Weekly review: Week ending October 7, 2016

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

It was a good week for getting things organized. I bought an organizer from IKEA, and I picked up lots of baby clothes hangers set out on the curb. Now A-'s clothes are laid out KonMari-ishly in various compartments: whites, short sleeves, long sleeves, pants (divided into solids and prints), sweaters, dresses, and sleepers. The frequent-access stuff is in the organizer, and the less-frequent stuff is on hangers. The arrangement has survived a few days so far, which is a good sign. Might move the sweaters to drawers, though.

A- has a lot of hand-me-down clothes. I might not get through all of them before they're outgrown. No worries! That just means I'll be able to pass them along. We have neighbours down the street with a baby girl half a year younger than A-, and we gave them a large batch of clothes when we visited them this week.

I also sorted the craft materials and puzzles that I bought from the woman who closed her home daycare. I donated paint, markers, sand, ribbons, and felt Christmas trees to the family resource centre. I now have lots of stickers (both flat and foam), colored paper, ribbon pieces, foam beads, glass pebbles, paper bags, felt, and other handy materials for future rainy day fun and room decor. (Choking hazards will stay in the closet for a few years.) I may have to buy my own pipe cleaners and googly eyes, though. :)

W- finished J-'s closet. Hooray! We moved her bed and desk back into her room, which means lots of floor space in A-'s room. Time to start thinking of and setting up activity centres…

We remembered to spend some time outside while there's still grass to be felt and herbs to be tasted. Despite a lack of planning and maintenance, we have a decent garden for exploration. A- nibbled on basil, tomatoes, strawberries, chives, sorrel, perilla, bok choy, peas, oregano, and mint. Next year, we'd like to reorganize the garden so that there's open space in the middle, and maybe 2' wide raised beds with toddler-friendly plants. In addition to the current assortment, maybe we can try radishes again – quick to grow and harvest.

A-'s scleral shell popped out again. She fussed a lot when W- was trying to put it back in. It was hard to restrain her. Eventually W- got it in, and we soothed her. I reflected a bit on the differences between our parenting styles, and I think I'm getting better at appreciating the differences instead of worrying about being on the same page. I'm certainly glad W- is there to help with the tough parts.

I tried setting up a video chat with my mom so that she can play peek-a-boo with A- or explore other forms of interaction, but it didn't work out. A- was boggled by the screen, and my mom's Parkinson's disease meant the image of her was shaking too much to focus on. I had to hold the tablet and fuss around with framing on my end, so I couldn't do anything else. I'm not sure if we can work out something much better, considering the timezone differences and our schedules/preferences/values, so maybe we'll just have to adapt to the way things are. Something to tinker with.

I attended the nutrition workshop's first proper follow-up session. The talk was about organic versus conventional, and Toronto Public Health's stance is that it's really a personal choice – no strong health reasons for one or the other in Canada. We did a blind taste test between organic and conventional apples, grape tomatoes, and milk. I couldn't identify any differences worth paying for, taste-wise. We may still get things like raspberries and brakes from the specialty food store despite the premium, because we like the quality and taste. (We've done those comparisons quite a few times!)

Much progress on my consulting project. I got the go-ahead to develop in the external sandbox, since I'd been running into technical issues internally. Once I set things up on my laptop with a forwarded port through my server, I was able to develop things quickly. Still having problems internally, but that's probably a different kettle of fish.

Finally got to watch Captain America: Civil War, courtesy of the library and my script for checking our favourite branches to see if they have certain videos available. Yay!

2016-10-09a-week-ending-2016-10-08-weekly-journal-review output

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (5.9h – 3%)
    • Earn (5.7h – 95% of Business)
      • ☐ Earn: E1: 1-2 days of consulting
    • Build (0.1h – 1% of Business)
      • ☑ Prepare invoice
    • Connect (0.2h – 3% of Business)
  • Relationships (10.2h – 6%)
  • Discretionary – Productive (6.2h – 3%)
    • Drawing (4.5h)
    • Emacs (0.8h)
      • ☑ Investigate Org Mode + Google Tasks
    • Coding (0.1h)
    • Sewing (0.0h)
    • Writing (0.0h)
  • Discretionary – Play (0.0h – 0%)
  • Personal routines (19.7h – 11%)
  • Unpaid work (74.3h – 44%)
    • Childcare (55.2h – 32% of total)
  • Sleep (51.6h – 30% – average of 7.4 per day)

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