Parkinson's Law And Finding The Balance

Parkinson's Law...You know it, right? "Work expands so as to fill the time available!" Jim and I are trying to regulate and balance our time now that we have an abundance of it, for the first time in our lives. We know this about ourselves...we need a plan.

Spontaneity is not our middle name. We like our little routines and these last two months we have been working on refining them. A good example of how we roll goes like this. We use to read our scriptures every morning before Jim went to work. I'd get up with him and make his breakfast and lunch while he was getting showered and dressed, and I'd read to him while he was eating. I didn't eat, I didn't spend time getting dressed, etc. When he would leave, I would do my daily blog post. Simple and easy, it worked.

Now we gets up later, we both need to eat and get dressed, he likes to eat right away, I like to wait. It takes him 10 minutes to shower and get dressed, it takes me longer. All that was equaling hit and miss on the scriptures reading and my blogging. Not good. So we have tried different things and now we do the scriptures at lunch when we have put in a half a day of getting ready for the day and doing our morning chores and started on our projects for the day. It works so much better.

I am still struggling with finding the time to blog but I am working on it. One thing I am trying is working on the post the day before, kind of piece meal, when I can and using the post options to have it publish at 12:01 am the next day. It is far from ideal, but it is helping me at least get some writing in.

One thing we really need to guard against is the Parkinson Principle taking over our lives. I think we both have a pretty good work ethic and we both like to get things accomplished, so if we do not schedule in some fun and recreation we tend to spend most of our time working here at home or some place else.

So little by little we are fixing that by scheduling time to just be together and enjoy life and the beautiful places we have around us.

So every week on Thursday when we can or another day if that is filled with something else, we are going on these little day trips.

Last week it was my turn to plan the day and that was the day we went to Filoli Gardens.

This week was Jim's turn and he picked a day in Marin County. We started out in Mill Valley and this little bakery called The Champagne Bakery. Five *****. Looking at us, you would never believe that Jim really is the lover of good pastries and I could take it or leave it but...This place was outstanding. Our new routine on these day trips is stopping for a pastry that we share.

The Champagne Bakery

We like to beat the crowds and
so we usually go early.
We were here a little after 7:00 a.m.

I got to choose and I chose this one that was a savory

pastry with cheese and ham. It was perfection.

The flower stand on the other side the
street was just setting up for the day.

It is the tiniest place just a little covered walkway
for arranging their flowers
beside this building overlooking the creek.

The flowers made me happy!

Next we drove to Muir Woods~
one of our favorite places on earth.

Arriving around 8:00 we only saw one
other person for the first half hour.

We did see a little family of deer having breakfast.
She was about four feet from us just off the trail
and completely fearless.

Muir Woods is a forest of redwood trees
and it is so quiet and peaceful.
You just naturally feel the presence
of God and a feeling of reverence here.

There are few things God has created
more beautiful that this little wooded area
where the redwoods tower hundreds
of feet above you and
the sun rarely touches the forest floor.

The forest made us happy!

They have benches for weary Grandpas.

An wonderful flat paths for weary
grandmas with bad knees.

Near the Forest is the Muir Beach.
Also very pretty, and the roar of the waves is deafening.
Again no crowds. Yay!

Afterward we went back to Mill Valley
and walked around the town square.
The little old man had put out more pretty
flowers in his little flower stand.
The shops were underwhelming
and over-priced but
we enjoyed the flowers once more.

The flowers made us happy again.

Next we headed further
north to Tiberon and Belvadere.

Sitting on a park bench on the shore at Tiberon
we saw this.
Fog trying to burn off on the bay and a little
glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge.
This view made us happy and feel a true
sense of freedom to be able to enjoy it .

In this shot you can see San Francisco
in the background.

We had never been to Tiberon before except to drive through. What a fun place and the most beautiful panoramic view of the bay, bridge and city and Angel Island can be had there. Sitting on the shore boardwalk we had front row seats.

Across the little inlet you can see Belvadere.
Beautiful, quaint and picturesque
and it reminded us of Italy.
Particularly the Amalfi coast.
Right on the other side of this
you can see Sausalito.

Always thinking, they also have park benches
for weary Grampas that have just eaten
their picnic lunch and need a little snooze.
It turned out to be a nice and
warmish day here in sun.

We then decided to drive across to explore Belvadere. Not for the Faint of Heart! In the shot above it does not look nearly as daunting from the shore as it did up close. This was not my favorite part of the day. It was exactly like Amalfi. Tiny, one lane, hairpin, curvy road to the top with two way traffic. I wanted to scream more than once.

At one point we landed up going up hill and around a bend and were suddenly nose to nose with a Fex-Ed truck. Holy Cow! He must have seen the sheer terror on my face with someone's roof a foot from the cliff next to us and a driveway that went straight down, looking like the only place for us to back up into...so he backed up the hill for us to get by.

Jim later said, "Why didn't you take pictures of that?" Are you kidding me? I was frozen in terror and had my hand on the door handle like Meryl Streep in "The Bridges of Madison County", trying to decide if I should bolt outta the car or stay... and the other hand over my mouth so I wouldn't swear!!

Yes, that is a roof I am shooting over!
The street was that high and
the one laner was that close to the house below.

Now this doesn't look like we are that high but,
let me just say that we were!
And this is Sausalito from a vantage point
I will never see again!

Jim's words when we got down from the treacherous ride..."Wow that was way cool!" And that is why we can never truly be one flesh! My brain says "No flippin' way" and his says, "Bring it on!" Figuratively speaking...we are one! And when we are not I'm glad he is there to protect me!

This part of the day did not make me happy,
but when we got down to sea level,
it did make me thankful if that counts!

Aside from the terror, it was a fabulous and memorable day!