Bedroom Vision

Somehow my bedroom always seems to be where the most clutter collects. Well, besides the basement but we're not going there today. I think I often feel like I will just absorb all the questionable items into my personal space for the betterment of the rest of the house. Company's coming? Dump all this crap upstairs in my room. Not sure where to put this thingie? I guess put that upstairs in our room. Etc. Like that.

And then suddenly your room looks like this. Even though you just moved in a few months ago. It was time for soul cleansing purge. So, I de-cluttered and polished and put things away and dusted and now it looks much more breathable.

Boring but clean. Once the quilt is out of the wash and back on the bed it won't make your jaw ache with totally sad emptiness anymore. That said...I have have plans.

Not sure how much you can see here but I've been busy writing down all my ideas to make sure I don't forget anything and also to be sure that something happens. It is so easy to just think of things to do and never really get to it. Isn't the so? I feel somehow more definite, knowing that I have the wall paint in a bucket downstairs. Must find a way to get real curtain rods pronto, the ones up are the crappy kind with the little toothy metal brackets that the squarish rods click onto. If you ever move into a house with those rods and are planning hang anything more than sheers on them, take them down immediately and put up real ones.

I have real issues with interior design. Real lack. I always need help. Does anybody else have ideas or pointers for this space? What am I missing here?

My dishwasher is so clean, you can eat out of it!

Those, folks, are the two cleanest peas on the planet. They've been through turbo rinse and heated dry, a swish of Jet Dry and a whole lot of hot water and cheerily presented themselves to me this morning when I opened the machine. Bing! Here we are! Bright and shiny! The world's cleanest food.

In Which She Is Resolute

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm leisurely about my well-wishing, taking my sweet time getting around to acknowledging the calendar flip ...why panic...we have 365 days to toot our noise-makers. The holiday madness largely behind us, we find ourselves here, blinking at the crisp, white, slate of a newborn January. I kind of love January. I love fresh starts, I love stillness after madness (no holidays all month anyone??? WOOHOO!) and even the sharp winter chill feels a little invigorating. After all, we've hardly had time to enjoy the gentle sifting of a slow snow shower, try out our snuggly Christmas mittens and scarves or go stumping around frostily blowing dragon breath with our giggling two-year-olds. The year is young! Hooray!

If you know me, you know that one of my favorite things about the new year is a fresh and teetering stack full of resolutions. People always tell me that they *cough cough* "Don't really do that resolution thing themselves. It's so depressing and who really keeps their resolutions anyhow!" I don't buy it people. Really? Your plan for making sure you can't fail is that you have decided never to have goals? A pulled out his list of last year's resolutions recently and sighed exclaiming that he hadn't "done very well." It turned out on closer examination that he had made stabs at and some progress on most all of them and had roundly succeeded  on a few to boot! I told him to stop being his own worst critic and appreciate all the success he'd had instead.

An attitude adjustment that allows you be pleased with any amount of progress instead of only perfect completion is helpful, so is a goal making tutorial...practical, yea modest goals are best. Instead of resolving to "eat healthy food" try changing it to "eating something raw every day + joining a CSA." Concrete is good.

Anyhow...all that to say: Here are My 2011 Resolutions!

• Shop for Christmas presents in July
• Get back to my pre-Nib weight
• Get up early 5 days a week (so as to have a quiet space before the hordes are up and buzzing)
• Keep a dream journal next to my bed
• Record all my books on GoodReads again
• Start a Housekeeper's Binder
• Buy a jasmine plant and get it to bloom
• Switch our kids to a local pediatrician (I am sick of driving any more than I have to)
• Call both sets of grandparents on set days, every week
• Host my first real kid birthday party  (Ru, my socialite turns five in April which will be the perfect time)
• Do yoga 5 days a week in the early mornings (maybe 7...we'll see...and also consider taking up running in warm weather)
• Follow a sport (am considering soccer at the moment, although American football has an allure too)
•  Buy my bees

What's on your list?

My Inner Neat Nick

I am not pregnant, but I have a few friends who are at the moment...among them one of my sisters (Hi Doubleddog!!! *waving*). And the other day a few of us were sitting around sympathizing with one very pregnant pal over her irresistible nesting urges.

"EVERYTHING must be done now. It is really important. It will not be okay if we plan on doing it later and I think I'll cry." 

You know, that sort of thing. And I we all ended up in stitches laughing about how dire the whole thing feels and how ridiculous it sounds out loud, especially when you're not pregnant...and also how fabulous it is to know that other people have been the same sort of mutant life-form you turn into when you're making another small human. Golly there is hope in solidarity. Such a great word.

And then tonight A and I went out for dinner and I told him that although I'm a mildly messy person and not very organized about my housekeeping systems and methods I recently put my finger on the fact that disorder really bugs me. On some deep psychological level that is not very overt, I come undone and begin to unravel at the seams. Its just like how some people get grouchy when they're too hungry. I do that when there are too many dirty dishes and none of the toys are in the toy box anymore and the floor hasn't been swept in four days. I am not sure if this is a new part of me emerging as I become neater or if I've always been this way and just noticed, but I've found that if I notice I'm feeling ultra-grouchy and snappy and think about why, sometimes I realize that I think the house is driving me nuts. And then, if I find a little space to work on the house, I magically feel better.

And yeah. Its a tiny piece of that same mania that I feel when I'm at the end of a pregnancy. Except I don't feel that way all the time, around the clock even at every potty break in the middle of the night. I just feel that way when things get too out of control. But, yeah...its the same feeling.

And then today, while blog browsing....I bumped into a cartoonist's blog and they had this fantastic entry that made me giggle, but my favorite part was this drawing which perfectly captures "the feeling."

Occasionally, this beast is me. I feel it coming on.