So I’ve found another site with a de-cluttering challenge that I am going to take on.  As soon as I finish cleaning up the kitchen from my son’s birthday party yesterday, I will post that before picture.  The kitchen is where we are starting this week.

http://Organization-101-Season-3-BUTTON.jpg” alt=”A Bowl Full of Lemons” style=”border:none;” />

On Sunday we’re going to do some clearing out on the main floor, and are going to take a couple of our not-being-used strollers for consignment or to Goodwill. We’re looking forward to reclaiming our dining room, which has become a bit of a mess. As we prepare for the fall’s studio project we’re going to be getting rid of lots more stuff. I keep imagining what the basement will look like emptied out, and I sigh with satisfaction. Of course, there is a load of work to be done before then!

Joanna really wants to move! She sees her twin sister crawling, scooting, and pulling herself up, and she wants to do it too. She has gotten closer to rocking herself from a sitting position onto her hands and knees. And she does move. You’ll look up and realize she’s not where she was before, even though you didn’t actually see her do it. She pushes with a foot and scoots on her butt.

And now to bed….

The first thing you should do is make a list of everything you want to store. This list will both help you determine how much storage space you need and ensure that nothing gets lost once you start putting things away.

Shelving is one of the easiest ways to create more storage. It can be portable in the form of free-standing units, or permanent that is attached to your walls. Easy-to-install, heavy-duty shelving can be purchased at just about any major home supply store. Many of these units are designed so that you can leave as much room between the shelves as you like, making it easy to get larger and smaller items onto the same unit and saving you space.

Heavy winter clothing can take up lots of closet space, leaving you with little room for your entire four-season wardrobe. One solution for storing out-of-season clothing is under the bed. Under-the-bed storage containers come in a variety of sizes and styles, including ones with wheels for easy access and to protect hardwood floors from scratches when you pull them out. You can also buy simple risers that elevate your bed off the floor additional inches to create even more space.

Garage storage has also gotten much more efficient. You can get built-in storage cabinets with doors so the space looks clean and orderly. There are also modular systems that enable you to choose what features are best for your needs; including hanging racks for sports equipment, hooks for tools, and more.

Most garages have pitched roofs to keep rainwater or snow from collecting on top, and this space is ideal for items you don’t use on a daily or weekly basis. Store these things on platforms or racks that lower and raise either electronically at the touch of a button, or with an easy-to-use pulley system.

In newer or renovated homes, a mudroom or drop zone is a popular feature. This area often has built-in benches, hooks and bins to neatly tuck away boots, jackets, gardening equipment and other items your family uses frequently.

Finally, if your family is as tied to their portable internet and communications devices as many modern families, get rid of the tangle of charger cords on your counters by buying or building a home charging station with multiple outlets and pockets for storing and charging cell phones, tablets, laptops and more.

This article is courtesy of the National Association of Home Builders.

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We’ve decided it’s time for Hazel to be in charge of her clothes. Tomorrow, she and I will put them in category piles, and then I’ll have her put them away. She’ll have a drawer for shirts, another for pants, etc. I am confident she can keep that straight. And then, it will be her job to keep her clothes in her dresser. The last time one of her friends was over to play, they took all of her clothes out and spread them around on the floor, and I got very frustrated, knowing I was going to have to get them organized and put them all back. No more! Delegation is the name of the game. Better for me, and better for her. This way, since she loves to do laundry, she can now finish the job by pulling her clothes out of the pile and putting them away herself. Yippee!

It all started with a hankering for one of these…

… a large freezer. Our refrigerator is TINY. With all the cooking and preparing we do for family and guests, I had been pining away for a stand-up freezer. Now, when I bake, cook, or prepare anything, we can put the extras away for a rainy day.

Soo… the freezer necessitated a smaller water cooler, since the taller one was where the freezer is now. Can you see me waving hello?And, we can sip the cool water on our balcony – and enjoy being more comfortable with our new, custom-made pillows….
What do you think? They’ll be perfect in our beach house someday.

… and eat pasta with fresh pesto I made with this enormous batch of basil from the farmer’s market. (It came with the roots still attached. Wild.) We ate some and, of course, froze the rest. It is now chilling comfortably in our new freezer – waiting patiently for the next pasta craving.

It really IS the little things in life, but these small updates sure make this place feel more comfy.

Don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink if they can be put in the dishwasher.

I think this has been on my resolution list several times. For some reason me and dirty dishes have a hatred for one another. I loathe loading the dishwasher. I would rather do all other housework, including but not limited to cleaning the toilets, before I clear the dishes out of the sink. But this year, this year will be different….

Make an effort to look presentable when I leave the house.

I’m tired of looking like a mommy bum. I’ve been sucked into the land of denim bottoms and a solid colored t-shirts, flip flops and pony tails for the better part of the last two years. It’s like a uniform. From now on if I’m leaving the house I need to at least put on some makeup and exchange the flip flops for something just a little nicer. I got on the internet and learned several different hairstyles compatible with mommy hair (a.k.a. dirty) so my pony tail can be reserved for the gym. I pooled my Christmas money and used it to buy a really awesome Michael Kors purse which has plenty enough space to be used as a diaper bag for the baby. Please note: these rules don’t apply if I’m going to or coming from the gym.

The other things on my list aren’t resolutions so much as goals to be accomplished in the beginning part of the year (read: before the baby gets here).

Get our house organized.

Since E was only three weeks old when moved from Dallas, we never really moved into our house. Yes, the boxes got unpacked but nothing got organized and all that little “stuff” never found a home. The result has been a year and a half of clutter and disorganization. Nothing ever gets put away because we don’t know where to put it. Since nothing ever gets put away our house is never clean. I’ve got until the end of May to get this task accomplished. If it doesn’t happen by May, it won’t happen for another year and a half. No pressure.

Implement a daily schedule.

I’ve been bad about letting the TV babysit E just so I can have some alone time. I feel like this has started to cut into my one on one time with her which means it’s a problem. This past weekend, I sat down and wrote out a schedule for us to follow. I’m hoping this will help me better organize our time. Though I know it will practically be thrown out the window when the baby gets here, I’m hoping the schedule can provide her some consistency and predictability through the chaos of a new sibling.

We followed the new schedule for the first time yesterday and it was quite nice to have some structure to our day. At any point in the day all I had to do was look at the schedule to know what we were supposed to be doing. Even though the day was packed and I was exhausted by the time E went to bed, I think it was exactly what we needed. Day two of the schedule starts today.

I would like to share the schedule with you but I don’t really want the whole world to know when I’m going to home and away; I can easily tell you what I did to create it though. First, I made a list of everything I would like to accomplish in a typical weekday. Then beside each item I jotted down how long I thought each activity should take. Finally, I rearranged the items in a logical order depending on when I thought each one should take place. I printed out copies of the schedule and put a copy in the kitchen, den, gameroom and, just for good measure, on my phone.

I was actually quite surprised how much stuff I could accomplish in a day when I didn’t loose several hours to the TV and internet. I have allotted two hours of one-on-one time with E, two hours for running errands/going to the gym, two hours for E’s nap, two hours of mommy free time, one hour of outdoor play, two hours of housework, and plenty of time to prepare and clean up after three meals.

If I work hard to change my habits and manage my time a little more efficiently all of these resolutions can be accomplished. They could easily help make my life less stressful and more enjoyable in the coming year.

Now, maybe I should quit farting around on the internet and go unload the dishwasher…there’s dirty dishes in the sink waiting for their time to shine…

So when an area of the house is bothering me, it starts nagging me in my brain. I go about what I need to do, but my mind keeps going back to what’s bothering me. Peanut’s toy area, especially with her recent birthday, has been bugging me big time. Even with her no-gift party, she still got a bunch of stuff from grandparents and uncles. Not to mention the fact that Christmas was just a few months ago and a lot of stuff was added then too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful that she has family and friends that love her and want to give her gifts. It just stresses me out when all the toys are all over the living room and there’s not enough space to fit everything into her toy cabinet.

My first thought was to get rid of some toys. I’m certain that I could go through and find some stuff to get rid of, but I’m hesitant to do so at the moment. I don’t want to make any rash decisions stemming from my need to keep the house clean and regret them later. Still, I couldn’t stand the mess of her toy area, so I decided to compromise by starting a toy rotation.

If you’ve never done this, it’s wonderful. The idea is that you take all of their toys and put them into piles. However many piles you want to do. Since we really don’t have that many toys (I went through and got rid of a bunch of stuff that was too young or not in good shape before the holidays) and I only currently have one plastic tote that’s empty, I decided to do two piles. One for in the tote, one for in her play area. Then when you have the separate sets of toys, you keep one of them out for a few months, then rotate a new one in and that one out. Of course, any absolute favorites or lovies stay out all the time.

The benefits to this aren’t just keeping your house clean. I read some research a while back that showed that if there are less options for toys, children play with each toy individually for a longer period of time and they use their imagination more. It also gives the child the opportunity to play with all of their toys rather than just a few. As we were going through making the piles, I realized there were toys that I hadn’t seen out in months. They’re just sitting there taking up space.

So when I decided that I was going to start a toy rotation again, I asked Peanut if she wanted to help. I explained to her that we’d put away some toys for a while, but not get rid of them. Then when she’s tired of the toys that she has out, we’d switch them. I’m not sure if she totally understood the concept, but she was excited about the prospect of helping mommy decide which toys to put in the “in” the box pile and which ones to put in the “out” of the box pile. I also explained to her that we needed to keep the piles pretty even in size and that she’d want to put some of the toys she likes into the “in” pile because when we switched, those would be the only toys she played with. I was amazed at how well she did and how few reminders she needed.

Peanut choosing which pile to put a necklace in.

I think the process went much smoother with her involvement rather than me going through her toys and suddenly half of them are gone. I would hold up a toy and ask her “out or in?” and she would tell me which one. She also chose some toys for the “out” pile that I wouldn’t have thought she cared about right now and some for the “in” pile that I would have thought she wanted now. I was afraid that she’d put all the toys she liked into the “out” pile and then when we rotated, she’d be sad that there weren’t any toys she liked to play with inside the box, so I was happy that she distributed them evenly.

The "in" the box pile.

The "in" pile.

She even helped me put the toys into the “in” box without getting even the least bit upset. I figured she’d be sad when I took the box upstairs, but she could have cared less! I think she actually understands that she still gets the toys, just later. Or she was just distracted enough by coloring. Either way, it went smoothly!

Peanut putting her tambourine in the "in" box.

The full "in" box, minus the blocks that I just put on top of it in storage since they obviously don't fit. No, she doesn't play with Shape Up shoes, that's just the box that her Oma gave her a life-size Elmo puzzle in, so it's what we keep it in.

I forgot to take any before pictures, but here’s what her desk looks like now. It used to have two more big puzzles and lots more coloring stuff. Along with stamps.

Missing her chair because it was downstairs next to my desk when I took this.

And here is what her cabinet where we keep her toys looks like now. It used to be stuffed to the point where you couldn’t see the back wall, let alone all the toys.

Yeah, that's marker on her face. The markers were definitely put in the "in" pile. I'm so tired of those things!

I already feel much better about her toy area. It’s like a stress is just lifted off my mind. Now it’s time to tackle my desk!

How do you keep your children’s toys under control? Have you ever tried rotating toys? Have you involved your children in the process? What else do you do to keep your house under control? 

Whenever I looked at my bookshelves, I cringed. Something just didn’t seem right. They always looked cluttered. I tried organizing them by genre, alphabetically, and even by owner (that would be my husband and I). Even though this type of sorting made sense, it didn’t make me happy… And then I found this inspiring post about organizing books by color and had an epiphany. Of course, how did I not think of this before?

How about flipping some books over?

The disorganized Before

And the neat After

This type of organization may cause some controversy in your household (I’ve gotten an it’s-not-practical lecture), but we are used to making sacrifices in the name of beauty, aren’t we?

It has been a chaotic weekend. The plans that I thought would happen were blown out of the water completely by unexpected opportunities and at this moment, we are still sitting in Georgia when we should be in South Bend.

Thursday Mom called and wanted to know if Dad could pick K up that afternoon so that they could take her to Pigeon Forge. I told her I had to think about it but would call her back. After a lot of talking it out and tweaking their plans some, we decided to let her go to Pigeon Forge with them. The tweaks involved us taking her up to Cartersville on Friday morning and initially, that they would bring her back to Lilburn when they came home on Sunday.

Thursday was a bit hectic what with the kids trying to get in some last minute play time and everything else going on. Friday morning was no different. We got about 2 hours of sleep before heading to Cartersville. The plan was that after we dropped K off and they headed out that we were either going to go to Summerville to see Rin’s great grandmother or we were going to do some sorting at Mom and Dad’s to get some more of mine and K’s things since there were still a ton there.

First, we ended up going out to lunch with Mom and Dad and then saw them off on their way. She and I are trying a “starting over” thing and I am cautiously optimistic. She said she was tired of fighting and gods know I am, so we’ll see what happens. Anyway, they set off and Rin and I headed to Home Depot. From there, we went to the house.

Here’s where things start to get interesting. You see, my room was a total chaotic mess and there was so much stuff that we had to do some sorting and cleaning to even start getting to what I wanted to get out. Then we realized that we had the house to ourselves (well except for the cats), so we kind of dove into the project. At 6am, she put me to bed in K’s bed because I was so exhausted. She napped for a bit and then the next morning we were back to working again. We had a lot to get done on Saturday before Troy could come up and pick up a load for us for which I still can’t thank him enough. Once he left, we were theoretically just going to do a little bit more and then head back to Lilburn…so then 5am rolls around and we were still there and still working and it was insane. Sunday was much the same way. I actually called Mom and just told them to a) take their time and b) come to their house since we were there. We were still working on getting our first load into the car when they got home. We visited with them for a bit and got the first load in and headed back to Lilburn, trying not to get killed by the idiots on the highways. We started unloading, had a bit of help from Troy, and then sent him to finish his work so he could sleep since he had an early flight Monday morning.

When I realized it was going to take us longer here than I had realized, I called Mom and told her to put K to bed and that I had no real idea when we’d get there. We finally headed that way around 3 something. We stopped at got breakfast at McDonald’s in Cartersville and got to the house around 5am Monday…pretty much in time to wake my Dad up and see him off to work. We didn’t get a lot done while Mom and K were still asleep, so once they woke up, the real work began. We were trying to get back to Lilburn before Mr. Monkey got home, but we missed that deadline and a couple more. There was so much more to sort and play Tetris with than we had realized, and some of it was taking a lot longer than we ever could have calculated for. We finally got on the road around 7 something after a few tearful goodbyes and promises that things really would be okay.

It took a little bit, but K settled in the car and we were talking about how it was a little scary but that she was excited about her new school and moving and that was a very good thing. We got Schlotzky’s for dinner which was yummy as usual and got back to the house around 9. The kids got to play for a little bit and K got to share her super-special caramels that her Gamma had given her, and then it was their bedtime. Rin and I had aimed to get a bit more done, but we both ended up crashing rather soundly. Something about a complete lack of sleep, a whole lot of physical labor, and pain levels catching up to us.

Tuesday dawned with neither of us able to move very well and it pretty much slowed us down from the get-go. By that point, we knew there was no way we would make open house, but we were still shooting for getting her to school on time. (Although once the secretary at the school found out that we were still in the process of moving up she was basically like “please inhale, it is all right”.)

Things took longer than we wanted, in part because I was kinda useless. Also, we had a little bit of time taken up by dinner since we had promised to take them for a Best Friend’s Waffle Dinner for National Waffle Day. We went to WaHo and they were very slow which was annoying. The food was good though, which made up for the horrible server. (Pro tip: if a customer politely asks you if you are new, say yes because it likely means they think you’ve done a terrible job. Pro tip the second: I don’t care if the text message is from God himself, take yourself more than 2 steps away from the table to rudely answer it. Seriously.) The kids had a ton of fun eating their waffles and everything else they consumed, and then we had to make a brief Wal-mart run before returning to Walgreens to attempt to pick up our scripts. The one on Rockbridge is awful and they screw things up all the time but we’d hoped that tonight, since it was closer, that they’d managed 2 freakin’ scripts. Nope. They shorted her ten of her narcotic which meant that she had to go back inside and they were like, “Well, we have to recount the inventory.” Um, what? She asked how long it would take and they weren’t giving her an answer until she got a bit snotty and was like, “No, I have two children in the car who need to get home for bed, how long will it take?” They told her to go and call back later. That stole a bit more time because of having to go in and deal with it and later for having to drive back over after they called her.

The kids had some play time and then they had some snuggle time and then there were some tissues and Mr. Monkey had to go to bed since he had school today. K helped us with stuff for a good long while, and we were still trying to get out of here on time, but I think it was pretty much a doomed effort.

Once we realized that there was no way we would make the school day, we slowed down a bit to try to accommodate stupid, unhappy bodies. Sadly, at this point, we are both kinda gimpy and still have to finish getting everything sorted and into the car. Then there’s that whole driving thing…but it has to be done and it will be good when we get there.

I can’t begin to tell you all of the kinds of things that I found while poking through my bedroom and then trying to decide what needs to come now and what can stay for later trips has also been a bit of a headache. We got out a lot of stuff though and it was kind of startling once we’d gotten the car loaded a second time. I’ve found pictures that I had forgotten existed, writings that I had thought lost, and so much more besides. I’ve found academic papers that remind me that I’m supposed to be working on academic publishing and that I need to kick my own ass and get back into it. I’ve found books and all kinds of other things and have amazed myself by some of the things that the younger me kept over the years. I suspect some of those will find their way here, but I have no idea when.

It has been an emotionally charged, physically draining weekend and we’ve still miles to go before we sleep. I’m trying to finish icing my knees and my lumbar spine since they seem to hate me the most. Silly things.

I talked to Mom a little bit ago and she was only barely “tsk-tsk” at me and mostly was teasing at that. I told her to reassure Dad that I had the 3-Cell Mag-lite in the car (he’d been quite worried that I was going to leave mine there), and she said, “You know that’s partially just his way of saying ‘I love you.’” I said, “I know, that’s why I’m making the note for you.” She got quiet for a moment and said, “After you left the other night, I lost him. The house isn’t that big and I couldn’t find him. I finally stood in the middle of the hall and called his name and he said, ‘I’m in here,’ and I said, ‘Where’s here?’” He had been sitting on my bed, looking around the room. When she went in, he looked up and said, “I’m going to miss her.” She agreed that she would miss me, too, and they took turns petting each other’s hair and telling each other that it would be all right and basically helping each other through the moment. I was moved to tears and almost am again just recounting the story. One, I would have expected it to be the other way around, that he would have lost her, and two, well, it’s good that he did not just shut down on her but instead actually shared his feelings and the moment and it’s a huge step and tells me that even in the midst of the chaos and the Lotsness of it all, they probably will be okay.

Until next time, whenever I manage to steal a few minutes again, here’s to hoping you know where your flashlight is…

She has actually (sensibly) gone to bed at this point; however, I am not quite ready to. For one thing, I had my Dad on my mind quite a lot and instead of just keeping that particular thought to myself, I sat down and wrote him a rather long e-mail. He and I have (at least as far as I have seen) gotten a lot closer in the last seven months and have had some amazing conversations. We’ve not had a chance to sit and chat on the phone of late, so I caught him up on a few things. I also made the note for him that considering that I know how much he just loves the phone and how I am prone to babbling at least with e-mail, if he gets bored he can come back and read it later!

I will probably head to bed soon, but I can’t quite sort what is keeping me awake which is annoying the crap out of me considering that I am exhausted beyond all reason at this point. I suspect that some of it is that pain levels have ramped again which sucks ass. I also suspect that some of it is that the next three weeks are going to be full of mad chaos and I’m not entirely certain I am totally up for that much chaos and yet I have to be. It’s not like it’s going to be swept under the rug, ya know? Some of it will be good. Some of it will be downright draining. I just have to figure out how to maintain a balance through all of it.

I imagine that a small bit of it is also that I am eager to have my daughter with me again. This is the longest that she has ever been away from me at one time and while I know that she has had a fantastic time and has gotten to do a lot of different things (like fishing), I miss her so freaking much it almost hurts. I miss her chatter. I miss hearing her playing in the background of whatever else I am doing. I miss her hugs. All of them. I don’t call her my snugglebum for nothing. I want her back with me and am getting more than a bit antsy about that.

Other than those things, I still have no idea why I can’t quite get my brain to shut off. I do think I might possibly be running out of words that seem to be intent upon being written though, so I am going to stop rambling, wrap up a couple of other things, and at least try to go to bed. (It’s definitely time for bed. I had to edit that last html tag because instead of closing the italics, I wrote / try. Needless to say, it didn’t work. :D)

Edited to Add (about an hour later): So I went back and typed up two entries that were missing, one from 16 July and one from 29 July. I also added tags to posts and went a bit nuts with that which was kind of fun actually. Jeez. Now it’s 4:09 in the morning. Ghf.

On Time
Time is a tricky thing: sometimes it works with you, unfolding and playing out in a spiral that makes things fall properly into place; other times, it treats you like you’re a gnat on a tornado-driven breeze, tossed about by its merciless desire to keep going, until it spits you out three thousand miles from home, leaving you with a headache and head spins and not a damn clue how to fix it. Right now? I’m a gnat.

The last few months have been chaotic. Of course, I write that sentence and want to automatically correct it with “the last few years” which I then want to correct with “my life is chaotic” but that would simply be one more distraction of minutia that will get me nowhere in the end, so let’s try again.

Life is chaotic, and sometimes, I’m a bloody chaos field. While everyone goes through periods of chaos and upheaval, I from time to time seem to have an extra dose made just for me and anyone within a hundred feet. What I really should say then is this: the last few months have been full of more upheaval than I have really figured out how to properly deal with. I have gone from one event to the next like a shock victim trying to keep her head above the water and sometimes, that description is much more apt than I want it to be. So many things have happened; so many things have changed. There are so many unanswered questions that I could probably fill a novella length printing with them and still not be done. On one hand, the more logical part of my brain understands that some of that is what the whole “growing up” thing is all about: chaos, upheaval, and learning to land on your feet. On the other, the much less logical part of me is going *runaroundlikeachickenwithheadcutoffwashrinserepeatohnoeztheskyitisfallinohnoezdoom*. (Aren’t you glad you don’t have to run around in my brain?)

One of the biggest overarching themes though has been “time.” One event happened approximately five months before it was supposed to, meaning that five months of theoretical preparation disappeared with one phone call. It was the correct choice; it was the sane choice; it was the healthy choice; however, it was still a complete flip-flop of what was going to happen and it made for a whole lot of wandering about going “ohshitohshitohshit.” Some of that time was spent trying to relearn how to handle some pretty basic things. A great deal of that time was spent playing pseudo-nanny to Miss Ma’am and Mr. Monkey and enjoying the heck out of it. I spent most afternoons working with them on their homework or talking to them about school or simply listening to them play while I poked about on the computer. I learned some things from all of that, both in the intellectual sense and in the personal sense. One of those things is, very simply, that I enjoyed the hell out of that. Sure, there were days they made me want to rip my hair out and Tuesdays were the day from hell due to K and her sentences, but I still enjoyed doing it. I also learned a bit about what it was like to function without worrying about every single thing I said, every bad day I had, and the ripple effect that those things might cause. All right, in truth, I started learning about those things but I still do it and I’m still a skittish little rabbit some days afraid to say a damn word. (That’s part of why I’ve not really shared this blog yet, see?)

However, here, too, time played a role. May came much more quickly than anticipated and things weren’t ready. May and June saw time playing having with a great number of things as about two months of arguing out schedules and talking out details and trying not to lose my mind in the middle of that basically was thrown out the window with two phone calls. It was frustrating and it was frequently a pain in the ass and yet, everyone managed to come out at the end of it alive. It just got to seem that every time I turned around, there was one more change coming from one more direction.

July has seen Rin and I attempting to play catch-up from all of the changes in May and June. Since she and I were supposed to have about two weeks to come up here and work before we brought the kids up but ended up not having them, a lot of the things we expected to already have done aren’t. We didn’t get much of anything done while the kids were up here, in part because well, they are kids and there were lots of things to do with them and in part because I was sick a solid chunk of that time. (Granted, at this point, I’m sick so much that I am beginning to not be able to tell the difference anymore. There is “sick with an infection to the point of almost non-functioning” and there is “functioning on such a low level that it is annoying, frustrating, and down-right frightening some days”.) After I got back from taking the kids to Georgia, we actually did get a start on things, but here we are with less than a week before she and I are supposed to drive to Georgia again, and there is so much not done that it is overwhelming.

I would love to say that we need help; however, I am not certain that I could successfully manage to figure out where and what with. Some of the sheer amount of things that need doing are turning the house here into one that is functional for four people. There are a lot of T’s parents’ old things still here (which is a long story), and there is a lot of chaos and disorganization in T and R’s things. Start adding in mine and K’s and you’re getting all kinds of fun…in not fun kind of ways. What we have managed to do is to get closer to a better organized kitchen. Some of the problem with that is that the cabinet layout in there is pretty terrible which takes a fair bit of working with to make it usable. We’re still working on that. What we have left to do is to get the bigger living room cleaned out and re-organized so that it can become the main living room so that everyone isn’t stepping on each other in the main living space. We also have about three other rooms that need some serious overhauling and re-purposing. It is a lot of work and it is overwhelming and I am so damned annoyed with myself for how little I am managing to get done that I cannot stand it.

Now, time is running against us and that overwhelmed feeling is just getting worse. I suppose at this point what we need to do is sit down and figure out what we can realistically get done, but I’m not sure that talking about it is going to help all that much just now. Some of it is simply going to be a matter of mind over body and an understanding that there will be no spoons left at the end of the week…not that there are all that many now.

I suppose that some of the rush of time lately is not helped by the fact that Saturday is my twenty-ninth birthday and let me tell you, that is kind of freaking me out. No, twenty-nine is not that old (though if you measure the age I feel every day versus the chronological, the difference is kind of disturbing); however, for where I am at in my life, twenty-nine is kind of old…and I suppose that makes a nice segue from the Time subheading to the next one…

On Growing-Up and All That Jazz…
When I was younger (read: in high school when I believed the world was well and truly conquerable), I had plans. The problem was a lot of those plans were based around inaccurate ideas and assumptions about the way the world worked. They were a naive kid’s dreams that revolved around what she thought she wanted: not what she needed. Sure, some of them were pretty clear. I’d do the college thing and find a cool job and take over the world. The only problem is that I’ve always been more like Pinky than Brain and quite frankly, taking over the world is just too damn much work.

A lot of those dreams and ideas changed when I had Miss Ma’am, many of them for the better, I would argue. That kid has scared the hell out of me and taught me so much about what is really important in life and about all the things I’ve missed in life simply because I was afraid that I don’t always know where to start talking about it. I have regrets, sure, one of the biggest being that all of the times that I’ve started a “Dear K” letter in my head, I haven’t written them down. That’s one of my new goals, but it’s a bit lower on the list right now than a few others. But one of the things that the last seven months have taught me is this: with my kid standing with me, I can damn near do anything. When I turned both of our lives upside down, she was the one who came up kicking butt first. She fell into a new pattern of life with relish. Sure, she was scared, too, and she had her days of missing the way things were, but for the most part, she tackled the change like a kid and she made me realize that no matter all of the other crazy things going on, life still goes on and it really will sort itself out.

As we are headed toward the next huge change in our life, she has been trepidatious; however, she has also started to find lots of things to be excited about. For a start, she has discovered through seeing some of Mr. Monkey’s activities that Girl Scouts sounds like a neat idea. She is also excited about the SCA group up here and is quite curious about learning how to be a fighter in the kids’ group. She has taken to dressing her stuffed cats up in SCA costumes which is just bloody adorable. Is she still scared? Is she going to miss Georgia and everyone and everything there? Yes. Is she going to throw herself into it headfirst? Probably. She does that. She’s a smart kid; she makes friends easily; she is growing-up to be amazing and I LOVE that so much. I love watching her put together how things work or do not work. I love watching her try new things, even when she doesn’t want to. I love talking to her and hearing what she has to say.

Most of all, I love that she manages, without trying, to help me keep going. There are a whole lot of things that I do because of her or for her. There are a lot of choices I make that revolve around her. I’ve frequently been accused of not thinking of anyone but myself and of not making the best decisions for my daughter, and yet, I measure the success or failure of something based on how she is doing. Kids let you know real fast if something isn’t working. Can you always change that thing? No. But they still let you know. So far? A lot of the decisions that have been deemed “crazy” have actually gone pretty well for her. Maybe I do have a clue of what I am doing after all. *wry grin*

Ironically, I didn’t start the bit on growing-up to be about K, but it makes sense to me -now- that the section kind of had to start with her. Some of that is very simply that I want her to be more prepared for how to function in adult society than I have been. Some of that has been through faults and choices of my own and some of it has been that there were things that I feel I genuinely wasn’t prepared for. For example, one of the greatest myths of my education was that going to college and getting your degree means something. The reality is that all that a degree means these days is that you stuck with something and finished it. It doesn’t really help you find a job like they all said it would and it certainly doesn’t prepare you for how to go out and get the job you want. I’ve learned more about that from Rin’s step-dad in the past couple of months than I ever learned in high school or at the university.

I spent a great deal of time being dependent upon someone and in a lot of ways I still am and right now, it doesn’t seem to matter which state or which house I am in, I am incredibly dependent upon the people inside of it. Right now, that is scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. I suspect that a lot of the dependency is adding to the trouble with sorting some of the unanswered questions. It also means that one of the biggest things that I have to learn about this whole “being an adult” thing is that while I am going to be dependent on other people in some areas, how dependent am I capable of being while still remaining independent? Someone is going to look at this and say, “Well, duh, that’s part of what you have to figure out in life,” and if that person says it to -me- I might hit them. One of the things I never thought of as part of my future when I was that wide-eyed kid was that I would be dependent upon someone else. I never thought I would frequently feel like a prisoner trapped in my own body trying to find a balance between pain that is tolerable and pain that really can’t be ignored. I never thought there would be days where I couldn’t open my own soda bottle let alone work a decent job and make a household. Yet, each of those things are things I deal with on a daily basis. It is a part of life and it is one that takes a hell of a lot of balancing to manage and right now? I totally do NOT have a handle on it.

The past few months have seen several symptoms getting worse. They have seen new symptoms cropping up. They have seen me battling for insurance and failing to get it again. Now they are seeing me trying to find a balance of meds that is actually affordable…and sometimes choosing which are necessary and which are not. It has not been fun, yet I am managing. Unfortunately, I’m not always managing that well. Pain levels are vicious. As I pointed out to Rin at dinner last night, it’s kind of a nasty cycle: you’re nauseous if you don’t eat, you’re nauseous if you do eat, so what do you do? *headshake* Try to find a balance, that’s what.

Some of my internal battle with age and growing up is this: society teaches us that people are supposed to do certain things at certain points. I’ve been behind a lot of those points, so I’m not sure why I’m shocked that I’m behind -all- of them. Honestly, I’m not sure why I care. I suppose because I am frequently a non-conformist trapped in the head of someone who battles with not wanting to be in trouble. That’s a fun battle, let me tell you. I play a balancing act of attempting to appear like a grown-up and trying to figure out what the hell that actually means. The number of times that I am shocked when someone actually treats me as an equal is somewhat disturbing and though I’m getting better at it, it’s still a rather large hurdle to overcome.

I imagine that some of the hang-up here revolves around the fact that now that I’m not at Mom and Dad’s house, there are a lot of old expectations of my own that I am having to tackle and beat the shit out of. For example, the theory that being out of Mommy and Daddy’s house means you are either in college or have a good job and are doing super awesome. (Did I mention I was quite naive to how the world worked?) *headshake* It is a bit tiring and frustrating and exhausting to have to battle some of these old things and yet, I suppose the more that I actually remember to sit down and write this shit down and try to sort it out the better off I’ll be in the long-run, right? *le sigh* Yes, I know, I speak the common sense now let me apply the clue-by-four to my head yet again. One day, this really will stick…or something.

So…do I meet all of societies expectations of a grown-up. Nah. But do I really want to? Do I really need to? Probably not. So maybe what I have to redefine is what I actually want. What and whose expectations do I need to meet? Wow, those are some epic questions, aren’t they?

On the Future…
So what comes now? Well, in the immediate, it is organizing and making a place and making some of the things I know I want to happen happen. On the 29th it is continuing to hope and pray that we can get K into Hamilton Traditional School. It is still part of the South Bend School Corp district but it is a different set-up from their regular elementary schools and it seems structured in a way that would work for K in SO many different ways. I want this. I want it a lot. It would mean a lot of changes for her, the biggest being uniforms; however, from everything I have seen and heard, Hamilton would be perfect for her. That’s not to say that Hay (the school she will go to if we can’t get her into Hamilton this year) is a bad school. It’s pretty good and has good teachers and will still work for her. It’s just that Rin and I think that Hamilton would be best and gods do I want her to get in there. So, we wait for the 29th when the secretaries are back in their office and we call and find out if we can get her in, or even if we can get her on the waiting list. I WANT this. I want it a lot.

After we figure that out, we can figure out other things, like what she is going to need to start school and all of that fun stuff. Granted, some of that is going to be the same no matter where she goes. On the positive side, they don’t start school up here until 25 August, so that’s handy.

There’s also Celebration to get ready for and a resume to write and a hope that I can MAYBE get the position at Ivy Tech that I would <3 to have even though it would be a huge challenge and so many other things besides. There are things to sort in three houses and trying to figure out what needs to come up north now and what needs to stay in storage down south and oh, yeah, trying to figure out where in the hell to scrape all the pennies for every thing that needs doing. But we’ll manage and we’ll figure it out cause that’s what we’re good at.

In Conclusion
Rin and Tadhg are home now and I’m losing my train of thought to afternoon conversation. I feel a bit better than I did earlier though I still have a whore of a headache which I’m not amused about. However, hearing about some of the funny things that happen at work is amusing. And hearing Rin explain how she made her life harder this morning by hauling her laptop to work with her like she was going to IUSB is also amusing. “Technology heavy. WHY???” *sniggers* I’m gonna get kicked for that one later. :D

Also? I got milkshake. HAHAHA for me. Yay for cookies and cream milkshakes from Steak and Shake, dude.

So, yes, in conclusion, my train of thought ends at milkshake and will begin gods only know where at some point in the future. The end.

So now that I’m on my way towards owning lots of black, white and grey clothing items, I decided that I need lots of fun accessories to lighten up my outfits. First on the list was a black scarf. But why make a scarf when you can make a shawl that is also a scarf, pray tell? So behold: Lacy Black Shawlette

Okay, so having pictures taken of me is not my strong suit.

But it’s cute and versatile!

Used as a shawl on our 2nd anniversary. Also featuring Rowan, Camera Hog Extraordinaire.

Summatime!

I know I should take more pictures of the stitch on the FO itself, and I’ll get around to that when I do my massive FO post. Spoiler: Look forward to LOTS of neckwarmers and cowls.

I was quite stressed last night and this morning, anticipating keeping inventory of all of the stuff, and watching AJ on top of that. I was amazed and grateful when the movers finished (paperwork and everything) by 1:00pm.

I picked up AJ and brought him to the new house. He was very excited to find his Playmobil train set and Weebles in his room. He played for an hour by himself while I unpacked all of the bathroom boxes.

So the good news: The bathrooms are finished!

The bad news: I still have about 100 boxes to unpack.

The plan: Get bedding on the beds so they’re sleepable Wednesday night (when we move out of the hotel with the famed maid service and breakfast discussed previously). Hook up the TVs and VCRs and DVD players. Get some semblance of order in the kitchen, including boxes unpacked. Unpack the childrens’ rooms. Unpack and organize the living room and family room. Then I’ll tackle the office, master bedroom and garage.

Wish me luck!

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be homeschooling Grace, too, while I do all this. I wonder if making her count boxes by 5′s counts????