Happiness Project: Slow down

*Why does blogger randomly decide to publish things without appropriate spacing? I apologize for not being technologically savvy enough to fix this... I'm one of those people who is always in a hurry. I talk fast, I walk fast, I think fast. One benefit of this is that I am NEVER late. Ever. Even with all my kiddos and crazy taxi-mom schedule , I have never been late to pick one of them up. One day, as I was paying for my groceries, after furiously loading them in my cart and all but running out of the store, the checker called out to me, "Drive safely, ma'am!" I'm ashamed to admit this is not the first time that's happened to me. I had been in such a rush doing everything that this guy was actually concerned that someone might get hurt. Another thing: the automatic doors at grocery stores are always too slow for me. If I wasn't pushing a cart full of groceries, I'd prefer to just use the manual-open doors then wait an agonizing half second for those doors to open for me. Why am I in such a hurry??? 1. I am my father's daughter. He does everything fast. My dad can be anywhere in ten minutes (or so he says). One day he was going to drive from his house, stop at Menards, then drive to my house. "I'll be there in 10 minutes, Laur" he said. I questioned, "Dad, just to get from your house to mine is 10 minutes, on a good day! How are you possibly going to stop at Menards and get here in 10 minutes?"We even have a catch phrase: "Terry-time". Here's how you use it appropriately in a sentence: Kent calls. "I'm on my way home; I'll be there in 15 minutes." Me: "Will you really be here in 15 minutes or did you just Terry-time me?" 2. I like doing things fast. Just today, in the time that Kylee was at preschool, I got groceries, drove home to unload them, went tanning, went running, showered, did my make-up, wrote a couple e-mails and still made it to pick her up on time. She's only at preschool for 2 hours folks! And it's at least a 10 minute drive. I LOVE accomplishing so much in so little time. Was it worth it? Was all the rushing around necessary? Did I have to cram all those errands into that amount of time? No. I have plenty of time when Kent gets home to go running. I could have gone shopping after I picked Kylee up from school- she loves to do errands with me. I constantly am dropping things or breaking things, bumping into things or hurting myself (today I cut my finger while chopping some veggies) so this week I've tried hard to tell myself, "Laura- slow down". It's something my mom told me frequently when I was growing up and it's something that I've said more than a few times to Kylee. Sure enough, my hurried tendencies have been passed on to her and chances are she'll hurt herself sometime! Last week I worked on organizing and while there is plenty left to do, I can confirm that yes, I do feel happier when things in the house have a specific (and labeled!) place. So, moving forward with a little Happiness Project of my own, this week I'm going to work hard to sloooow down.