Task Avoidance and Trophies

The main purpose of today’s blog post is task avoidance. What task, you ask? Putting away the groceries. It’s the worst. Here I’ve exhausted myself by obtaining said groceries, and now I’m responsible for the continued effort of placing them in my home in an orderly and effective manner. This involves rearranging shelves, taking several trips in and out of the house and up and down the stairs, and unpacking and repacking many food items for storage and freezing. Plus, there’s a big benefit to chopping some fruits and veggies for future eating success, so I really ought to do that, too. 

And yet… here I lay in the couch, paralyzed by grocery store fatigue. 

I did it. 

Mostly.

I still have a few lingering items I need to put away, but the work is nearly done. In addition to putting stuff away in general, I grated and froze 5 lbs of cheese (with a food processor), squeezed juice out of 5 lbs of limes and put it in ice cube trays to freeze, grilled and froze 16 chicken breasts, chopped lettuce, stocked the bathroom cabinets with toilet paper (stopping to clean one of the bathrooms during this process), threw out a bunch of stuff from the fridge and pantry, and put dinner in the crock pot so I won't have an excuse to go out to eat later when I'm too hot and tired to cook and clean up the mess. 

I may sound like a braggart, Here! Read this list of things I just did and call me amazing and stuff! but just let me have this moment, mmmkay? Because one thing that's hard about summer is that I feel like I'm constantly behind in life, so I just need this one thing to help me feel like I accomplished something this season. If nothing else gets done, at least we will be able to eat chicken and reach the toilet paper when it needs replacing. Perhaps simultaneously. Because life is chaotic like that, and I'm not above eating chicken in the bathroom when I'm stressed. 

Since I need a win, I am going to award myself an imaginary trophy (it may take the form of a Coke... because I didn't quit soda on July 5th like I was supposed to).

Me right now with my imaginary trophy

In fact, I am going to award myself a series of trophies:

A trophy for vacuuming half my bedroom on Tuesday. Even though the vacuum is still sitting there waiting to finish, I'd like to think of it as a glass half full (or room half vacuumed) sort of situation.

A trophy for doing my hair two days in a row. Tuesday and Wednesday. That doesn't happen much during the summer. 

A trophy for growing a dahlia from seed. I planted an entire package, and I got one. It bloomed today. 

A trophy for not going out to lunch today. I can't say the same about breakfast. 

A trophy for picking up my prescriptions for the month before they got taken off the pick-up shelf.

A trophy for filling up my gas tank before the gas light came on (it was minutes away, but still...)

A trophy for reading three books to Eva. That may be the entire total for summer so far, but it's three more than I read her during the month of June. So we're moving up in the world. 

A trophy for cleaning the inside windows of my van, which requires me to climb in the back seat in a hundred degrees with all the random sand and candy wrappers I like to haul around town. 

A trophy for eating zucchini. 

The first harvest, then yesterday I picked about 4 more. 

A trophy for doing my Church calling.

A trophy for listening to my kids talk. 

So if trophies translate directly to Cokes, as I suggested above, I've earned myself a lot of Cokes. I should probably get busy with the drinking so I can quit soda again.