My "&pf" method of getting things done

This has been a summer of many medium-sized projects.  I think I've knocked out about four referee reports, a bunch of gardening, a new syllabus for my fall calculus class, an improved fence-and-gate for Miser Dog's yard, and a few other projects that don't come to mind right away.  I'm still working my way slowly through writing a talk for this summer's MathFest, and starting next week I'll teach a mini summer course for high school students who might someday become first-generation college students.

In contrast to my mama-bear-sized projects, I'm getting to enjoy the amazingness of people around me who do remarkable feats.  My friend June off-handedly remarked, as we were getting ready for this morning's run, "I'm a little sore today because I rented a jack hammer yesterday."  (A jack hammer?  She's so impressive to me, June is!)   And that same day, my husband on a whim rode his bike 165 miles to New York City.  And then, when he got back today, he took off on his bike yet again to do grocery shopping because "I need 5 more miles to get over 200."   That's 200 miles in 2 days.  Yeah.

So, I'm not renting jackhammers to redo my own concrete window wells, and I'm not galavanting about between cities on my bike, but I am keeping on top of my email correspondence and staying ahead of the weeds in my garden.  And and that's okay; I'll get to be overwhelmed again once the semester starts up.

No, I'm enjoying the chance to spend each day with a mish-mash of activities, circling back again and again to the same projects, seeing them slowly come together and then eventually get crossed off the "needs to do" list.  And so my daily "to do" list has this weird symbol in it over and over again:

&pf.

That weird symbol stands for "and plan forward".  As in,

• "calc syllabus &pf"; 
• "math mag & pf"; 
• "Leitzel lecture &pf".  

Each time I see that "&pf" I know I've promised myself I'll spend a small amount of time -- ten minutes, a half-hour, maybe even an hour -- on that project today, but it's okay not to finish it yet.  Instead, when I've spent some time on the project, I make a note on a future day to spend more time on it, and then I get to check that to-do item off today's list.

The time management world loves to talk about "big rocks first":  you figure out the most important tasks---the "big rocks"---and do those determinedly, filling in around the edges with the less important pebbles and gravel.  Because, they say, putting in the big rocks first is the only way to fit all that hard material into the bucket of your day.

(As a side note, I have to say I'm totally tickled at how many of the images that come up in a google search involve putting rocks in canning jars).

But for me, my projects this summer aren't dead weight, they're organic ideas with many implications that I want to think about, return to, and that could consume the whole summer if I focused on them without making space for other parts of my life.  My projects are less like rocks and more like this bush that I trimmed.  Once I put the biggest branch (which itself had lots of branches) in the wheelbarrow, there was no space for anything else. I had to take the big branch out, fill the wheelbarrow with smaller twigs and leaves, and pile the big branch on top.

A bush branch sitting on top of the compost heap.

So I do the little things, and I add the big things in a bit at a time.  The advantage of coming back to the same thing over and over is especially helpful if the point of the project isn't just to get something behind you, but also to get something new in you, or more specifically, in your head.  I want the mathematical projects I'm working on this summer to stick with me, and I know that we learn things better when we space out that learning.  So I return again and again to the same paper, each time bringing another 24 hours, or another week, of perspective to the project.

J-son has been working in this fashion, over the course of months, on building a visible engine from a kit that my father bought him.  Back in March, he got stuck (probably because he put something together backwards).  I packed up the kit so that the sight of it wouldn't continue to frustrate him, and "planned forward" to June, when school let out and he'd have daylight time with his dad, who is a total gear head.  Once June came around, I asked them to spend just 20 minutes figuring out what went wrong and how to move forward.  Don't bother to finish it; just spend some time together.  The point is not to get it done; the point is to be doing it.

They actually ended up spending almost an hour together, making a lot of progress, and seemed to really enjoy it.  And they only stopped once my husband realized that the timing belt that came with the kit was the wrong size.  But because they'd gotten so much further than they'd planned, they weren't frustrated: they happily stopped (for now) and contacted the manufacturer for the correct part.  Once that part comes and they attach it to the model, they'll have fond memories of having worked together, and they'll get to spend yet more time together learning about something that they both find fascinating.

It's a good summer. 

frugality vs. convenience

My friend Beth confided, a bit sheepishly, the difficulty she has living a low-trash life in this modern world.  She told me she sort of admires me from afar, but has a lot of trouble figuring out how she might reduce garbage in her own life.  She said, "I'd really like to make less trash, but it all comes down to convenience.  It's just, you go to the store, and there are so many other things you have to be doing, and . . . convenience wins".  She sounded kind of embarrassed about admitting this, like it's some kind of guilty secret.

But what she's saying, I understand: grabbing a single box of cereal (with its lovely plastic liner bag) and a carton of milk (whose carton goes into the recycling bin) seems a lot easier than wandering many aisles and buying the many ingredients that come with making your own breakfast in a low-trash way -- not to mention that you still have to actually spend time making breakfast.  How could frugality trump convenience?

To me, all of this "convenience" has a lot of hassle built in that has become invisible to most people.  Beth (and most other normal people I know) assume that going to grocery stores over and over again is convenient.  How do you give that up for frugal DIY-ness?  But for me, the more I get into my weird lifestyle, the more I see massive inconvenience of the grocery-store kind of life.  The parking lots of grocery stores are unkind expanses of asphalt and obstacles.  The stores themselves are full of glaring lights, insipid music, and advertisements.  The sheer quantity and variety of items for sale (do we really need 87 varieties of potato chips?) means that finding the few things you do actually want is slow and inefficient.   (Seriously, grocery store aisles are almost as bad as TSA lines in airports, as far as I'm concerned).  And the checkout lines can vary in speed so much that the comedian Emo Philips uses them as a metaphor for "eternity".

Here's a different version of "convenience".  Last year, I only went to a grocery store (the kind that Beth means) a dozen times, and four of those times were while I was traveling and used a grocery store instead of a restaurant.  So, in 2015 I only made eight trips from home to a grocery store.

Instead, I go about three times a year to Miller's Amish market,

Trash from my last trip to Miller's, several months ago,
next to a canning jar solar light (not trash).

each time stocking up: about 50 pounds of flour, 25 pounds of oats, sugar, dried beans, nuts, some dried fruit.  I buy giant blocks of local, organic cheese for half the price of industrial grocery store cheese.  All of these food things come either in plastic bags (which I reuse for other food storage) or in large brown paper bags, which I recycle with cardboard or use as garden liners; I store the dry goods in large cat litter bins or glass jars to protect them from bugs and moisture.  I cut the cheese (heh heh) into pound size blocks, wrap the blocks individually, and freeze them.  That way, when I want baking supplies in between my trips to Miller's, I go "shopping in the basement" on "in the chest freezer".

My market backpack, with the containers
I'll return to get refills.

I also do a weekly trip to our local farmer's market to get yogurt, eggs, and milk (all in reusable containers, so the only trash is the plastic seal on the yogurt lid and the milk lid).  Compared to the grocery store, our farmer's market is an amazingly human experience, and it's also faster:  from the time I take my bike down off the hook at home to the time I hang it back up again with my groceries in my backpack, is a half hour.  (I've discovered to my surprise that biking is even faster than driving, sitting in traffic, parking, etc).

And when I'm at home, how do I make breakfast quickly?  I've written elsewhere about making waffles and muffins quickly for our weekend breakfasts.  On weekdays, I tend to have homemade granola mixed with yogurt.  I make my granola in large batches (one to two gallons at a time), so the cooking part of that comes only about once a month, usually while I'm making something else.  A gallon jar of granola compared to a wimpy little box of cereal?  To me, the granola scores big on the convenience scale.

Granola is super easy to make.  The more I make it, the more I realize the main ingredients are oats and oil.  Powdered milk, cinnamon or ginger, and sugar add flavor and/or sweetness, but they're totally secondary.  (I get oil and powdered milk at the grocery store, but I'm hoping someday to find bulk versions elsewhere.   Cinnamon and ginger are MUCH cheaper at market than at the grocery store; plus you can bring your own container and refill it there instead of doing trash).

Great Jars of Granola!

The basic idea behind this kind of shopping comes from Amy Dacyzyn's "Pantry Principle"-- keeping a well-stocked pantry that allows me to make a variety of foods (bread/pretzels/granola/muffins/waffles/etc) can be cheaper and faster than choosing the menu first and the ingredients second.

The point of all this description isn't to say that Beth is wrong and I'm right:  I'm sure that Beth would find my version of shopping incredibly inconvenient if she tried to start it up right now.  "Convenience" is a psychological thing; it's much more convenient to rely on habit and routine than to keep trying new things.  I used to go the grocery store weekly or more, and back then I thought that side trips to our farmer's market were a painful extra excursion.  Reorganizing my life took a long time, a lot of experimenting (not always successful).  Now that I'm used to this new way of living, I realize that it has become easy for me (and, in fact, easier than my former habits).  I'm not saying it'd be the kind of life that everyone would like.

But it *is* a life that, now that I'm used to it, means that frugality and low-trash-ity has become *more* convenient, not *less* convenient, than buying packaged and processed food from the grocery store.

Twisted resolutions

I love making really creative, convoluted resolutions that combine multiple goals in a sort of back-door way.  One of my most successful resolutions of years past -- successful in the sense that I'm still happily incorporating them in my regular life -- combined my goal of wanting to get back into shape and also spend more time with friends: the resolution was,  "Run gregariously".  Likewise, our family's "Special Dinner" series was my answer to finding ways to build traditions among a group of people who come from many backgrounds but who now lived together in one home.  They're fun; they're funky; and they worked.

So here, below, are three of my favorite twisted "resolutions" for 2016, along with a description of how & why I came up with these particular ideas.

1.
What I really want to do (that is, the goal behind the resolution) is build up my upper-body strength: lift weights more often, do pushups, yadda yadda.  In the past, there have been times when I just *loved* lifting -- bur recently, as much as I love the idea of it, I somehow just never seem to get started.  So putting on my thinking cap about what was different then than now, it was that the love-lifting-times came when I had a natural clothing transition time that coincided with a lifting space -- for example, I was going from class to swimming, so I happened to be right near the weight machines right as I was changing from normal clothes into other clothes. In that situation, a small detour to the weight machine just seemed like a gift to my body and my mood.  What worked was a combination:  the swim was a signal, and the geography made the detour easy.

Hence, Exercise resolution #2:  "Stretch and do pushups before any shower".  

The shower is the signal, and stretching/pushups is something I can do anywhere.  Better yet, since I usually take a shower on those four days a week I go running (gregariously), I can do my stretching/pushups while I'm already warmed up and stinky.

2.
Likewise, a huge desire of mine is to keep J-son out of jail/not let my family members strangle J-son have lots of regular "Time In"s with J-son.  I also want to try to take care of some deferred maintenance on the house before my sabbatical is over.

Hence, Home resolution #4:  "Weekly fix-it project with J-son".

3.
This next one is already one of my favorite ideas of the year for being convoluted in its conception, even though I have no idea if this'll actually work.  I've mentioned once or twice that N-son has some mild physical issues because of a stroke -- one of these is that he slurs his words.  This slurring is both persistent and mild: persistent in that all of our family and all of his teachers know that it's often hard to understand him, and mild in the sense that every speech therapist we've taken him to says he's fine.  The most recent speech therapist noted it might be "laziness" -- rather, that he speaks well when that's his only task, but when he gets distracted with other thoughts (especially in crowds) he just relaxes his mouth a lot.  He needs some strength training, she suggested.   And on a completely different side of N-son, he's loving playing drums and also the new mostly-adult chorus he's joined, both for the music but also for the no-judgment camaraderie that his new social circles provide him.

Hence, Home resolution #1:  "Find affordable voice lessons for N-son". 

(Don't you love it?  Building on his current passion, but also giving him a backdoor to speech therapy . . . I'm so psyched about the potential for this idea.  We've already found some $1/minute lessons; but I don't think we want to put quite that much money into it if we can find a more frugal alternative).

Fractal Sabbatical

I often think of sabbaticals as a practice for retirement.  This year, because my husband is actually retired, the practice feels much more real.  

I read other retirees who describe the delights of getting rid of the alarm clock, waking up when they actually feel like it.  Sleeping in is definitely one of my husband's joys these days. But for me, I've found that this year's sabbatical has actually made me want to push my schedule in the other, earlier direction.  I used to wake up at 5:50 a.m. every day, but now I'm waking up at 5:30 a.m.  These quiet morning hours are precious to me.

I pushed in this direction, actually, to get away from my computer a little bit.  There's so much good stuff to do at the beginning of the day -- in my case,  pre-scheduled running/biking with friends, prayer time and planning time -- that I tried to convince myself to start my day WITHOUT checking email and blogs.  But after repeated excuses about why Day X ought to be an exception to the no-early-computer rule, I decided the exception should become the rule, and I gave myself a half-hour first-thing every day to catch up on the e-world before returning to the physical world.

In fact, I made myself this arc of a schedule as a picture of my day.  The shape pleases me because it makes me feel as though I'm rising through my early-morning levels -- email and blog first, then upward to exercise, planning and prayer, then a brief eat/dress time before start in on my math.  And so that I don't twitch about being e-disconnected, I promise myself time just before lunch for a second round of email.  Lots of open space in the afternoon as the day begins to descend into night.

Morning planning time is sort of holy to me -- not "holy" in the sense of being mystical/magic, but "holy" in the sense of being somehow set apart from the more mundane aspects of my life.  I got to do a Time Management presentation for young mathematicians this past summer, and to them I described this daily planning time as a sort of a mini-sabbatical.  Mathematicians sometimes study objects (like broccoli or clouds) where little pieces of the object look like the big object. We call these objects "fractals"--because if you "fracture" off a little piece of broccoli, it's a copy of the whole.  My daily planning time is a sabbatical within a sabbatical, I told these young mathematicians.

So making time for this early-morning planning while I'm apart from my kids and computer is just as important to me as writing that sabbatical proposal that gives me time away from teaching for a year.   Totally worth waking up a bit earlier, just to enjoy this time apart, this time of reflection.

And so here's where I've been most mornings once I've finished my run or my bike rides: I'm a little bit stinky, sitting with my paper planner, thinking about the day ahead, spending five or ten minutes enjoying my sabbatical within a sabbatical.  And, in fact, that's what I'm going to go do now.

A week with no walls

Last Saturday, my husband drove off with my children, leaving me all alone.  For just one week.

Although of course we love each other very much, there is something to be said for having a week-long vacation from each other every once in a while.  Being apart not only allows us to indulge in the things we love that drive the other person a little bit nutso, but it also allows us to think fondly of the good parts of our marriage.  Consider this heart-warming note my husband sent about the joys of frugality, as seen from the comfortable distance of living in a bit of temporary restaurant/new-car luxury, as he and the boys spent the week with his daughter (my step-daughter):

[My daughter] and I were talking about cooking. Although we have been going out for dinner, the boys have been cooking breakfast and making sandwiches during the day. I was telling her how to shop for vegetables in season and some ways she could convince herself it is better to cook than eat out. 

It's funny. As I do it, I am channeling you, of course. I feel like at fat guy sharing diet secrets, or a happy drunk telling a sad drunk next to him in a bar that he needs Jesus.  But even if I would prefer to drive new cars and eat out more, I feel overwhelmingly blessed to share my spendthrift life with you. . . . 

. . . This had been a lovely trip. The funny thing about our (relatively) Spartan life is that every luxury feels so good. The [rental] car is a smooth, quiet, electronic marvel. I worried about being able to drive all this way because I was remembering Chicago and back in the Prius, or thinking Michigan to PA in the Humvee. The 2015 Malibu is automotive Heaven.

For my part, what I reveled in was what I think of as "the week without walls".  I woke up in the morning and could do my usual morning puttering without having to schedule it around the boys' 7 a.m. wake-up time.  I took on projects during the day, and I didn't have to keep an eye on the clock so that I could be back home to supervise summer school or prepare dinner in the early evening.   I started a bedtime book or went to sleep early without having to check that the boys were home, that they'd brushed their teeth, that they had planted their phones in the cell-phone garden.

The wall-less-ness of the schedule was thrilling.  It was energizing.  It was freeing.  It reminded me of those summers very, very long ago that I used to relish because of the childlessness of them. I'd  just moved to the College where I now work; I was a divorced mom with one child.  School years, my daughter would be with me, and summers she'd spend at her dad's home.  What amazed me most during those summers of no childcare was that the true freedom was NOT that I got to go out with my friends on a moment's notice, and it was NOT being able to stay at work after the daycare closed --- it was the freedom to leave work EARLY.   That is, I could go home at 3 p.m. if I were tired, and I wouldn't have to do so knowing I'd just have to return to the childcare place to pick her up, or I wouldn't have to bring her home with me and immediately go into "second shift" of mom duty:  I could just . . . go home.  And sit there.  There was no 5 p.m. wall in my schedule.

And last week, I started projects knowing that I didn't have to magically have them cleaned up and put away at a certain time.  I could move dinner to 4:30 or to 8:30, and nothing crazy would happen.  It was like Time opened up for me.

My husband and sons are back.  I'm very glad they are; I missed them (even the 16-year-old who still, alas, needs constant supervision). But I'm also glad for the temporary gift of time I got.  It's a glimpse to me of what lies ahead when the boys move out.  Will I be bored?  (No)   Will I be lonely? (No).  Will I have trouble figuring out what to do with all my free time? (no, no, and no).

Tool hangers (and musings on saving stuff)

In the midst of a semester where every hour counts, I've been thinking about what and how we save things.  

• If I save money, I see the numbers in my accounts go up, and I can get that money back out whenever I want.   
• But saving things --- like arts and craft supplies, that requires ongoing effort so that things don't get cluttered, and I'm still not guaranteed that I'll ever be able to use any of it. 
• And saving time --- well, I don't have to store time in a drawer, and I don't get to store it in a bank. 

Still, there is a way in which learning a skill and practicing it is a way to bank a bit of time for the future.  I've done so much sewing in my life that, by now, it's easier and faster for me to mend something than to go out and buy a new one.  And I've made so many tool hangers for family and friends who got married that nowadays I can whip up one fairly quickly.

So when K-daughter wrote me earlier this week to say she's getting married Friday (today!), it was fun to spring into action.  I just happened to have a set of tools lying around that I'd planned to be a gift to I-don't-know-who (but now I do).  And I rummaged through my fabric supplies, and found a pair of holey jeans, and an orange drawstring that N-son had asked me to remove from a pair of his shorts.   

I like how the orange drawstring winds up and down;
have to take the ugly sticker off the hammer, though!

 I like the contrast of colors; they fortuitously go well with the color of the tools I'd picked out.

I even like that this is something old/something new/something borrowed/something blue.

But aside from the tool hanger itself, the process of putting it together was joyful.  It took me two, three hours, probably.  These were contemplative and creative hours, a break from my regular routine of reading papers and writing reports.

And maybe this is one aspect of what saving time looks like:  that some long-ago version of me spent time learning to sew, puzzled over new projects, and stocked up on extra materials.  So then this week, when I needed to pull all this back out of the Time Bank, I could.

The wedding is tonight.  I'm so excited!  

Moderate Praise for Going to Extremes

A commenter on Frugal Scholar said, the other day, "I don't go to extremes like reusing coffee filters or stuff like that . . . " .  My immediate thought was "what's so extreme about that?"  I have a reusable "gold" coffee filter that I use whenever I can.  And when my husband makes Pot #1 of coffee with a paper filter, I've been known to make Pot #2 by just dumping a bit more coffee grounds into the existing set of grounds.  That's not extreme by my standards, it's just normal.

But I admit I do go to extremes in other ways.  In fact, recently I've been reaping the mixed blessings of a life lived to extremes.  This past summer, I spent something like 20 hours a week training for the Ironman triathalon.  It's not the way I want to live always, and I was happy as all-get-out when I finally finished the race.  It wasn't just that I was happy to do the whole 140 miles; it was a relief to know the triathalon training was behind me and I could now return to "normal".  

But, in large part because of going nutso this past summer, "normal" means something different for me now than it did before.  "Normal" now means I "only" run 13-ish miles a week.  It means I have gone from bike-fearing to bike-loving: I bike to market and to doctors appointments instead of driving.  And when I get a bit of extra time on the weekends, my husband and I go for a 25-mile joy ride, biking through some of my now-favorite farmland vistas.

And the truth is, I pretty desperately need that exercise habit to be deeply ingrained this year.  Because now that the academic year has kicked in, I've gone to extremes in another direction.  This year I'm both a department chair and a member of my college's promotion and tenure committee.   Either one of these jobs is notorious in academic circles for being a time suck; the combination (mixed in with teaching and advising that I'm also doing) is a little bit like an IronMan of Academia.  I've got lots and lots and lots of administrative work on my hands . . . although, it's not really my hands that carry the load, it's my butt.  I'm doing a lot of sitting and staring at computer screens.

The time-suck that I've entered into this year, I think of as another odd and painful blessing.  It has forced me to think about all the parts of my life that have become normal because of habit instead of because of choice.  So to keep myself sane, I'm examining every part of my day, from how and when I rise to what I do just before I go to sleep at night.  I'm paying especial attention to anything that keeps me seated at a screen, or seated reading papers.

I've put myself on a newspaper fast; between now and May, I'll get the Sunday paper but not the daily paper.  That's a half-hour each morning I'll spend differently.  I'm becoming more aware (and also much more careful) about internet use.  I'm seriously considering an internet fast from 7:30 each evening until 7:30 the next morning; I just have to work out the logistics of that.

I'm also, paradoxically, using these time pressures to force a few new activities into my schedule.  I have a weekly "date" with my grown daughters, and that's turned into a source of delight for all of us.  I've started attending coffee hour at our faculty center, mostly so I can schmooze with other people.   I've set aside time for a Bible study and for solitary prayer and quiet.    And I've decided that I need to read something that's pure enjoyment, so I'm threading my way through Jane Eyre.

With so little free time in my schedule, I'm working hard to make the most of the time that I do have.  All of a sudden, every little thing that I do matters.  I think about every part of my schedule these days differently, carefully, even obsessively.  It's an extreme way to live.   But I think that when this academic year spits me out into a warm, empty, wide-open summer, I'll be a better person for having lived this way.

Managing time, space, and money: five books

After a recent bragging fit of mine where I pretended I be an expert on all the best and most beautiful literature on time management,  a colleague shot me an email, asking in part,  "Also: which time management book would you pair me with?!"

For what it's worth, here was my response.  

I don't know if you were joking about pairing you up with a time management book, but I'll say that I don't think of this as a joking matter.  So I'm taking you seriously.  

Here are my five favorite books on organizing time and space.

1.

First is Hyrum Smith and the "Franklin Planner system".  I heard these audio tapes when I was just starting out at [the college I teach at], and I've since converted them to MP3s:   [I don't know if I'm allowed to share these publicly.  If you leave your email in the comments below, I'll send you the link to these MP3's and then delete your comment so other people don't have access to your address.]

I was WAY skeptical before I started these tapes.  I did not believe that some business guy could tell a single mom, hippie-granola, math professor how to organize her life, but I've been a hard-core devotee ever since.  He encourages people to organize their time by their own values -- the "vital versus urgent" notion I mentioned in our conversation earlier today comes from these tapes.  But he also showed me how to have all of the information I'll ever need at my fingertips, and how to have it magically "pop up" just when I need it.  There is a book, too:  The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management.  

2.

Another classic is Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  This has a cult following, I think partly because he loves cute buzz phrases ("Think Win-Win"; "Sharpen the Saw"; etc), and partly because this is a squishier book.  This won't help you manage paper, time, or your calendar (I think), but I appreciated his approach to working with other people.  In particular, the chapter on "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" was the very best explanation of how to do active listening that I've ever read.  And I re-read it once in a while because I'm so bad at working with, y'know, people.

3.

Julie Morganstern's Organizing from the Inside Out is hands-down the best book I've read on how to organize spaces and belongings so that they stay naturally well organized.  I've used her methods in my kitchen (where I have lots of random people helping put things away), in my teenage daughter's bedroom (the transformation was almost instantaneous and miraculous) and even in my office.  She has very little to say about managing time (and what she does say is vacuous at best).   I have 3 copies of her book on my shelf just so I can hand it out to other people who ask for it.  

4.

David Allen's Getting Things Done is one of the most recent big organizing books out there, and he's generated his own nerd-cult of "GTD" followers.  I twitch at a lot of his book because he spends a bunch of time bashing my hero, Hyrum Smith, and he says that values and priorities don't matter.  (Grrrr).  But he has some good stuff on the difference between reference information and active files.  I reorganized my email folders using tricks he mentions, in particular using symbols in the name to keep those email folders at the top of the stack:  I have an

•  "@ to print" folder,  
• "# waiting" folder for those emails that don't require action until someone responds,
•  "& Meetings Committee" for my active committee work, 
• etc

whereas "old" email goes in regularly named folders below.  Allen is also good at describing how to set up a tickler file.

5.

Finally, if time is money, then everybody should read the classic Your Money or Your Life.  I've read this book out loud to my husband.  I re-read it every few years.  Countless people say it's changed their lives (they'd actually say "transformed"), and I have to say it makes me think about "spending" my money as a way of spending the time it takes to generate that money.  I wish I could get all my advisees to read it.

Beware Kids' Activities!

I'm leery of kids' activities.  Let me start there.

Lately, I've been swimming a lot, and I see very out-of-shape parents sitting passively by the side of the pool, watching their kids get exercise.  I'll admit, that bugs me.

It bugs me because so many kids' activities are unnecessarily segregationist.  Kids get on a sports team (or in a drama club, or in an orchestra) with other people almost exactly the same age, and I know that too much of that is a bad thing for our kids.  I worry that constantly sticking kids in age-restricted sports and clubs tamps down their maturity --- much as having 18-year-old college students live together in dorms encourages behavior that few 30-year-olds would ever tolerate.  They spend their time trying to live up to the coolness of someone a year or two older than them, getting trophies for being the fastest 13-year-old runner or the most consistent 10-year-old dancer, without getting to see or work with the even faster 18-year-old runners or the even more experienced 24-year-old dancers.  It tamps down the kids' maturity.

An alternative is to find things to do together, when possible.  So my husband takes all our kids to bike races, where they each race in their own age category, but the boys get to see how adult racers handle themselves, too.  Or we all do a 5k road race together, as a family, and compare notes afterwords with the 20-year-old winner of the race and with a 70-year-old runner who almost (but not quite) beat out N-son.  Or, (many years ago, when my daughter was still at home), we hired a good friend to come over to our home to teach "Family Dance lessons", and all of us, from age 2 to age 50, learned the swing and other snazzy dances in our garage.  (A dozen years later, N-son can still do parts of the dance we learned to Queen's "We will Rock you").  If we weren't riding bikes together Sunday afternoons, we could join the family-friendly intergenerational ultimate frisbee game in the park.

Still, kids' activities are a part of my kids' lives.  N-son takes drum lessons, and I'm hoping he'll soon join the school jazz band.  J-son runs track and cross-country with his middle school.  Both of them are part of an after-school squash program (that I love because it adds a tutoring component, teaming the squash kids up with college volunteers and thereby ratcheting up the age-mix.)  And this year, both of them want to join the football team.  That's a lot for kids just barely in their teens.  And I let them try to do it all, just like their mom and dad go a bit nutso on the sports side.

Which leads me to the other thing that makes me leery of kids' activities:  they're not designed with a frugal lifestyle in mind.  Latest example: three days this week, J-son's cross country practice started in one location (5 miles from our home) and ended two hours later in another location (3 miles from our home).   This completely rules out riding bikes to practice, so -- in spite of my "no car" hopes -- I've put fifty miles on the Prius this week, just so my son could run 12 miles.  Crazy.  Fortunately, this schedule is one-week-only.

[Also, J-son's feet grew from a size 6 to a size 9.5 this year.  No kidding!  My stash of shoes-to-grow-into didn't get quite that big, and all the so-called-thrift stores were sole-less, so when his coach said he needed a pair of running shoes, I went to a Real Store, where he got fitted with completely brand new $hoe$ . . . thereby quadrupling my clothing budget for the entire year.  sigh.]

All this is to say, I'm leery of kids' activities.  Let me end there.

Doing things the All-and-Nothing way

There's something to be said for slow and steady.

But slow and steady is not my life recently.  Instead, I've been energetically and exclusively focused . . . on  a variety of things.   Sort of like serial monogamy, but with aspects of my life instead of with romantic partners.

Last weekend, my boys went out of town and I had three days where I just threw myself into math.   (Remember, for me, math is fun).  For three days, except for a tiny bit of exercise and pauses to eat, the only thing I did was crank out pages and pages of math.  It was GREAT!

Monday was the 15th.  Math was over, but I moved about (running, lifting, biking, running again, swimming, biking, walking, dancing) for 15 hours straight, much as I did on June 15 but a bit less intensely because of the heat.

Another day was devoted just to the grand e-mail catchup.  Another day to committee work.

Last January, when my friend TL designed a marathon training schedule for us, she found one of the many programs that intersperses days of intense work with days of rest.  This summer, I'm discovering how much I like that system for so many different aspects of my life.

At any rate, today is mostly a rest-from-everything day, possibly meeting up with my best friend from childhood, so I'm not going to write much more now.  

Planning to spend and save; time and money

I'm writing the bulk of this post Sunday night, after the end of my weekly internet sabbath, although I'll tweak this post a bit on Monday and Tuesday before I hit the "publish" button on Tuesday morning.

The internet sabbath day is one that reminds me of all the non-e-things around me, a reminder I find I need regularly.  Probably because of the lack of e-distractions and i-distractions, late Sunday is a good time to plan, too. I get to make lists, and I love making lists.  For some reason, this week I've been struck by the distinction of planning for things where the planning is what makes things those things happen (on the one hand), and planning for things that are going to happen anyway (on the other hand).

Is that confusing?  Maybe some simple examples are in order.  The triathalon I'm hoping to do in the summer of 2015 is -- in some very important ways -- a sheer invention on my part.  It didn't exist in my world even a month ago.  It doesn't actually have to exist in the future . . . but I am trying, through planning and will-power and whatever-else-it-takes to make it happen.  I've bought a bike (the Sudden Painful Death Machine).  I've started thinking about training.*   In fact, part of my Sunday sabbath this week has been planning for what kind of training I'm going to want to do in the year(s) ahead.  It's the Future Wishful Tense of planning.  It's the planning itself that is going to make the triathalon a reality (or not).  It's an arrow I've shot into the future.

* Part of finding the time to train, as I wrote before, will be letting go of this blog.  Today's is my 442nd post; at 450 I'm going to stop blogging and turn into a hyper-obsessed athlete, or so I tell myself.

I'd put our special Family Dinners in the same category of invention-planning:  the Valentines Dinner, the Zoo Dinner, the Money Dinner, the Siete-de-Mayo Dinner, the Pirate Dinner, the Halloween Dinner -- they're all creations sprung from my head  some time last December, planned out so that they'd become reality during the year.  And -- to be a bit more serious -- retirement is definitely in the same category.  If you don't think about it, imagine it, plan for it -- if instead you just do whatever's in front of you -- then retirement just isn't going to happen.  Planning for a wished-for future is an important part of my life.

But most of my Sunday sabbath planning is in a different category.  It's the planning of anticipating certain-to-occur needs, needs that will come smack me in the face whether I plan for them or not.

• Will the boys need more meds soon?  If so, call the doc on Monday and get the next prescription before we run out.  
• What does the week's dinner situation look like?  Figure out when to pull things from the freezer and when to soak beans, so I don't spend extra time defrosting things.  
• Are there big deadlines coming up?   Plan some time in the week to work on these projects so I'm not late, or (God willing) not even rushed.  

The first kind of planning is figuring out how to spend time (or money).  The second kind of planning is figuring out how to save time (or money).

And I love them both.  For example, as I turned the page in my daily planner and found my annual Thanksgiving shopping list just sitting there waiting for me, I gave myself a little high-five/gold-star for having organized my butt off several years ago.  Now that I have a list I carry over from year-to-year, the brain-power I would have spent getting ready to shop for this annual dinner is available for use for bigger purposes, like for designing a bike rack that can accommodate the SPDM and all my husband's and kids' bikes, too.  By Tuesday, I'll start following my annual Thanksgiving meal recipe (as much as I ever follow a recipe).  Again, an hour of advance planning several years ago, combined with a few minutes' combing through the cupboards, freezer, and calendar, mean that I'm feeling confident and relaxed about the cooking extravaganza to come.

And all of this reminds me that a day of rest -- a day of removing myself from the immediate concerns of the present -- brings with it a special gift.  It's the gift that reminds me, every week, that I'm able to look just a bit into the future, to prepare for that future, even to help shape that future.  (It's why the Big Guy declared the sabbath "holy": there's a really big future out there to think of, He says.)

A while back I wrote this to end a post, and I think I was pretty funny, but accurate:

Calendars aren't classy. Schedules aren't sexy. Lists seldom inspire lust (unless they're in my husband's lap). But I couldn't live the good life without them.

Room for emergencies

In my post yesterday about cutting down on overwhelming busyness, I toyed with the idea of saying something along the lines of this:

Part of the reason for avoiding a completely full schedule 

is to save space in my schedule for emergencies.

Jinx.

I hit the "publish" button, went to work, came home.  That very night, J-son was tooling around on his bike while paying attention to everything that was not his bike, when he crashed.  We got a call from a very nice neighbor who'd bandaged up the hurt ankle and sent him home.  No broken bones, but there is a gash.  I spent the evening pampering him, keeping him off the foot, and wondering quietly in the back of my head whether it's worth going to the emergency room for stitches.  We decided butterfly bandages and some iPod time (with feet up in the air) would probably do the trick instead.

But what I didn't do was fret over a big pile of work that I'd brought home.  And I didn't worry about getting further behind on Project X while I doled out ice packs and hugs and reassurances.  Why not?  Because for once this month, I didn't bring a big pile of work home.  I hadn't really intended to play nursemaid, but at least I had the time and the brain to change roles once I had to.

Poor kid. Glad I was there. 

Filling out forms

Yesterday, when my son asked in a loud voice, "Mom, where's the emergency form?", I didn't panic.  I smiled.

It's that time of year again.

Schools are sending home piles and piles of forms to fill out, over and over again.  A year ago I wrote about how I create a master form on my computer with all sorts of pesky information, a form that's easy to update .  (One piece of that information is names/addresses of people to contact in an emergency; that's why my son was calling this the "emergency form".)

Usually, I hand the master form over to the kids and have them use it to fill out their school forms.  Except that this year, they've learned the drill so well that they didn't even need me to tell them what to do.  (We usually keep the master form on the bulletin board near the phone, but I'd taken it down to update some phone numbers, so all he really wanted was some help finding the one form with all the answers.)

Even with the master form in front of them, the boys still had lots of questions, which shows one reason why filling out forms is so hard.  My master form lists a "medical provider", but the school forms asked for a "physician".  We had to translate between those words.

So I guess I could pretend I'm doing all this NOT  because I'm a lazy bum trying to save myself from mind-numbing work (which would be the truth), but because it teaches my children valuable administrative skills they'll need some day.  Hah!

Here's the list of information that I keep on that master list.

• Child’s Name 
• Birth date 
• Address
• Mother’s Name 
• Home Telephone/Cell phone 
• Address 
• Work, Work Address, Work Telephone 
• Father’s Name 
• Home Telephone /Cell phone
• Address 
• Work, Work Address , Work Telephone 
• Emergency Contact/Person to whom child may be released (some forms need 3 names)
• Name, Address, Telephone 
• Name, Address, Telephone 
• Name, Address, Telephone 
• Medical Provider, Address & Telephone 
• Dentist, Address & Telephone 
• Special Disabilities 
• Allergies
• Insurance company, policy number, telephone

This year, my kids worked pretty hard on their forms.  I myself spent 5 minutes proofreading and correcting the huge stack they'd plowed through, and then we were done.  Score!

The secret society of the blissful busy

As April winds down, I want to say the forbidden word, and then to make a confession.

My life (I have written) has been rich-and-full lately.  There has been a lot going on.  I have been -- to use a word that I try hard not to use -- busy.  I could list all the ways my time has been apportioned (children, housework, job, PTO) but that's not the point -- I know that other people are busy, too.  The details don't matter.  The busyness, that's something you can understand without wanting to get close enough to read the bumpersticker on the back of my busy-bus.

And I think it would be fair for you to think that "busy" means "unhappy", or "frustrated", or "overwhelmed".  But no.  Actually (here's the confession part), I really like being busy.  Delighted, you might say.  I've been having my own little Busy Ball.  I've had a blast.

It's true that I do NOT like letting important things go undone.  When I can't meet obligations (to myself, to others), then I'm frustrated.  The getting-big-things-done part of my life is why I took a few days off of blogging, in fact.  But the mere fact that my day is filled up with activity, that part I like.  I seek it out, truth be told.

As busyness goes, it's just that, generally, activities that other people find relaxing, I find stressful -- lacking in purpose or sense of accomplishment:  family vacations (couldn't we find a volunteer activity to do together?).  Lying on the beach (anyone want to go for a walk?).  Long lunches.  "Just sayin' hello" telephone calls.  I can do those if I have to, but I'd rather be making lists, writing emails, doing math, canning tomatoes.  Anything that leads to something.

I'm one of those people who gets twitchy when I sit still.  At a grand dinner earlier this week, I was the one who kept hopping up, walking over to other tables, schmoozing all around.  I was the one to propose that next year, maybe we should add dancing.  Sitting still for 75 minutes?  Not my style.

Except when sitting still is purposeful.  Give me a book and a quiet room, and I'm there.  Back in the pre-N-son days, I read entire Tom Clancy books in a span of half-days; John Grisham and Agatha Christie and John Donne and Dorothy Parker can still command my undivided attention.  So it's not at all that I'm afflicted with some kind of ADHD.  (My sons, yes).

 But I don't think busy-ness is some kind of sin.  There are times it comes close:

• when we try to act superior to others because we're so busy;
• when we try to impress others because we're so busy;
• when we try to welch on our promises because we just discovered we were busy;
• when we try to blame others because we took on big tasks that (surprise!) made us busy.

But is enjoying being busy bad?  That is, provided you can control those other aspects of pride and conceit?  Sometimes people imply that it is; that "not taking time to smell the roses" is somehow a signal of general maladjustment.   If they're right, I'm way out of whack.   

Surviving a busy spell: phase 3 = lists

Write it down.  That's phase 3 of my when-I'm-way-too-busy coping mechanism.

You knew I was going to say this.  You just wondered when.  I make lists all the time.  When I get busy, the lists are even more essential to me.  A list is not just some kind of security blanket for the obsessive-compulsive (although, thank goodness,  it can certainly be that for people like me -- hah!)  When people  are under stress, both memory and decision-making suffer.  So writing things down helps to avoid brain farts, minor mishaps, or even huge mistakes.

The point of a list is not to make my life conform to the list.  Just because I write it down, doesn't mean I have to DO it.  It just means I no longer have to actively remember it . . . my list will remind me.  More written on the paper; less clutter in the head.

Every time I think of something I might want to do, it goes onto my list.  (I keep all my lists in my planner).  Big or little, I just write it down.

What happens once I've got my list together is more of an art form than a science.  I know from past experience that I tend to write down more tasks than I can ever accomplish in a single day.  Some people deal with this using the "three big rocks" method (choose the three tasks you really need to accomplish, and just do those), and I understand the appeal of that.  But my day is often full of many important little tasks; if I did just three of the things on my list, my world would fall apart.

Instead, once I've got a list, I do a kind of quick triage.  I'll often read through my list quickly, marking some of the tasks with a "U" or a "V" or other symbols.

• For me, "U" stands for "urgent" -- C-son needs meds today.  I have to prepare for my class before the class happens this afternoon.  If I don't register for the conference today, I lose the early-bird discount.
• "V" stands for "vital", the tasks that are central to my identity and my values.  Getting exercise.  Doing math.  Hugging my kids.  (Yes, I write "hug kids" on my to-do list, because I'm the kind of person likely to forget to do that.  Sad but true).  
• Depending on what else is on the list, I might also mark some items with a telephone (on days I have a lot of calls to make) or an "e" (on days there are a lot of emails to send out).  This allows me to "batch" my tasks.

Given that I don't have enough time in a single day to do everything on my list (and trust me, I don't), I try to whack away at the U/V parts first.  And sometimes, "whack" means just not do it at all: to heck with that conference.  Or, I'll run tomorrow when it's not raining, but skip it today.  Crossing something off my list because I decided NOT to do it feels really good on a busy day.

I also try to ease some of the mental strain of large to-do lists by deliberately moving some big tasks into the future, when the semester is over and life will be less hectic.  In May, I'm going to review a paper an editor sent me, and I'll also work on a newsletter that has no fixed deadline.  Both of these are things I want to do, but I don't have to do them now.  So they're not on today's to-do list (try saying that three times fast!); they're on a "May" to-do list.  I can forget about them for a while.  Phew!

Having a list isn't a method for getting everything done.  Hardly!  For me, it serves more as a way of getting peace of mind -- it reminds me that I haven't forgotten to do something important.  Reminds me that what I am doing right now is really the most important (to me) thing to be doing.  That if there's something important I didn't do, at least I know I didn't do it, and can try to work around that.  That, since I can't do everything today, at least I'm making choices about what I can do today.  

Surviving a busy spell: my unbalanced approach

Phase 2 of surviving a busy time: don't go for balance.

I've seen a lot of presentations on "balance", as in "How to balance career and family", or (for professors), "How to balance teaching and research".  I really don't like that metaphor.  For me, it sounds like this:  two different, important things, that you need to keep as far away from each other as possible.

Balancing work  and family?

I try to think instead of "integrating" -- that is, bringing things together.  I like that I take my kids to math conferences with me.  I like that my students come to my home for dinner, or that my kids come to my classes.  I like that I go running with my friends; that's a lot better for me than "balancing my exercise and my social life".

A better metaphor than "balance" might be a jigsaw puzzle.  How can we put all the pieces of our life together, especially when there's not much room on the table (or in our calendar)?

Examples are in order.  They're tricky, because I'm sure the puzzle pieces of my life don't look like yours.  You don't probably don't have a pair of boys who were dying-dying-dying to play squash last weekend.

You probably didn't have a huMONGous pile of papers to grade, either.

That would be me with the squash wannabes and the grading.  Two puzzle pieces.  Pieces that fit together nicely, like this:

I grade, unmolested, overlooking my sons,
who smash the ball into as many walls as they can.

So yes, I plan my syllabus around my children's athletic and music practice schedule.  I often grade while they run drills on the basketball court or while they bang away on drums.  [ --> Earplugs! <-- ]  I want quiet while I grade; they want a mom sitting on the sidelines but not on the court with them.  Fits together nicely.

Cooking with my kids is another example; I'm such a task-oriented person that I'm not good with playing traditional games.  (I'd be happy building the V-8 engine together with J-son, but once it's built, I don't have much patience for just watching it run.)  So -- since I want to make sure I spend time with my kids, and since somebody has to make dinner anyway -- cooking gives us a purposeful task to accomplish together.

We "put the pieces together" when we do several errands at once, keeping shopping time to a minimum.  (Bonus points if one of those errands is a stroll through the farmers' market, hand-in-hand with the husband.  Yes.)  In a different way, we "put the pieces together" when we live according to our religious convictions all week long, not just when we're at church.  I kind of like having the different pieces of my life oozing around and touching one another.  Integrated.  Connected.  Better than trying to live life in the middle of a teeter-totter.

Surviving a busy spell: phase 1 = acceptance

I mentioned earlier this week that April is a month that is really "rich and full" for me -- a euphemism for "busy".  Every academic year is sort of like the 1812 overture: it starts all sunny and soft, but it build in intensity, ending with all instruments full voice and cannons going off.  Okay, so I'll admit it: I'm getting overwhelmed.

For me, one of the ways I get through this month is to realize that this is the way I decided to live.  I didn't choose the particulars, necessarily (no, I do not want to make 5 trips to the pharmacy again this week!), but I did choose the general outlines that make up my tasks.

Occasionally, I've been surprised to find that other people don't see it this way.  I remember a conversation with a friend who was complaining about how much grading she has to do.  I made what I thought was an obvious remark:  how lucky we professors are, that we set the amount of work we have to do, and we work hard because of our own high standards.  My friend was insistent that the grading she faced was just way, way too much.

Now, at my college, no one tells professors how many papers we have to assign.  No one tells us that we have to serve on national committees.  But we still assign a LOT of work to our students (and it comes back in spades as piles of papers to grade).  And many of us join all sorts of committees, and end up doing all sorts of extra work because of that.  But I quickly realized that trying to push that point with my friend would turn me into a jerk, so I eased up.

And yet, I still believe there is a heck of a lot that I do that's not other people's fault.  It would be easy to rail against the system that made me spend 8 hours in the offices of doctors, notaries, schools, and pharmacies last week.  I'm betting you didn't do that, after all . . . but that's my point.  *I* chose to adopt a child from the Statewide Adoption Network, and *I* agreed he ought to move in the Thursday before Easter.  Okay, so all this was a choice.  My choice.  In the same vein, I spent the past weekend (and also much of Monday . . .  oh yeah, and then again much of Tuesday) grading piles and piles of papers . . . but *I* assigned those papers to my students.  Another choice that was mine, all mine.

It might not be that the particular flavor of busy-ness I face is what I would have chosen, granted.  It's reasonable to ask, "Is this worth it?"  Sometimes, I think, "no".  Then it's time to extricate myself gently.  I've resigned from committees because of this in the past.  I've often said "no" to things I really want to do, just because I know how awful April is.

I also know that my situation doesn't apply to everyone.  A tenured professor has freedom that few other people have.  If my dean says, "I just thought of something I need you to do right away", I can say, "Sorry, not going to do it," and nothing bad happens to me.  (Just think how miserable it would be to be my dean!!!).

But for me, at least, the first phase in surviving the onslaught of too-much-to-do, too-little-time-to-do-it, is to own the busy-ness.  It's mine.  

Time and Money: $163

A few years ago at our winter math meetings, I noticed a phenomenon you've probably seen, too.  I would see a friend or colleague I hadn't seen in a long time, and we'd start chatting.  "How are you?" one of us would ask.  And the other of us would invariably say, "Busy.  Oh, I'm so busy!"  And this would lead to a long listing of the besetting committee work, grading woes, and other giant time sucks.

It struck me that the new standard response to a "how-de-doo?" was a combination of grievance and bragging.  And it wasn't pretty.  I resolved back then to try to spend one year without saying "I'm so busy" as an answer to a polite question.  

To my surprise, the "so busy" has become so much a part of our standard way of conversing, that it's really hard to avoid.  Even when I would answer, "fine, thank you", the other person would often come back at me with, "Really?  I bet you're awfully busy!!".  Hard to know what to say, because I didn't want to lie and say "no".  (I do a lot of stuff, and I am proud of that.  I just had a psychological evaluation because of the adoption process, and part of the report says, "Her competitive streak and frequent themes of admiration/exhibition in TAT responses indicate that she enjoys feeling like a "Superwoman" and being perceived that way by others . . . ".  Um, yeah.  Spot on).

Eventually I came up with a rejoinder that sounded more positive to my ears.  When people asked me if I was really busy, I'd say with a knowing smile, "My life is rich and full."

Which is true.

Well, for a professor, April is generally what you might call "richer and fuller" than the rest of the year. Given my druthers, I wouldn't have chosen this particular month for moving a new child into our home, and yet . . .  and yet, here he is.  And he's wonderful.  Let us just say that riches have rained down on my head, and I've come close to being overwhelmed.  Could do with just a bit of poverty now.

But there is that Superwoman part of me, too, determined to shine in my own eyes if not in the eyes of others.  Not busy; instead, possessed of a rich-and-full life.  So later this week, I'm going to try to share some of my "keeping my head above water" tricks.  But that "rich and full" is the first, most important part.  I chose this life; embrace the choices I've made.

************
Weekly spending:  $63 at farmer's markets (potatoes, milk, yogurt, bacon, apples, broccoli), and $41 on ice cream, cereal, and ramen noodles.  You can probably guess who brought home 50 lbs of potatoes, and who brought home the processed sodium: my husband and I make a good team, even when we don't pull in the same directions.  This brings the 7-week average to $163.

Facts about 163:  it is prime.  It also has the cool property, 

163 = 10^2 + 8^2 -1^2 = 9^2 + 9^2 +1^2.  

Total weekly spending since March 1.

Requisite graphs:

Avg spending for each of 7 weeks.

Thanksgiving master recipe

As I promised yesterday, here's my giant Thanksgiving recipe.  Shopping done!  Today's stuffing day.

Tuesday

• Make space in fridge by emptying out gross moldy things.
• Grocery shop.
• Make cranberry relish:  (grind together in the blender 4 cups cranberries, 1 orange, and then 2 cups sugar.  place in refrigerator.)
• Make salad dressing:  (mix 1/4 c walnut oil, 1/2 c vegetable oil, 3 tbs cider vineagar, 1 tsp mustard, 1 TBS honey, salt, pepper,  and 2 tbs chives.) 

Wednesday

• Chill white wine, water, and canned cranberry sauce.
• Defrost turkey.
• Start the stuffing:

Brown 2 lbs turkey sausage with sage and celery and break up clumps.  While letting cool, toss 12c. bread cubes with 2 tbs olive oil, thyme, salt, and pepper.  Spread onto 2 baking sheets and lightly toast in 350° oven for 20 min, shaking pans occasionally.  mix with sausage (not grease), cherries, and apricots.  Store in a ziploc bag.  Save 2 tbs grease.

Thursday

t = -5.5:  20 lb turkeys take 5 hours; cook about 15 min per pound.

• preheat oven to 450°.
• finish stuffing:  (chop up 2 apples.  mix sausage grease with 2 cups water.  add both of these to dry mixture.  stuff into turkey).
• grease turkey with butter or oil & cover with foil.

t = -5:

• place turkey in oven; reduce heat to 325°
• put the rest of the stuffing in a crock pot.
• start salad: (wash and dry lettuce; tear into small pieces and store in ziploc bag in fridge)
• for dressing, chop 2 apples and mix with 1 tbs lemon juice and then 1/4 c walnuts.  mix all ingredients together with dressing from Wednesday and store in fridge.
• make sweet potatoes:  Preheat small oven to 400°. Wash and slice potatoes into quarters. In a large bowl, mix together 1 tbs olive oil and 1/2 tsp paprika. Add potato sticks, and stir by hand to coat. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake for 40 minutes.  Serve at room temperature.

(this is the last chopping until t = -1.5.)

• run dishwasher.

t = -4.5:

• baste turkey now and every 15 to 30 minutes (says Joy of Cooking).  ugh!

t = -1.5:

• empty dishwasher.
• set table.  Don't forget serving bowls, serving spoons, and butter.
• wash, peel, and quarter potatoes.  place in a pan of cold water.

t = -1:

• open red wine.
• boil potatoes, then simmer.
• check turkey temperature (when cooked, stuffing should be 165°).
• preheat second oven for bread.

t = -15 min:

• put cranberry sauce & relish on table.
• boil water for greenbeans.

t = -10 min:

• nuke 1/3 c. milk for 1 min.
• nuke gravy
• add greenbeans to water.

t = -5 min:

• Finish mashed potatoes (drain potatoes; add 3 tbs butter and nuked milk, mash together and use mixer to whip it lightly). Put in nice bowl on table. 
• open white wine. 
• mix lettuce with salad dressing. 
• pour water, milk. 
• remove turkey from oven, remove stuffing from turkey.

t = 0:

On table or sideboard:

• Turkey 
• gravy 
• mashed potatoes 
• butter 
• stuffing from turkey 
• bread 
• sweet potatoes 
• salad 
• green beans wine 
• cranberry relish 
• cranberry sauce 
• milk 
• water

After dinner, begin preparations for leftovers:

• shepherd’s pie 
• soup

Thanksgiving shopping list

I might have mentioned once or twice (or a dozen-dozen times) that I love making lists.  Ahh, here's another of my favorite lists: the thanksgiving shopping list.

I put this list together one year when I was dreading the act of pulling together all those menus for foods I make only once a year.  I don't dread the cooking; it was the act of organizing all that stuff at a time that I was already really busy with kids and grading that was stressing me out.  So I decided to create a "master recipe" -- one giant set of directions that starts with "Tuesday:  clean out the gross moldy things from the refrigerator" and ends with a list of all the foods that need to go on the table Thursday at meal time.  (Can you tell I've forgotten to bring out the cranberry relish one-too-many times?  I vowed "never again").  I typed up the entire thing on my computer, and I bring it out again every November and tape it to my cabinet doors.  I update it a bit from year to year, right after Thanksgiving, so I don't have to fret beforehand about what I'm missing.

Accompanying my master recipe (which I'll share tomorrow) is the master shopping list.  The first round of shopping happens at home -- I check inventories and cross out everything we're already well-stocked with.  Oh, I love this list!  Yours is probably very different, but I can't restrain myself from sharing.

meat:

• 20+ lb turkey 
• 1 lb turkey sausage 

dairy

• milk 
• 3 sticks butter 

fruit and vegetables

• 1 orange 
• 4 apples 
• 4 c (1 lb) cranberries 
• 4 sweet potatoes 
• 6 big potatoes 
• celery 
• lettuce 
• green beans 
• 1/2 c dried apricots 
• 1/2 c dried cherries 
• 1/2 c chopped walnuts 

spices and oils

• 2 tbs chives 
• 1 tbs dried thyme 
• 1 tsp sage leaves 
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg 
• 1.5 c sugar 
• 1/2 tsp paprika 
• honey 
• mustard 
• cider vineagar 
• brown sugar 
• walnut oil 

store-made items

• 2 baguette breads (for stuffing) 
• 1 can cranberry sauce 
• stuff for homemade bread 
• 2 jars gravy 
• vanilla ice cream 
• ziplock storage bags 
• ice for turkey in cooler 
• wine — red and white