Just Ticked Off

Would that I were comfortable with stronger language, because it's warranted. I'm just angry. Sick, tired, and pissed off.

I'm angry that my home is a shambles, once again...and apparently until the end of time. That my young daughter already notices the differences between this home and others, and knows that THIS is wrong. I'm royally pissed off at myself for not pulling my head out and FIXING it, and at everyone else for not caring enough to HELP. I don't understand how the rest of the world can get up, take care of family, go to work, come home, take care of family, clean the entire freaking house so that it's at least in some kind of order, go to bed, then get up the next morning after too little sleep and do it all over again. I don't understand why I CAN'T KEEP UP. I don't understand why I seem to be expected to do it by myself, either, but that's a personal thing I'm pissed off about right now.

I'm sad and disappointed about my weight and health and how out of shape I am, and discouraged at how very long it's going to take me to get THAT mess straightened out. At least I'm making some progress in that arena, at least so far. I just finished my third week of Weight Watchers. Again. Woo-HOO, right? Right. I've done well (I know, for this WHOLE THREE WEEKS), but I'd be more pumped if it wasn't a dang life sentence. I had my baby just over 5 years ago, and I weigh what I weighed at that point, which is the last time I started WW.

Yeah, not much with the stick-to-it-iveness. I couldn't even keep this project going, could I? And obviously, I need to, because when I was journaling here, and reading comments here, I felt less alone, and I WAS getting things done, albeit tiny things. Right now, even the tiny things feel beyond me.

So, I don't know what's next. I may share some recipes and things, but I don't want this to turn into a weight-loss blog, because jumpin' cats, those are boring. But if I find ways to turn out good meals that are actually healthy, I'll share.

I'll have to tell you about the powdered peanut butter I discovered, at the very least.

Comfort Me

Don't act like you didn't suspect that this might happen. By "this," I mean a week without posting. Given the nature of this blog and how it came into being, it's a wonder anything ever gets posted at all. Huge thanks to Sheryl for taking up my slack, there.

Status of my house: Well, we're not LOSING ground. And honestly, that is something. I had good meals going for over a week at a time, there, and that hasn't happened in ages. Also not having happened in ages, a whole week with no dining out or bringing takeout home. That, my friends, is HUGE. I also have to give Alex credit for keeping up with the dishes while I was cooking. Sometimes there would be some left, but he kept the pile from becoming unmanageable, and I appreciated that immensely.

We also actually managed to get about 1/3 of our bedroom clean, working together, which is no small feat. I may not have mentioned it before, but I surely will again, so...our house is weird. It's laid out weird, it's priorities are weird, and...it's just weird. It's over 3,000 square feet, but with tiny bathrooms and closets, and the smallest kitchen you could imagine. Seriously--it's an apartment kitchen, and here we sit in the middle of 5 acres, not in midtown. TEENY. But the master bedroom? It's enormous. There is no reason for a bedroom to be this large. None. It's the size of most people's living rooms. And since we came here from a wee little house, in the way of bedroom furniture, we have...well, a bed. Which itself was a maternal gift. And after several months of us using a Coleman cooler as a night-table (think I'm kidding?) and an empty ceiling-fan box with a couple of barstools as an entertainment center (again, think I'm not serious?), our mothers got together and bought us some more furniture, in the form of a couple of night tables and an actual television cabinet. This leaves about a half an acre of empty space in this bedroom, which for US, is just More Places To Pile Crap. I may take a picture of this...or I may not. I might have reached my internet humiliation threshold.

Honestly--I can already see that a huge challenge for us in keeping a livable home is going to be resisting the temptation to fill every horizontal surface with whatever random detritus happens to be in our hands at the time. From where I sit right now, I can see the Leaning Tower of Weirdness that is our dining table, and it's not pretty. Especially considering that it wasn't that long ago that it was clean. This piling on, it happens FAST. I am bad about piling, and Alex is bad about putting things off until "later." Combined, we are a deadly duo of disarray. I'd like to save Bella from this fate while she's still young enough to mold. She told me a few days ago that she wanted to do something or other at her grandmother's house instead of at home, because "our house is too trashy." Trashy. Yep, that's the word she used. And you know, when you get right down to it and start sorting and cleaning, a lot of it DOES wind up in the trash. Just think how much time and labor we'd save if we took a minute to decide that something (junk mail, newspapers, whatever) was trash, and threw it away BEFORE ever putting it down! Hey, at least I'm thinking, right? Anyway, 1/3 of the bedroom clean is like a whole normal room, and a very good start. I appreciate Alex helping, too, because when he gets going, that man can clean. And fast.

I got sick last week, and meal-planning and preparation went straight out the window. This meant that we spent a lot of money we don't have on takeout, which is really, really stupid. It's unhealthy and expensive compared to home cooking. I always feel like a failure when the takeout bags come in. But I just didn't have it in me, and Alex definitely doesn't feel like cooking a meal when he gets home from work (with our normal work schedules, I get off a couple of hours before him, so it'll be much easier for me to get dinner going by the time he gets home). We're old, tired, and out of shape. And yes, there's an additional area in which we must GET IT TOGETHER, the being out of shape.

So, now it's back to planning and cooking. Honestly, it's the planning that fells me, if I'm going to fall off the wagon. I hate the planning, and coming up with something to cook, and trying to magically divine what the people I'm cooking for will enjoy or even accept. I'm particularly unimaginative when it comes to vegetables. I tend to get some frozen veggies, steam them, and be done. Which while healthy is somewhat boring. No complaints so far, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. I gotta say, though, I am LOVING the new frozen veggies that come in a microwavable steam-pack. GENIUS.

So, there we are, all caught up. At least right here. I'm going to post my favorite comfort food next, and would love it if you'd share yours. Don't we all need some comforting right about now? Me, I have pneumonia and it hasn't stopped raining in forever and my baby girl is growing up faster than the speed of light. COMFORT ME.

Please post your favorite comfort food, and the recipe (or a link to the recipe, if you have it posted elsewhere) here in the comments to this post. I'll figure out some way to compile them and make links for reference. My favorite comfort food is homemade chicken and dumplings, made with fat, fluffy "dropped" dumplings, and I'll be posting the recipe here tomorrow. Alex's favorite comfort food has got to be his mother's chicken tetrazinni. WOW, does he love that stuff, and what little of it I usually get to eat IS darned good. I'll get the recipe from her and post that, as well. Now it's your turn: COMFORT ME.

Hi, My Name Is Sisyphus, And This Is My Boulder.

At least that's how I feel today. I put in something like 5 to 6 cumulative hours on household/family maintenance today, and when I went to bed, everything was just the same as it was when I got up. It's defeating, and it leads to a view of the days, months, and years stretching out before me in household futility.

I mean, I understand that there's something to be said for maintaining the status quo--in fact, it's my very failure to do that which has led me to the point where I'm puking up said failure all over the Internets. I understand how important it is to do those "little things," those thankless tasks that keep a family running. I do. But if I'm doing THAT all the time, how will I ever have time to make anything BETTER?

I mean...hours, literal HOURS on my feet in the house today, with nothing to show for it except that...well, it's not WORSE. Which, I suppose, is more than I could have said at bedtime a couple of weeks ago. When I think of what my mother came home to every day after work when I was a kid, I want to go back in time and slap myself stupid for a.) not cleaning up after my dang SELF, and b.) not kissing her feet in appreciation on a daily basis. Crap, I'm about to cry right now.

After cooking and serving dinner, and Bella's bedtime, and cleanup of dinner, and feeding of dogs and horses, and walking of dogs, and gathering of laundry, when I finally sat down at 10:40 PM, it was with one of the last remaining boxes from the infamous pile. When I opened it, it was full of such random, I-Have-No-Place-To-Put-It-But-I-Can't-Throw-It-Away STUFF, that I just took out the few books (those, at least, I can shelve) and closed it right back up. And left it sitting there, on the loveseat, and turned out the light and went to bed. Which is where I am now. Crying into my computer over the fact that (and yes, this is just hitting home in a big way--I'm a slow learner) THIS NEVER ENDS. And also that if I stop, even for a minute, we begin to slide backward. Again.

I would like to thank my husband for, without being asked, having apparently voluntarily taken up the mantle of chief dishwasher in the last couple of weeks. It is much appreciated. I'm about a thousand times more likely to cook you good food if the dishes I need to use to do so are already clean. I'll take advantage of Canadian Thanksgiving time to count my blessings.

Seriously, achievers, how do you cope? And how do you carve IMPROVEMENT time out of your meager allotment of MAINTENANCE time?

Acronyms for the orderly-challenged

Hi! Sheryl, from Paper Napkin here. I'm so glad Belinda and I are collaborating on this blog. I have a lot of areas of my life where I need to get it together, and I think you, and she, and I can all help each other, hooray for blogs!

85-90% of the time my house is clean. The rest of the time my house is either very clean, or a sty. Now clean to me, may not be clean to you. Clean to me means when I bring in groceries, I have a place to put the bags down. It means I can walk around my house without stepping on stuff. It means neighbors can drop by, and I'm not embarrassed. Unless it's my pin-neat neighbor (curse her). It does not mean a place for everything and everything in its place. I wish I were that kind of person, but I ain't never gonna be that kind of person. Plus I have 3 little kids, so I've let go of that dream. Case in point, was going to take pictures of my house to show you what clean means to me, but I can't find the battery charger for the camera.

I've always been a messy person. When I was in college, there were wall to wall clothes in my apartment, and days-old dishes in the sink, and it was the same when I lived at home. But I've always hated being messy. Messes depress me, so over the years I found a way to control it. Then I had kids, and that threw me for a loop for a while, but I've got it under control again.

There are a lot of little tricks I use to keep the house clean. The verymost important one is DLFB. When I first started cracking the whip on my inner slob, I asked myself, what are the essentials? What areas of housekeeping absolutely must be done for me to feel sane and peaceful? DLFB: dishes, laundry, floors, bathrooms. Since I'm a dork, I made a sentence to help me remember: Domestic labor feels beautiful. (I told you I was a dork.)

If I do a little bit in each of these areas daily (or almost daily), keeping the rest of the house clean seems to follow. Notice I said a little bit. I do one load of dishes a day, I run the dishwasher at night, and my kids empty it in the morning, so I can stick a few dishes in it here and there during the day. Occasionally I have to do 2 loads, but most of the time I can pack the dishwasher full enough that I only have to do one load.

I also do one large load of laundry a day. We're a family of 5, so that doesn't keep the hampers empty, but it does keep them from overflowing. I hate laundry with the fire of a thousand suns, so I try to encourage us not to cycle through too many clothes. I make the kids change after school, which keeps school clothes nice, and who cares if their play clothes are dirty? (Well, actually I care, but I care more about not having tons of laundry, so if it's a choice between my pride and more work, laziness always wins.)

As for the bathrooms, I just do one thing a day. I clean the toilets, or sometimes just one toilet. Or I swipe the counters. It takes me 30 seconds, and I'm done for the day. I keep the Windex and paper towels on the counter and The Works (which I swear by) by the toilet in each bathroom, so they're right there. Inconvenience is the enemy of clean, if you're a lazy slob. I approach floors the same way. I vacuum one room, or sweep, or mop, but never all in one day. If it seems doable I'll do it, otherwise, forget it.

Figuring out the non-negotiables of housecleaning put things in clear perspective. DLFB saved my butt, and my house. It makes house cleaning manageable, because it's just 4 things! I can do that! It gives me peace of mind, and when those things are done, it makes keeping the rest of the house clean fairly easy. I tell you the other tricks I use too. Hope they help!