SuperIma Sunday Check-In

It was a fantastic week! The sun was shining, spring was in the air, I was basking in the afterglow of a good report from my doctor, and I reflected on how much better off I am than I was three years ago at this time. And I set my SuperIma goals in the true spirit of self-care with which Leigh Ann intended, so there was no guilt and self-loathing. (Okay, there was less guilt and self-loathing.)

Last week's goals were:

• Cap off my housecleaning after an hour: Well, some days I didn't clean at all, and other days I cleaned for more than one hour, so I think I probably averaged out to an hour per day. This week was filled with such beautifully unprecedented March warmth and sunshine that it seemed like a waste to spend afternoons indoors cleaning when we could be at the park. So I guess you could say that not only did I achieve my goal of cutting my cleaning short, I actually surpassed it. I'm such an overachiever. Or underachiever. Whatever.
• Get Nathan to bed at 7:00 each day and take the rest of the evening for myself: This mostly went well. As predicted, there were some challenges due to DST and the fact that it was still light out at 7:00. But the ample fresh air and park time wore Nathan out enough that he usually fell asleep by 7:30, with the exception of one really bad night when he didn't fall asleep until 9:00. But I think he did get enough sleep, and his behavior was better, so ... WIN. And I, too, won because I spent every evening watching TV or reading, and not feeling guilty about it. You know, while I was on the treadmill at the gym the other day, I saw something in the garbled Closed-Captioning of one of the TVs, and I couldn't tell you what the show was or who said it, so this is kind of irresponsible journalism ... but anyway the unknown person on the unknown show said something like, "Women tend to feel like if they aren't working all the time, they are lazy." OMG, yes. I totally feel this way. It's like if I'm not either cooking or cleaning or doing something vaguely professional-ish on the Internet, I feel guilty. But I think with this week's SuperIma goal, I gave myself permission to not be working all the time and to not feel guilty about not working all the time, and that lack of guilt went a long way toward making it a better week.

So, this week I am setting the same goals: (1) Clean for an hour per day, and (2) Get Nathan to bed by 7:00 p.m. and take the rest of the evening off. In the interests of complete accuracy, I do have to note that I have to spend some hours this week memorizing my lines for the show, because the deadline to be "off book" is this Friday. So that will sort of cut into my "me" time, although I guess technically my participation in community theater is something I'm doing for myself, so memorizing lines will still be "me" time. (I'd really rather be at the spa.)

And, somewhat obnoxiously, I have formalized my goals into a chart.


(Saturday is all X-ed out because we are going on a trip.)

There's no bigger buzz-kill than a chart! But the message behind the chart is, You have three categories of daily responsibility, and once you have worked at each for an hour, you are free to relax without guilt.

Have a good week, everyone!