To Do: Stick Finger in Blender

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Last night I stuck my finger in the blender. On purpose. But not. It was a total how-stupid-can-you-be moment. A moment of too much in a hurry. Too distracted. Too stressed. Which is ironic because I was making dinner early so that my family could eat while I went for an hour massage. Hurry up and relax. Kind of the way I live, really and it's not good.

I'm so glad I cut my finger yesterday. I needed it. I needed a wrench blender throw into my day to stop me in my tracks. I spent an hour in the ER instead of an hour getting a massage and I can honestly say I think it may have been better for me. It made me laugh. I couldn't help but laugh when we arrived and I explained what I did to the lady behind the desk. And I laughed that Jack had no shoes on. And I laughed when my husband, in all seriousness said, "I guess there's no dinner then?"

I had to wait. Wait for the doctor and the x-ray tech and the glue and the tetanus shot. Waiting is good. Someone, something needed to slow me down. So often I function from my "To-Do" list, I mean it's legitimate stuff that needs to get done...but it's a lot. I tend to pile it on. My current list looks something like this:

Sewing projects: mending, skirt, curtains.

Deep Clean House

Wash slipcover

Magnet-Sophia's kitchen

Blinds for kids room

Clean out car

Switch out Fall/Summer clothes

Contacts-order

Dentist/insurance

enter receipts

thank you notes

calls/emails

blog to do's {there's a whole other list for this one}

{And sometimes "shower" makes it on to this list. Seriously. I have to write that down?!? Sometimes. Yes.}

This is just this week. And I was hell-bent on getting it all done by Thursday so I could spend Thursday and Friday relaxing. This type of living: off the to do list, is not really living. My husband can't stand it because I operate in a constant state of "agenda driven" life. But honestly this is all I've ever known. This is how I've functioned for my.entire.life or at least for as long as I could write. The to do list dominates pretty much every waking moment. The thought of trying to function without a list is kind of crazy to me and even if I didn't write it down I'd still have it in my head...I always do. I'm not sure what it would be like to live without a to-do list. My fear is that my world would disintegrate into utter chaos, that the wall would be painted with poop (oh wait... that already happened) and there would be no dinner and no clean laundry and we would live in squalor. Or maybe everything would be fine and life would feel like vacation and I wouldn't need a cut up finger to knock some sense into me. Or maybe there's somewhere in the middle. Something tells me there is. In fact I found this article about Living without a To-Do list that I want to read...I just have to add that to my list;)

Do you have a to do list? If you don't how do you function?

--Sarah