Our Disneyland adventure yesterday turned in to a migraine a few hours later.  But getting in bed at 8:15 and sleeping soundly (thanks to a healthy dose of medicine) from 10:00 to 8:00 worked wonders.  I woke up with enough mental energy to keep processing, although I’m opting for email processing so that I can stay in bed and rest.

(By the way, if you think that processing is taking me a ridiculously long time, you’re right.  In the GTD book, he talks about making the business executives he works with clear out their schedules for two or three days to get the system set up.  Now granted I don’t have full days to set aside because processing definitely does not work too well with Addison around, but still it seems like a much longer process than two or three days to me, especially if you consider the emotional aspects of it.  Business people have emotions too, right?  Or am I wrong, Elizabeth?)

(Second by the way: Thanks for all the comments and emails after my last processing post.  You all gave me such great food for thought — I’ve been asking myself a lot of new questions as a result of the different perspectives.  The only thing I  have decided for sure is that now is not the time to make a final decision.  It won’t hurt to keep the box in my parents’ attic for another year.)

So my goal for the day was to take my inbox from this:

15,206 emails in my inbox, with 1,463 of them unread . . . down to zero.  I have taken my unread emails down to zero before, but obviously, it has never stuck. So this time I knew I needed to be more systematic about it.

1. I started to unsubscribe to feeds/email lists I don’t read (as well as those that are sent to me by another Lindsay that thinks my email address is actually her email address, which is really strange and a long story) to minimize my unwanted email.
2. I also took the time to research some Gmail features that I was not familiar with to figure out how to handle things better.  Now I am archiving all my emails after I note the next action or event I need to remember.  (I know archiving is probably pretty basic, but I just never took the time to figure out how to do it or where the emails would be stored.  And since I’m not a major techie, thankfully, it’s elegantly smooth and simple.)
3. It seemed like there was going to be a third thing, but now it’s lost.

So after about four hours of processing, I’ve got my inbox-zero:

But more importantly, I’ve got an above-average chance of keeping it looking this neat and tidy if I stick with it.

Next up, email drafts dating back to October 2007 (pretty sure whoever was waiting for that email is ticked!).

I guess I forgot that I have not been to an amusement park without my wheelchair for almost 15 years (I think our year passes were the last time, Ishkhanoohie!).  That’s not for the faint of heart, people.  (And we were only there for about two hours.)

In other news, Addison LOVED it.  And passers-by loved watching her LOVE it.

While I want to spend as little of our savings as possible, I don’t want to make the mistake of not enjoying some of the unique opportunities we have while living with my parents.  Like babysitting.  It will be a monumental waste if we are so frugal that we don’t go out on dates or weekend getaways while we have built-in babysitters.  We are aiming to carve out some kind of balance where we live lean, but also enjoy some of the things that So Cal has to offer (which is A LOT!).

The deal we hit on is that for all the activities I want to do, I need to sell something personal to make the money for it.  I’m not a huge purchaser of stuff, but I am definitely a keeper of stuff, AKA a pack-rat.  Since I know that experiences bring me more happiness than material possessions, I have started giving up things that I have long thought I would never part with.  My test question has been, would I rather have this or go to Disneyland?  If you know nothing else about me, you should know that Disneyland trumps almost everything.

Here’s the tally so far:

• Sold items: $507
• Birthday money from my aunts: $30

So all that is to say, I’ve made enough money that I’m going to Disneyland today!  Addison and I are off to buy my annual pass (thankfully they have a $199 So Cal resident pass) so that we can enjoy a year of Disneyland fun before she turns 3 and costs money too.

If there’s one thing that’s sure to boost my flagging spirits, it’s a roller-coaster!

Stats:

20 pounds, 7 ounces (she was 18 pounds, 5 ounces at 9 months)

27.75 inches (she was 26.25 inches at 9 months)

From 9 months to 12 months, she stayed in the 40th percentile for weight but she inched her way up to the 13th percentile for height (from the 11th).  Way to go, baby!

It’s kind of crazy to think that we ever talked about her cankles.  She’s thinned out so much, I can barely remember the glory of her fat-roll days.  Gone are the height and weight-related nicknames (Shrimp, Rudy McCankles, etc.).  Now Neal most often calls her Scabies and Monkey Bones, while I usually call her Sneaky Trickerson or Sweetness, depending on (surprise!) whether she’s being sneaky or sweet.

Firsts:

At 12 months, it was all about walking.  Neal mentioned it in his guest post, that on her first birthday she strung together 8 steps to reach him — and really, she never looked back.  She had a few weeks of drunk walking, but by 14 months, she was full on sprinting.  And I haven’t caught up since . . .

Her verbal repertoire was also growing, though she still relied on her expressive mannerisms, gestures, and facial expressions for a lot of her communication.  I did manage to keep this partial list of the words/sounds she was consistently making at the one-year mark (usage notes or pronunciation in parentheses):

• dog barking
• annoying laughs (not that they were actually annoying to us, but we were trying to get her to mimic annoying sounds a la “the most annoying sound in the world” from Dumb and Dumber — she was pretty good too)
• douche (she used this one A LOT for a host of things, including her parents and Jesus — should I admit that?)
• dog (pronounced: “do”)
• kitty (screamed)
• eye
• hi
• hello
• strawberries (pronounced: “baba”)
• apple (pronounced: “ba pa”)
• mama
• dada
• no (she got MUCH better at this one over the next several months; now it is definitely one of her greatest hits, but mostly like this now: “NO, NO, NO!”)
• nien
• socks
• shoes
• keys (pronounced: “e”)
• teeth (pronounced: “tee”)
• baby (this sounded the most like the actual word)
• glasses (minus the gl — oops!)
• more (pronounced: “mom”)
• Grandpa (pronounced: “bah pa”)
• cheese (pronounced: “hee”)
• cup (pronounced: “up”)
• MINE! (it was always exclaimed)

Two anecdotes from that time period that I never posted but actually recorded:

We’re all about dental hygiene around here, so we started with the teeth brushing as soon as Addison had teeth.  She got into quite a routine with it — a freaking weird routine.  When Neal says, “Ready to brush your teeth?” Addison says, “Ah,” turns to the mirror, and licks her reflection. It’s the only time she does that.  Ever.

By the time Addison was in that 14-month-old, running-everywhere mode, church was getting to be quite a headache.  Sometimes if I got to Relief Society late, the only seats left were in the very front, which meant my failure to keep up with her was on full display.  She would be in people’s purses (she’s all about the touch-screen phones; I’m pretty sure more than one sister was horrified to see her iPhone/iPad in Addison’s hot, little hands), other kids’ boxes of Teddy Grahams, and running up the aisles before I knew what hit me.  But this one particular day really took the cake.  We were sitting at the front when Addison bolted away, up the aisle, and straight out of the room.  But when I followed her path out, she was nowhere to be seen.  I quickly looked down all three nearby hallways and couldn’t find her.  Thinking she must still be in the Relief Society room, I walked back in and looked around.  Still no sight of her.  I asked a friend sitting by the door where she went and she said she went into the hallway, but when I went back out, I still couldn’t see her.

At this point, I was getting worried.  There was an outside door nearby; surely she was not strong enough to get it open on her own, but maybe someone walked in at the wrong moment.  When I started walking toward the door, I finally caught a glimpse of her — sitting completely still in a corner with her arms at her sides, as if she was a statue.  When our eyes met, she started laughing like she was the funniest person that ever lived.  The whole experience was shocking for me on so many levels:  How could she run so fast?  How could she find such a great hiding spot so quickly?  How could she hold so perfectly still for at least two or three minutes when in most of our daily life, she couldn’t do it for three seconds???  There’s a reason she earned the name Sneaky Trickerson so early in life!

And for sticking with me through all that, even though it’s hopelessly late, you get some pictures.  Can you believe I didn’t manage to take a single picture on her actual first birthday?  (If that’s not coming up in therapy in 20 years, I don’t know what is . . .)

But I did capture some shots of her day-after-birthday lollipop, courtesy of Grandpa and Grandma Horton.  Since we were pretty strict about sweets, my sweet-toothed Grandpa waited a long time for this moment!

A few days after Addison’s birthday, my friend Kirsten came to stay while Neal went on a business trip and we made Kirst’s favorite dessert — lemon jello cheesecake.  We pretended that we made the cheesecake for Addison’s birthday and got the obligatory messy-baby photos:

This picture says it all -- her daddy did not teach her to get her hands dirty!

I took a bunch of video in between these shots that somewhat explains the transition to messiness below (spoiler alert: she was assisted by her mom).  But the videos are too long to upload in a reasonable amount of time, and shot sideways with no hope of turning them (I’m an amateur), and in the background I’m talking to/berating Neal about wasting time on his business trip (you can’t hear Neal’s responses, but at one point I say, “What do mean by ‘doing nothing’?”), so no video here.

Addison wasn’t that in to the dessert — she maybe took two licks — but that meant more for us.  Cute pictures/video + more dessert for the grown-ups = success!

And if you’re still with me, you get my second video posting ever.  Some of her early walking, taken the day after her birthday:

That’s it for one-year-old Addison.

Bye, now!

Watched game(s):

National League

• Dodger Stadium — Los Angeles Dodgers (too many to count)
• Wrigley Field — Chicago Cubs (2)
• Nationals Park — Washington Nationals (2)
• Veterans Stadium — Philadelphia Phillies (1)
• Coors Field — Colorado Rockies (1)
• Jack Murphy Stadium — San Diego Padres (1)

American League

• Angels Stadium — California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels (too many to count)
• Fenway Park — Boston Red Sox (4, maybe 5)
• Camden Yards — Baltimore Orioles (3)
• Yankee Stadium — New York Yankees (1)
• US Cellular Field — Chicago White Sox (1)
• Metrodome — Minnesota Twins (1)

Just toured (meaning my visit to the city was unfortunately in the off-season):

National League

• PacBell Park — San Francisco Giants
• Busch Stadium — St. Louis Cardinals
• PNC Park — Pittsburgh Pirates

And now I can throw away a bazillion ticket stubs.

So, I need advice.  I mentioned that I was humming along with my processing, until, BAM, I hit up against this big emotional barrier.  I think, nay, I know one or more of my blog readers can help me move forward and make a decision.

First, a little background.  Neal and I are, and have been, in the process of paring down our life.  Not that we had a huge life to begin with, but if I haven’t mentioned it before, we want a tiny life.  A tiny life that will fit in a tiny, 320-square-foot home.  One of the reasons for moving in with my parents for awhile was to work on this paring-down process, since I still had a sizable chunk of stuff from my past life housed here.  So I’ve been doing that.  And mostly it’s been fun.  Going through my old high school/junior high stuff is pretty entertaining.  But last week I came across a big box of stuff from my two-year baseball mission, AKA the lost years, 1998-2000.  The summation of the lost years is that after my freshman year of college I had to quit school for two years, was mostly bed-ridden, started therapy, learned to hate doctors (except psychologists, I like most of those), listened to a lot of sports talk radio, watched a lot of baseball, and wrote.

All that writing is my problem at the moment.  See, I kept it all, every bit.  Letters to and from me.  Journal entries.  Two novels I started.  A ridiculous number of poems.  And HOLY HANNAH, it’s depressing stuff.  I was facing my own mortality at 18 years old, and the combination of adolescent angst and clinical depression and potential death are just overwhelming.  It’s been 12, 13 years and it’s still absolutely too painful for me to read any of it.  ”Across the Catwalk” and “Untitled,” which I only wrote after I knew things were getting better, are just about the only things I can tolerate reading from that time in my life.  In my efforts to go through stuff, decide what to keep and scan, what to toss, I tried to start by reading some of the letters other people wrote to me.  I thought that would be easier, but man, I couldn’t get through more than one or two.  Even though I’m not still that horribly ill (mentally, physically, emotionally) teenager, I can’t help but feel all that pain still resting there.  And when I read the letters people sent to me, which seemed safer than reading my own writing, I can feel them grappling with that pain and not knowing what to say to me or about me.

It’s such an important part of my life.  Absolutely defining.  I remade myself under the tutelage of so much suffering, both external and self-inflicted.  I thought someday I would want to look back on it all, like maybe there were still lessons for me there.  But I’m beginning to doubt that day will ever come.  Maybe living through it once, and still coping with chronic issues that connect me to it, is enough.

I’ve pictured gathering it all and setting the box on fire.  I love fire (in a slightly pyro-type of way) and I love the symbolism of letting it all go.  But then I worry that I would regret that, for me and for my daughter.  For me, because I don’t want to pretend it never happened and I don’t want to ignore something that could teach me more of what I need to know.  (After all, Joseph Smith once said, “Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God.”) And for Addison, because perhaps she could avoid some of the mistakes I made during those years or at least feel less alone when she makes them.  Maybe I should just seal that box up, mark it carefully, and tuck it away for her to find some day.  She’ll learn things about my past from that box that I will probably never be able to tell her.

Neal thinks I should scan them without reading them and then get rid of the physical items.  But I’m not sure that would be less painful.  I would still catch glimpses of the words, and like I said, it just feels like that ache is still present.  Should I do something that has the potential to keep me in my depressed, too-contemplative mode for a couple weeks more?  (By the way, this all came to head on that same Tuesday.  I thought getting things done (!) would help me feel productive and stave off the depression, but unluckily this was the box I came upon — since there was no Box 8.  )

So, here’s where your advice comes in.  Burn it?  Seal it?  Push myself to go through it?  What would you do, or what have you done in your life?

After I got done collecting, I was feeling so energized and POWERFUL.  And then I looked around at all the stacks I’d collected and told Neal, “I just want to stay in the collecting phase.”

But eventually I pressed on.  To processing.  Processing the GTD way can be summed up with this workflow diagram:

From David Allen via this 7PProductions post

It’s really all about the next action decision, which is another thing that I like about this method.  I am notorious for jotting down a quick to-do/reminder like this one (that has been at the top of my tasks list since 2010): Roth IRA conversion.  But have I converted my old 403b to a Roth IRA yet?  No, because that’s not really an action item.  It’s more of a multi-step project that I know will take time, so I keep putting it off (although from a financial perspective 2012 is going to be the best year for me to do this, so my procrastination has actually been beneficial).  Now that I have “processed” that item, it looks like this on my list: Call Vanguard rollover specialist at 800-523-9442 to discuss next step for Roth conversion.  It’s specific and actionable (even though I still don’t want to do it because I hate the phone).

Once I got into the processing mode, I was really going like gangbusters for awhile.  In fact, I got my main inbox to look like this:

I don’t think I’ve ever had a surface in my room look that clear and uncluttered (as many old roommates can confirm).

But I’ll tell you, I hit a snag.  Maybe snag isn’t the right word . . . it’s something more like a HUGE emotional barrier.  Which is why this is only part one of processing.  It’s a work in progress — I may need more counseling before I’m through !  More on that later.

One of the main premises of GTD is that we keep too much in our heads.  Even if we are able to accomplish things that way, we’re probably using too much mental energy and what we aren’t doing, but think we should be, is weighing us down.  Um, yes.  Story of my life.  I have generally been a fairly productive person and I have always been able to keep a lot in my head.  But as time goes on, this is becoming more difficult and maladaptive.  It takes a toll on my sleep (to-do lists pop into my head and keep cycling the minute I turn out the light).  It takes a while to figure out what I can do in a few spare minutes and so sometimes I squander the time I do have.  And keeping things in my head will necessarily become more difficult as age slows down my mental capability.

So the collection phase is about one thing: getting everything out of your head. I started with collecting all my papers/mail/random crap and putting them in a physical inbox.

But that was only the beginning.  I have about a gazillion things I need to do, but they can’t be put in an “inbox.”  So I wrote lots of notes that I put in my inbox to represent the thing that needed doing: Process Box 1 (I numbered most of our still-packed boxes from the move).  Replace old family picture with new family picture.  Sort drawers in Addison’s dresser.  I walked through every room in the house, making notes of anything I felt needed to be done.  This took a while since we have a lot of spaces that look like this, even after living here for five months:

(Isn’t that a lovely painting?  Neal gave it to me as a going-away gift when we were dating and he thought we wouldn’t be seeing each other much anymore.  Little did he realize that you don’t let go of guys who give you paintings with poems on the back!)

When I was done with that, I got on my computer and looked at all my programs and files, all the online applications I use, my email accounts and Google Docs.  I was trying to think of any possible thing I wanted to do with them and write it down, regardless of how important or useless it was.  Collecting is not the time to evaluate — it’s just getting everything out of your head.

Finally, I just sat for a good 30 or 40 minutes and thought.  I wrote down everything that came to my mind that I’ve wanted to do, or considered doing, or might want to do in 30 years.  I don’t know if you’re like me, but I know even plans that can’t happen for 30 years still take up mental energy because I think, I don’t want to forget that it would be cool to do that when I’m 60.

I really enjoyed this collecting phase — probably because it felt like accomplishing something, without really having to accomplish something.  And it was some of the least physically-draining productive work I’ve ever done.  In fact, I think it gave me an energy boost because I finally felt like, I’m really doing this.  I’m really getting everything out of my head so that I don’t have to waste psychic energy on things I’m going to do in my 60s.  What a relief!

I knew I was enjoying the collection process, but it turns out I was enjoying it even more than I realized.  When I started processing (the next phase), I found notes like Process Box 8 when, in fact, there was no Box 8.   But then I could just cross it off my list — look at me, gettin’ things done!

The depressed feelings quickly morphed into a wickedly short fuse when our darling girl would not nap, despite being seriously tired and whiny.  (The day before she also did not nap, and instead learned to climb out of her pack ‘n play and came waltzing into our room beaming as proudly as I’ve ever seen her, which is saying something since this girl can beam!)  I rarely, rarely lose my cool with Addison, even when she was going through her vicious tantruming/kicking/hitting/hating-mommy phase, but that day I had a couple of somebody-better-get-this-kid-away-from-me-before-I-scream moments.  I never screamed but we did have a very tearful timeout, which was definitely more depressing for me than for her.

And on top of that, I was having this fresh wave of fatigue, which I should have seen coming since whenever I’ve been feeling well long enough that I note it on my blog, it means that I’m due for a decline.  (Note to self: these health problems are chronic; plan accordingly.)  So Addison deciding that she would no longer be napping — because every day since then she’s fought it like crazy, and she’s only had about two naps — felt like the worst possible timing.  I lay here thinking, how could she be that tired (because she also doesn’t sleep through the night lately) and that active and not fall asleep after three hours in her pack ‘n play (because we’re really persistent about the sleep thing)?  And then of course, it dawns on me what a ridiculous question that is when I’ve been in bed for five and half hours and I still haven’t slept a wink.  God help us if she has my sleep(less) genes; Neal will be in an asylum before he hits 30.

Which brings me to my next topic: why I can’t sleep.  I have avoided this topic with pretty much everyone for a long time.  I think I’ve been in denial, hoping that it’s some little fluke that would resolve itself over a few weeks.  But now I must own that I am itchy again.  Not pregnancy-itch-from-hell/wake-up-daily-in-a-bloody-mess itchy, but still pretty itchy.  And it’s been going on since July (though it’s intensified over the last month), so yeah, I’ve really been in denial.  I just can’t wrap my mind around the concept that I am going to have a new chronic health problem of itchiness.  There’s just nothing dignified about that.  Chronic pain, spinal arthritis, fibromyalgia, hypoglycemia.  Now those sound dignified and serious.  But the thing is, the itching feels like the worst one.  When I’m really in a bad place pain-wise, I can’t sleep and I actually cry involuntarily sometimes (as in, not from emotion but from some physical necessity).  When I’m itchy, I also can’t sleep but I feel like I am going INSANE.  Literally.  I actually think that my mind is spiraling into insanity.  It’s all I can do to not rip my own skin off, except that when I haven’t clipped my nails in a few weeks, I actually just end up ripping my own skin off.  When I wake up in the morning after just a couple hours of sleep, I realize that I’m still fairly lucid, if ill-tempered, and that I’ll have to do the whole thing over again in 12 hours.  One of my worst nights recently I just tossed and turned for hours and hours and hours, trying desperately not to scratch myself up too much, only to see that the clock read 12:14 am.  Have I mentioned I hate clocks?  And time.  I don’t know how I’m going to do a life like this if this is the new normal because there’s no this-will-be-over-in-9-months-and-I’ll-have-a-little-bundle-at-the-end guarantee and I have a toddler to raise now.  In case you’re wondering, I feel like crying right now.

Neal is ready to work on solutions.  The special soaps and soaks and detergents and steroid creams that did so very, very little for me the last time around.  He’s ready to talk to doctors about whether this is another auto-immune disorder or liver disease or allergies or, God forbid, something even worse.  Call me crazy, or still in deep denial, but I’m just not there yet.  I can’t stand the thought of trying all those recommended remedies again to no avail.  And I especially can’t stand the thought of sitting down with yet another doctor who has about two and half minutes to discuss and diagnose my problem.  It’s times like these I wish I lived near On Call Mom so that I could talk to someone I already trust who also has mad doctoring skills.

I guess that’s all for now.  I’ve been considering blogging about this for the last week or two, but I’ve felt too insular and withdrawn, so I actually take this middle-of-the-night, non-ranting (did it sound more ranting than I realize?)   post as a good sign.  Maybe soon I’ll be ready for “solutions” (I said that sarcastically — yeah, I’m not there yet).

Except left to my own devices, I’m a lot like that.  I’m sure this is embarrassing to admit, but when I’m in “the zone” I will forgo going to the bathroom for 7, 8 hours even though I really need to go.  I will forget to eat for hours and hours because I don’t want to be disturbed.  My Dad and I both idle away plenty of time (him playing free cell, me surfing the internet) but once we buckle down to work, we can stay focused for ridiculously long periods of time (although even I couldn’t do 28 hours at a time with any regularity).

When I was single, I could work those long hours if I chose.  And even pre-baby, I could still do school/work projects like that on occasion.  But I think one of the reasons it took me so long to finish my thesis was that there just weren’t 12-hour chunks of time to work anymore.  I spent a solid year trying to figure out how to work differently, like in 3- or 4-hour increments, but I just didn’t seem to be making progress.  So finally we decided that the month of May was going to be all about my thesis, and I could work as many 12/14/15 hour days required to get that thing finished.  And it worked!  But even so, I need to learn how to work differently.  That type of schedule is inimical to the kind of mother I want to be — Addison handled it okay, but I was a mess some days, just dying to see her.

So I started looking into personal productivity books/blogs/systems, which might sound boring but when you’re the kind of person who reads personal finance blogs for fun, it’s not.  I heard so many good things about GTD that I decided to buy the book and wholeheartedly invest in the system.  That was in 2010, so obviously, I’m right on schedule.

I’m not going to write a proper review of GTD since there are many good ones already on the web (this review and article series convinced me that this system could work for me), but I think I will write a few posts about the process I’m working through to streamline my life.  So stay tuned for phase 1: collecting (unless this sort of thing bores you to tears and you just come here for the pictures).