days gone by…

so today I took little boss to her play group and as part of the group discussion we were asked what we do for ourselves – just us, not our children or our partners, family, employers, animals or anyone else. so I spoke about barrybadger.com and how it started out as the ramblings of a woman who didn’t know what all the fuss was about and now that same woman can barely find time to write a post a week. some of the other ladies talked about having a shower, being able to wash AND blow dry their hair and getting to the gym. it took me back to when I was pregnant and having friends with kids telling me that in the early days I will struggle to get out of my pj’s and then as time goes by the luxury of going to the toilet on my own would be replaced by an inquisitive toddler spinning the last sheets of toilet paper onto the floor…of course even if every single person who crossed your path told you these stories, you would still think “it will be different for me”….but it’s not – unless you have a nanny – which I don’t, so even though my employers paid me to find improvements in business and to help people work smarter not harder, I still struggled to find a way to get in the shower and out of my peter alexanders before Mr B Badger.com got home from work. I made friends with the pram and the bouncer and sometimes even wheeled the travel cot around the house so that I could get things done…I thought this was difficult at the time. then she started crawling…and with that new-found independence came a wilful dislike for any constraint….the playpen, the cot and the jumper thingy became a source of frustration. now she is starting to walk and whoa nelly are we seeing a whole new side to her personality. lets just say that she is doing a great job of expressing herself when something isn’t going according to her plan. the independence that she is showing is hilarious. she helps me dress her, grabs the whole box of wipes and puts it in-between her legs – not so helpful – when I am changing her, feeds herself, drinks from a cup and “brushes” her teeth – she holds the brush in her mouth and chews on the bristles, hey it’s a start…right?

I think part of the problem with trying to find time to do something “just for me” is that we have such high expectations of how things should be…clean house, laundry done, shopping done, food prepared and on and on it goes…so I have a list. last week I made a list of daily tasks that I need to do every day and here it is for your amusement…

• eat breakfast
• drink 2 litres of water
• snack healthy
• take your vitamins
• finish one task before starting another
• go for a walk
• don’t go to bed on a dirty kitchen
• put little boss’ toys away when she goes to bed
• sweep floors with the orange fluffy
• do one load of washing
• plan dinner

anything outside of “the list” is a bonus…getting through “the list” can sometimes come unstuck on item one, unless you consider eating breakfast to be consuming the cold remains of little boss’ French toast. so now we have less tumbleweeds of MrRoobens hair blowing around and the laundry hampers are not at one with the floor….in the words of Charlie Sheen… “winning”…