The title sounds like a fairy tale doesn’t it? My mother makes THE best pies. They say that the baking skill skips a generation. She was teaching my daughter at five how to make pie crust. No pie, or dessert ever measures up to hers. We looked forward to devouring them when returning home from college. My grandmother always made my favorite angel food cake with pink icing or fresh snickerdoodles when we visited. My great-grand’s maiden name was literally “Sweet”. We got our sweet tooth honestly!

That’s not the pie that I’m talking about, although that swoon was worth it! Somewhere, sometime, a basic principle of Time Management was to thoughtfully plan out how to allocate your time pie chart-esque, not only including your profession, but also yourself {gasp}, family/relationships, community, spiritual, and physical self. The visual model for some of those models was the pie chart, pebbles in a jar, a big planner journal, we’ve all seen or read a version of the concept.

It’s Saturday morning. My time. The museum is closed for an installation and it’s Spring weather outside for sure. I spent the first half of the day “concierging” as I call it for my 20-somethings, and communicating with the family on bills, ledgers, tuition, dates, rent, internships, and deadlines. I’m not over reaching, I promise! And then my aging Dad called about his login and how to message family on the Ancestry.com platform. That’s why they call this the sandwich generation. POOF, it’s noon!

And it’s not just personal things, everything is outsourced, payroll, insurance, DMV, Health care (cough), the dentist, the accountant, download our app, log into our portal, authenticate, password, password expirations and authencations, did you download our paperwork? Blah, Blah, Blah. We all get it!

This world has gotten nutso. The basic life skills required for me, or my children that are ready to fly, or my intelligent aging parents to navigate life now requires Olympic talent. When looking at the looming to-do list, the question that we ask ourselves is, CAN I HANDLE THIS RIGHT NOW?

Preparing for the next item on your personal to-do list is like the soul-searching question for jumping out of an airplane, hitting Class 5 rapids, skiing double black runs, whatever it is in your world. How much time and resources can you allocate? You may have to be on hold for an hour, you may have monitor email for a reply back, does it work for your time zone, does it work for someone else’s, are the planets aligned. It takes monumental effort to cross something off the list, to declare it FINISHED! Don’t get me started on the followup list, aka the “babysitting list” in my book of humor bring levity to it all. When I’m solo, managing a team of one under this roof and it’s become a line item in hours, a hefty slice of pie, it’s a become a THING.

I’m tired, I have decision fatigue, and my life is blessed and we are all healthy and I love them to pieces! I’m intelligent, a Virgo (aka organized, among other things..), and I don’t see where I can build in any more efficiencies. And managing things around in circles is getting very obnoxious. I want to be outside, on a trail, with friends, and traveling. And I don’t have soccer and sports weekend schedules any more. We are exhausted. The pie is only so big, and that was MY time!

This brings me to Princess Kate. The chatter is so loud on wondering what’s up with the Princess. I don’t think it’s as hysterical as is sounds. I think it’s actually a diversion from the overwhelmedness of our real lives. I hope everyone is sending a prayer of love to her at the same time they wonder about her. She’s got to be dog-a$$ tired! I mean her schedule, plus 3 little royals, front-page-visible all day, every day, for 11 married years now. Even if had stylists, for clothes, hair, makeup, a chef, a driver, and a sash and royal jeweler detailer, I would be exhausted. Her Time Management pie chart is so unbalanced.

Out with the old, we are seeing many changes, coming fast. Good, bad, or otherwise… it’s time. Cacooning is a popular word right now, coming out of winter. Who are we this spring time and with the reflection and pause from the last few years. Princess Kate likely needs a lot of extra cacooning right now. Let’s give it to her and lead by example by taking time for ourselves. May we send her love and reflect on our 2024 plans.

Take a minute or five over the weekend to see where you can let go of some of the demands or non-essential, non-sensical things in your life. Do you really HAVE to do all the things? Also, make sure to plan for joy, unstructured rest, and whimsy.

In the meantime, my imaginary chef is bringing me an artichoke panini, a mixed green salad with all the goodies from my garden, and a just baked homemade strawberry rhubarb pie for the weekend! Cheers and much love!

PS And because we keep going, I started a couple more looming projects and made it outside to clean up my yard for spring! Once it was a hectare/2.5 acres, now it’s too tiny to measure, but it brings me joy, and the bulbs and buds are green!
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