Mommy Meltdown: Using Your Dashboard When All Else Fails | Giftie Etcetera: Mommy Meltdown: Using Your Dashboard When All Else Fails

Friday, November 1, 2013

Mommy Meltdown: Using Your Dashboard When All Else Fails

Loki (age 5) had a meltdown yesterday.


Check out that huge lower lip. Imagine how far he can stick that out! He cried and cried and asked to cuddle.

You need to understand that he LOVES Halloween. It's one of his favorite days. Jack Skellington is his favorite movie character ever. But school was all day, he didn't nap, and it was pouring rain and miserable during trick-or-treating. He couldn't handle it and burst into tears.

Mommy was sympathetic. (Heck, let's just tell the truth. Mommy was running on coffee and chocolate and almost melting down herself.)

I had to substitute teach yesterday, prepare for trick-or-treating out of town (including candy, costumes, non-uniform clothes to wear under costumes, camera, gifts for my brother-in-laws Halloween birthday...the list goes on and on), deal with a sick husband who couldn't help out the way he usually does, and prepare for the first day of Nanowrimo. In addition, I had tons of end of the month deadlines to reach. I was overwhelmed.

A peek at my calendar shows that October 31st was full and trick-or-treating was not even written down.



And the weekly page, including the 30th (which was not complete on the 31st) was jammed, too. (Blurs are intentional to protect the innocent.)



Thankfully, I keep my dashboard set up. For a dashboard (the first page of a planner), I just use a piece of graph paper cut to size. For me, a dashboard is necessary when life gets crazy and will exceed the allotted space on my weekly page.




Halloween is one of those days. Therefore, I used my dashboard a ton yesterday.  I just put the date on it, kept it open on the teacher's desk, and jotted down anything that I needed to remember, all day long. I wrote down my calories (as I could not use my cell phone to enter them while teaching), reminders of things that I needed to do or remember, and notes of times when I had to return to teaching from breaks.


Today, I am processing the dashboard. I am entering my calories in Fit Bit, typing up ideas for my novel, and putting task on the weekend's task list.

The Rules say that you write things where they belong - on your weekly page, on your monthly calendar, or in your projects. The Reality is that my dashboard was a lifesaver yesterday, when I didn't even have a second to turn the pages in my planner.

Another reality? Only the five year old had an actual meltdown. I survived tear-free, like a reasonably mature grown-up.

Etcetera.

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