I have made a few decisions. The hardest decision is to give up my night time White Russian made with home made Coffee Liquer and raw milk. We will not discuss the Vodka as it is against the law in America to have a Still. I will only drink tea in the evenings in November. Though I will still have a wine with dinner. That is a good decision.
Decisions themselves take up a lot of time and imagination so I will also give up decision making itself for anyone other than my animals and myself for the month of November.
I won’t tell anyone else how to be. Or say ‘I hate to say this however..’, or ‘I don’t mean to interfere but..’or ‘well in my opinion…’ because I will be floating about in my own little bubble and I will allow the family to empower themselves by working this stuff out by themselves. 
I won’t nag about ‘homework’ or ‘you’ve been gone for hours what have you been up to’, or ‘You are going to drown in one of those potholes, one day, if you don’t fix the lane.’ 
Everyone can do their own laundry and I will not nag them to ‘get on with it or do you want to go to school/work naked.’ Something I do not want to see. I will not harp on about boys cleaning the boys bathroom, and ‘why is the grout a funny colour’ I will not whine on about how if they want to ‘leave water and soap all over and slip and wack their stupid heads that is their own choice’.
You see how easy this is going to be. In fact My life will be nicer as long as I do not have to actually go into the boys bathroom.
However I have been making very strict decisions for myself. Every Sunday I shall arrange a weeks worth of my own clothes into daily bundles, stacked neatly in piles. Farm pants, tops, warmie, knickers and bra all folded together. Seven of them. Then I do not need to make decisions about what to wear.
Every Sunday I shall write a menu of dinners and create the grocery list accordingly. Then I will not need to make decisions about food. In fact I should do this for the rest of my life -I always have trouble deciding what to cook for the ungrateful masses.
I will ask the Matriarch to feed the teenager in town once or twice a week and monitor his homework from there. I will ask John to cook me those fabulous Thai soups more often.
Someone else can do the grocery shopping and go to the feed store. Can I give away all the jobs I hate? Just so I can write a book? Thinking deeply. Um. Yes.
I don’t want to make too many decisive changes because I might forget what they are and then I will spend time and brainpower trying to remember what I have decided. But I will use the fridge doors to write lists as I think of things so I don’t have to think about remembering things. And I am going to rename myself The Little Red Hen. I like her attitude. 
Mostly I am clearing space in my head but I also need to clear space in my day. So here is the TimeTable. I have a timetable of sorts anyway but this one will be in stone for a month. What do you think?
- 5am -6 am – Get out of bed and stumble to computer then Write to you and post the blog.
- 6am. – Milk the cow, feed the animals, take photos and all that stuff.
- 8 – 9am – Breakfast. Hang out in the Lounge of Comments and do a wee bit of visiting; I would hate to miss out on what you are up to so drop me a line if i miss an important post.
- 9am – 10 Fast forward housework. (I do this already) I love to do housework in fast forward. I do everything once and as quickly as possible.
- 10 – 11 am -Visit the old people, write to children, correspondence: my people cannot be neglected just because I am writing a book.
- 11 – 1 pm- Prepare dinner. Take pictures. Farm work. Load pictures onto tomorrows Weblog page. Read yesterdays writing. Block out todays writing.
- 1 – 4 pm- NaNoWriMo – two thousand legible words a day minimum. Though in the first week I want to give myself a five thousand word buffer in case of emergencies. Always stop in the middle of a sentence or action so it is easy to pick up the next day.
- 5 – 6.30pm- Milking, feeding out, farm work.
- 7 – 7.30pm- Finish dinner and feed dinner to family.
- 7.30 – 8.30 – Load photos onto tomorrows blog, shuffle about the blog world a little. Shower, bed!
Good morning. In fact the only real change to my normal timetable is writing The Book, which is called Potatoes are Your Best Friend by the way, from 1 – 4 pm each day. Usually this time is spent in the gardens, watering, weeding, taking photos and playing with the animals, with a little writing thrown in. Now that the gardens have been handed over to the Shush Sisters I have more time.
That all makes a certain amount of sense to me. Have you any ideas? We have a week to make any changes.
Now it is 6 am and I must get moving..
You all have a lovely day.
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
101 responses to “Decisions: Managing the household and farm during NanoWriMo”
The Head Mistress of The Farmy is ruling herself with an iron glove. These rules are all your choices so you can do with them as you wish. The Head Mistress needs at least one reward. I think the White Russian cocktail should stay on the table. I am not going to say ONE more thing dear Celi. Hugs Virginia
Darling Cousin-Friend!! c
For once I haven’t read all the other comments before making my own comment…. but here is my penny’s worth:
Plan to write enough words per day to make your target in 6 days a week, rather than 7 days a week. This builds in a day for ‘crisis management’ – so instead of 1,667 0r what ever the exact target is, you’d need to do 50,000 divided by 26 days, roughly, 1,923 per writing day! For less than 300 words extra a day you get a day off a week. (I hope my maths is right!!!)
That is extremely good advice, and thank god you did the maths as it is not my strong suit. You are absolutely correct too, I shall be working hard to get ahead of myself and stay ahead. The no editing edict should help me keep the numbers up too ! c
PS
did you see this?
http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/books/2012/oct/20/writing-your-novel-30-days-method
🙂
I love your schedule and the lists. I should try that clothing pile as well. Good luck with your book. It can be hard but you have a good system worked out.
thank you honey, i will give it a good crack anyway! c
Sounds like a plan C! I can’t imagine waking up voluntarily at 5 am every day, but I guess that’s the difference between an organized woman and…me! 😉
You are going to do it wonderfully, as you always do. I see you left a one hour backup from 4 to five in case you need more time for writing, that’s clever.
Good morning (good night here) 🙂
Celi I felt tired just reading your lists.
But sound common sense! As soon as I’ve written a list I feel I’ve done most of the stuff on there and can actually cope with life!
Good luck XXXX
I’m amazed at your ability to get so much done. I’m sure Potatoes Are Your Best Friend will be a smash. By the way, my daughter says she can no longer look at the pictures of your fierce new moggies: she says they give her strange dreams. Last night she dreamed she had a conversation with the grey one. She asked it’s name, and it replied, “I don’t know, I don’t have one yet.” She said, “You look like a Toby” and the blue-eyed fluff ball said, “I agree.”
Wow! I can see why you have to be organised. My only suggestion is – well this will sound radical to you I know – but it’s to have a tiny blog diet by posting only every second day while you are writing the book. Writing needs a bit of space to breathe. Best of luck though, it’s a great project!
Spoilsports (re the still). I suggest giving up washing up too. You’re sooo organised! 🙂
l’il Red – sounds great; do you think John can garner a recipe for the Thai soup and send it to us this year? Other than that, knock em dead kid; love your title
It’s like the piggy’s been caught in the mud!
up to his hocks.. c
Of course, cook and freeze Novembers meals. That’s what I forgot.
Love the ‘housework in fast forward’. Genius.
Ok, that’s it! Everyone in my FB writing group, (marginal exaggeration about the everyone) has joined NaNoWriMo and meanwhile I’m sitting on this epistolary story I started two years ago…so I took the plunge. Have very little idea of what I’ve gotten myself into but as long as you’re there, plus the crazies I love in Wordsmith Studio, I think it’ll be ok. Once I figure out how to, I’ll see if I can add you to the buddy system. Let’s go girl! (punching the air with fist) 🙂
I am sooo lazy….must write a schedule for myself–next week!
Love schedules: have funny principle – if I have ticked off 75% I give myself a pat on the back and put the 25% onto next day if need be. That makes no sense, but somehow it has worked since I was at Uni. But work on blogs at 5am: NO way 🙂 ! Oh: believe in the Hemingway method – My vocabulary definitely improves after a few glasses of vino!
Definitely give away as many jobs as you can; that book needs to be written!
Timetable looks great. I’d say this is a go!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I love your photos, especially the pigs. I tended pigs when I was a girl. 🙂
Lovely to see you Anna, there is so much to fit into our little lives! c