Updates

You know, I'm looking for a laptop now, muddling through recommendations from people I know and complete strangers... If I had one, and if I had a wireless router set up in my home, I could have uploaded a picture of my bedroom for your entertainment (put those dirty minds away!).

We stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home yesterday and I decided that I needed to - da, da, da, dum! - ORGANIZE.

So I bought a shoe bag for the back of one door and two Sterilite plastic drawers for the bottom of my closet. I'm most definitely NOT a shoe girl, but somehow I've accumulated, oh, I don't know, 50 pairs of shoes??? Some are winter, some are summer, some are dress-up, and they were all either (1) on the door-mounted shoe rack, (2) in cardboard shoe boxes or plastic shoe boxes piled up on the bottom of my closet, (3) tossed willy-nilly around the bottom of my closet so that I have to crawl inside to find a matching pair, or (4) the three pairs I wear on a regular basis are out in the middle of the room, in front of the dresser, right where I stumble on them whenever I walk around the bed to get to my side.

We're in Wal-Mart and we're shopping separately (we both have cell-phones now so he's allowed off on his own - I'll always be able to find him now!) and I have a basket full of plastic drawers, shoe bags, racks, saline and shoe inserts for my owey heel. I run into my dear husband in the housewears department and he says, "What do you have there?" just as I say, "I've decided to organize my shoes."

His response? "You have too much stuff in your closet - it's a waste."

So I got annoyed and then when he said to get a shoe bag and put it on his closet door I said I'm going to oganize my closet but that doesn't mean take over yours 'cause you always throw in that I have one drawer in your dresser so I'm not using your closet... (Did you notice that awful person/tense switch?!?!)

Then while I was stomping around the store for the remainder of my shopping trip, I realized something: we each have two closets, one in our room, and he has one in daughter's room and I have one in son's room, but he ALSO has daughter's giant IKEA freestanding closet. And we each have one dresser/bureau. So he actually has MORE closet space than I do! And he has the nerve to complain that mine is too packed??????????

Anyhoo... I pulled out ALL.THE.SHOES.IN.THE.BOTTOM.OF.MY.CLOSET.

Oh, dear Lord! The room was a MESS to the nth degree!!! But I got them all back inside, summer shoes in the two plastic drawers, boots standing on the right side, and only 4 plastic shoe boxes stored on top of the two drawers with special dressy, strappy shoes that I wear once or twice a year in their own boxes.

And I moved a couple of clothes around and made it a bit less crowded, decided to donate a few things that gave me even more room, AND got it all done literally 1 minute before he decided to come upstairs and be done for the night! I had JUST sat down on the bed and sighed out loud, when he came up the stairs!

I'll have to take a picture of my shoe storage and post it here some day, just for giggles! And 'cause I'm darn proud of it!

Oh, and I hung the shoe bag on the back of the bathroom door so I can store the stuff that accumulates on top of the sink in it and only have my toothbrush holder on the sink so it looks all clean and neat in there instead of how it usually looks...

Cabbage Soup

So several years ago I ran across the Cabbage Soup Diet. It was created for overweight heart patients so that they could lose a quick number of pounds before surgery. It's NOT intended to be a diet anyone follows for a length of time; it could most definitely lead to malnutrition if overdone.

That said, I followed it to the letter the first time I did it and lost 11 pounds in one week. 11 pounds! Oh, did I feel awesome! It's basically water weight you lose, and it comes back on when you revert to your old eating habits. But it proved to me that I could afford to lose the weight so later on, when I was ready, I joined Weight Watchers.

Now over the years, though, I've tried the Cabbage Soup Diet again, feeling at times like I needed a quick diet fix. I couldn't do it. The basic premise is that for one week you are only allowed to eat the soup and a few other items: for instance, the first day is fruit and soup, no bananas. The second day is vegetables and soup, no potatoes. The third day is a number of bananas and soup, no other fruit, and so on. (I'm not sure I got everything in the right order; if you want a copy of the diet, contact me in the comments and I can send it to you.) What I discovered the second time around is I like texture in my food. I would have gnawed off my own arm to eat something crunchy, like crackers or potato chips, instead of spending a week not having to chew anything!

Anyway, Jack likes the soup. He's a soup person, and surprisingly, a bucketload of cabbage soup doesn't do anything gastric to him other than, and I quote, "give him energy." Pardon me, but WTF??? Energy? Without eating any food??? Not this girl!!!

But every once in a while he begs me to make the soup, and I do. And I did. On Sunday.

And surprisingly, this time around, the soup tastes good to me. I think I must have overdone the black pepper last time, like put it in and forgotten I had and doubled it, because all I remember from the last batch is I hated it!

Sunday's pot is quite tasty, if I do say so myself. So we'll be doing cabbage soup until it's gone, not to the diet extreme, but along with regular food. And I'm looking forward to lunch.

And it's only 8:13am.

Horrors in Haiti

I don't know what to do.

I've donated money. I've brought foodstuffs in to church where they're collecting canned goods to send to those poor people.

It's not enough.

It's days like this that I sometimes wish I was a go-getter, someone who would really get off her butt and do something.

My heart bleeds for these people. I cry as I watch the news reports. I thank the Lord that none of my family is there, but at the same time I feel for those total strangers as if they were family.

When they find a survivor, a young child, or an older woman, I cheer, buoyed beyond belief that another person beat the odds. Could I live seven, eight days without food and water? I truly don't think so, so used am I to opening the cabinet and grabbing a diet Dr. Pepper and a breakfast bar whenever I feel like it (forget about "when I'm hungry").

We are truly spoiled, here in this great USofA.

I, for one, will try my best to appreciate what I have, do with a little less, and give a lot more.

THAT is one thing I can do in honor of those in Haiti.

Prissy is just so cute!!!

Okay, want to see a picture of a cute puppy named Prissy?

Go to my friend Miss Hope's blog post: Hope from the Edge.

OMG - that has to be one of the cutest puppies of all time!

Hey, my sister has a Westie who'd love a cute little girlfriend, Miss Hope, and long distance is the ONLY way I'd go for some puppy love when they're this young...

His name is Duncan and you can see a picture of him right here:

Haiti

Please do whatever you can do to help those poor people in Haiti. I spent a few moments today at lunchtime watching some video on CNN.

I cried.

I made a donation to the Red Cross and my company is matching any of our documented donations as long as they're made by January 31. I'm so glad I work where I do.

If you pray, please pray for Haiti.

If you send good wishes or positive thoughts, please send them winging to Haiti.

If you believe in anything, please ask for help for Haiti.

Words to Live By...

I read childsplayX2 on a regular basis. Yesterday's post, Fear Can Suck It, is IT, man! Every one of us, with or without kids, should read this and take it to heart.

I would print it here so it's easy for you to read, but it's copyrighted so go to this blog post and read it and know that this dad, who loves his children so very much, really should make your list of "Blogs I Read on a Regular Basis."

That last paragraph ROCKS! And the idea of realizing all I can be??? AWESOME!

I don't know what's happening to me...

I'm well aware that when I eat bad things, I gain weight.
When I don't exercise, I don't lose weight.
When I eat late, I gain weight.
And Jack has been so good about helping me.
Until this week.
All of a sudden we're having coffee and snacks around 9pm.
THIS.HAS.TO.STOP.
TODAY.
TONIGHT.
Maybe tomorrow (there's some pumpkin pie left!)

I'm already failing...

Did you read my last post? About how I'm going to De-Clutter my house and my life?

Well, we got off to a great start, and haven't touched those Rubbermaid buckets again! But I'm going to do it, I swear I am.

Although we did get rid of about 3 pounds of candy by giving them to our dear daughter - she's enabling the chocoholics she works with by bringing the chocolate in for them. She says it's like watching starving animals attack!

Yesterday was my little neighbor baby's 2nd b'day - Happy B'day, G! I called to leave him a message on the phone and his mama called me back and I got to wish him a happy b'day on the phone! And he sang Happy B'day back to me, and he said hi and bye to Jack. He's so darn cute!

Next week is going to be a tough Weight Watchers week - here's what it's going to look like:
Tuesday - dinner out (work event)
Thursday - dinner out (scrapping event)
Friday - dinner out (work event for Jack)

Yea, I know, I can eat healthy when eating out. But I don't. It is what it is, folks. And this week I'm already bloated which means that this Saturday my weight will be up, and NEXT Saturday it will be up (even though I'll be losing the bloat by the end of next week) - I HATE watching my weight!

So here's what I'm wearing today...

I made a mini-resolution to myself to try not to wear jeans to work except on Fridays. We don't have that rule, but I have a tendency to, well, not look my most put together when I wear jeans, so I figured I'd try for 4 of 5 weekdays... And so far this year, I've managed.

BUT today I got up, put on a pair of new black pants that had been hanging in my closet for over a year, a Pucci-inspired blouse (black, lime green, cranberry, brown, orange and blue - it's nicer than it sounds, I swear!), a black sweater (thanks, hon, for my Xmas present!), and (unfortunately) dark bronze shoes. Which of these things just doesn't belong? Yes, the dark bronze shoes - but there's a reason for that fashion faux pas - that broken toe I had since Thanksgiving? My black heels are just a tad too tight and too high to wear yet, so I figured, who's going to really care about the fact that my shoes aren't quite going with the rest of my outfit? Certainly not me.

Until I got out of the car in front of the building and realized my pants are not black.

They're navy blue.

A really noticeable navy-blue-that's-not-black.

So I'm really self-concious about how I look today... Oh, well, maybe someone will submit me to What Not to Wear!!!

De-Clutter

You know, there are many blogs online where you can register your "word" for the year, try to "live" your word. And most wonderful, thoughtful, deep people are choosing words like "nurture," or "story," or "blessing," or "peace," or "hope."

Me? Not so deep. My word is De-Clutter. Capitalized just like that. Hyphenated just like that. Emphasis on the "De."

My house is full of stuff. Important stuff, sure, stuff that neither Jack nor I would want to lose or give up for all the tea in China.

But it's full of a lot of other kinds of "stuff." Stuff we don't need, don't want, never needed, shouldn't have kept, shouldn't have bought, should have passed up... Get the picture? "Stuff" that's making me short of breath, "stuff" that's overwhelming me, "stuff" that's collecting dust, "stuff" that needs to be De-Cluttered. Now. ASAP.

When I cleaned for the holidays, I took lots of "stuff" that didn't belong on the first floor, in the living room, kitchen, dining room or library, and dumped it into Rubbermaid bins and piled them high in the computer room. I promised myself I'd go through them with a hard heart and throw out or donate whatever didn't have a home and/or whatever I didn't want/need. Jack and I dipped our toe into the De-Cluttering project on Saturday. We started a bit of cleaning, and so far I have two small boxes/bags to be donated to the VVA (they pick up at the house and they take clothes and small household items). We didn't overtire ourselves, just puttered around for a half-hour or so in the middle of the afternoon, and BOY-HOWDY, did I feel accomplished when I saw two bags of trash and two boxes/bags for donation!

2010 is going to the be year I De-Clutter. I will be De-Cluttering my life, my house, my bookshelves, my drawers, my closets, whatever can be De-Cluttered will be De-Cluttered.

I swear. I promise. I pinky-swear. (Yup, this is for real, folks!)

It's 01/01/10!

Thought I'd mess up those numbers, didn't you?!? (Confession: I did. The original post title read 'It's 01/10/10!")

Sometimes I make resolutions. Sometimes I even announce what they are. And I never manage to keep them throughout the new year.

But I'm going to try again. Here goes:

1) This year I'll try to eat better and exercise more. (An easy resolution since we just knocked down our universal and gave it to my sister-in-law, who's a personal trainer. Yes, and I'm still x# of pounds overweight and too lazy to exercise!)
2) I'll try to scrap more and make more homemade cards. (I'm off to an okay start on this one since I made a b'day card for my cousin-in-law, and a Bar Mitzvah card for our neighbor's son today, and I'm hoping to make a couple of thank you cards tomorrow or Sunday for some of great gifts I've gotten this holiday season!)
3) I will try really hard to be a better wife/mother/daughter/sister/aunt/cousin/friend/employee. (Please fill in whichever one applies to you!)
4) I will try to purge and organize my home and my life. There is too much clutter, of the "stuff" kind and the mental kind in my life and I need to just clear it all out so I can breathe.
5) This year we will make out our will. We have stuff that needs to have a home post-us and without a will there could be some trouble so we will move forward with this project this year.

And that's all I'm posting here - there are a couple of other things, some more important than what's in black and white here on my blog and a few that are quite a bit more frivolous, but I picked a few that mean something. I figure there are at least two of you out there reading this blog that will hold me accountable...

Some holiday photos were posted on Facebook - haven't downloaded them to my desktop yet so I didn't post them here yet, but I will. Soon.