In Which I Attempt to Blame Produce ...

I spend all week thinking about the projects I could tackle on the weekend. All those bigger things that slip through my fingers in daily weekday busy work seem to shine with the promise of Saturday.

When Saturday comes I inevitably waste the day.

I'm not even really sure what I did today.

I think part of the problem is that the daily living stuff takes up more of a normal day than I count. The littlest one still gets to nurse throughout the day, necessitating my sitting quietly and, in a housework sense, unproductively. (Of course I am not saying it is not good to nurse the little ones. I am simply saying that they eat up (pun intended) many minutes of Saturdays, just like they do weekdays.) The laundry still needs to be gathered, washed, and dried. The children still need to be supervised through their tasks. Dishes still need to be washed.

And then there's the meals.

I am blessed to have some children who really enjoy artichokes. Especially the baby ones, which were on sale this past week at our favorite store. I bought one package of 9, which was gone in one quick lunch, and more was requested. So I bought 3 packs of 12 on my next visit. This morning I rinsed them, cut them, removed the small, pointy outer leaves, and steamed them (with most of the outer leaves still intact, we eat the baby ones much like the bigger ones, only there's no scooping out of the choke, it's all edible in there! Hooray!) But prepping 36 small artichokes took quite a while, really. Especially during the part where I was "helped" by the 2 year old with the artichoke rinsing and such.

After lunch the little ones still need to be corralled and sent to the potty / diapers changed and get their story and pre-nap routine and tucked in for naps. And of course I sometimes still need MY nap.

Little ones still wake cranky on weekends, as well as weekdays, and just want to sit and snuggle all afternoon. They still interrupt my purposeful stride towards the trash can which needs emptying, or need a juice cup filled just before I take the laundry to the basement, and often by the time I come back to the task I've forgotten it or been several-times-sidetracked, just like a normal work weekday.

And then there's the dinner, in which rinsing and hulling and slicing 3 pounds of strawberries, and cutting up carrots, red peppers, and cucumbers, as well as sausage and cheese with crackers for an "easy" finger food dinner ... and suddenly it seems I've spent the better part of the evening over the cutting board.

Not that the fruits and veggies aren't good. They just take so LONG.

I can't tell you how often I skip the healthy salad lunch because I don't want to mess with all the veggie prep.

No, literally, I can't tell you how often because in this post I'm using the veggies as an excuse for not getting other things done. So we'll have to pretend I regularly slave over the cutting board.

Anyway, here it is, 7 pm on a Saturday evening - pre-church evening requiring baths and making sure laundry is washed and folded and available for tomorrow. There's really less time on a Saturday evening than a weekday evening for projects and things.

All day long I've wandered the house with projects and home improvement dreams in my head. Not the ones where you redecorate a room or build an addition. I'm talking home improvement as in decluttering the book shelves or organizing the toy cupboard to make those things functional parts of the home.

And all day long I've managed to do ... as usual ... the bare minimum of the must-be-dones.

I am frustrated with my wasting of time, which is spattered throughout the day, gobbling down the little minutes between necessary things.

If I could learn to use the little minutes, instead of viewing life as needing big chunks of time for big projects, I would get so much done.

If I would keep on keeping on, rather than looking for breaks and self indulgences, I could be a productive woman.

That's my dream, anyway.

Some Saturday it's gonna come true.