Joan of Arc???

I was in the grocery yesterday and hummed along to a familiar song. Then, I thought about the lyrics.

"She's so high
High above me
She's so lovely

She's so high
Like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc,
or Aphrodite"

-Four Year Strong

Wait, what? He is describing a lovely, spoiled woman who has everything, including status. Cleopatra - check. Aphrodite - double check.

But Joan of Arc? The girl-martyr? How did she get in this song????

My greatest fear

As a child, my greatest fear was my dad dying. I had nightmares about it. My mom is immortal, so I didn’t have to worry about her, and besides, her voice is implanted in my head. Listen:

Why am I wearing this ugly shirt? And why am I not best friends with that person I don’t like? When is someone going to clean this up and stop living like a pig?

My mom in my head shakes her head in my head.

Back to my dad. While he isn’t the image of frailty and weakness, he embodied the Achilles’ heel of my childhood. If something had happened to my dad, everything in my life would change. He was the financial provider while my mom stayed home with us (thanks, Mom!), he took care of us when we were sick, and he represented security to me.

One day he had the audacity to mention his mortality. In the military, he had assisted doctors harvest organs from donors. He enthusiastically told us that when he died, he wanted to donate his own organs. Stretching out his hand, he mused about how fascinating it would be if someone else could have his hand.

So yes, the nightmares were his fault.

I didn’t want someone else to have his hand. First of all, they didn’t deserve it. Second, even before having read Frankenstein, that sounded freaky.

My dad averted my fears by not dying, and has continued the trend to not dying as a grandfather. Jenna has done most of the work in that effort, but I assisted as well, providing this specimen:

Before reproducing, I knew that children tend to look like their predecessors. It makes sense; genes and such. I hadn’t considered so much that children are their predecessors. They are new life, but they are a continuation of old life, which is weirdly beautiful. “Living on” in someone or “surviving” someone isn’t just poetic, it is somewhat literal.

So now I’m left to wonder at this new life, with his new soul and personality, but with his daddy’s chin and huge eyes (and feet), his mommy’s ears, and everything else that came from grandpa. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

P.S. Dad, might I tempt you to postpone dying until great-grandfatherhood? Perhaps great-great?

Organize 2014: April

It's May already. Shhh... ignore that and I will, too.

This month I made a discovery - the best baby article you have is a laundry basket. I picked up this beauty at Goodwill for $4, and it is brilliant for a baby learning to sit. We have tile floors, which hurt to go bonk on (we have gone bonk several times, twice on the head and once on the face. Scrunchy got over it quickly, though). Sitting him in a basket provides two benefits: 1, the sides catch him so that he can straighten himself. 2, the toys can't escape.






So, for my April organizational goal, I decided to straighten my back door closet. The one that contains my life line of reusable grocery bags. Observe:

I didn't mean to clean this closet at first - I started working on the library and found these backpack/bags my husband had brought home. I was going to sew adorable bags in this exact function when I realized I could take these fake-backpack like things, turn them upside down, and cut the bottoms open. It took all of five seconds, and I was done. I then stuffed the bags with grocery bags. It's like Inception, but less irritating.

I also separated the paper vs. reusable bags to improve the hoarding experience, and rearranged the junk treasures on my storage shelf. More on the storage shelf in a future post.

Final result:

Organize 2014: March

My previous handling of pantry encounters went like this: open door, stare at the chaos, grab chips, get away quickly and try to forget what I had seen.

Much like the way I handled college parties.

But college is over now, as is pantry chaos, thanks to one hour of my day in March, and nifty labels.



Seriously, only one hour. It's not perfect, but it is a drastic improvement. See? I even labeled the shelves:



My shelves are labeled as follows from top to bottom: Storage, drinks/candy, snacks/condiments, cooking tools, baking, carbs and cans, and there is space on the floor for heavy stuff that doesn't go anywhere else.

I even hung up my mop and broom.

That wasn't as dreadful as I had imagined. Hussah!

Organize 2014: February

I was raised by a Home Ec teacher. I learned to like sewing, cooking, needlework, grocery shopping, and, you know, other home economics things.

But not cleaning. My mom is the domestic goddess of all things home economical, but I think she secretly longs for a maid to do all the dirt removal.

So how does one clean? I asked my lovely MOPs mentors this question, and they came back with great advice - divide the work and it won't be so overwhelming.

So for my February organization goal, I created a cleaning schedule that I follow faithfully as best as I can throughout the week. It goes like this:

Monday - Dust and clean the windows/mirrors day
Tuesday - Floor day
Wednesday - Random cleaning day
Thursday - Bathroom day
Friday - Grocery shopping/I'm off the hook for cleaning day

Every day I have mini goals, which are as follows:

-Make the bed
-10 minute pick-up
-Laundry
-Have sink empty and counters wiped by the end of the day

Floor day is tedious and extremely necessary. I get so many puke-splotches on my tile during the week that you would think we live on carnival grounds. (Did you know that baby spit up is called positing and not vomiting? Ah, the education of motherhood).

I actually look forward to random cleaning day - that's the day I clean something that doesn't normally get cleaned, and could be just something that I noticed looked disgusting lately. If I'm tired I'll just clean Scrunchy's toys and feel satisfied with that.

If I had bigger problems with laundry, I would make a day of that too, but I don't usually have a problem remembering to transfer and fold it. It's a gift...

On the laundry note though, I'm going to have to do a lot of it now because I realized I was ruining my son with laundry detergent. He's had dry skin since he was born, and I thought I tried everything to get rid of it. I had oiled him with coconut, olives, organic nonsense, and changed the detergent three times. This week I noticed that his diaper area was the only place that didn't have the rash, so I washed his clothes in the diaper detergent to see if that would help (he is cloth diapered). It did. Now to wash every article he owns...

Organize 2014: January

I have been wanting to write a post for a while, but rather than bore you with my Shelley-like turmoils, I thought I would tell you about my 2014 Resolution.

(Why do I feel the need to blog? I'm not sure, but I decided to stop fighting it)


I used to be a document controller, which meant that I got to fight with engineers about organization systems. It was riveting work. Since I quit to become the full time mom to Scrunchy, I realized my own home is, well, not quite in chaos...probably not close to chaos, even, but still it bothered me.

No, I'm not obsessive compulsive.

No, you aren't either.

Obsessive compulsion is a disorder, and while some of you may like to be organized and are bothered by mess, that doesn't mean you have OCD. Obsessive compulsives tend to have dried-out hands from being washed too much, and can't sleep at night because the bedroom door frame is slightly crooked.

For another thing, you cannot be OCD. You can have OCD, but unless you are the disorder yourself, stop claiming to "be so OCD, lol." It's annoying.

Back to my resolution.

For January, I decided to organize my important documents in a filing container that I can grab on my way out the door when my house bursts into flames. After my child. Scrunchy comes first, then the important documents. I went out and bought a container from the thrift store, only to realize we already owned one. Sigh... $2 for naught... Anyway, it only took me a couple of hours, and made me feel better about life:

See the beautifully organized files? Me neither. They aren't alphabetized, but they work. Yay for one resolution down!