How Not To Get Things Done

I feel like I'm lacking discipline in a lot of areas of my life right now and can't quite get things together.  Sure, life with small children is challenging and requires flexibility and all that but I think I may have given in to "flexibility" a bit too much and not maintained discipline about the things that are important to me.  This is my job right now, after all, and not an easy one.  I bemoan the difficulty of keeping on top of everything I need and/or want to.  I went back to the Arboretum with some friends today and managed to pack adequate lunches and put sunscreen on Grace but failed to bring a hat for Violet.  My sweet 3-month-old is sporting a little sun across her nose and cheeks.  Ah, small failures...

Another small failure is that dinner is an unknown, nebulous concept for this evening.  I am normally big on planning meals, shopping efficiently, etc but I have passed the end of my planning into the no-man's-land of "What are we having for dinner?"  I have even passed the breakfast-for-dinner solution as we had pancakes just a few nights ago.  Tomorrow is our produce co-op day and so I didn't want to go grocery shopping until I know what we will have, but the pickings in our cabinet and freezer are pretty slim today.  What can I do with spaghetti squash and pine nuts?  I'm the one doing the shopping for our produce co-op this weekend, which means that tomorrow's early morning hours will find me hanging out with the produce wholesalers at the Dallas Farmers Market.  It's a pretty disappointing farmers market, with practically no local farmers, but the produce co-op has gotten us screaming good deals over the past months on regular grocery-store style fruits and vegetables; that's nothing to complain about too vociferously.  We are bowing out of the co-op this spring, however, because I found a CSA for this coming growing season!  I am really excited about it starting up next month and hope that we like it as much as the one we did in Connecticut.  I have really missed the amazing food.

Grace has spent the better part of this afternoon cycling through some very specific activities.  First, she asks me if she can play with Play-Doh.  I say that yes, she can, after she cleans up her room by putting all her toys in her 2 toy baskets.  She goes in there, half-heartedly puts a few things away, then gets engrossed in the toys and plays with them for a while.  She eventually grows bored and wanders out to find me and ask if she can play with Play-Doh.  Repeat.  I think her room is actually a bigger mess than when we started all this.  It all feels pretty familiar to me, actually, as I can't seem to get anywhere with my responsibilities either.  Either Grace is suffering from the same lack of character as me or she is showing me that I should stop being so task-oriented and just enjoy myself.  One or the other.