Making an effort & a permission slip
Hi friends! It’s Saturday afternoon, and after a week of cooler temps (low 30s!), it’s hot again. Blurgh. Tim and Blake are off at a motocross event, the first of the year, and today, Sadie and I visited two book sales and two op-shops. The book sales were a bust. One was so busy we could barely move. I got claustrophobic and overwhelmed, so we left after 15 minutes. We did come home with a stack of new books for Sadie, two books I have already read but wanted for my collection, a cardi and a jumper for me, so it was not a total waste of time. I found a bagel shop in Subiaco and grabbed a BLAT, two plain bagels, a blueberry bagel and a donut! Sades only wanted Maccas, so we did drive-thru for her.
I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, my cookbook collection is at capacity as it is VERY rare for me to find any I want to add to my shelves these days. I have a list of things on my phone that I am always looking for, so the hunt is still fun, though.
This week, I really made an effort to find some kind of routine because I wanted to feel a bit more in control of my time and surroundings. I have come to realise that I am not a morning person. It is not that I don’t like mornings, I do, but more that mornings are rushed, even more so now that Blake is in high school, and I need to direct all my energy into getting us out of the house on time.
I have two school drop-offs instead of one. We are leaving anywhere from 20-30 minutes earlier than we used to, but the funny thing is that we are much more organised and rarely run late. Weekday mornings are not for extra chores or leisurely reading on my phone. They are for hitting the ground running and maybe putting a load of washing on before we leave the house.
What I know now is that afternoons are my window for energy. Once we are home from school pick-up, that’s when I can get things done. Some days, I have a window of time between finishing work and picking the kids up, and I can use that time for errands, appointments, exercise or dilly-dallying around home, but once we are all home, that’s when I do house chores. It worked this week, and hopefully, it’ll keep working.
Something to make the things I have found hard, not so hard or boring, is to listen to audiobooks while I do them. I say to myself, “If you fold the washing now, you can listen to your audiobook”, or “while you cook dinner, pop on an audiobook to make it more enjoyable”, and it works! I am blasting through audiobooks and mundane chores.
I admitted to myself last week that I really don’t like working out; I just don’t. I like it AFTER but not before or during. The shitty thing is I know I have to exercise if I want to age well so I just have to do it. I can whinge and moan about it, but I still have to do it. And I have been doing it. It’s only three times a week I have to motivate myself because for 3 days a week, the exercise is built into my job, and I can’t get out of that, so I do my dumb exercises. As silly as it sounds, it actually feels good to say I don’t like exercising, but I like myself enough to still do it because I know it’s good for me.
I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time giving myself permission for so many things. After I read this post from Rachel Johns, where she wrote her own permission slip from the principal, it got me thinking about all the things I tell myself I can’t or shouldn’t do. So here is my permission slip.
PERMISSION SLIP FOR REANNON BOWEN FROM THE RATIONAL SIDE OF HER BRAIN
FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, REANNON IS ALLOWED TO-
Drink Coke no sugar every day and not feel bad about it
Continue to add books to her collection, even if she has already read them or may never read them
Cook the same 20 meals on repeat because after (almost) 25 years of being a parent and wife, she is tired
Change her style
Be a basic bitch if she wants to be
Have stupidly long and silly nails if she wants. It does not make her a silly person.
Shop in chain stores without feeling like she is single-handedly destroying the earth and humanity
Spend all Friday night indulging in watching silly reels and looking at nonsense on the internet
Unashamedly love watching The Kardashians. It’s not a guilty pleasure; it’s just pleasure
Love pop culture and celebrity gossip
Talk too much
Do things that are purely for her pleasure and benefit
Want a small life
Not care about dusting or cleaning windows
Not feel bad for sleeping in a separate room from her husband when she can
Get annoyed at her children because sometimes they are truly annoying
Enjoy so-called junk food
Write on the internet without feeling like she is an attention-whore
Switch off from the news as often as she needs to
Change her bloody mind
This was a really fun exercise to do. Maybe you need to write yourself a permission slip, too. Write it in the comments section below if you like. I’d love to read it.
Talk soon xx
A really interesting post. I have recently given myself permission to use screens over a book when I feel the need. Yesterday I spent the afternoon on the couch binging an old series of English Bake off.
Boy does it feel good to be unabashedly yourself. Such a wonderful feeling.
Also I am nuts for Mhair Macfarlane. :o)