The Heusens

A few days ago, I wrote down my life goals for right now. Here they are:

1. Be an awesome wife who has conversations and sex and laughter with hubby
2. Be an awesome mom who is mentally present and lives life intentionally (like, plans stuff to do with Saya) rather than it being the process it currently is (where I feel I'm always in crisis mode and responding to her needs, rather than anticipating them)
3. Have a rich and fulfilling relationship with my family and my friends, with time to enjoy them
4. Be clean and organized at my home and in my office and my life
5. Plan ahead by having a schedule and sticking to it. Do stuff like chores on a timely basis. Go shopping for groceries and other stuff during an allotted time during the week.
6. Be financially responsible. Save money by cooking food at home, and making meals to take to work.
7. Be a rock star academic and get tenure.
8. Have fun.
9. Not be tired all the time.
10. Travel the world.
11. Have good hygiene and look nice and put together
12. Exercise three times a week.
    

I have no idea if this list is feasible at all. What I do know is that, at least recently, my life has been completely imbalanced and too focused on work...causing neglect in all other areas of my life. Right now, I feel like I could work on my job for 24 hours a day and never get to the bottom of the pile. So this weekend I just decided to make peace with never getting it all done...and focus on hearth and home.

Mind you: it wasn't really an option, considering we still hadn't unpacked from our move a month ago...and I was afraid we never would. We learned a few things this weekend:

1. Sometimes it's good to say no to social activities. We love hanging out with friends, but this weekend proved too much. We said no to 4 different social engagements on Saturday. And if we hadn't, we would be much, much more stressed out. After the whirl of orientation week, we'd hit our max.
2. Keeping a house in order is kind of a full time job. Hopefully now that we're unpacked, we can go into "maintenance mode" where it's not so hard. I cleaned up the kitchen last night, and it seriously took me, like, 45 minutes. I mean, I have a vague notion that other people do this on a daily basis. But...45 minutes? For real?
3. It feels really, really good to get a few things done, rather than giving into my temptation to sleep...constantly...especially after my first week of teaching.

Here is our weekend recap:

Saturday morning trip to the Farmer's market, lunch at Bloomington Bagels, a long nap (me), and a trip to the Bryan Park pool (Kris, Saya, and Nathan). For dinner, Kris made the Zuni Cafe pasta with roasted tomato sauce and braised bacon with some uncured bacon slab he found at the local butcher. It was heavenly. Two hours of bacon braising in your kitchen makes for a good-smelling kitchen.

Braised bacon:


The finished dish:


This morning, we had lattes and our braised bacon leftovers were reincarnated into a topping for our brioche style French toast, with local maple syrup. Heaven.


Then we were off to work. First up: unpack and put away all the office stuff (I've been putting this off for a month). Check! Next: clean up the kitchen. Check! Then: Clean up and organize the living room. Check! Decide how to organize the garage. Check!

I sent Kris off to Lowe's to buy a garage shelving system and a new barbeque for our deck. We've been wanting to grill all summer. And since reading Michelle's detailed post on barbeque, smoking, and grilling, experiencing the wonders of her grill, and hearing from Maryn and Brian about their amazing barbeque, I've been fixated on getting the same grill/bbq/smoker/deep fat fryer she and Andrew have, which they affectionately call "the Beast". I'm under the deluded impression that if I have the same grill, my cooking skills will magically become like Michelle's. One can hope, right?

Well, Kris decided we would not have time to barbeque, so he just wanted a grill. Even though he's probably the one who's gonna use it more, I felt deeply disturbed. I did not feel comfortable moving away from the Michelle-endorsed model and into uncharted territory. I was mad. I wanted the Beast.

After a few tense conversations, Kris arrived back at the house. With...the garage shelving system, a new bath mat, a queen sized pillow-top inflatable mattress, and...the BEAST.

YESSSSS.

Turns out the customer reviews were much better for the Beast than for the other models. Which just goes to show you: don't f*@! with Michelle. She is all-knowing. It also goes to show you that I get my way, at least like 95% of the time.

As Kris assembled and I ran errands and cleaned, Saya added to her list of favorite inappropriate toys. Currently, her favorites are (1) a box of tampons, so she can practice dumping them all out on the ground; (2) Kris's nasal spray (lid on, thankyouverymuch) which she pretends is a bottle and tries to feed to her stuffed animals...I blame this on Nicole for introducing Kris to nasal spray; and now this:


Yes, that is a necklace made out of my (clean) underwear. She just went into the dryer, and put my underwear over her head. And then proceeded to wear it around the house for an hour and scream any time I tried to take it off. At least she was happy wearing it:


Here is Kris with The Beast II, fully assembled, on our new deck in our new backyard:


I made us sandwiches, took a "nap" with Kris while Saya napped (without quotes), went for a run, and then steamed some tamales for dinner.

So. I feel re-balanced. I really do. I needed to spend some time this weekend nurturing my family and getting our lives in order. And I feel relaxed. This is how weekends are supposed to be. But now, at 9:20 p.m., I have not begun prepping my two classes tomorrow, or finished doing a bunch of other things I promised people I would do. And I don't care.

Balance is the art of knowing which balls to drop, and when. So far, I'm good at dropping balls, but need to figure out which ones I can afford to drop, and when. Tips, please!

Posted by Ashlyn on Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:45 PM | Permalink