What I've Been Up To

It's been another long and hard week.  This is what I've been up to when I haven't been working:

I got on Pintrest.  I love it, but it's so easy to lose an hour there!  I'm SaltLakeAnnie if  you want to follow my boards.

I've been watching the first season of West Wing this week.  I'm not sure how many times I've watched the first season of West Wing, probably 3 or 4.  I love it because I feel smarter when I watch it.  It makes me want know what is going on.  But sadly, I probably could tell you more about the politics and what is going on in the Washington, DC of West Wing better than what is actually going on today.

I am working on making this skirt.  I love it and have been dreaming of making it since before I owned a sewing machine.  The fabric I'm using is similar but slightly different.   I ran into a slight snag though when I discovered I needed an invisible zipper foot.  Did you know you needed more than one zipper foot?

I made this pie for Shawn.  Well, not THAT pie, but that's the recipe for the pie I made, which I got here.  Only, I didn't do the lattice crust, I went for a regular old pie crust.  And I think it was the best apple pie I've ever had.  I'll definitely make it again, and next time I'll try the lattice crust.  (Oh, and to be perfectly honest, I bought the pie crust, I didn't make it, I just used the recipe for the insides.)

I harvested the first of our sunflower seeds.  The sunflowers were huge, easily three feet across!  We cut them down and let them dry for two weeks and yesterday I harvested them.  I'll try to post pictures of the actual flowers later, they were amazing!  I've roasted most of them and left the rest raw to either give to the birds this winter or plant next spring.

Right now I'm making this soup, found on Pintrest (and here).  It's so nice to have a Sunday.  Shawn and Scooter are asleep on the couch and later Shawn will make some bread.  We plan to take a drive up the mountains to see the beautiful fall leaves this afternoon, and I plan on convincing Shawn to let me whoop his butt at Ticket to Ride Europe after dinner.

Overwhelmed

It's been one of those weeks and it's only Tuesday.  Yesterday was one of those days that when I got home from work I told Shawn that I just wanted to cry.  He looked at me and said "Go ahead and cry" but he face looked more like "Please don't cry, I won't know what to do if you cry!" Today was one of those days that I said to Laura, let's just run away.  She asked where I wanted to go and I said, I don't care, anywhere but here.  I'd be satisfied with Park City or Logan. (They are other cities in the state, I don't think that really classifies as running away.)  Ugh.  I feel so overwhelmed at work, so behind.  And the behindness is overwhelming the overwhelming feeling.  And last week I had a week that was a perfect catch up week.  Until three urgent project got dropped on my desk, and then one of the behind projects came to a head, and I didn't get anything else done.  So, this week I'm even MORE behind, more guilt for being behind and I just want to stop and run away.  I just want to ignore all the behind projects and start completely fresh.

So, I stopped today and yesterday.  I surveyed my office and got that overwhelmed feeling, but I decided to meet it head on.  Instead of plopping non-urgent tasks and random papers in piles around my office I confronted those piles.  I went through all of those papers and I threw most of them in the recycling bin.  I organized the others and I cleaned off my desk.  And I started to feel a sense of ease.  A sense that I can indeed get caught up.  And tonight before I left work I sat down with my "to do" stack and I went through every item, and I created a To Do List.  And for the first time in weeks I feel like all that work is manageable.  I can do it.  And what's more, I'm kind of excited to do it.  I love to do lists, I love crossing off items.  Even though it's already been a long week I'm kind of looking forward to tomorrow and walking into my clean, organized office with my to do list.