Day 29 - CDC recommends all J&J patients get a booster after 2 months

Finished this book today…

11/18/21. Thursday 

9:30 – I’m up but I lie in bed for transition time. I took today off because I thought I would be in Ireland this week. 

10:00-10:30 – I go downstairs to say good morning to the animal.  She’s lying on the ottoman, but her eyes are open, so I know she’s awake. I sit down on the couch and she jumps in my lap for kisses and cuddles. I pet her for several minutes and we finally go out to the backyard.  I stand around, waiting for her to go potty, and examine some of my plants.  I really need to get in some watering. She finally goes potty.  Return inside; coffee for me, pieces of sugar cookies for her. 

10:30-11:00 – Bullet journal 

11:00-12:30 – I read Organization is a Learnable Skill 

12:30-1:30 – Blog posts. 

1:30-2:00 – I get dressed in my Covid-19 uniform, wash my face, brush my teeth, and put my contacts in. I eat some Girl Scout toffee peanuts that L.’s Dad mailed to her. 

2:00-2:30 – L. and I take the dog for a walk before she goes to work. 

2:30-3:30 – I have a spinach salad that I made yesterday and finish Organization is a Learned Skill.

This book was written by Lisa Woodruff, the same author of The Paper Solution, the book that I finished a couple days ago, and the owner of the company Organize 365.  Lisa was able to secure a publisher for The Paper Solution, but Organization is self-published and it shows in the editing. There are some typos and grammatical mistakes, which distract from the overall message at times. You know it’s bad when you find yourself thinking, “Oh, that sentence would read better if…” or “That verb tense is off…”  

This is Lisa’s origin story and she describes how her company, Organize 365, evolved. Lisa is married with two adopted children who were plagued with health issues and learning disabilities since birth. What’s interesting about Lisa and Organize 365  is that she’s been podcasting about her life, her company, and her children, in real time, since they were under the age of 10 and the episodes are still around. I binged all of them a couple of years ago and it’s fascinating how she, her children, and her company have evolved. Now, her son, Joey is 20?? and her daughter, Abby, is 19??

Greg, her husband, is a “peripheral character” who is not fully fleshed out. He’s worked at the same 9:00-5:00 job his entire life, M-F, and has done little else, leaving Lisa to run the house…and her direct sales businesse(s), and her company, and the children [at one point, Lisa calculated she was in her car a whopping 26 hours a week, driving her kids to and from school; doctor and therapy appointments; and countless meetings with school administrators concerning her kids IDPs]. Lisa, who is also a credentialed elementary school teacher with an emphasis in Math, was also a teacher for 3 to 4 years in the midst of this chaos.  

There are hundreds of podcasts detailing this never-ending nightmare  over a multi-year period, and Lisa is always very sunny, talking about her kids in glowing terms and routinely calling her husband a “saint”, even though he’s never an “option” for any help whatsoever because Greg is always “at work”, per Lisa.

 Lisa blogged for the two years she tried desperately to organize her house, which took around 18 months and resulted in her quitting her teaching gig because she was spread too thin.  She details her organization journey in the blog and the podcast and is ultimately successful at finally creating order out of chaos. The systems she employed worked!! and teaching women how to organize their homes became her passion and ultimately her company, Organize 365.  The company is expanding and doing quite well, even during the pandemic. This book emerged from her blog and podcast. 

The main premise of the book is that organization CAN be taught, ergo the name of the book, Organization is a Learnable Skill, and Lisa aims to teach women how to organize their homes,  one household at a time, for $1000 a pop, if you purchase the All Access program. What’s lost in her messaging is the following question: If organization is a learned skill, then why aren’t we teaching it to men, our husbands, our boyfriends, etc.? Why are women Lisa’s target market? Especially when men are guilty of “malicious ignorance” where they feign confusion over how to perform a basic task or say shit to their wives like, “Oh, you’re better at that [task] than me, so you should do it.”  Keep in mind that when a man says that to his female partner, he’s usually referring to the most laborious, dirty, crappy chore that nobody wants to do, including the husband, and it is thereby relegated to the wife, because nobody else is going to change the diapers, or dump the cat litter box, or meal-prep vegetables for the family.  

Using the veil of malicious ignorance, the man skates and the wife is left holding the bag, because if not her, than who?   Eventually, Lisa tells Greg she no longer has time for meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking for the family, so he took over these chores about 4 years ago. That seems to be Greg’s sole contribution to the household, although…you know… I don’t live in their house… 

What’s not discussed in this book is the fact that Abby got knocked up at 17, gave birth, and she and her son are living in Lisa and Greg’s basement (apartment), where they will remain….probably forever. Abby is unemployed, having suffered from ADHD and learning disabilities her entire life. Lisa is open about her new grandson, Grayson, on a few of the more recent podcast episodes, but has never, ever mentioned who the father is, which I find extremely odd. But that is neither here, nor there. Suffice it say that Lisa’s house is organized and she’s incredibly productive, even though her life is technically a hot mess.

I will say that Lisa is one of my favorite podcasters and she has a cult-like following…her podcasts easily have over a million downloads. So, it is with this caveat that I recommend both The Paper Solution  and Organization is a Learnable Skill. 

3:30-4:30 – Today is the last day to make purchases and still receive $10 Kohls cash for every $50 I spend, so I drive to Kohls to start off the new year (2022) with new workout attire, bras, and underwear.  

-I drive to Starbucks and order a Peppermint Hot Chocolate. Then I get gas. 

4:30 – 6:00 – Return home, collect the dog, and we drive to the dog park. Nobody is there… I guess because it gets dark early now.  Still, the dog park is lit…oh well. I take the dog off leash and we hang out for a little while in the dog park so she can explore, without interruption. Then, we exit the dog park and do a couple of loops around the main park while she is on leash. Return home. 

6:00-7:30 – I make a spinach salad with some of the last remaining veges in the fridge and add some tuna fish. I read The Lazy Genius while I eat dinner. 

-L. is home and attending her online class at Otis from 7:00-10:00. 

8:00-10:30 – I listen to my Chapter 13 and 14 combo AUDIO Lecture to see if I need to make changes for my highschoolers tomorrow morning and while it plays in the background, I check email at College Nos. 1 and 2. One of my students for Specialty Class 1A will be absent the last week of class and wants to take the Final early, even though he currently has an F in the class. Go figure. 

-Lecture is through running and L. will have to separate the Chapter 13 lecture from Chapter 14, in order so that they stand on their own. Unfortunately, one of the lectures is outdated and keeps referencing Trump as our president, so I record a 2-minute PSA for the students, explaining the discrepancy. L. will also need to add new images to the Google slides.  

-I create a new Discussion Board prompt and redo the Home Page for tomorrow’s Module. 

-L. approves the drafting chair and easel I selected, so I order both. 

10:30-11:00 – L.’s online class is finished so she makes my edits and changes the Google slides.  Then we download the new lectures and the PSA I recorded to three Canvas shells. 

11:00-11:45 – I try on all of my Kohls’ purchases to make sure they fit, remove the tags, and put everything in the washing machine.  The bras are amazing!  Finally, something that fits! 

11:45-12:30 – I do a 30-minute Insanity Max – Cardio workout in my new workout clothes. I look just like the athletes in the video now! 

12:30-1:30 – Blog post. 

1:30-2:30 – Bullet journal. 

2:30-3:00- Nighttime routine. Bed. Tomorrow’s class is ready which means I don’t have to get up an hour before the start time.  I set my alarm for 8:30.