August 5 - Too Much To Do

   I thought I'd share a portion of my To-Do List so you could see why I get overwhelmed with it all sometimes and shut down.  I was certainly starting to feel that way by this afternoon.
  I managed to start a few things on this list today, but I didn't really cross any off except moving the hard rubbish out to the nature strip.  It was easy to pick that owing to it having a deadline outside of my control.  All of the other things, well I've lived with them this long so it's only me it's driving nuts.  It doesn't really affect anyone else.
  I have the dishes mostly under control now since the purchase of a dishwasher back in early June.  I'm sure Mum would attest to that.  The laundry gets done when I need clean clothes but there is a bit of a winter backlog.  Fortunately my lines are outside but under cover; an idiosyncrasy within my family.
  I got the cross trainer out of the way early again today.  I wish I could do it before work on week days but it just requires getting up too damn early.  I'm not an early to bed type so it just doesn't work for me.  After my exercise I made a cooked Sunday breakfast.

  I fried up 375g of mushrooms in about two teaspoons of butter with some fresh ground pepper and served it onto two slices of Bürgen Soy-Lin toast which I pre-sprinkled with a little Mainland Finely Shredded Tasty cheese.  I hadn't really considered whether or not mushrooms were filling before this, but it turns out they are!  What I made would've happily fed two people so I'll keep that in mind next time I have a hankering for them.
  I got in yesterday's laundry and laid it all away.  I love it when we get those few nice drying days in winter and you don't have to re-hang on the clothes horse.  I put another load on and had a quick snack of a small slightly ripe banana before dealing with the remaining hard rubbish.
  I cleared old pot plant containers off the deck, some junk from the back of the garden and some old fence palings from the side of the house.  It was satisfying to see it gone but it was a big grunt shifting it all on my own.  Some of the pot plant containers were quite big and I needed to empty the dirt out of them first!  I had planned on removing rubbish from under the decking as well but I'm afraid that will have to wait until next year.  When I moved the pots, I witnessed a rather large huntsman scurry under there for cover so there's no way in hell I'm going under after him!  Even next year I might pay someone else to do the crawling under the deck!
  Even though I'd worn gloves it took a fair effort to remove the dirt from under my nails and tend to my scratches from handling spiky dead plants, but once clean I felt up to making lunch.  I had pretty much the same as yesterday as I had the other half of the tin of tuna to use up.  It was a Wattle Valley Wholegrain Soft Wrap with half a 95g tin of Sole Mare Tune in Olive Oil, half a tomato and a slice of Bega Tasty cheese followed by one serve of belVita Breakfast Fruit & Fibre biscuits (4).

  After lunch the next load of laundry was ready.  My work out clothes and a couple of weeks worth of socks.  Do you guys hate doing socks too?  The weather had turned by the afternoon and fiddling around making sure each sock was hung right and fixed to the line left my fingers feeling like icicles!  It took quite a while in front of the radiant heater for them to feel thawed out.
  My interest in running about doing chores had severely waned by this time so I played a few episodes of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and started slowly tidying my desk.  I have started to be a bit more ruthless about what I throw away.  I'm quite sentimentally attached to scraps of paper and postcards and knick-knacks and such, but I am trying to be a bit more realistic about what is 'needed'.  I can always scan post cards and keep them electronically!  Sigh.. almost as bad, but it takes up less physical space at least!
  It's got very cold this evening and I can hear the wind whipping around the side of the house.  The very sound of it is chilling me.  It reminds me of something that happened on Grade 6 camp.  It was freezing, I was in a tent with two or three other girls at Wilson's Prom and we lay there imagining heaters, imagining the warmth of the sun, and it really did help for a while.  I wonder if they remember it too.
  I didn't really do enough work on the kitchen to justify a before/after comparison but I will get there eventually.  Instead I have done a before/after shot of dinner!

  Yes folks, I made myself Burritos!  And those two round containers mean I not only made dinner for tonight but also a fridge dinner for use in the next couple of days and a freezer dinner for later!  They are probably not the healthiest of all options but they were enjoyable and I was restrained in the application of cheese, sour cream and avocado.  I rounded out the day with 20g Lindt 85% Cocoa dark chocolate.
  So there you have it, I didn't get much done today but I'm still exhausted and feeling like there is just too much to get done.  Unfortunately I'm not the only one with too much to do of late;  Mr Smart's commitments kept us apart this weekend (I won't lie, I did pout).  However we had a wonderful time on Thursday and there is always next weekend.
  Here's hoping tomorrow's Mondayitis is not a severe case!
  Jess