Hope y'all have a Happy National Hangover Day tomorrow...

Looking back over this year, I will admit I fell far short of my own expectations for myself. I will grant that it’s been difficult adjusting to being a work-from-home mom, but that’s no real excuse when the baby’s slept twelve hour nights on his own since February, and between one and three two-hour naps every day. My house is a disaster, I kept falling behind in my grading, and I haven’t lost but ten pounds of the twenty I gained while I was pregnant.

Not to mention the other ways I haven’t been taking care of myself, my husband, or our budget.

I’m going to try to do better this year. I won’t set huge, sweeping, life-changing resolutions that do nothing but set me up to feel like even more of a failure than I do, though. Baby steps, HH. Baby steps are the way to go.

I resolve to…

…spend 15 minutes per day, in one room per day, picking crap up and putting it away. I will not let clutter pile up on flat surfaces in the living room—I will throw away trash, pay bills as they come in, shelve books as we’re done reading them, hang up coats, and put miscellaneous junk where it belongs. (I don’t think there’s a damn thing I can do about keeping the toys scattered on the floor picked up just yet...) I will not let dishes pile up in the sink and on every flat surface in the kitchen—I will put dishes into the dishwasher as they’re dirtied and run it when it’s full.

…sort through all of the papers we’ve accumulated and throw away the ones that are not necessary to keep. All of them.

…de-clutter that third bedroom over the course of the next three months or so. We’ve got a whole lot of stuff that we need to throw away, give away, and/or put into storage. I’ve got all of the bookcases in there, and can’t get to any of our books! Nor can I get to the bookcases to put away books that have migrated elsewhere.

…remember that I need to take a little time every day to take care of myself so that I can keep taking care of my husband, my son, my house, our budget, and my classes.

…have supper waiting on my husband when he gets home. He’s been working harder than he should—two months ago, his part-time help quit (when they moved her useless ass from full-time to part time), and he’s been running a two person store by himself, working 55-hour weeks, since then. Somehow, even in this rotten economy where nobody can find a job, nobody’s willing to take a part-time job at a payday lending company. I wish I could think of more to do to help take care of him than having supper ready, but I can’t.

…get my son far more used to his maternal grandmother so that my husband and I can have her babysit while we get in some range time! I haven’t been shooting since July, and I’m kinda going nuts! I’m sure my husband is, too.

…put aside more time to keep in contact with friends.

…stop procrastinating grading. I will grade my students’ blogs the Saturday after they’re due, and get the grades for them posted promptly. I will grade their discussion board posts the day after they’re due and post points as I grade them. I will grade 10 papers per day—5 from each class—and get those grades posted and the papers returned the week after they’re handed in. I will keep up with helping my colleague with the bad eyes on getting his grading done the day after his students’ posts are due. Procrastinating only adds to my workload and my stress load. I need to stop it.

I know that there will be times that I won’t be keeping my resolutions to the best of my ability, and that there will be times that I feel totally overwhelmed by what I haven’t done, and how much I need to get done besides what I’ve procrastinated. But as I’ve said in other posts, you haven’t broken your resolutions until you’ve quit trying to keep them. If you stumble a time or two, get back up and keep working on them.

I know I’ll more than likely stumble, but I never give up. I suppose I'm just stubborn, that way.