Saturday, August 16, 2008

Peace ... and progress

I spent a couple of hours tonight at Wal-Mart doing the weekly grocery shopping thing. The store is in the midst of a complete remodel (I'll save my very strong feelings on that for another post), and in the giant turnover that has relocated all health and beauty products just past the rows of school supplies, I found myself carefully navigating my cart between MANY buggies driven by parents obviously on a last-minute quest for crayons and pencils.

The whole experience brought back memories of last year and my 9 p.m. shopping trip the night before school started. The depths of self-loathing for my procrastinatic (is that even a word?) tendencies reached new levels. This is going to sound really judgmental, but I looked at the other people who had put off purchasing their children's supplies until they couldn't put it off any longer, and ~ honestly ~ I could not for the life of me see myself as one of them.

I vowed that night to get a grip, plan better, and not get myself in last-minute races against time that send my blood pressure into dangerous territory.

A year later, I can't say that I NEVER put off important tasks, but there's a whole lot less of that nonsense going on that ever before in my four decades of living.

Some noteworthy examples:

In May, at the end of the school year, I had my grades ready THREE DAYS before they were due in the office.

I now plan all meals a week in advance and make one grocery trip each weekend. It is very rare that I make a mid-week trip to the store for something I forgot or we ran out of.

Last year, I'm sure I bought at least a dozen new books for the Fayetteville Public Library with all the overdue fines I paid. We haven't had an overdue library book since April. (I began writing down due dates in my planner and scheduling library trips in advance instead of waiting until overdue notices started showing up in my mailbox.

My kids' school supplies were purchased two weeks ago and have been bagged and labeled for the first day of school.

Now ~ my next big goal ~ to get them all to school ON TIME for an entire school year. Ambitious? Yes. Attainable? We'll see!

1 comment:

Angie said...

Amen, sista! I am right there fighting the battle with you! I had the school supplies bagged, but unfortunately had to grab the marker on the way to open house and label them in the car. But they were ready by the time we got there. Being on time is my big goal! I cleaned house all day to get that fresh start! Hope it works.
Miss you!