Modern Art

Have a good look at this picture.  Tell me what you see.

Now think to yourself, "Why in the world is this important, and why does Joe want me to think about this odd collection of things?"  It's a sculpture, comprised of:

7 Company Tokens
1 Singalong CD
1 Finding Nemo DVD
1 Spoon
1 Duplo Car
1 Playdough Lid
1 Soda Bottle Cap
1 Hair Elastic
1 Twistable Crayon
1 Side-panel to a Computer Tower

Okay, now let's think back to this post.

Yes, this collection of things was dug out of the innards of our computer on "annual clean the dust out of the heat sink night."  You know that night has come when your computer's fan spins into overdrive every five minutes asking for a little more cooling power.  Anyway, our computer has a HP Hard Drive Expansion Bay in the front, which is very convenient for short and long term storage purposefully placed by my beloved two year old.  I really love Blake.  He never ceases to amaze me, though.

And now, it'd be a good time to put that spoon back into service with a late-night scoop of ice-cream!

Go fetch with Blake.

I have realized that there are definitely merits to having children who can run errands.  They slowly learn to put away their own things.  To find their lost things.  To get things that I need.

Most of the help I ask of the boys is mildly useful to nearly inconsequential, because they are still in the training phase.  But of course, every bit of responsibility is important to their developing skillset!

Here's an example of how this went down this morning:


Scene:  Dad has a drippy nose and is trying to employ two-and-a-half year old Blake's energy to bring him a tissue or toilet paper or something to blow it.

Me: Blake, could you go get me a tissue?  I need to blow my nose.
Blake: Yes, daddy.  [trudge, trudge, thump thump thump]
[Blake comes back from who-knows-where-he-went empty handed.]
Me: Blake, what happened to the tissue?  You have to go to the bathroom, tear of a piece of toilet paper, and bring it to daddy.
Blake: Otay, daddy.  [trudge, trudge, pat pat pat]
[Blake comes back from the bathroom with a little fleck of corner torn off the toilet paper, maybe the size of a bandaid.]
Blake: Tantoo daddy.
Me: Yes, Blake, thank you.  Can you get me another piece?  This time unroll the toilet paper and bring me back two squares.
Blake: Otay, daddy.  [thump, thump, pat pat pat]
[A minute later, he brings me back a piece large enough to blow my nose into.]

I love having a boy who can fetch things for me, even if it takes iterations!

Success!  he unrolled the toilet paper and brought me two squares back.

Mostly Done.

This is a treatise on Why I don't untie my shoes.

Not that it's a newsworthy topic, but when I asked Jen at the beginning of the month what she thought I should write about, this is one of the ideas she pitched.  So here goes.

First an image of a cute puppy.   He almost made it.  via.

Have you ever been in a situation where you had a job to do, and you realized that the constraints were so tight that you could do 50% of the job and get 95% of the benefit?  It sounds terrible, I know.  The words, lazy, slacker, unmotivated, and half-hearted come to my mind.  None of these are words that I imagine anyone wants to use to describe themselves.  They are the type of words that you'll never find on a resume, that you'll never hear a person pride themselves in, and that you'll probably never hear come from someone's mouth with a smile on their face.

BUT--

What about the other side of the coin?  You know-- the "glass half full" interpretation of that situation.  In the financial world, people get huge bonuses for ideas like that.  People use the words efficient, savvy, innovative, and advantage.  I see a whole side of the issue that says that given a limited set of resources, where can I get the largest return on a minimum investment?

I think this is how I see the "To untie or not to untie" debate.  To me, untying shoes that will just need to be tied again is somewhat of a waste of (time) resources.  In a world where clogs and slip-on shoes abound, why not just loosely tie the shoes so they can effectively be slip-ons?   Granted, there are athletic shoes that need to be cinched up to perform properly, as you shouldn't hike, run, climb in loose-fitting shoes.  But cruising around the office?  Or walking to school?  Sounds acceptably leisurely to me.  And what of the "You'll break the heel!" argument?  Well, it's a good one, especially if the shoe is tied so tightly that they do not approximate the comfort of slip-on shoes.  Therefore, if you have to wriggle and jam your feet to get the heel to slide into a tied shoe... you better untie them.  But if you can easily shoe-horn the footwear on-- I say go for it.  Leave them tied.

Shoes aren't the only domain where people historically give a half-hearted effort.  Here are a bunch of stereotypical and otherwise examples of people doing 50% of the work to get 95% of the benefit.  Consider:

• Make bed-- or at least pull the covers up.
• Close the bathroom door--or at least swing it so it obscures the toilet.
• Put the toilet seat and cover down--or at least don't leave a mess.
• Take the trash out at the end of the night--or at least get to it when it's full.
• Put away the folded laundry--or at least put the clean stack in your room.
• Put dirty clothes in the hamper--or at least gather them on laundry day.
• Throw away the gas station receipts--or at least get to them on semi-annual car cleanout day.
• Put things away--or at least stack things at the bottom/top of the stairs for the next trip up.
• Take care of the yard--or at least mow the lawn but not trim around the edges.
• Get all your shopping done--or at least get the food in the trunk and let the next person put the cart away.
• Get on your Sunday best--or at least sling a pre-tied necktie loosely over your unbuttoned collar.
• Put your toys away--at least so they don't get run over (even if they'll still get rained on).
• Write a great paper--or at least get the polished draft written without spell-checking.

See what I mean?  There are LOTS of ways that we go halfsies to mostly get the job done.  People have their "things", you know?  I put away my dirty laundry and clean laundry, but I don't tie my shoes. 

Hot and Cold

When winter starts to roll around and we start to prepare for various Winter Festivals, the people of New England start to moan and groan about the potential for a bitterly cold winter.  It's one of those unifying things that we go through every year that provides us an opportunity to show up to work in snowpants and work boots a half hour late, then we compare stories about how long it took us to shovel the sidewalks and driveways.  Then the people with snow-blowers and plows smirk about how effortlessly their snow pile has been growing.

One of the winter-onset aches is the cost of home heating oil (we heat with natural gas!) or how many cords of wood a wood stove can go through in a winter.  We chat about thermostat settings and tolerance for bundling up inside as compared to setting it at 70 and just forgetting it year-round.  We talk of winterizing our windows/doors/basements.  We talk about how little sunlight we get in the wintertime (dusky around 4?!  What!?).  Most of the time, it's not that we don't like the winter, but that People like to complain.

There is a comparable discussion that happens at the onset of the two or three hottest weeks of the summer. At that point, it's a rush to the basement or home stores for window air conditioning units to help take the edge off the summer heat.  In my geeky mix my enthusiasm for thrift, record keeping, and seasonal analysis, I have generated the figure below:  The Seasonal Variations in Gas & Electric Utilities for our Half-Duplex.  (1100 square feet, two story with basement.)

Three Years of Utilities for the Jacksons, normalized to cost per day.

In interpreting the above plot, there are a few things to note:

Sep-09 Given an ancient freezer from a friend moving across the country. It added about 50 cents per day to the electric cost average. Old compressors in fridges and freezers are notoriously inefficient, so if you have appliances made before 2000, you should consider replacing them.

Mar-10 Had baby. We abandoned our previous trend of having the house chill down to 60 while we slept and began using an electric heater to warm just the sleeping spaces. We also had various houseguests after Blake was born, and used more electricity.

Jul-10 For the opposite reasons as March, we wanted to cool down the house for the nursing mother and baby, so we ran the air conditioner quite a bit more than our previous summers. Well, we air condition for the hottest month anyway.

Spring-11 Well, throughout this spring, Jen learned how to quilt. She had quilted before, but during this spring she REALLY took on the hobby. She found it therapeutic, relaxing, and fulfilling, and allocated a budget of time and funds to this awesome skill. With quilting comes IRONING, which is a 1100 Watt heater that gets alot of use when quilting.

Jul-11 Sold the old freezer, and bought a smaller, more efficient chest freezer. Regained the much of the 50 cent per day advantage.

Jan-11 Looking at the RED line for natural gas useage, keep in mind that we had killer snowstorms: 1/12/11: 15inches, 1/21/11: 7inches, 1/26/11: 10inches , 2/1/11:10inches. It was unrelenting, so our gas heating spiked that year a bit higher than normal. To back that up, I'm including the average daily temperature from the gas company bills from those heating months. It's clear that the 2010-2011 winter was consistently colder than our disappointingly warm winter last year. We only had like 4 inches of snow for the whole winter last year. It seems like last year's moaning and groaning was largely for naught.

2009-2010	Avg Tmp	2010-2011	Avg Tmp	2011-2012	Avg Tmp
Nov	51	Nov	49	Nov	49
Dec	38	Dec	34	Dec	45
Jan	30	Jan	29	Jan	34
Feb	32	Feb	29	Feb	38
Mar	44	Mar	38	Mar	46
Apr	53	Apr	45	Apr	52

So there you have it.  Any other observations you care to make on the above data?  Comments welcome.

A revival. NaBloPoMo.

So this is November the First, and I've been looking forward to this month all year long.  Maybe not literally, but I remembered how much fun National Blog Posting Month was in 2011 and how much introspective writing made its way onto FunghiFritti.  So this year, I've been jotting down ideas and thinking about what bits of my life might just be interesting enough to commit to the internet archives.

courtesy Bridget.

via.

I'd like to see November as the month when Joe springs to life, bringing vigor to his web presence where only a languishing website with sporadic posts previously existed.  Kind of like how our sourdough start sat in the fridge for 8 months completely neglected, and we had some hope of bringing it back to life.  Here's how that story goes down:

For Jen's birthday in February, she was gifted a sourdough start and a King Arthur Flour crock in which to keep it.  The sourdough start came home with us in a tupperware container, which was immediately thrown deep into the abyss of the fridge, and the crock took up residence on the counter holding our collection of ladles, whisks, a meat tenderizer, a potato masher, and our trusty ice cream scoop.

When we were in grad school, we had sourdough pancakes regularly, and were entrusted with a "secret family start" that was gifted to us with a friendship bread recipe.  It was given with great solemnity and we had accepted the responsibility to care for that branch of the family tree.  We had good success with that start for years, and even moved it across the country with us, ultimately discarding that creature after it gooed all over our fridge.

Understand that sourdough is a living, breathing organism.  Bakers and enthusiasts take great pride in cultivating their "mother."  I understand that beverage manufacturers also prize the particular flavor of their mother, as it differentiates them from their competitors.

Anyway, back to our "new" start and the crock.  After 8 months, the starter was in bad shape.  The sludge settled to the bottom, the watery sour smelling liquid was all at the top.  I was sure that the acid/yeast/bacteria levels were way out of whack.  But I was willing to nurse it back to health.  After some intense internet research (and really, is there any other kind?), I decided to clean out the crock, dump the liquid into it, and peel the pasty mass out of the suffocating tupperware and into the breathable crock.  It was more like silly putty than our previous sourdough start.  With a glimmer of hope, I poured about 3/4 cup water and 1 cup flour in the crock and stirred and stirred and stirred until the consistency was smooth.  I covered it and went to bed praying for bubbles.  Was it going to be dead?  Could it be resurrected?

Well, the next day, there were a few bubbles.  The question was, were the bubbles from life, or because when I was stirring the night before the wooden spoon punched some air into the depths of the crock?  It hadn't really grown persay, but I saw a chance of rejuvenation.  So I added another 3/4 cup water and 1 cup flour, stirring until smooth.  Surely, if there was life, I would see it soon.

via.

I repeated this process daily for about a week taking out a cup here or there to make bread or pancakes, and what do you know?  It now froths and bubble when I feed it and leave it over-night!  IT'S ALIVE!

So the moral of the story is this:  If you want to pick up a neglected, pasty blog and make it alive again, all you have to do is add a little flour and water (pictures and words, perhaps?) each day and it'll become a refreshed creature soon, adding some very satisfying flavor to your life.  Here's to hoping that NaBloPoMo does just that for this blog.  :)

Editor's note: It may be that the start really was dead, and I was just creating a new one from the natural yeasts and bacteria in the flour, according to this enthusiast website.  I may never know for sure, but it's nice to be back in business!

As of Late

Fall in New England is in full swing--it's our favorite time of year to spend together as a family. Here's what we've been up to over the last few weeks!

The Deerfield Fair

My latest quilt finish

(Thanks to Joe, as usual, for being my model)

Time to paint pumpkins!

Our first-born is ready to write Santa for two front teeth!

 A Saturday hike up Rag Rock

...and sometimes playing outside in the fall is fun...and sometimes it's not

Give a boy a blueberry...

And he'll make a picnic of it!

Yes, they are berry lovers.

They face the task with much seriousness.

And roll the flavors through their mouths very patiently.

School's out for summer!

Well, today I sent my little boy to kindergarten....but when I picked him up, he was magically a first-grader. (Did I do a little happy dance when I saw that he was assigned to the first grade teacher I was hoping for? Maybe.)

Teacher gifts were brought in,

Sidewalks were decorated (thanks, Meghan!),

Moms were indulged at dismissal time,

Brothers and neighbors were happy to be together.

One of the major bonuses of living in a duplex is our neighbors. When we moved in, Jacob was 22 months old, and his sister, Catherine, was just a twinkle in her mom's eye. Fast-forward to today and Jacob is heading to second grade in the fall and one of our very favorite friends. 

We have loved Ian's elementary school--it's one of the last, true neighborhood schools where the principal knows each child's name by October. Make no mistake--we are thrilled for the summer to be here, but come September, we'll be excited for our next first grade adventure.

Cliff's Notes. Or Word Search. Or Hidden Picture.

Remember when you were in school and you wanted to refresh your memory after drudging through a summer-reading book?  (Maybe that was just me.)  There was always Cliff's notes or some other synopsis to bring it back to your memory.  Well, this little video combines so much of our kids' personalities, if you haven't seen them in a while and need the "Joe's notes version."  It's unscripted, true, and fast-paced.  It's hilarious to me, and epitomizes the boys.  I feel like it's a highlight reel or trailer for the "Blake and Ian Movie."

I have taken a few notes of the quirks, then jumbled them up, if you are following along at home.

Look for:

1. Misuse of Toys
2. Potty Breaks.
3. Bossy Big Brother
4. Word Mimicking.
5. Hugs and Praises
6. Toddling little brother.
7. "No"
8. Home-built weapons/tools
9. Peek-a-boo.
10. Giggles
11. Jumping
12. Belly-Buttons
13. Teasing tugging
14. Baby Vocabulary
15. Learning to Walk
16. Mis-identifying my children
17. Bonk!
18. Stairs

A busy November Satuday.

My recruits.  They didn't look like they had much experience, but I wasn't disappointed.

Today was great.   Saturdays are so hard to come by, it seems, and having a day that is relatively loosely scheduled, good weather, and available to do projects at home is quite the rarity.   There's still more on my list, but I was happy, the boys were happy, the girl was happy...  No complaints.

• Made Pancakes
• From my favorite cookbook, but added a half cup of potato flakes, after having some by Bro. B at a ward campout that had such great texture.  I thought he was just being cheap and "cutting" the recipe, but it certainly helped mine not be as rubbery as the flapjacks usually are.  Blueberry topping and New Hampshire maple syrup.  Mmmm!
• Long-arm quilting
• Jen went for lessons on long-arm quilting, so I had the boys today.  From the report, it sounds like the type of class that I would enjoy.  I enjoy a nice craft day.  Honestly though, she said there was a computerized machine that could run the quilter on a program, which reminds me of the CNC Milling machines at BYU, which could run automatic tool-paths.  Who knew quilting was so high-tech?
• Raked leaves.
• Yay!  It's November!  It really was a great day for it.  Turns out that Ian is quite helpful, and Blake has very little patience for wet leaves.  Ian was  very sad that we had to bail prematurely out of consideration for Blake, but I promised him that once naptime commenced, we could come work on the project a bit more.

  

  Pretty handy with a rake.  Not a fan of the crawling on damp knees.

  

  A whole canvas with which do work!

• Folded Laundry and Did Dishes. 
• A bit more than usual this time, since we are restocking Blake's wardrobe for the winter from the Basement Bins. We did the work to the soundtrack of  WaitWait and CarTalk.   Ian responsible for his own (some moaning, not fully trained yet).  Blake was good for playing with the hand-towels.
• Naptime/ more outdoor chores!  
• Six more tarps worth of leaves, and cutting up some fallen branches from the fluke Halloween snowstorm.  My back is getting achy, my hands a bit loose on the grip, and I have the fleeting thought that this is the reason that raking leaves as a team makes so much sense.

  

  About ready to take flight.  Weather conditions are Just Right.

  

  Post flight.  Pilot crash-landed in pile.

• Scavenger hunt
• When the 5 S. boys came to stay in May, one of the activities was a scavenger hunt through the back forest.  Ian gave me his version today with a nice little tour of features (Grandpa tree, leaf pile, a downed tree) on the way to a secret stash of cookies that we split.  I only had put 5 cookies in the baggie, and the thought occurred to me that it wasn't an even number.  I had to make it enough so that I wouldn't worry too much if he ate them all, but not so few that we couldn't have a substantial share if we split.

  

  Ian's custom scavenger hunt.  Clue 2: "Cousin tree, you have something caught in your moustache."

  

  Balancing our way out to the treasure.  We had several trees come down in the swamp during the Halloween Blizzard.

Splitting up the Loot

I: Dad, would you like a cookie?  (Yes!  He's going to share!)

me: Sure!  Thank you.  (I eat cookie number 1.  He eats cookie number 2.)

I: Dad, would you like another cookie?  (Wow, what a kid!)

me: That's great!  Thanks.  (I eat cookie number 3, and he eats cookie number 4.)

I: Would you like another?  (Should I push it?)

me: Okay!

I: Oh.  I was hoping you were going to say no.

me: Alright, no thank you.

I: Great!

me: That was the last cookie, wasn't it?

I: yes.  (I love my exchanges with my boy!)

• Tables/chairs for Thanksgiving
• Setting up for our annual dinner at church.  Seating for 240.  (Normal attendance 190.  Optimistic?).  Ian helped with some of the chairs, then was on the table cloth team, then on the cheerleading squad to get the battery changed on the tall clock in the chapel.
• Cooked dinner
• Jen lets me cook sometimes, especially when we're out of "prime" ingredients.  So I did mac'n'cheese with franks, salad, steamed broccoli.  There was something for everyone, and Blake worked his way through dinner with a fork!
• Bath
• Happy time.
• Played lincoln logs, cars, clean up/sort, pretend
• Fantastic to see a 5yo and 18mo old pretend together.  Great to contribute to kids repertoire of imagination.  Blake sent some time sitting inside the play castle.  Ian spent some time pretending to be a T-Rex chasing after the cowboy that comes with the Lincoln Logs.
• Blake Bedtime routine:  The kid was beat.  He collapsed
• Doctor/Dentist
• When we play, we take turns being the doctor.  It follows a good model/emulate cycle.  Upon inspecting my eyes with a pretend flashlight, Ian declared, "Your pupers are a bit big."  An obvious reference to my inspecting his pupils just prior.
• Ian was my dentist, and had me lower and tip back the computer desk chair.  He fitted me with some sunglasses to keep the bright light from my eyes, then went upstairs to get my toothbrush and some toothpaste.  The boy brushed my teeth.  He Brushed My Teeth!  Then he counted each one (16 on bottom, 16 on top, he said.  I think I only have 14+14, though), gave me some advice ("You should also brush under your tongue...this is real advice, Dad"), and had a inspected his work.

And now I'm blogging why BYU football is putting the smack down on N. Mexico State.  Successful Day.

Faux pas.

The scene: September 2001.
Location: Newmarket England.
Time of day: about 9 pm.
Date:  just about any.

I don't know if I have any persistent phobias, but during this particular season of my life, I had a terrible fear of-- wait for it -- snails.

credit

Yes, they are harmless enough.  They are slow moving and not likely to attack.  But for some reason, at just the right time in the evening that year in that town, they became very active critters.  They paved the sidewalks, and every couple of steps in the dark I'd get a crack-squish under my shoe that was very disconcerting.  The displeasure was immediate and lingered on for a while because each of those steps constituted the loss of a life (form).  Sad day for the snails.  My shoes served death to all upon whom they trod.  It was probably heightened by the scarring memory of camping in the back yard in Tennessee and running around in the dark barefoot, then slipping and falling on my hiney when I stepped on a gigantic slug.

As a missionary, we called a spontaneous teaching appointment where someone invited us in off the street a  "step-in" teaching appointment.  These teaching opportunities were celebrated, and much more favorable than the other kinds of step-in, which sometimes included dog feces.  In the case of the snails for those couple of weeks, they'd be more of a step-on.

I bring this up because tonight I stepped on a cucumber slice that my youngest left as a booby trap for dear old dad, right in the middle of the kitchen floor.  I stepped on it, the slice squished, my foot slid.  The terror of the snails rushed back to my memory.  Terrible.  Just terrible.  Hypnotherapy?

Here's a spontaneous list of things which have been under-foot this year in our household.

Object	Pain Level	Squirm Level	General Appraisal
Cucumber Slice	0	9	Contributes to loss of balance, a relatively unpleasant squish/slide with the vegetable underfoot.
Bouncy Ball	3	1	I nearly biffed it big-time on this one.  I felt like those elephants on Dumbo, doomed to be buried in the tent.
Jack	5	2	Yeah, that was bad.  Jacks are spikey.  The squirm came from the thought of my foot being impaled.
Poop on a Rug	0	5	Trumps the cucumber slice in squirm factor.  How'd the poop get abandoned there, anyway?
Needle	4	3	It hurt pretty bad, but there was alot of other anguish at the thought of them lurking in the carpet waiting.
Die Cast Airplane	4	1	If only it were a Tonka Town toy, where everything is rubberized...
Duplo Blocks	4	0	Just painful enough to have disdain and occasionally feel like they should be banished for a few weeks.
Scattered books	1	2	This is a "pain of guilt." It's really my fault, thinking that the bookshelf at the bottom of the stairs was a good idea.
Cheerios/Kix	1	5	The sound of Kix popping sounds JUST like the sound of a snail shell being obliterated.
Grapes	3	1	Yeah, and the grapes feel JUST like the squish of the snail corpse.

I highly doubt that mine is the only house where things get stepped on.  Tell me, what's the worst thing you've stepped on, and what makes it so bad?


P.S. When I was looking for that snail URL, I came across this neat art project.  Check it out: Urban Mollusk.

Free Time? A Seriously hot commodity!

Life is a precarious balancing act.  The bowl needs the spoon, and the spoon needs the bowl.  Otherwise, the contents find themselves spattered around.
Image courtesy of Ian leaving his soup-bowl perched last week. 

I had originally set this post to go live at 7am.  And now it's a day late.   Oops.  At any rate, here's a look into a typical weekday at our household...

7 am...That's about when Blake starts to wiggle and jiggle and giggle in bed.  By 7:15 I've pulled him from his bed to Ian's, where it's his job to wake up big brother for school.  I take a shower while Ian gets dressed, then dress myself and Blake.  We go down at 7:45, where we'll eat oats or cereal, and either Jen is packing Ian's lunch or I do some daddy magic.  8:03 and we're walking to school, Ian bundled into a stroller and Ian chattering away with Jacob, the next-door-neighbor.  

By 8:35am, Blake and I are back home, when I finish getting ready for work.  If I don't dilly dally wish the dishwasher or dealing with dirty laundry or disposing of diapers, I can be out the door and at work somewhere around 9:00-9:15. 

{Magic Happens while I'm gone.  I do magic at my desk, Jen does magic all around.  }

 I come home around 5:30-6pm, after which we do track A or track B.

A: Dad's home.  We eat, play for a short while, then I bathe/pajamify Blake.  Family Prayers/Rocking with songs/Bedtime #1.  Then Ian's "projects", perhaps some cleanup or games or family night.  By 8:15 we wind down, pajamify, read scriptures, brush teeth, tuck in for Bedtime #2.  

-or- 

B: Dad or Mom has an evening commitment.  She or I eat fast and run out the door.  Somehow miraculously {the other} feeds the boys and does the rest on her/my own, and the house is quiet when she/I come home.

Under both A and B, typically around 9pm I'm home, and have until 11:30pm before my body starts to shut down auxiliary systems.  Every minute counts.  Maybe we watch a show.  Maybe we clean the kitchen.  If I've got gumption, I'll throw in laundry.  Maybe I tick down my List.  

I certainly can appreciate how with kids, there is an intense desire to have a brief moment of self-directed activity.  Even better, if it could be RESTORATIVE.  I feel it.  My stay-at-home wife (who has role of mother also) must be feeling it, too.    I'm glad she got a weekend to spend with one of her long-time friends with reduced worry about balancing each element of life.  As mentioned last week, it's better to be a restorative diversion than an escape.  Here's my list of restorative activities that are tough to wedge in after the sun sets and 14 hours of the day's activity:  Geocaching, Hiking, Reading, Woodworking, AutoMechanics, Basement Organizing, Overnight Camping, Canoing, Gardening, Exercising, Deal-hunting, Computer geeking (I made that one up).

I stumbled upon this great article from Ardeth Kapp (July 1991 New Era, excerpted from a BYU Devotional) entitled "Packing Your Wagon"

Too often we allow ourselves to be driven from one deadline, activity, or opportunity to the next. We check events off our calendar and think, “After this week things will let up,” or “After this semester …” or “After graduation, then the pressure will ease.” We live with false expectations. Unless we learn to take control of the present, we will always live in anticipation of better days in the future. And when those days arrive, we shall still be looking ahead, making it difficult to enjoy the here and now. The beautiful fall leaves come and go and in our busyness we miss them.

I'm inclined to think that even as the days are filled with routine, check-lists, and even last-minute activities, there are ways to "repack the wagon" every night, finding ways to let the "scripted" days be restorative.  Certainly on the weekends.  It's tough sometimes to slow down and assess the priorities, so that we include the things we find to be of highest value.

I think the answer is somewhere between these two:
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
~Thomas Jefferson

 and
It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
~Henry David Thoreau

To this, I say, Good luck!