Dust Motes

photo from psychologytoday.com

Wow. A lot has changed around here since I wrote last. I need to investigate all the changes Blogger has made.

Another year has gone by. I am a year older, and maybe not so much wiser. I lost my job, but then got hired with a new company that does the same kind of work I was doing. I now work harder than I ever have worked in my life. LOL

DD will be in sixth grade this year. How can she be in sixth grade already? My own sixth grade days seem not that long ago.

The best part about time is that it heals all wounds, but lately I have found that I've been missing my grandmas, both of them. I don't know why they've been on my mind so much. I guess I just see DD with her grandmothers, and remember my own happy summer days.

DD and I went swimming at the local pool a weekend ago. It was so fun. She is old enough now to doggie paddle, so she was fearlessly jumping off the diving board. I was shocked that she wanted to try, but she saw other kids doing it--little bitty kids with lifejackets--and she must have decided that she could be brave and do it too.

How she has grown...

I feel like I've regressed in some ways. I haven't written for ages. I get so tired during the day, and when I come home, I just want to brain-rot with Facebook or the tv. Ugh. Same old story. Maybe my heart wasn't in it anymore, either. I have felt creative stirrings recently, and decided to dust the corners of this old haven and see where the path leads me.

The door is open...

all I have to do is step across the threshold.

Updating at last

Yikes! So I didn't do so hot updating my blog in January. January is kind of one of those blah months. I can actually feel a bit of hope that Spring is coming, right around the corner, in spite of the 7 inches of snow on Friday, and in spite of how foggy it is outside right now. LOL

We're watching the Superbowl, hoping for the Giants to upset the Patriots. Neither DH nor myself can stand "America's Team." Heh. Go Eli Go!

DD spent some time outside today, but the snow was melting. It's been a kind of a stay-at-home day. I have a few loads of laundry to do. DH fixed nacho cheese dip and chips and some hot wings for us to eat.

I've had a lot of fear about writing. I can hardly bear to open my paper journal. The blank page stares out at me and I am paralyzed. Writing used to be so important to me. I journaled in my paper journal no matter what. I really can't say what made me fall away from it. (I've always been an on-again, off-again blogger!) Too many days are left unrecorded now. Sigh.

All I can do is pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back on the horse. So here goes nothing.

Snow Day!

Overnight, we got 7 inches of snow and it hasn't quite let up yet!

DD was driving me crazy about going outside to play. I swear, that kid never stops yakking! (And there for awhile, we thought she was never going to learn to talk!) So she spent about two hours outside this morning already, in her new used snowsuit and snowboots I bought off Ebay. DD says they keep her nice and warm, so that's good. She built a snowman. Her face is so beet red now from being outside, I hope she gets warmed up here in the house!

I really should be doing something more constructive today than sitting her at the computer. Maybe I'll go take a nap. If the weather permits and the roads are cleared off, tomorrow we'll be going to the in-laws to see pictures of their trip to Germany. They were gone two weeks to visit friends.

But who wants to do housework on a snow day?


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This week's book list includes "The Good Guy," by DRK, and "The Children of Hurin," by JRR Tolkien.

Still Eating Christmas Candy

It's time to put away the decorations. It's time to clean up the wrapping paper and leftover boxes. It's time to find room for all the new toys and clothes. Out with the old and in with the new...
I wish it were that simple. Let's see, to start with, DD's room is a complete and utter disaster area. Tomorrow evening or this weekend, we will start by attacking her closet. Closet must be cleaned out so that stuff will fit inside. Then we'll attack her bedroom floor, and put away all the toys--we will also separate what she has outgrown or doesn't play with from what she does play with. I hope we can pare down the toys to one big Rubbermaid container.

Next, I have to do something with all the dolls I've been collecting lately. They are large and take up quite a bit of room. I basically just need to rearrange them.

We need to vacuum and dust the upstairs bedrooms and clean the bathroom.

Whew. I'm already exhausted, just from writing this down.

Maybe I should save some of that leftover candy as a reward. :)

It's that time of year again

Nanowrimo time! Go join the hysteria.

I have not much to say as to where I've been for the past several months. Is it really October? And is it really MID-October?

My last remaining grandparent, my mother's mother, passed away on August 12. That required a quick trip to Florida and back.

My youngest sister got married on Sept. 29. Thank the gods that's done and over with.

DD has been sick all this week with some kind of flu.

Nano starts in three weeks and I have no clue what I'm going to write about yet.

I've started to sell things on Ebay, and have started collecting Himstedt dolls.

Spring Cleaning

The mere amount of junk we have collected in a matter of the 8 years we have lived in our house is astonishing. (Of course, I had cluttered a two-bedroom apartment in a year, so why should I be surprised, right?)DD starts her spring break this Friday, and I told her that if she (along with our help) can get her room cleaned up and is able to keep it clean for one month, then we will redecorate her room. By "keep it clean," I mean for her to put her toys away when she's done playing with them. She is excited about the prospect, because it means that she can have a princess bedroom instead of a Noah's Ark bedroom (that was the baby theme).

But, I'm sure that she feels overwhelmed when she looks in her room because there is a tiny path from the doorway to the bed. I guess we should donate the toddler bed since she is in a full-size bed now, and her play tent should be taken down because she never plays in it. It's not as if we don't have places to put her toys. She has two big plastic tubs for toys, and several large boxes, and even a bookshelf for books, but things still end up scattered everywhere.

The clutter makes me crazy--so crazy that just thinking about it makes me frustrated. I am not a neat freak by any means, but everything has a place and everything in its place is all I ask. If you get it out, put it away!

Even with all these toys, she still tells me she has nothing to do. Yeah, right.

And let's not forget the whining that comes along with being asked to do a task. I guess I'm raising a procrastinator like myself. When I was growing up, my sisters and I were badgered into cleaning every weekend. I kept my room clean; that was expected, but it was all the other cleaning that I hated: wash the walls, dust the knickknacks, clean out the dishwasher, etc. etc. I hate chores to this day. But, rationally, I know that if I don't keep things clean, then the messes start to grow and grow AND GROW, to a tipping point.

And they're at that tipping point now. So, since DH understands how overwhelming the idea of cleaning is to me, he offered to help DD work on her room and also the other rooms of the house her stuff has overtaken. My main goal is to get her toys pared down to a manageable level, clear out her outgrown clothes, and have her keep her stuff in her room instead of all over the house. I think these goals should be do-able. Once it is clean, I plan to implement Flylady's methods so that good habits can be reinforced.

I myself am bad at doing things now. I put things off until I can't stand it anymore, which is a silly way to live. You never get anything done that way. Things sit and fester, which eventually get you to a point where your once-wonderful dream home feels like a prison. I've been reading a book called "Self-Coaching," in which the author speaks of each of us having choices. Strangely, I never though of life that way before.

Everything is a choice: I can put things off until I am upset and crazy, or I can do things now and then don't have to worry about them any longer. I can browbeat myself into the Well of Self-Pity or I can choose to think that this too, shall pass.

Anyway, it was a liberating idea.

Not only am I attempting to spring-clean the external, I am working on spring-cleaning the internal. This winter has been long for me. I charted 50+ days in January and February, and of those days, only I felt "ok" for only 20 of them, and it was a "blah" kind of ok. March has been better. I attempted some different ways of thinking: if I caught myself starting to listen to the endless "grass is greener" monologue, I immediately got up and did something or thought about something else instead. (Here is an excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's book on how the population has always struggled with depression. via metafilter)

Habits can be changed.



(I've been adding some stuff to this blog, like Amazon textlinks. Amazon tries to decipher keywords and phrases on the blog and then adds in the appropriate textlinks; however, some of them may be only tangentially related, and have no rhyme or reason.)