I am woefully behind at, well, life right now. I think 2019 may be out to get us. Not in a tragic, earth-shattering way, but just with normal, everyday STUFF. Sinus infections that keep kids out of school for weeks on end. Snow. That. Won’t. Freaking. Stop. It all adds up to one big excuse – for the pile of laundry, the stack of unopened mail, the exercise plan gone awry, the Christmas decorations I still haven’t packed away. And can you say “dishes”? Or don’t. It’s better not to talk about them.
So how do we make it through? I’ve boiled it down to four things that help me get by when I just can’t.
1. Ask For Help
I am very good at accepting help, but I’m not so great at asking for it. I think a lot of us fall into this category. So if your mom shows up on your porch with a homemade dinner, you usher her right in, but you would never call her up and ask her to please make you some chicken enchilada casserole.
Or maybe you don’t have built-in help. Maybe your family lives across the country. Maybe your parents are wimps, err, I mean snowbirds, like mine. Maybe you don’t have any handy-dandy “mom friends” with whom you can trade childcare. There are other options.
Just recently, my little village offered a candlelight snowshoe hike, coupled with FREE CHILDCARE for hikers’ kiddos. Say what?!?! I couldn’t participate (see: sick kids, above), but I appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.
If your community is not as awesome as mine, maybe your grocery store is. I am a longtime Festival Foods fan. Festival makes me not mind grocery shopping – except during the week before Thanksgiving, when people go crazy and it’s best to avoid humanity entirely. And now Festival is even better, because they are offering this nifty service called Click N Go.
I had been thinking about trying online grocery shopping for awhile, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger (or, more aptly, clicked the mouse), mostly because I really do like grocery shopping. I know it’s a time-suck, but I find it sort of…relaxing. Call me crazy. Still, I had a host of other reasons not to give it a try. I was afraid my personal shopper wouldn’t pick out the highest quality produce. I didn’t want to be the one left with the bruised Honeycrisps. Or what if he selected fully ripe bananas when I wanted green ones? Heaven forbid. Beyond that, I figured it would be kind of a pain to register and find my grocery items online.
Turns out, I was wrong. Click N Go was easy to set up. There is currently no app associated with the service, so you just visit www.festfoods.com/clickngo. When my order was ready for pick-up (way ahead of schedule), I received an email notification. I rolled up into the parking lot, and a friendly gentleman pushed a cartload of groceries out to my car. As he helped me load the bags, he smiled and asked if there was anything else Festival could do to make my experience better. Umm, really, no. Unless you want to make me a chicken casserole.
2. Use Shortcuts
There are lots of life hacks out there. For instance, you might buy 12 pairs of the same sock, because I think we can all agree that pairing socks sucks. Who wants to spend your evening finding the sock with the gold toe vs. the one with the red stripe? Or maybe you like to brush your teeth in the shower to save time. Maybe you’re an avid meal prepper. You do you.
Personally, my favorite shortcut is simply donning my winter hat. Hats are even better than dry shampoo when it comes to cutting down on hairstyling time. I love anything that allows me to sleep in for an extra half hour. And I especially love my Love Your Melon hats. Yes, they are a little ubiquitous these days. Kinda like that one song that’s on the radio every time you turn it on. But 50% of their profits still go to the fight against pediatric cancer. These guys make you feel good about not washing your hair! Bonus: Love Your Melon even sells baseball hats, which is super useful for the 6 days each year in Wisconsin when it’s too warm for a stocking hat.
3. Write It Down
I love notes and lists. To-do lists, grocery lists, goal lists (both short- and long-term) – give me all the lists. Post-Its and planners are my BFFs. The stationary aisle is my mecca. Come to think of it, this blog post is even a list. If you aren’t a list maker, well, I could give you a list of reasons why you should become one.
When your head is spinning because you are out of ketchup and your husband needs vitamins and you have to pick up your son’s inhaler and drop off a check because the kids’ lunch account is empty. Again. (Where does that money even go? I swear, I must have bore 10 children I haven’t met who are eating off that lunch account.) When you sit up in bed at 3 am because you just remembered you are responsible for snack day tomorrow. These are the times you need to make lists.
If I can get my middle-of-the-night checklists out of my head and down onto paper, I know they won’t evaporate into the ever-present fog in my mom brain. Then I can usually, sometimes (okay, every once in a great while), get back to sleep. So keep a notebook by your bed, or just write yourself notes in your phone. But write it all down and prioritize it. Give it a 1, 2, or 3. “1” would mean this really needs to get done tomorrow, “2” represents those things that you should do. The “3s” are just laughing at you.
4. Let It Go
You know that list you just made? Get your head around the fact that half of it won’t get done, at least not this week. Maybe not this year. Or even next.
Learn to embrace the madness. If you can’t do that, learn to contain it and then ignore it. Shut the door. Not the front door – the laundry room door. I promise you, that laundry will not grow legs and walk away.
Then take a breath and watch this video of Winky the Bichon Frise, strolling through the Westminster agility course. This dog has life figured out. Instead of racing to the finish line, Winky sets his own pace and pauses to enjoy the view…or maybe to soak up the applause. Either way, good for him. As he saunters up that ramp with joyful nonchalance, he seems to be reminding all of us that life is about the journey, and not the destination. This is fortunate for Winky, because his final time was a whopping 192 seconds, including 92 faults. First place went to another dog, who scored somewhere around 30 seconds. Guess what, though – I couldn’t tell you that other dog’s name.
Bottom line – You don’t have to be in first place to win at life. Maybe it’s not even about winning. Maybe it’s about putting a hat on your head and asking a stranger to fetch your groceries. And, most importantly, enjoying the view.