My life is moving faster than I am

The title is thanks to my friend Susan, who summed up my existence thusly on Facebook the other day.

The period between Easter or Spring Break and the end of the school year is hard for most people, I think. When I was in college my friend Lucy labeled the crazy weeks of term papers, final projects, performances, exams, and social events collectively as "Hell Week"s. She wasn't far off, as I recall. So many students had days that started before dawn and ran into the evening, trying to fit in classes, study groups, time at the library, and the host of other tasks that are required of a college student.

Now, as a parent, I realize that the same kind of craziness takes over in elementary, middle and high school, but it is different to be one person in charge of all the stuff than it is to be the parent of (ohmygod) a high schooler, a middle schooler, and an elementary student and responsible for getting them to the myriad church youth group/school/extracurricular/sports activities.

Of course, in the midst of it I have evening work commitments. Never my favorite, although I love my job, and just one more thing on the list. Our church rummage sale is this weekend and I simply don't have the time to volunteer to help set things up like I have in the past. It is too much. Thankfully I did get some things cleaned out of my house thanks to the sale, though, and it is happily ensconced at church waiting for a new home. If you have read this blog more than a few months you know I do love the opportunity to jettison the things we are not using anymore.

My oldest is doing Coming of Age this year -- it is the UU equivalent of Confirmation. With that comes the inevitable planning of family gatherings, sprucing up the house for company, and figuring out what will be on the menu. Usually I love that kind of stuff but thus far I have taken little pleasure in it. I hope to pull my house together this week and weekend and perhaps then I will be a little more chipper about the stuff that has to be done.

Today I am home -- at least for the morning. I am straightening and organizing, not really cleaning, but putting together my craft room/office space which is out of control. I am making progress, and I know I will be in a better frame of mind when I see just a little improvement. I hope to see more than a little. In the chaos of this time of year, I find a morning spent in solitude, doing mundane tasks, centers me. I move deliberately, I focus on small areas and move methodically from one to another in a way I seldom do either here or at work. Somehow it becomes a little meditative, and I walk away refreshed, ready to tackle the tasks and days ahead.

What do you do to find peace in chaos? How do you slow down even in the mad rush of spring recitals, soccer practices, and senioritis?

I can use all the help I can get. :)

Time flies when ... it's summer?

I guess that's my excuse. I haven't posted on my blog for 2 months because it's summer. Although, to be fair, it really has only felt like summer for a month. It took its own sweet time getting here, then bore down on us last week with temps near 100 and humidity to match. Brutal. I try really hard not to complain about the heat -- I do, after all, live in Minnesota, and, well, we have such cold so much of the year it feels ungrateful to complain when we finally get a warm day. But this? This was ridiculous.

So ... what has been happening since May 11, when I took my little hiatus?

Well, my little brother got married. He and his wife were both married previously and had some sad tales to tell. They had a lovely day and a beautiful ceremony and they are deliriously happy. So that was nice. In an awesome bonus, I did NOT get into a hair pulling, scratching, biting fight with my mom's sister, who hates my everlovin' guts. Ignoring evil relative FTW!

Also, my eldest son graduated from 8th grade. They had a simple ceremony at the end of the school's annual awards ceremony and I did not cry. Perhaps I am unsentimental, but I prefer to think of it as "looking forward to all of the cool stuff my kid will learn and do as he grows." It's all in the spin.

In June I made a trip to North Dakota to spend a couple of days with my mom. We attended a lecture by Clay Jenkinson, who portrays my favorite President, Thomas Jefferson, and it was amazing. I highly recommend Clay's Show, The Thomas Jefferson Hour.

And I drove my new car home from North Dakota at the end of that trip. My dad restored it for my mom (who picked the beautiful color) in 1996. They are starting to think about downsizing and moving somewhere warm, and they decided they had better start getting rid of cars. (My dad has a fascination with cars, which I detailed in an album I made for him a few years ago. You can see the inside pages in my gallery at Scrapjazz. Here is a link, but the album starts on page 7 of the gallery just in case the link doesn't work.

And here is the car:

I know.

It is gorgeous. I could not love it more.

Of course, in the interest of full documentation I should also add that the fuel pump died on the doggone thing before I'd had it a week. Fortunately the part was under $25 and my awesome husband did the mechanic work to get me up and running again. Could have been worse.

And of course we have been doing the usual home improvement stuff around here lately -- Evan's room is looking very appropriate for a gearhead, and Garrett's room just got its bamboo wall mural and a new oak door, and will get new bifold closet doors (also oak) as soon as I get them stained. Patience, grasshopper.

We spent a lovely few days at our friends' lake cabin in central Minnesota, where all 3 of the boys learned to waterski. That was a highlight. We had a ball. It is so much fun to give my boys a little chance to experience stuff like that. I took my grandparents' lake cabins for granted, and I wish one of them was still left in the family. Having a week every year to hang at our friends' cabin is really a treat.

And, of course, Potter fever hit our house in July, when Evan and I went to the midnight showing of the final harry Potter movie with our friends Tracy and David. The boys dressed up and we all loved the movie. We all love the books even more.

And, speaking of books, I read The Count of Monte Cristo with a couple of friends over the spring and summer. It is 1,200 pages. It was great fun to read with a group again and we are thinking of doing it with more books, although keeping a looser format than a monthly book group. I read it on my Kindle, and cannot love the Kindle more, either. What a great invention.

So ... it wouldn't be my blog without a list, would it? We still have that doggone storage unit from spring 2010, when we put the house on the market. Since then we have gone through a lot of it and it is less than half full, so we hope to clean it all out soon. Plus there are always a million things to do to get ready for school starting, so here is my list for today:

* clean out storage unit by Sept. 30 (in progress as of 8/22)
* get out for a few days of camping (not so many camping days this summer with the government shutdown)
* get kids to eye doctor before school
* finish staining Garrett's closet doors (in progress as of 8/22)
* stain remaining 3 doors for basement (in progress as of 8/22)
* weed garden
* take out tree/bush in back yard

I think that's good for now. I am well. My kids are doing great -- they are at UU Chalice Camp this week (Vacation Bible School for UUs). My husband is as handsome, patient and kind as ever.

So I am grateful for the things that stay the same, even as the world and my family change every day.

Spring cleaning

I LOVE spring. The crisp scent in the air, the mud, the deceptively sunny days that are surprisingly cold when you step outside.

I made it through this winter, and it is somehow more and less of a surprise than I expected. I wasn't on any medications this year. When my doctor suggested I taper off last fall, I was terrified and told him no. Mere weeks later I discovered that I was suffering from side effects and he changed my medicine and I went crazy. Okay, perhaps that is a little harsh. But the new med, it made me sick. It made me feel like I was wildly careening from sane to batshit crazy and back again in seconds. And, frankly, the withdrawal from that drug was worse than the drug. So bad, in fact, I told the doc I was ready to go it alone.

And it was fine. I felt the normal ups and downs of winter, although I suspect they are more intense than most people. Still, I was ok.

Now it's spring, and I am feeling the sunshine. My mojo is back -- at least until the next cloudy day. I am cleaning, organizing, purging -- eliminating all that excess stuff from my life. The church rummage sale is in 3 weeks and I hope to bring an entire van load. Or two.

Tomorrow Evan and I will paint his bedroom, and Tuesday all 3 boys and I will hit the storage unit to clean things out, find some of our treasures, and begin emptying it, because by the end of June I want to be done paying that ridiculous $100 a month.

What went today? About 4 dozen 3.5 inch floppy disks. A box of photos to be mailed to my aunt. Another box, this time of scrapbooking supplies, to go to a charity I love. About 50 textbooks (Goodwill takes them and nothing goes to waste so if they don't sell them they are recycled). Several cardboard boxes. Rob cleaned up his work room, purging who knows what. It feels good.

This week, I will find stuff in storage -- shoes I have missed, art from the living and dining rooms, kitchen towels I stuck in storage to free up a drawer but that I need now, the magnet boards we bought the boys to keep their ever-growing collection of travel souvenirs, sheet sets that will immediately go the the rummage pile, an antique settee that I miss and want back in my living room -- but only the stuff I love and need comes back.

I am still in mourning for my grandma and her stuff. Things are not the way she would have wanted them. But they are the way she chose for them to be. I learned a lesson in this. Avoiding difficult decisions does not mean that the decision points won't someday arrive; it just means that someone else makes the decisions.

I decide. Difficult or not, I am the decider. It's started -- I just have to carry it through.

I have a LOT of books

I know Nate Berkus wants me to make my bookshelves look more interesting by adding photos, memorabilia, and other items that personalize my space. However, Nate has NO IDEA how many books I own. It was a huge effort but we (and by we I mean my darling husband) put together the bookshelf.

I had emptied one of the smaller bookshelves and dusted earlier in the day. After the shelf was assembled I emptied the other, removed the protective dust covering off the books (What? It IS protective. Really.) and got down to business.

I honestly thought I would have a ton of extra space in the new shelf. Oops. Turns out when you have NO MORE ROOM on the 2 small shelves, even one gigantic shelf is not enough. Witness: NOT a Nate Berkus approved bookshelf. (Note to self: Dude! The cord, man. It is heinous!)



And I know the cranberry lamp is an errr .... bold choice. But it was from my grandma and I love it and I just tell anyone who asks that the pink is an accent color.


Still and all, I like it. I can see the books now. It was so much fun reshelving them, looking at the dust jackets, remembering the stories, thinking I need to re read this one or that one. They are my friends, and it makes me happy to display them in a manner befitting them. Now I just need a dozen or so more of them.

(I know I would have more book space were it not for the bins on the bottom row. But I have a husband who saves his woodworking magazines and needs a place to store them AND an obsessive need to keep a million papers in little files without the necessary obsessive need to actually file.)

And I only had 2 glasses of wine last night but I was a little giddy when I posted. Forgive me. The recipe for the Red Velvet cake is here. Deeeeelish.

Born Organized

FlyLady has a term = Born Organized. I am. Or I was a disorganized mess as a kid but eventually figured out my path through the chaos. (And please don't say "unorganized," because it annoys me almost as much as people who don't know the difference between "everyday" and "every day.")

So this stuff comes easily for me now. And I have a child for whom it does not come easily. I am trying to help him but we don't communicate well on the best of days and today our "communication" consisted of me throwing things and yelling LOUDLY while he tried his best to stay out of the way and avoid flying pieces of paper from his disgusting mess of a backpack.

He has a folder for each core class. The trouble is, he doesn't put the homework papers into the folders -- they get shoved into the locker and haphazardly gathered at the end of the day.

The system, in case you were wondering, is broken.

He has missing assignments and is failing multiple classes. Failing.

I have cried about this for longer than I care to admit this afternoon/evening.

I am failing my child.

I am failing.

Gift giving

I posted a piece last year that had one solution to the excessive gift giving that some of us struggle with every year. I still don't know the author but I'm linking to it again in the hopes that someone out there knows who wrote it and to give frazzled, budget-conscious parents some ideas.

Children Receive Five Gifts

As I think about the gifts we've purchased this year for our boys, we are giving more this year but most of the categories are still covered. When they are small it's easier to do; as they get older and have more specific wants (and more expensive wants) it's more of a challenge. It's still a piece I like to revisit each year because it does help me focus my shopping list.

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And if you wouldn't mind, my mom could use your good thoughts and prayers. Today is a day that she has been dreading, and a wish for a calm day and a positive outcome would be most welcome. Thanks.

The Mother Lode

Yep, I have hit it. It's the jackpot of family photos. I just don't know how I am going to wade through all of them. It's overwhelming.

My great-aunt was an Alaska Pioneer and her brother, my great-uncle, also ventured up there for a time to teach school. He left a bunch of photos from 1950, all clearly dated and marked with information about each scene shown. I called a local historical society that was delighted to hear I was willing to send them the photos. I was delighted to hear that they would take them off my hands. LOL

After spending much of the day scanning photos (on the new scanner that is SO awesome it creates files too big for Microsoft Photo Editor to open!), I have decided that first I am going to try to file paperwork and documents in individual file folders (since I already have most of those made up and in a file cabinet). I am going to make sure photos are labeled and put them in boxes for now so they can be scanned and scrapbooked or stored in photo boxes later.

And I think I'm ordering the new software the 15th. So exciting.

Progress ...

Rob got 2 additional shelves put into one of the closets. Here they are now:



The closet on the left. Top shelf is craft stuff that will be moved and an accordion file that holds a good number of old family photos that don't fit into my smaller photo boxes. It will soon hold many more as I get them sorted and labeled. Middle shelf is resource books, including a family Bible and a baby name book.

Bottom shelf holds binders with individual family information.

Have I mentioned this didn't make a dent in the stuff I showed you the other day? Ay, caramba! Or uff da, whatever.



The closet on the right. Top shelf holds several empty scrapbooks as well as a number of scrapbooks and albums that are full.

Middle shelf is photo albums and scrapbooks, all full.

Bottom shelf is my sewing basket and button box.

Yeah, it looks pretty good. Until you see that I still have a long way to go. I think we emptied half a dozen boxes and a couple of those plastic crates. Not much in the grand scheme of things. Pray for me.

Another season ends ....

and what an ending it was! Evan pitched an inning (his first ever) on Tuesday. Tonight he pitched again and did a great job, retrieving the ball and throwing it to first base twice for 2 outs.

He played first base, too, and was really on and paying attention. Turns out the game is more fun when your kid is having a great day. LOL

At any rate, the season has ended and I am most grateful.

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In other news, Rob did some plumbing last week and it turned out the pipes he replaced were not the main problem -- it was the faucet. So he replaced the faucet last night and I finally got to put the bathroom back together. I've had all my cleaning supplies out on the counter for over a week.

And last for tonight, I had a request from one of my genealogy websites for some information. I knew it was in a specific book and decided to empty the closet of its boxes to find the elusive tome.

Now I have a living room piled high with boxes and a scrap room filled so that there's no walking space -- and no book. Honestly, I can't figure out where I put it.

But as long as it's out there, I am starting on the organization of the closet and its items. I am hoping to be done by November 1. Yikes.

Now we're cookin' with gas

Okay, not really, as I have elaborated here before on how much I hate cooking with a gas stove. But I felt compelled, after Rob helped me with MSPaint, to show off my beautiful recipe binder. The background of grapes was taken at a vineyard in Napa and it looks great in the kitchen. (It has to, since all of my cabinets are custom and are not as deep as standard size. Which is a little problematic when installing a dishwasher which is supposed to be flush with the cabinets, but I digress.)

I have to say that this problem was a huge pain in the ass. I have collected recipes for years, from coupons and package labels to newspapers and magazines, I had a million of 'em. It was a very good thing to go through them, determine which ones I would probably never try, even though they sounded amazing, and get the ones that were actually possible into a place where I could find them. A huge pain in the ass but well worth it in the end.

Naked, baby!

Not me. Jamie Oliver. You know, the British chef who took the world by storm with his TV show The Naked Chef? He wasn't really naked -- he just is a simple cook who doesn't fuss up his dishes with a lot of sauces and fancy schmancy stuff.

I love him.

He has a new show, Jamie at Home, on the Food Network. He wears Wellingtons, lives in an old stone cottage, and runs to the back garden to get fresh ingredients for his creations.

The other day he smoked two salmon fillets in a biscuit (cookie) tin. On chicken wire. So cool. Now I need a biscuit tin. LOL

Anyway, in my neverending quest for the coolest kitchen gadgets that are actually useful and which don't take up a lot of space, I give you .... The Flavour Shaker! Invented by Jamie and sure to set the culinary world afire, it is a nifty little gadget with a ceramic ball inside. You shake up whatever you've put into it (peppercorns, herbs, spices, oil, etc) and it blends the flavors and produces lovely spice rubs, marinades and all manner of delicious additions to your own healthy cooking.

Available at Amazon.com for about $35 plus $11 shipping (it ships from the UK), I highly recommend it.

And no, I don't own one. But soon, soon, it will be mine. LOL

In other culinary news, I spent my gift card at Bed, Bath & Beyond on Sunday. It was $25 but using a couple of 20% off coupons and a $5 off your order coupon I saved more than $10. Sweet.

I bought: stainless steel measuring cups (the welds broke on my last set), a microplane (which I am most excited about ... I know, sad), and a green marble mortar and pestle set (which will do until the Flavour Shaker arrives).

And, last geeky thing (for now, anyway): when my mom and dad were here my mom bought me a label maker. *Sigh* It's a DYMO LetraTag. It prints italics, underlines, outlines, and has all kinds of cool tapes ... including magnetic, metallic, clear, and my very favorite ... iron on. Yep. I am totally stoked about it. Thanks Mom!

An open letter

To my sweet darling husband:

That white thing on the wall next to the back door in the kitchen? It's called a calendar. The nifty little numbered boxes correspond to DATES. If you use a pen (the little stick-like thing on the table next to the calendar), you can write things on the calendar.

For example, if today you had a meeting for your Executive MBA program in Minneapolis, you would write "R" (for Rob -- get it?) and then "school meeting" and then the time you were supposed to be up there.

If you had done this it would have eliminated a mass amount of confusion today and made life easier for me all around.

Since we all know it is all about me, I hope you will remember this in the future.

Your loving wife

More organization

Rob just put up this lovely ladder shelf for me. It is behind the door, literally the only place in the room that had space. LOL I don't have a lot of rubber stamps but I wanted to get them and some of the foam ones out of the drawer they were in to make room for my clear acrylic stamps.

The shelf is made of wood Rob had lying around in the basement work room -- 2x2's, 2x4's (ripped in half) and some little trim pieces. I sanded it, primed and painted using the black that I had for the kitchen redo in 1997 (remember the holstein cow spots on the soffit?).

It is looking great, has some room to add stuff to, and all I have to do is putty the screw holes and paint over them. Nice.

I think I will do a 360 degree photo montage of this room sometime. It is completely fab and I am so lucky it is mine!

Organization tip

I cannot tell you how many times I have been part of conversations about organizing life with kids. One of the biggest questions parents have is, "How do I store all of these gigantic art projects?"

In our house, we have a closet door that we tape all of the art projects to. We take pictures, sometimes of the whole closet door, sometimes of individual projects, so that we have a record of them. Once the photo is taken the item is mailed to a relative, sent to work with Daddy, or surreptitiously deposited in the trash. I keep a selected number of the originals in a Sterilite 3-drawer container in my scrap room (one drawer for each child).

Yesterday, though, I received a catalog in the mail and it contained an item I just had to share. The catalog is called "Toys to Grow On" and it is chock full of wonderful, creative, educational games and toys.

The spotlight today is on "My Keepsake Portfolio" -- a 15 by 19-inch personalized accordion folder with tab dividers. It is a marvelous solution for anyone who has struggled with where or how they are going to keep the gigantic macaroni pictures and puffy foamy dot pictures their little darling has created.

Have a good day! It seems my cold has really taken hold of me and I am sluggish and zombie-like, so I am off to grab yet another cup of English Teatime and a new box of Kleenex.

Feeling industrious

My throat is still sore and my voice is pretty pathetic. I feel like Peter Brady -- "Time to Change" -- remember when his voice was cracking? LOL Since I was up early this morning (!) I sat down and copied some more recipes onto 4x6 index cards. Now I need pages that will hold those cards horizontally in a 3 ring binder. Anybody have a source?

I also wrapped 3 Christmas gifts that my mother-in-law had shipped here for the boys, which gave me the opportunity to check out my stock of gift wrap and the like. Turns out I have more than I could possibly use in 5 years. I went thru the gift bags and found bags that were given to me when Garrett was born. Seriously. Nice to know, though, that I have ribbon, bows, paper, boxes and bags aplenty. The only thing I might need is tape.

I have begun organizing the spare bedroom and listed a couple of things on ebay that we have not used that I am sure someone else will love. Took down the Halloween decorations and rearranged a bit in the laundry room so that when it comes time to break out the Christmas stuff I am ready. Baby steps, right?

Stuff I'd like to accomplish this week:

get the pavers set in the sand between the house and garage (Rob got most of it done)

get rid of the rabbit fencing that was around the garden (again, Rob did it)

finish burning the yard waste in the fire pit

continue working on the Holiday Control Journal from FlyLady

work on Nancy's sweatshirt (the border finally arrived)

start planning for Christmas gifts for teachers

I am still flying pretty high after the concert. It really was remarkable. And I enjoyed it SO much more than the one in 1999. I couldn't figure out why until I looked back at the setlist from that night. This time there were just more songs I liked and that I knew. It adds a lot to be able to sing along.

I love Magic -- all of the songs. Most of them have a decidedly political perspective, though, and this doesn't. The day I first heard it I was surprised at the melodic quality of his voice, and that translates pretty well onstage as well. I cried throughout the entire performance of this Friday night -- I'm not sure why, except it just has such a wistful tone. Check Clarence's solo. Left me speechless.

Whew

We seem to have made it through the icky fever thing that Evan and Spencer had. Of course I got it too and it manifested itself as a killer headache but it seems okay now.

Rob will be home shortly to discover that I have cleaned his "work room." Honestly, my scrap room (aka crap room) doesn't deserve the crap name after all. My husband saves *everything*. He has tiny pieces of wood scraps that are good for nothing, tons of miscellaneous sized pieces of scrap wood, and lots of them are next to the furnace. Ummmm, honey? You won't let me have an electric blanket because of the fire hazard but you will store wood and turpentine next to the furnace? Seriously, I am going to buy an electric blanket and you are gonna shut the hell up about it.

I vacuumed his room, moved stuff around, cleaned some things out (to be fair, some of the stuff was mine), and mopped the floor. There was sawdust all over, so that is gone, and he can now access his tools, including the compound miter saw and the new band saw. I also got the vacuum hose into the cabinet the laundry chute drops into and cleared out the dust and dirt from there. We will be finishing the crown molding in the living/dining room this week before Wednesday. Of course now I want crown molding in my bedroom, too. LOL

I now have 4 coats of magnetic paint on the back of my scrap shelf, with another 2 to go before it is "sticky" enough, and I have a coat of paint drying on the interior side of the back door. It was just plain primer ivory but I wanted paint on it and it looks so nice now.

This week I will get Uncle Henry in the mail, along with some family history files that the cemetery will place in the records for me, and I will mail the request for his free headstone to the Veterans' Administration. My sweet grandma sent me money to cover my mailing expenses for Henry and the phone calls I've made ... and some money for some archival products for storing some of my large family photos. PLUS she included money "just because." I am stashing it so I can buy a Silhouette or a Wishblade.

And as a happy little side note, 60 Minutes on CBS features an interview with Bruce Springsteen tomorrow night at 7 PM Eastern and Pacific, 6 PM Central time.

Ahhhhhhhhh ......

that is my contented sigh as I settle in for the evening. Things are mostly put back in their places. Laundry is once again moving through the endless assembly line. The kids are playing the Wii, Rob is at the Y getting a little exercise and catching up on class reading, and I am congratulating myself on making it through the weekend.

The boys and I spent about an hour putting away summer clothes, sorting out clothes that are outgrown, and pulling out the winter stuff. Spencer got a little annoyed having to try on a thousand pairs of pants but the good news is I really only need to buy him one pair of jeans and he is set for winter.

Tonight I am making these for dinner (without the cut-out faces) and we are eating them on a blanket in the family room with some fresh veggies and dip while we watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition. The kids love to do this, and it is such a nice quiet way to end the weekend/start the week.

I have lots of stuff set aside for next week's sale at church, plenty of projects to keep me busy at home during the week, and I am volunteering at school Monday morning to take down the Book Fair. Each week I will also volunteer Tuesday morning in Evan's class, and Thursday afternoon in Spencer's class. I'll talk to Garrett's teacher this week to see how/when I can help her, and I will hope that I will still have a few hours to myself in the afternoons. LOL I am most grateful, though, that I have the ability to spend that kind of time in the classroom and be an active participant and helper to their teachers. Certainly not everyone has the ability to do that.

Have a good week.

Monday

Woo hoo! I have been keeping up with my "at least a load a day" laundry resolution and I feel as though it's pretty well under control.

I cleaned some more in the laundry/storage room and I can actually walk in there -- makes it so much more pleasant since I have to be down there doing laundry anyway.

I also brought some stuff to a LSS (that's local scrapbook store for you non-scrappers) that is having a garage sale. You get the money from whatever they sell of yours (you price the items) in store credit. Whatever doesn't sell goes to Ronald McDonald House. Nice to get rid of some stuff I know I won't use.

I found the missing house stain last night in my husband's *ahem* work room. Which is really just a disaster area with a bunch of tools and home improvement materials in no particular order. Anyway, despite the fact that it is 9 years old, the stain is still good. So I mixed it well, put a coat on the front door trim and around the entry, and poured the rest into a quart paint can. I'll do another coat if needed today and get to the back door as well.

I cleaned the oven yesterday in the midst of Rob's projects, too. Those self clean modes scare me -- the outside even gets warm, and the smell is icky. I always feel like I should call 911. I was a little more comfortable doing it with him home. It really wasn't too dirty, but we've had it for a year -- I figured it wouldn't hurt.

This morning I cleaned the fridge. Oh, I am lovin' that. Trouble is it made me realize we have almost no fresh fruits or veggies ... time for a trip to the grocery store for those and some ingredients for Rob's birthday cake. I always make him a from scratch German Chocolate cake and bring it to work. This year his little brother and sister-in-law will be here for dinner with us, so I need to bake 2 cakes as well as do the tri-tip and a Caprese salad for dinner. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the cakes rise properly. I haven't quite got the hang of them with this oven, so we'll see.

Today ... blood work, grocery store, staining the front and side entries, finishing the sanding on the dresser, priming the dresser ... it feels so good to be getting things done. I'm nesting so much you'd think I was pregnant! LOL

Have a good week, all.

Hey! That's a lot of posts for one day!

I am back to brag about all I accomplished today.

* I vacuumed the hallway, living and dining rooms today, and did the edges of the kitchen where all the crumbs collect.

* I finished laundry, folded it all, and the kids and Rob are putting away their laundry after dinner. Mine won't take long to put away tonight, and even the laundry from the camper is done and ready to be packed up in there for the winter.

*I vacuumed the basement stairs and the family room.

* I dusted the basement bath and family room.

* I cleaned some random stuff off the kitchen counter and put it away.

* I loaded and ran the dishwasher.

* I cleaned the upstairs bathroom (with the exception of the floor).

* I cleaned the basement bathroom.

* I cleaned out 2 plastic drawers in the vacuum closet. One had mostly light bulbs and batteries in it. Since we've gone to the compact fluorescents we didn't need most of the bulbs. I am donating them to our church rummage sale.

* In the process of cleaning out the second drawer (which contained mostly tealight candles and potpourri) I found quite a few candles that I was given as gifts that I never burned because I wasn't fond of the scent. Duh. Why did I keep them this long? To the rummage sale.

* In the laundry process I removed multiple summer clothing items from Spencer's possession. He had outgrown them but still was insisting they fit. Again, off to the sale they will go.

* I organized a shelf in the laundry room that holds extra dry and canned goods.

Tomorrow I am going to do something FUN in my free time. And I will really enjoy it because I know I've earned it. I love a clean house!

Cleaning ... AGAIN.

Yes, I know you are probably all sick and tired of my ranting about cleanliness. Hell, I'M tired of it. But here I am, once again, in a cleaning frenzy.

My friend Sarah posted awhile ago about clean rooms. She is right -- sometimes it does get to be a sort of twisted contest -- "I can find THIS many things to do with my family instead of cleaning our house and thus I am the worst housekeeper." As Bitch, Ph. D. said, "Pity me."

Except I don't. I don't care, really, how anyone else lives. And unless they live in absolute filth (read: animal excrement, piles of dirty dishes attracting bugs and vermin, toilet bowls and refrigerators that look like 100 year old science experiments), I don't mind being at their house. Someone else's mess, someone else's dust, someone else's clutter, is not really a problem for me. But if you live in a mess I blame only you.

And logically I blame myself when I live in a mess. Even though there are 4 other human beings and a pug in my household. So I do all that I can to keep it neat. But here is where I have a problem. I have tried to explain this a thousand times and I have just quit since a woman had the nerve to tell me, "People are more important than things." Well, DUH. I mean, thanks, ya snippy little bitch, I NEVER would have placed my husband and children above my kitchen floors on the priority list if you hadn't said that to me. Honestly, I am still burning over that one and it's been a year. Have I mentioned I am a champion grudge holder?

Anyway. What I was trying to explain to this woman (along with a bunch of others) at the time was that if my house isn't clean I am not a good mom. She misunderstood. I don't mean that if your house isn't spotless you are not a good mom. For goodness' sake, no mom who lives in reality can have an always clean house. What I meant was that if my house is dirty, I am unhappy, and if I am unhappy, I am not a good mom.

Yes, I realize my standards are pretty high. I grew up in an immaculate house. My mom worked full time outside of the home in a CPA's office. From January through April 15 she probably worked 70 hours a week. But the house was always clean. It wasn't fancy, but things were put away. Laundry was done. The bathroom was clean. She was the only one who cleaned -- my dad was a throwback to the 50's -- and it always got done.

I have spent about 10 hours cleaning my kids' room and playroom this week. We cleaned the playroom Tuesday night. And yes, part of the problem is that my kids, like so many others, simply have too many toys. They do. And I have to own that I am part of that problem. But honestly, they have a place for each toy or type of toy, they have closets and bins and drawers, and still everything was mixed up. And the Happy Meal toys were all over. We don't eat at McD's all that often, yet here are all these toys. Are they reproducing up there? Are the toys having sex in my kids' room at night, making more useless little toys? I don't know, but the school is getting a 2 1/2 gallon Ziploc bag of little toys for prizes or whatever.

Four garbage bags have come out of there. My kids will draw a picture and then save it forever. Or they'll draw 10 almost identical pictures and save them all. Notebooks full. I have a paper sack full of 4T clothes for the Goodwill. I have not yet sorted through the summer clothes and added winter clothes back into the mix. I am not emotionally ready for that. But I will be able to get to that next week.

I have approximately 15 loads of laundry that need to be done now. My kids are constantly complaining they don't have clothes (or pajamas, or socks -- whatever). Imagine their surprise when I started pulling mountains of clothes out from behind beds, shelves and dressers. From inside the closet behind the dress up box came another mountain. Oh -- and when I emptied their drawers to fold and organize clothes to make it easier for them to put clothes away I discovered socks and underwear in the same drawer as T-shirts, swimming trunks, and sweatsuits. In another drawer was a pile of papers, a stack of baseball cards, a few dozen assorted Legos, and rocks. A plastic grocery bag full of rocks. Not beautiful, extraordinary rocks. Not rocks gathered from exotic, far away locales. Just rocks from the backyard landscaping. Granite, mostly. Just rocks. What, dear reader, am I supposed to do with this?

I guess the bottom line for me is this: I like a neat house. I think it makes a home feel peaceful and welcoming when it is tidy. I think it makes family life run more smoothly when things are in their place, when you can find what you need, when you can count on the keys being hung on the key rack by the door (or whatever). It may not be that way for everyone, but it is that way for me. I don't apologize for being a neat freak. It is who I am.

So yes, I DO get distressed over my kids' room. I probably get a little too freaked out over it. But today I conquered it. It is clean, the drawers are neat, the bookshelves are relatively organized ... it is a pleasure to be up there. So much so that the nightly bedtime story ritual (which I have sorely missed) will be reinstated this evening. Right after the kids pick up their room.

Yeah, yeah, I know. *Sigh*