Heh. This better be worth it...

Heh. So I need a place to write this down, so this is as good as I have right now. Here goes.

I've been doing that FlyLady thing. I have my sink clean. Every morning, I get up, clean the cat box, shower, dress and put on shoes, wipe down the bathroom sinks, make the bed, empty the dishwasher, fill the dishwasher, feed everyone breakfast, clean the kitchen again, make the kids' beds (so they don't go back to bed), check the calendar, and start a load of laundry. *sigh* Then I start my work day.

At lunch, I move the laundry to the dryer, feed everyone again, clean the kitchen again, and straighten up the house. Then I go back to work.

After I finish school, I put out a few hot spots and try to get rid of some clutter around here. Then, I cook dinner, feed everyone, clean the kitchen again, and straighten up the house again.

By the end of the day, I bathe the kids, clean their bathroom, medicate them, and put them to bed. At my bed time, I straighten up the house again, gather all the dirty dishes, brush and floss, wipe down the bathroom sinks, put on jammies and crash.

The "getting rid of clutter" is going slowly. I went through the kitchen cabinets this weekend. I threw out a ton of bubble liquid, popsicle molds, old candy, bottle caps, etc. I also got rid of half of the mugs up there. The medicines went back to the linen cabinet. It doesn't look a lot better. It just looks like my stuff is more comfortable and has a little more elbow room. Same with the sewing room, dresser top, underwear drawer, t-shirt drawer, under the kitchen sink, etc, etc.

The one thing I've learned is that the goal of housekeeping is to NOT to clean the house. It's to keep it clean. And that takes work. It's worth it, though. I can open two large pizza boxes on my kitchen counters without moving anything. I can sit on the carpet without brushing off my pants when I stand up. I can sit on my bed during the day to do work without making it first. I can let my mother use my bathroom without apologizing first. I actually wish the results were more dramatic -- like suddenly my house looks like Good Housekeeping or something. I mean, I did find some great stuff while cleaning up the clutter, but I still can't find the zipper foot for my sewing machine. I still have a ton of stuff to get rid of.

But there's always tomorrow. I just get the feeling that I've done the easy cleaning, and now the hard work is going to start. Why, just this afternoon, I cleaned the dryer duct on the roof, declogged the shower drain, scrubbed the shower walls, dusted and vacuumed the family room and living room, made brownies, invited my dad over for lemonade and brownies in the lawn chairs in the back yard. (Did you know that I can dust and vacuum the living room and family room both in 20 minutes?) The brownies were finished at 2:30, and my dad stayed until 3:45, so it went pretty well downhill from there.

Anyhoo, I'm pretty tired. And tomorrow's the weekly drive to The Big City for therapy. *sigh* Must be time bathe the kids, clean their bathroom, medicate them, and put them to bed, straighten up the house again, gather all the dirty dishes, brush and floss, wipe down the bathroom sinks, put on jammies and crash.

This better be worth it.

Latin roots, Abbott and Costello style

So we're doing a vocabulary drill from MCT Language Arts: Latin roots and prefixes. It went something like this:


Mom: "Bene"

Boy: **atchewwww**

Mom: "You just sneezed all over my stuff!!"

Boy: "GOOD!"

Mom: "What?! You just spewed germy slime..."

Boy: "Mom, 'bene' means 'good'."

Mom: *sheepish grin* "Oh. Okay, 'cogni-'?"

Boy: "NO!"

MOM:"What no?! What could possibly be 'NO' about vocabulary?!"

Boy: "Mommm. 'Cogni' means 'know'..."

Mom: **facepalm**

Cue the hysterical laughter...

Housecleaning and gun control!

To post or not to post -- that is the question...

Not much has been going on. (Don't most three-page posts start that way?)

Most of this week, I've been falling-down tired, and I'm not sure why. It's not like my usual depressed bonelessness. (If you've ever done it, you'd know it. Think: sitting in the kitchen chair, slumped over the table like a boneless chicken.) The Husband is now down with a creeping illness, which involves a sore throat and sleeping through dinner. Bad trend.

I've been keeping my resolution to be more compulsive about the housework by following the FlyLady. It's been interesting. And very tiring. Seriously, the idea is that you can do anything for 5 or 15 minutes. That hideous pile of papers and junk by the telephone, the one so huge that you'll never get rid of it? Just try working on it for 15 minutes. You can do that, right? Then later, try again. And so on until it's gone. You'll feel so good when it's gone that you'll start on the pile of stuff on your dresser, 15 minutes at a time. Then you'll then feel so good that you'll work yourself to death, 15 minutes at a time. ;)

Seriously, I had to re-arrange her schedule a bit so that I didn't have 12 chores to do before breakfast, but other than that, the house is noticeably cleaner, and getting less cluttered. I kept up on the basic presentable-ness of the house this week, so I was able to sit around in my pajamas and talk gun control with The Husband this morning without feeling guilty about not cleaning something. Hey, it's a start.

As for the gun control, well, it's complicated. The founding fathers wanted us all to own guns so that when The Invasion came, we could all grab our muskets from the pegs over our door and run down to the town green to join up with our regiment. Now the military handles that whole "well-regulated militia" thing, and we don't really need a musket hanging over our door. It's all fubar. The NRA insists that they want local governments to control their own gun regulations, but then they turn around and try to legislate how the city of Chicago regulates their citizens' gun use.

I'm convinced that for every shop clerk or homeowner that foils a robbery with a gun, there is at least one child that accidentally shoots himself. Most suburban and urban gun owners are total idiots. Hey, the only way that you can prevent a night-time invasion of your property is to keep that gun loaded in the nightstand with the safety off. Yeahhh. That sounds like a good idea. And do you know how many of those gun owners can hit the side of the barn that they're aiming at? Yeahhh. I have no problem with trained, experienced people owning guns -- the same way that I don't mind trained, experienced drivers on the road. But most of the yahoos wearing a sidearm into Starbucks are total idiots and should not be trusted with a gun.

The NRA should as themselves: should people like MomontheVerge really be carrying guns and shooting them when they're feeling threatened? I think we can all agree the answer is, "Hell no!" ;)

tick, tick, tick...

So I'm sitting at my school table today in my kneeling chair, "resting" my head on the table, trying to get up enough strength to start the school day, when I start hearing a sort of ticking sound. I sit up. I listen. Nothing. It seems to be coming from closer to the table. I lower my head a bit. Is it a timer? The thermostat? What could that be? I shrug and put my head back down, contemplating how much energy would really be required to make more coffee. Suddenly, it occurs to me. That ticking sound? Coming from near the table? Is on my wrist. And it says 9:00. Oy, get to work!

I smell rat droppings!

Metaphorical rat droppings, that is.

Today, I had a flashback to my days in the corporate rat race. In my previous life, I was a computer consultant. I loved it -- at first. I was the hero. I rode in on my white horse, fixed everything, and rode off into the sunset. After leaving adequate user documentation, of course. And then I got paid a huge sum of money.

When I moved to Florida, I got a real job as a regular computer employee, and found out what it was like to work in a real office as an insider. It sucked. The people I worked with were shallow, self-serving, and devious. They would throw me under the bus as soon as look at me. Every time I chose to act like the adult and ask the questions that everyone needed answered, I was kicked to the curb and then dinged on my review as being overly concerned about the issue. People would whine about something, knowing that I would think that management would want to know about the discontent and issues brewing in the department. Then I would find that I was being played.

Never in my life have I hated working as much as that job. Okay, I take it back. I hated my boss in 1990 more than any other boss. I hated my co-workers in 1994 the most. I hated the client the most in 1990 the most. But never have I hated them all as much as my last job.

So this morning, at 6:30, I got up, took a shower, dressed in the nice clothes -- I only wore them to church yesterday for two hours, -- packed up The Boy and sent him off to the Honda dealer with The Husband, packed up The Girl and took her to The Big City for therapy.

Wicked flashbacks... I actually had to change into grubby jeans before I could leave the house. Seriously, major flashbacks. I could smell cubicle hell -- rat droppings and all...

I see your stinkbugs and raise you...

So, in my renewed effort to be more hard-working, diligent and compulsive about keeping the house up, I've been shining my sink. I got as far as the pile of stuff in the corner of the kitchen counter, moved the pile of hot pads and disturbed -- OMIGOD-OMIGOD-OMIGOD -- a huge roach!! It must have been an inch and a half long! I pulled out my most toxic chemical, sneaked up on the bastard and sprayed it. My best toxin only slowed it down. I had to smack it with a newspaper. EW! EW! EEEEEEEW! It took me a full hour to stop shuddering in disgust. Some people call them "palmetto bugs" when they're trying to be genteel, but WE know what they are.

(I tried to insert a picture of one, but when I moused over the pictures in google images, they enlarged, and I started shuddering again. You'll just have to trust me!)

Anyway, we had a very boring trip to my sister's for the weekend. We wanted to see snow, but ended up coming home early to avoid the snow. I know -- heh? The Husband had to be home to prepare for the next semester, and we couldn't afford to be snowed in. Bummer.

There was something else really funny that occurred to me this morning in bed, but it's gone now. Like much of my brain. ;) When it occurs to me later, I'll add it.

It lives! (for now, anyway)

Well, it seems the dishwasher was playing possum. It came back to life this afternoon. Maybe it was overheated? PMS? ADD? PTSD? Whatever it was, it's a bad omen. For the last year or so, the only setting that has worked is "light wash". Now it hiccoughs? Hmm. Maybe it's time to do some serious research and buy one before all heck breaks loose. It's only money, right?

The KitchenAid is supposed to be seriously quiet, which would be good for our open floor plan, but SuburbanCorrespondent has been betrayed by hers, and I'm wary. My only requirements are that it be very quiet and be bisque colored. And preferably under $500.

On a completely unrelated note, we got a Wii fit for Christmas, and it has pissed me off already. If you haven't seen one, the stupid thing has a pressure plate that you stand on, and it weighs you and tests your standing balance. Then, after it asks your height, it tells you -- dah-dah-DAHHHH -- your Wii Fit age. Let's just say it told me I was overweight, added seven years to my age, and made my little cartoon self more pudgy. The Boy had the nerve to kind of squint at me and say, "Yeah, that looks more like you." Maybe it's time to back away from the ice cream sandwiches. Or kill the messenger. Let's say it didn't motivate me to work out. Call me stubborn... Anyone else have this problem?

Resolutions -- and a death in our appliance family

Resolutions... I should resolve to continue doing what works for me. That would be pinot grigio. No, seriously!

I think I need to become more compulsive-obsessive. See, there's The Husband and The Girl -- they're two peas in a pod. The Husband is self-disciplined to the point of being compulsive. That man has a written record of every sit-up and every weight lifted for the past 30 years. He gets up at 5:30 every morning, puts in his contact lenses, makes coffee, eats breakfast, packs his lunch, shaves, showers, gets dressed, and goes to work -- the same way, the same time every morning. It's like religion. And it's deadly effective. Me? Not so much. I drag out of bed at the last possible moment, getting as much shower as I have time left. The Girl takes after him. The Boy? Yup, a night owl without a compulsive or self-disciplined bone in his body. *sigh* It's my fault. Sorry, Boy.

So, I've been reading the FlyLady. I'm just not sure I can commit to a 27-fling-boogie or whatever it's called. I would rather re-grout the shower walls once a year than squeegee them every day after my shower. It's the difference between mowing the lawn and vacuuming. You can tell when the lawn has been mowed. Not so much with the vacuuming.

See, I was raised by a career gal with a housekeeper. We lost the housekeeper when I was 11, and then my sister and I learned our formative ideas about housekeeping. First, it's not important enough to do ourselves unless we simply can't avoid it. Second, we clean house for guests, not for ourselves. After all, we don't care what it looks like, do we? No. Third, if you can get away without doing it, by all means, don't do it. Betty Homemaker my mother was not. She fought her way up though a man's world, held her own as a single mom in 1970, and was pulling down $45k a year in 1980. So, that was something there.

Meet my mother-in-law: full-time homemaker, mother of six (the youngest four, boys), and house proud. This woman was a professional cleaner, and her status in the world was dependent on how well she did her job. "We may be poor, but my house is never dirty." She was a domestic goddess. And boy, could she make mashed potatoes...

Mars, meet Venus.

So, now that I'm a professional homemaker, I have to get more serious about the house being clean all the time, rather than just when I can't stand it anymore. (Ankle-deep in carpet crumbs, anyone?) The only problem? I have a full-time job homeschooling! Oh the irony...

And? Tonight the dishwasher died. The memorial service will be tomorrow evening...