15 minute challenge?

Aw, I so miss being able to call my dad for help or advice. Enjoy the heck out of him while you can. The hole they leave when they are gone is enormous. Maybe it wouldn't feel so big if I had a husband to turn to instead of Dad, but I didn't and relied on dad for not only advice and household help, but to talk to my son when he needed a male point of view.

I will be doing 15-minute challenges all day long today and tomorrow. It seems I can only work for about 15 minutes until I need to sit down for a 15-minute rest. This packing of boxes and carrying them downstairs shouldn't be as difficult as it seems to be. I should rig up something to either slide them down the stairs or lower them from the edge of the upstairs railing. Maybe a couple of boards leaned up on the stairs to slide them down, and a pile of blankets to soften the landing? This would work for the boxes with unbreakable things in them. I should probably rig up a rope to slow the decent though. Ugh. I need a man today.

I have lots of bookkeeping stuff to do today. And laundry and housecleaning! Thx for the thread. If I rotate projects, I just may stay fresh and get some of it done! LOL

Have a great day everyone!

I need a challenge!

I have been doing laundry all morning. Our German Shepherd is disabled and incontinent, so I do several loads of wash every day just of her stuff. My house is a disaster because I spend most of the time dealing with dog stuff (vet, walks in her wheels, therapy, vet, etc.) So I will try 15 min. every hour in each room just picking up trash and laundry!

I am currently hypomanic and have zero energy, this is new to me. Normally, make that always, mental and physical energy is bursting out when I’m hypomanic if I’m not having a painful fibro flare. So I’m in bed working on meal planning and landscape planning and looking into a million other things occupying my mind right now. And then each time I get up to use the restroom, at least hourly because I drink tons of water, I am doing 5-15 minutes of easy stuff including putting away what I am no longer using. The next things I’ll use those breaks for are: small clean in the bathroom, dusting various rooms upstairs, decide about and prepare returns, and little projects from my project room.

This is how I attack larger but less urgent projects and it works really well, you’re right you stay fresh and happy to work on it instead of “will I ever be done?” 5 minutes a day, though it often leads to more. Things like cleaning out email or other online/computer things, paperwork, organizing something. I break my dusting up into small segments upstairs and just do one a day or as I feel like it. So u less I’m doing very poorly nothing ever really gets dusty and I spend a max of a few minutes a day doing it.

I'm in!

Off to fold the laundry in the dryer and start a second load to dry.

I ended up taking a nap. But I have a list for tomorrow!

Feeling better, getting more tired than usual though. Guess that is normal. I am paranoid about every cough or pain though though.

Yeah, I just don't understand it.  When he was born, she didn't want anything to do with him.  He looked EXACTLY like his father too, and you would think that would endear him to her.  We figured it was postparum depression and that she would eventually come around.  She was seeing a therapist and was on medication, but it was as if the baby was invisible.  I've never seen anything like it.

I was at her house one afternoon when she came for her mandated visitation.  My neighbor put the baby in her lap and she just kept playing with her phone, not making eye contact with the baby at all.  Then another tie when she was there for her visit the little one had a fever.  My neighbor was going to take him to the doctor.  She asked the mother to come with them but she didn't want to go. I ended up going with her myself.  The mother just stayed at the house and watched a movie.

Her son was so disappointed.  When it came time to have his mom legally adopt the baby, she wasn't sure whether to do it or not.  I mean, she loved the baby but she didn't want to take her son's child away from him.  But he couldn't work and take care of a baby by himself.  He told his mom that he was planning on divorcing his wife and he wanted to make sure the baby stayed with his mom instead of her parents.  Her parents were very wealthy, but they were always traveling and he knew the child would be raised by a nanny.  So she adopted him.  The son ended up staying with her and like I said, they had another child, a daughter.

It must be so very strange for the boy to know they kept his sister, but didn't want him.  He is aware that he was adopted by his grandparents, and he calls them Mom and Dad.  And he calls his real father Dad also. I don't know what he calls his birth mother.  I don't know how much of a relationship he has with the sister.  My neighbor is very glad that she went ahead and legally adopted the baby so that his mother can't just decide one day to take him back.  Although to my knowledge, she has never shown any desire to do so.  And as he is growing up, he is looking more and more like his father all the time. It  is uncanny.  I've known the father since he was about 3 and watching this child grow up is like watching his father all over again.  

I know it was hard on my neighbor to go through all the stages from diapers on up all over again.  She is in her 60s. She also has a health issue that is quite painful for her and makes some things much harder.  But, they are in a much better financial position with this child than they were with their own 3 sons, so that aspect is easier.

I will be going over one night this week for a glass of wine and I'm interested in spending some time with the boy.

Lexica That is so odd. My first thought was also post-partum depression, but her long-term actions don’t fit with that, do they? My next thought would have been the child wasn’t her husband’s, but that was also proven untrue, I’ve seen it in a mama cat who basically left the runt of the litter to die, but it seems so much weirder in this situation.poor baby, well child.


cecilia keep us posted!