Grateful Friday

After wearing jeans my entire life, I'm grateful for Fridays when I get to wear them to school.  It feels more like me.

I am making a little progress in dressing like a grown up girl.  Last year when I would get home, changing into jeans was my first step.  Now I pretty much wear my work clothes until bedtime.  Maybe because changing would take too much energy....

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I am grateful it is General Conference this weekend.  How I love it!  I am looking forward to hearing from our dear leaders and being uplifted.

I was feeling a little anxious about the weekend because I am looking forward to watching 6 hours of meetings on Saturday and usually my Saturdays are packed full.  How would that work?

I'm grateful Adam suggested we make a list (he knows what soothes my soul--lists!) and decide when we'll do what.

I think it will work.

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I'm grateful Geri and Megan and Whitney are visiting Paris (kinda wish I were too!).  I love living vicariously through their pictures.

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I love that my students are concerned about me.

I sometimes wear glasses and sometimes wear contacts (depending on if my eye is flaring up).  Yesterday, late in the day, one of them, in a worried tone asked, "Are you wearing contacts?"

I said yes.

He said, "Oh good.  So you can see."

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I am grateful for the random skill I have of writing backwards.  It is apparently easier for lefties like me.  Yesterday was backwards day at school for Red Ribbon Week.  (Mostly it was "Teacher, my tag is itching my neck" and kids trying to wear their hoods over their faces day.)  I wrote backwards on the dry erase board and it delighted them.  It's nice to have an easy crowd to please.

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I am grateful that I know my principal.  My default is to not want to make waves (Adam said I should approach the district tech guy like I would if I were advocating for one of my children--you can't just summon Mama Bear though).

There are things that frustrate me.  For example, I haven't had a microphone since school started.  I've told everyone, including but not limited to the guy from the district who came to make sure it was working.  I've received emails encouraging me to use my microphone and outlining all the benefits.  I've replied that I. Don't. Have. One.

(When there wasn't going to be a third grade in the classroom, the room was pilfered.)

The other day, my principal walked by while I was having a prep.  He poked his head in and asked how I was.

Because I know him, he's my neighbor and used to be my bishop and I've cried in his office on more than one occasion (bishop's office--YW president related--I don't want to talk about it),  I felt comfortable outlining all my little frustrations.

He said, "Write that all down."

I did.

Within minutes, the tech guy was in my room to talk to me about a student's computer issues, I had new coatracks installed by the custodian and my principal returned with a microphone for me.  I said, "I've told anyone who would listen that I needed a microphone."

He said, "Just come and talk to me."

And you know what?  I will.

Snow Days

Monday was no school because of Martin Luther King day and we have had snow days since.  I love sleeping in a little.  I love having my kids home.  I love the extra time I have because I'm not the chauffeur for lessons and practices.  Everything's cancelled.

We've had a steady stream of hot chocolate, Adam's devised a drying rack in the garage out of a ladder and space heater and ski poles for the steady stream of wet snow clothes, and life has been cozy.

I have been able to make a slight dent in unfinished projects.  One of them is Emma's room.  She's redecorating it.  She thought this meant I would drive her to the store and buy her paint and whatever else her heart desired.

It truly means it's time for her to go through her things and pare down and tidy up before I'll buy anything.

That isn't quite as fun.

And she's moving slowly because of the siren song of her friends and the snow.

She wants to get rid of a bookshelf and I want to incorporate it back into the schoolroom where it started in the first place.

So you know what this means.

Today, while I have my muscle home for one more day...

...we are moving furniture.  I have a new layout in mind for the schoolroom.

Lovely, lovely snow days.

What I Cleaned in October

In October I cleaned our bedroom.  It's (ridiculously) the biggest room in our house.  (I want to carve off a corner of our bedroom and attach it to the kitchen.)  Because of its size, it sort of became a depository for random furniture and belongings that didn't have a home otherwise.

Then I got tired of that.

I took back our bedroom.  I moved furniture out and moved around the existing furniture (by I, I mean Adam and strong children moved things, I pointed directions).

I created a little seating area in the corner.

Then, I tackled the dresser.  Its drawers contain craft and sewing supplies because all of our clothes are housed in our closet.  I wish I had a before picture of the drawers to show you.  (No I don't, you'd be horrified.)

They were scary drawers.  The kind of place where you had to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way out.  I took everything out and sorted and sifted and ended up with this.

And this.

I even got exceptionally carried away (because I love organizing and compartmentalizing as much as the next person) and wrapped up all the loose, random lengths of ribbon.

Oh, what a thing of beauty is a little organization!

(I took pictures in case it doesn't last.)

Books I Read in September

Saving CeeCee Honeycut by Beth Hoffman***

I reread this book because my book club read it.  I didn't love it the first time I read it, I think I liked it more the second time around.  There are some great messages in it and a lot of hope and kindness.  My complaint about it is that some of the characters don't seem real.  They seem like caricatures of every movie you've seen and book you've read about the South.  Also, some of them were so sticky sweet you just wanted them to do something rotten so they'd seem alive.

Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin**

The polar opposite of the previous book, this book was raw and distressingly real.  It involved a person disappearing, illness--mental and otherwise, grief, addiction, you name it.  It also included a lot of hope and kindness.  If you could get past the cringeworthy language and actions of some of the characters, it was a compelling story with some very likable characters.  (And some characters I didn't like at all.)

The Geometry of Sisters by Louanne Rice***

This book was sort of a dramatic tangled mess.  It had it all:  tragedy, lies, secrets, kleptomania, paralysis, teen pregnancy, a runaway, a ghost, unrequited love...

Phew.

What I loved about it though were the sisters.  There were several sets of them and they all loved each other and needed each other in the same way I love and need my sisters.
 

 

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald***

This was a fascinating book.  It was set in the 40s-60s with some interesting looks at culture then.  (Yikes to the 60s drug and free love scenes portrayed.  Yikes.)  The book is about a baby that is a "practice baby" at a college in the home economics class.  It explores how messed up a person can be when they don't have proper attachment as an infant...no constant mother figure but a parade of practice mothers.  The answer is pretty messed up.  I liked a lot of the characters in this book and the end broke my heart and gave me hope as well.


Cramming in what I cleaned in September because The 31 Days of Gratitude is upon me.  I cleaned my family room.  It's a pretty easy room to clean because there isn't near the clutter of say...one of my children's rooms.  I got rid of every VHS tape (except the one Adam uses to record the Superbowl each year so he and Braeden can watch it later).  Also, I/we did move some furniture.  Braeden wondered where we were going to put the Christmas tree with the new arrangement.  I just smiled at him.  He groaned.  "We'll be moving furniture again, won't we?"


I didn't have big strong kids for nothing, did I?

What I Did (and Didn't) Clean in August

August was Emma's room.  Wow.  Emma's room reminds me of my room when I was growing up.  Cluttery (yet another word that isn't) and a reflection of a sentimental girl who uses a lot of paper to draw and write.

Moving 9 times since I've married has cured me of a bit of my clutterbug nature.  A bit.

But Emma...

We divided her closet into two days.  We cleaned The East Side of the closet one day and The West Side of the closet another day.  That may give you an idea of the state of things.

In a further reflection of Emma's 'tweendom, she was ready to part with many things:  Polly Pockets, magnetic paper dolls, beads.  She is still clinging to stuffed animals, her Littlest Pet Shop collection (which from its orderly appearance hasn't been played with since last time we deep cleaned her room) and her American Girl doll paraphernalia.

Also, the girl volleys between needing me to direct her every cleaning move and dismissing me because she wants to do it herself.  I allowed her to sort and sift and organize solo.

Like nearly every other aspect of this mothering gig.  It's a process.  I am trying to teach her how to organize and arrange things so they'll have a prayer of making it back.  I am trying to teach her to get rid of stuff she doesn't need.  I'm trying to teach her to put it away/throw it away/do something with it besides leave it on the floor.

I don't think I'm making too much headway.

But I'm not giving up.  Greater women than me have forged the way in this battle.  (My mom with me for example.)

What I Cleaned in July

I am kind of getting tired of 1) cleaning and 2) writing about it.  But still I persist.

In July I cleaned the boys' room.  Nothing too exciting.  It always is an interesting look into their lives and personalities when we delve deep though.

Braeden is maybe my most sentimental child.  He saves a lot of things that are meaningful to him.  The wonderful thing about him though is that he's getting old enough to discern what is meaningful and is willing to let things go.  Letting go of things is an integral part of cleaning.  Vital.

What Braeden lacks is a good sense of how to organize his treasures, most of which are papers...he loves to draw maps of imaginary lands.

(I don't quite get it.)

I handed him file folders and he acted like I'd handed him the world.  He said, "Thanks SO MUCH," and "This is PERFECT."  He was happy with his neat magazine box full of files.

And so was I.

Mark is less sentimental but perhaps more of a hoarder.  He hoards Lego instructions and boxes.  He has stacks and stacks of instructions...each more valuable to him than the last.  Our Legos are a jumble and not kept in a way where you have all the original pieces together with the original directions...I shun such blocks to creativity.  Mark truly uses the instructions though.  He pores over them.  He learns about construction.  They give him ideas.  He discovers how to make things more stable.

(I don't quite get it.)

And then there's the boxes.  He insists that he needs the boxes.  They include pictures of Lego sets Mark doesn't have.  He studies the pictures and then tries to recreate them.  It seems he would much rather create something based on a picture than the mere directions.  So I cut the boxes, carefully saving the flat pieces in a stack.  I put one size of direction booklets in a box and the rest in a magazine box and he was happy.

And so was I.

My boys aren't going to have a constantly neat and tidy room.  They aren't.  And I'm OK with that.  Because the trade-off is enterprising boys, flexing their imagination and creativity.

And that isn't always neat and tidy.

Speaking of my boys, here are some videos shot from Adam's phone of them bowling (assuming I can make it work).   They make me laugh.

KP Duty

In June I cleaned my kitchen.  I procrastinated and dreaded and scrubbed and scoured and hoped that certain people were amply rewarded for their inventions.  The inventors of SOS pads, rubber gloves and removable/cheap drip pans for electric burners are maybe my favorite people in the world.  And the inventors of self cleaning ovens.  I love you guys.

Clean kitchens are like an eclipse.  They are a fleeting if-you-blink-you'll-miss-them phenomena.  But like the saying goes, the kitchen is the heart of the home.  It is where earth, water and fire combine to nourish, soothe, unite.

It's worth it to get it sparkling clean every once in awhile.

Then let your children have a snack and watch the crumbs and fingerprints descend.

I don't have any splashy pictures of what I changed. (Are pictures of what I changed ever splashy?  Let's pretend.)  I do have an idea of what I want to change in my kitchen though.

I want a tile back-splash.  I am getting up the courage to decide exactly what I want.  (I think I want white subway tile with some red glass tile shots of color in there but what if I decide I don't want red in 5 years and there I am with red glass tile shots of color?)

I am also getting up the courage to try this project on my own.

I am also waiting for my baby brother to decide to come and visit me and do the project for me.

That's really what I'm waiting for.

Ammon?

What I Cleaned in May

I revamped our school room (and dusted and cleaned it down to the last corner).  Our school is completely unrecognizable from what it was last year when I had three students filling it so it was time to modify the room as well.  I also was looking for an upstairs large surface for homework.  Braeden's and Emma's homework destination seemed to be a couch downstairs with the accompanying sprawl.

I also just like to change.

And move furniture.

I moved this desk into Emma's room:

And also abandoned the fold down wooden desk you see.  I used to have one for each child.  They weren't being used.  The desk you see was Mark's but you can see him over on the futon.

Now I have this big table (carried from Jill's house across the street...she no longer had a need for it).  Thank you Jill!

Mark, of course, does his school work under the table.  Why wouldn't he?

I also claimed this desk from Emma's room for my own.

I did some picture swapping and hanging.  I'm trying to see how many nail holes I can possibly make in my walls.

I hung up this map that I like.  (An accurate, official map in a school room is overrated.)

I also created this collection in the stairwell.  I envision adding to it until every bit of the wall is covered.  (Adam?  You'll help me, right?)

My favorite change maybe is putting these pictures in frames.  My talented and dear brother Tabor painted them for me when he was about ten or eleven.  I was a freshman in college and he sent them to me periodically.  I missed him when I went to college because he had made me laugh every night at dinner while we were growing up.  The paintings cheered me up then like they do now.

He still makes me laugh whenever I talk to him and I still miss him.

 

I never, no, never, measure for picture placement.  I am the queen of eyeballing and imperfection.  It more or less works for me.

I enlisted Adam's help in hanging these pictures though and he did a bunch of math.

I'm glad there are people like him in the world.

And I'm glad he's my people like him.

Cleaning In April

I doubt anyone still cares about my cleaning.  Did you ever care?  But this keeps me on track, this accountability business.  Besides, I started reporting on it and I like continuity.

I cleaned my children's bathroom in April.  It gets cleaned every week so it didn't seem like it would be too big of a challenge.

Except my children are not civilized and have not learned the lessons I (really!) have tried to teach them.

Here's what the bathroom counter often looks like (brace yourself):

These are otherwise delightful children...but they make me crazy.

They read a lot.  There are always a few books in the bathroom (but a thesaurus?  really?).

Also, see how there's a cute little toothbrush holder?  That's just too far away for one little toothbrusher.

If you notice in the top right corner of the picture, there's a medicine cabinet.

Here's what it mostly looks like:

Because why would you want to put anything back in the medicine cabinet when it looks so lovely on the counter?

Our children do have other talents.  (I keep trying to remind myself what they are.)

And I'm not a complete failure as a mother/housekeeper.  (I keep trying to tell myself that.)

One problem is that I try to avoid this room whenever possible.  It's not a good recipe for tidiness.

What took up the most time in the room was this little bit of real estate.

It's a big closet...though obviously with things spilling out onto the floor...

In addition to extra toiletries (the ones not on the counter in the medicine cabinet), we keep games and puzzles there.  That seems like a strange choice for a bathroom closet but there's a lot of space in there.

I got rid of many things.  There were games and puzzles we've outgrown. Because I'm sentimental and have a hard time parting with things my children particularly loved, I set some of them aside for the mythical grandchildren.  It makes me feel better about boxing things up.  Adam gives me odd looks but he's kind and doesn't say anything.  I was telling Jill and Stephanie about my progress one day as we wend our way around the neighborhood.  In talking to them, I realized how much I truly hate Chutes and Ladders and Candyland.  I had set them aside for my mythical grandchildren.  The minute I got home, I put them in the donate pile.  I am not playing those games again.  I have put my time in.

Here's the final product:

I quickly took a picture before any of my children could descend.

Since I had cleared so much space, I was able to fit in sleeping bags that had been stored in the boys' closet.

Someday, my house will be all organized in tip top shape.  Someday.

Just like the mythical grandchildren.

What I Cleaned in March

In March, I cleaned our living room, "dining room" and hall closet (cue scary music).

I feel a little dissatisfied with my progress because one of the things on the list was to steam clean the carpets and my steam cleaner has a broken piece.  The website and owner's manual are in disagreement about the piece.  And I'm confused.

And not sure I really want a steam cleaner anyway.

I can think of 25,000 things that are more fun than steam cleaning.

I feel marvelous about the coat closet though.  Here's how it looked "before":

I'm not proud.



This doesn't look vastly better, but believe me.  It is.

Other than that, the room was mostly easy to clean.  I vacuumed all the corners and cleaned all the nooks and crannies and deep into the couch cushions.  (I found zero money...I need richer family members and visitors.)

One rainy Friday afternoon (I actually don't know for a fact it was rainy, I'm just guessing) we were cleaning the house as is our custom.  I got fidgety and told Braeden and Emma I wanted to move furniture.  They're used to me by now.  Since we're cut out of the same cloth, Braeden and I started scheming and measuring furniture without the benefit of a tape measure...who has that kind of time to go all the way to the garage?  Braeden had been sweeping so he started measuring with the broom.  Would the piano fit here?

Emma went for the tape measure.  She's like that.

We decided against a complete overhaul of everything and just switched a few things.  First, we had to see if we could make the piano budge.  We could!  Hurray payback for all that milk I buy those children from Costco!  While we were in the middle of heaving the piano across the room, Braeden's friend Adam stopped by with his trumpet in hand.  He and Braeden were going to have a sort of jam session with a trumpet and tuba and if you haven't witnessed that my friends...

Adam was completely befuddled by our actions.  "What are you doing?"

I pointed to the final destinations of all the furniture.

He said, "But why?"

Braeden shrugged and said, "My mom just moves furniture."

Adam said, "But that's the optimum spot for the piano," and he pointed to where the piano used to be.  Totally irrelevant.  Change is what we were after.  I could tell Adam thought we were crazy and by we I mean me but I just enlisted his help in moving furniture.  He's a strong kid.

Next Hannah stopped by.

"What are you doing?"

I guess what I was doing is making neighborhood children grateful for their more sane mothers.  You're welcome.

Here's the optimum spot for the piano, where it no longer resides (pretty roses courtesy of Adam--the husband, not the bewildered neighbor--on my birthday):

And I also moved Horace Vandegelder to a new perch.  He seems really happy about it.

Best pet ever!

Still Cleaning

I dream of a completely organized and clean house.  It's not my reality.

I am still chipping away at one room per month.  I did a ridiculously simple one for February.  My very small powder room downstairs that didn't need organizing (because it's too small to even get cluttered) but painting.

Do you see the wall?

I retouched the paint last summer and it didn't go well.

Even though I'm the anti-perfectionist, it made me a little crazy.

I repainted the whole thing and it mystified our children that I was doing the same color.  But I like the color.

I also repainted this little dresser:

There was nothing wrong with it.  I just wanted to paint it.

I painted it a variety of colors then sanded it a little to make it look a bit distressed.

I can't decide if I...

1) like it

2) don't like it

3) feel neutral

That narrows it down though.

I do love the little knobs.

I bought them at Joyworks in Snohomish which store is a joy in my life.

So here's the finished product.  The walls are all the same color and the dresser is not.  I also took away the rug.

Because I wanted to.

And I'm the boss.

In March I'm cleaning my living room and dining room (that isn't a dining room) and coat closet which is scary.

I'm thinking of running away from home.

A Little Control

Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.  

~Les Brown

There are a lot of things I can't control.  Many many.  And that's probably good.  I'm not sure I could handle the responsibility.

In 2011, my one big goal/resolution/fond desire is to gain more control in my house.  (cue scary music)

My house is more or less clean.  It gets dusted and vacuumed regularly.  Legos and socks and books get picked up at frequent intervals.  The dishes get done.  And the laundry.

But there are pockets.  Unnerving pockets.  Places where chaos reigns and frustration has a heyday.

I decided to tackle one room every month.  I also decided to document it here to make me accountable.  Every year I more or less do this same thing but I usually run out of steam/attention span/time and end up cleaning what is really really bothering me and leaving the rest to only slightly bother me. 

I started with my absolutely easiest room for January:  the laundry room.  It's easy because it's small and because I'm mostly the only one who uses it.  Mark goes in every morning to sort the laundry he's transported from the bedrooms, everyone goes in occasionally if they're in search of stray socks and it's where the cleaning supplies are kept.

Here's the before picture.  There's the stray sock basket and there are the cleaning supplies complete with open cupboard doors (where the cleaning supplies belong).  My children are physically incapable of closing things/putting them back.  

Here's the after picture.  It's not much different (why I picked this room first).  I wiped everything off and moved everything to clean the floor, put everything away (for now, until children descend) and organized inside the cupboards a bit.

Let me just savor my success a little.  One of these months, the room will be the kitchen and it will be a much harder fought battle.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.  

~John Dewey