Filofax

Remember when I wrote about The 10 Best Pens? Well I had to try the Pilot Varsity Fountain Pens after Sharon (and a few others) recommended them.

And, I love them.

They bleed through my Filofax paper, which is a damn shame, but I’m using them in my five year journal and on some of the mini to do lists I keep in my Filofaxes (but not on official Filoafax paper.)

I love all of the colors. I love the way they write. I just love them.

Not. A. Good. Month. for much of anything.

I did almost nothing on my big monthly to do list, and some of the stuff I did has to be done again because that’s how it went for me in March. All messed up. So, I’ve carried my big list into April and am being very cautious about adding anything to that list so that I’m sure to get more things finished. Surely.

With four PTO days coming in April, I’m sure I can do some of these things… and still have fun and relax on my PTO days.

I have been having fun art journaling in my personal Filofax. That’s the one I use for work and I’m using the top space of my week on two pages to doodle the over-arching theme for the week. That’s been fun because it’s a good way to vent some frustration and turn that into something that makes me smile.

I did a fairly good job of working on JMP’s stocking, though I didn’t manage the ultimate goal for that project (which was to finish the entire top right corner) but I did get close. I think I’m going to see a huge difference in this one by the end of April (knock on wood.)

I also managed #17daysofgreen (my personal photo challenge for March) – that was mostly fun and not a chore. I considered extending it to a full month but decided not to press my luck. That was a smart choice since from 3/17 through the rest of the month turned out to be one trial after another (and I don’t really mean that whole jury duty thing.)

Oh, speaking of jury duty, I took my pennybridge (with the iPad case) with my to jury duty and that was cool. I learned a lot about using that Filofax just in the three hours I had to play with it and am looking forward to taking it along with me to BlogHer Food ’14 and BlogHer ’14. (Though I’ll miss my Cover Story and my Malden a LOT while I’m gone. I do love both of those Filofaxes.)

Fingers crossed for April. It’s going to be a good month, I’m sure of it.

I just yelled really loudly, “STOP TURNING OFF THE DAMN LIGHT!” because once again I came back to the office to work for another couple of hours, after a quick bath in a very hot tub. Another two hours — it’s already 8pm.

I spent five hours driving today. That’s not an exaggeration. I might have actually spent six. I lost track there at the end. I spent an hour on conference calls. I tried to clean the kitchen, only to discover there are too many dirty dishes to fit into one dishwasher load. I didn’t get to eat any of the yummy food we bought, for lunch, because I was working from the dentist waiting room using my iPhone hotspot and didn’t have time to eat. I forgot to take a drink with me so I was dying of thirst.

Today was the day from hell — even if we did have pie. And a nice dinner. And I can have another piece of pie once I finish work.

It was the day from hell — even though TW’s missing check arrived and so did her mother’s meds.

What’s more annoying than the day from hell is that I’ve had the week from hell and it should not have been so.

Sassymonkey was my favorite person because she watched the spam for me most of the nights this week. This meant I turned off my computer very early (for me) and didn’t worry about work stuff all night long. I should have had plenty of time to do all of the fun things.

And we did go grocery shopping last night and eat real food that was not peanut butter. So that was good.

But, I missed two days of writing in my daily journal (something I do every morning between 8-9am.) I missed an entire day of writing in my 365 lists Filofax journal tab (and I’ve never missed a day, since January 1.) When I look at my work Filo, I see that I did do all the things originally scheduled and I see a whole lot more things added. That’s normal. That’s as it should be. I did all the work things and more. Yay me.

But my Malden. My personal Filofax. Aye yi yi. So many erased items. So many arrows indicating I moved something from one day to another to another to another. So many not crossed off things.

How could that be? I didn’t work all the nights, like I usually do. How could I have done so little? What in the hell happened to my week? I know what happened to my today — but my week? Wah?! I have no idea. I didn’t journal anything that explains it. I don’t have any additions that explain it. It’s like someone just came along and plucked a couple hours out of each day of the week.

Hell. I don’t even know where to start tomorrow — I’m tempted to just erase everything (thank you Frixion erasable pens!) and just go with the flow and call this week a BUST.

Next week will be better. Oh. No it won’t. Next week is going to be something else… Shudder. Let’s not think about it.

Thank goodness February is OVER. I’m done with it. There’s a reason why February is a short month and it has nothing to do with cycle of the moon or sun or anything calendar related. It’s because February is a DICK.

But, it wasn’t really all bad. I kept my “To Dos” manageable and have only two things left un-done. One was a carryover from January and I must do that in March. Sooner rather than later — I must fix my coffee pot. The grinder is clogged or something and it won’t grind beans — so I’m stuck using pre-ground coffee, which I keep buying so I’ll have coffee even though I have a ton of beans. Gah.

I didn’t quite manage the #tcblove photo a day challenge. I was late for two of the days, one because I’m a procrastinator and the other because I forgot TW had a dental appointment and it would be dark before we left the building. Oops. I suppose I could have not planned to take that photo in the afternoon and managed it on time but see that procrastinator thing? Also, work is NUTS right now. I skipped one day completely because the theme just didn’t work. In fact a lot of days the them didn’t work for me — I’m not a marshamllowy kinda person. lol. It was fun, though. I’m glad I did it and I’m looking forward to 17 Days of Green in March.

Still not finding time to art journal, though moving a handful of gel pens to my desk did cause me to do some doodling a couple of times. I’ve got plans to schedule art journal time into March and since that’s helped me get a ton of work done on JMP’s Christmas stocking, I think I might see some success with that next month. I hope.

All in all, a good month — consider February sucks so hard. Onward!