Plan of the Day and how the Pioneer Woman saved me $9,000

Every morning when I get to work for the Navy there is P.O.D. - Plan of the Day. Today, I have my own P.O.D. - 1. Clean a room. 2. Play on Blogger. Back to Step 1. Insert one soccer game in the middle of all of it, end with a Girl's Night Out to celebrate assorted birthdays (not mine), and the P.O.D. is complete. Hopefully I 'll get to a few of the many, many posts hanging out in draft status wondering if they will ever see the techno-light glow of the Internet.

Why is the cleaning so all-consuming? Well, it all happened in January when the IRS came knocking and wanted an extra $9,000 from 2006. That was a check we couldn't write - just don't have $9,000 laying around. So we went on "The Budget" and one of the things to go was my weekly housekeeper. So cleaning became my leisure activity. I cleaned constantly trying to get that good feeling when the whole house is clean all at the same time - the feeling I used to get every Tuesday afternoon when I would come home from work and find that the housekeeper had come and all was well. It was my suburban version of crack - I desperately wanted that feeling again and if I got it for a minute, I wanted it again immediately.

What does the Pioneer Woman have to do with this? She had a contest on her blog for some Kitchen-Aid mixers. She runs these contests pretty regularly, there may even be one right now! (Sorry, no, just went and checked.) The question she posed to answer for an entry was "If you could have one wish, what would it be?" I flippantly answered, "I'd want my tax bill to disappear." Within a day or two, I got a letter from the IRS, we had submitted a revised 2006 return, they accepted it, not only was our $9,000 bill gone, we would shortly be receiving a check for a $62.00 refund. Hooray! It was magical.

So on Tuesday, my housekeeper returns! But only twice a month because we are still on a revised form of "The Budget" in anticipation of Bookworm heading off to college in the Fall and having to pay that bill. Sigh.

Off to clean a room...

Confessions of an Organized Homemaker by Deniece Schofield

From the back cover: Do you find yourself constantly picking up toys and clothing that clutter your home? Has your desk drawer become your filing cabinet? Do dentist appointments and important events seem to sneak up on you - if you remember them at all? If so, then Confessions of an Organized Homemaker is coming to your rescue!

Learning that I read this book would make half my friends roll their eyes and laugh saying, "She'll never get organized!" and the other half would drop their jaws in surprise and say, "She's the most organized person I know." They'd both be right. I have areas where I rock in organization - I could give seminars on efficiently grocery shopping, doing laundry, and packing lunches. Time management - I can juggle schedules better than most. But my car is always a mess, I have a deep seated phobia that prevents me from going to the post office in a timely fashion, and I am a paper hoarder which leads to lots of other problems! This book didn't solve my problems. I already know what I am supposed to be doing. But it was a nice kick in the rear for a few of my problem areas - menu planning and getting the family to pitch in on chores.

I'm not sure why the title of this book is "confessions" but I do have a few confessions of my own that are the result of my lack of organization. The big one is overdue errands. I am good at the side of errands that is 'picking up what I need', I am bad at the side of errands that is 'returning what I am done with'. I'm taking Lent as a time to make my peace with this world of overdue errands. I have movies from Blockbuster that were never returned (about three months overdue), I have a Play station game from the game store that was rented about four years ago, lost, and never paid for, I have the ball gown destroyed and never returned, and I have the library books from the summer of 2005 that deserve a post all their own. I am tackling each of these neglected chores and doing my penance. In the case of the library books, the penance was fines to the tune of $70.00. See...lack of organization is painfully expensive.

Would I recommend this book? Sure, if it's on a good sale. Most of the organizational/housekeeping tips are very similar to what is to be had for free over at Flylady but sometimes it's nice to hold a book in your hands, curl up under your Snuggie, and imagine what your life could be if you just got organized!

This book is my "C" book for the 2010 A-Z Reading Challenge. Click on the button to see my progress.

Happy Valentines to me...random life happenings

I spent Valentine's Day driving back to South Carolina after spending the weekend with my father. He handled his first dose of chemotherapy very well - kept his appetite, kept his hair (what there is of it!) and, most importantly, kept his sense of humor! His next dose occurs later this week. The first week of March he has a repeat of the brain MRI to check for new growth. That will be a red letter day.




While I was away, I missed snow here in coastal South Carolina. The last time it snowed here was 1989. I missed that snow too - again I was away visiting my parents - what a coincidence!



I got home Sunday night and found a sweet Valentine's gift from Ex-Marine - a Snuggie! As seen on TV! I hinted around quite a bit at Christmas time but nobody took the bait so I was very pleased to see it now. Along with it came a big box of chocolates - diet to follow.



Less than an hour later, Bookworm said, "Somethings wrong with my tub." That something was the septic tank backing up and soon all three tubs had an inch of YUCK covering the bottom. An emergency plumber visit to dig up the tank lid by flashlight revealed that the drain into the tank was clogged with PAPER TOWELS. Some child...and there are really two equal suspects....decided that rather than walk down the hall to get a new roll of toilet tissue, he would just substitute the Brawny paper towels that I keep under the bathroom sink so they are handy to wipe the mirrors. Never dreamed a child would consider using them to wipe something else entirely. And, more than once. Boys really are a different breed. Sigh. Aren't you glad I chose a picture of paper towels rather than a picture of a septic tank.

This post is late getting up but Happy Valentine's Day!

Ants, ants, ants

I'm kind of in a random thoughts mood about ants probably because..they're everywhere and I have a bunch of bites.

They're everywhere. Springtime and summer mean ants in South Carolina. I think Lowe's has an entire aisle devoted to ant killing products. I walk around my yard and treat mound after mound only to walk around the next day and find more. I have this idea in my head, that the ants are burrowing one gigantic mound under the concrete slab that my house is built on. They are tunneling away deeper and deeper. Then one day, a little shake of the planet, a nudge of plate tectonics, will cause the collapse of the ant world under our house and the whole house will kaboom! sink down three or four feet. I'll open the door to be greeted with three feet of dirt staring at me - with tunnels like you see in an art farm full of frantic ants trying to escape.

I think about this when I'm standing in the shower and an ant walks across the ceiling. Or when things like this happen....you turn on the bath tub and ants come running out of the spigot before the water begins. The pipes? They're in the pipes! I am grateful they prefer the bathrooms over the kitchen but really, why are they here at all? Everyone can tell you why the ants try to come into the house... it's because it's so dry, they're looking for water, unless it has rained recently and then it's because it's so wet, and they want a dry spot. Hell, the ants aren't stupid, it's summer in South Carolina, I'm betting they just want the air conditioning.

The ants coming out of the bath tub spigot happened to Youngest. That was a really cruel happening because Youngest has always had a little fear of ants. I'm not sure where it came from but as a toddler, he would get very frightened when there were ants around. With that in mind, imagine my horror when for some reason we were at the Atlanta Airport with Youngest in his stroller and I looked up there at the baggage claim and on the ceiling was a traveling art exhibit, a sculpture kind of thing, of enormous, million times larger than life ANTS! What's everybody's favorite keep the baby in the stroller quiet trick? Why, tilt him backwards, of course... oh noo... keep him looking down at the floor! Whatever you do- do not tilt the baby backwards to see the GIGANTIC ANTS! What a day.

And my final ant thought is how much ant bites hurt and itch. I stepped in a mound the other day. I frantically swiped them off my shoes and dug them out of my socks and thought I had done a good job. But later I realized that a few must have gotten past me and Ihave bites. Not on the feet, not on the ankles, not near the knees,...I have bites up where my bathing suit stops. (No don't think bikini line, my bathing suit stops where the ruffled skirt ends a good three-six inches below the bikini line!) I have three bites just high enough up that scratching them in public is verboten. So, of course, all I want to do is scratch and then go kill more ants.

Life cycle of a Sago palm

Like every other yard in coastal South Carolina my yard is full of Sago palms. They look pretty from a distance but for me the joy of the Sago palm is what's going on inside the fronds. When I walk around the yard, walking the dog, killing fire ant mounds, picking up toys - (it's just one fun thing after another here!) I always peek down inside the palms to see what's happening. I thought it was interesting yesterday that of the six palms in the yard, they were almost all at different stages of development. (They must not be female palms or their cycles would have synchronized by now - ba dum dum.)


So the first guy has nothing going on...just some dead leaves. Picture would probably look better if I had removed the dead leaves but the palm fronds are actually sharp and reaching down in there is dangerous - putting your hand in is like playing Operation but the sting isn't just mildly shocking it's incredibly painful.






The next guy has just the tiniest hint of the growing fronds. And still lots of dead leaves.















Then here you can see the frond buds (I don't really know what they're called, I'm just making this up) getting a little taller - they still just look like brown sticks though.











Now they are beginning to look like something, little green baby palm arms starting to unfurl.















But then there is this...WTH? I have lived in this house for four years. I don't remember ever having seen a giant green possibly alien blob growing inside my Sago palm. I'm going to be watching this carefully and when it hatches it better just be a baby palm - not a hybrid palm monster here to attack.



I'm going to get that question answered. Next week is the city's Tour of Gardens. Five master gardeners are opening up their gardens one a day for five days - see five gardens, five days - it's all so logical. And I am planning to tour them and peek inside all their Sago palms until I find an alien palm baby and then I'll ask aloud, "What the hell is that?" and see what the Master Gardener says probably accompanied by a little eye rolling and heavy sighing. And on the last day, the Master Gardener is in my neighborhood, just one street over. And so I am assuming their yard is going to very similar to my yard... lots of sand (did you see that bare sandy spot in the very first photo), all sorts of trees dropping tree debris constantly, totally invaded by ants and moles, ravaged nightly by deer, and just in general.. hard to work with. And if I like the Master Gardener who lives in my neighborhood, I'm going to take advantage of their "Rent a Master Gardener" program and drop $50 for a consultation. I'm VERY EXCITED! Probably by garden three or four "VERY EXCITED" will be replaced by depressed and hopeless - similar to my emotional roller coaster that is the Christmas Tour of Homes. Somehow I always resist actually leaving that tour and going home to set my house on fire so I'm sure I'll get through this too.

The 60 Second Organizer

From the back cover: There is no better time than the present to get motivated and get organized. The Sixty Second Organizer is an easy-to-read, enjoyable, effective guide you can use to tame the paper tiger and beat the stress and chaos of disorganization. Here are 60 solid techniques - one for each minute of the hour - for getting and staying organized at home and at work.

Well, Jeff Davidson was honest about the easy-to-read part; the format sure did make for quick reading. Unfortunately, the tricks were nothing new. I don't think there was a single item of the 60 that made me stop and think, "Wow, that's a good idea." It was all the same stuff that is hashed over again and again in women's magazines. I guess I'm hoping for a miracle. If the miracle ain't coming, I'd at least like to be amused (think FlyLady!). Perhaps I should look around Amazon and see if I can find a cheap copy of Sink Reflections.

This is one of the books on my list for the Spring Reading Thing 2009. Click on the logo to see the rest of my list.

How do we tell if it's clean?

In the course of my government slavery, I went into a house the other day that was home to a few kids and a set of parents and a small pack of assorted dogs. The house was dirty: piles of things on the floor, dishes unwashed, trash overflowing, and most unappealing - a pile of dog poo on the stairs. The stairs inside the house. The stairs that people would traverse from the first floor to the second floor - eww! So I am telling my friend, Mary Poppins (who really is practically perfect in every way) about this and saying, "How would you not know your dog had pooped in the house?" And there was this pause and she was like, "Well..." and then came the story about the time her dog had pooped in the house and how she was totally unaware but only figured it out later when he was cavorting with a piece of rock hard dried poo. So then she had to search every nook and cranny until she found the poop stash. And just in case you are wondering, Mary Poppins' house is immaculate - except for that one pile of dog poo.

So then of course I started thinking about my own pet poop story. Our cat lives in Bookworm's room. Sometimes the cat roams about the house just to nap in a new spot the way cats like to do and then gets shut out when Bookworm shuts the door and takes off for school or wherever. Shut out from her usual napping spots and from her litter box. Well the way our house is laid out all my places - my bedroom, my den, the kitchen, the laundry room are all at one end of the house. Bookworm is on the other end past the formal living room that gets absolutely no use. So one day there is a knock on the front door - no one uses our front door! I go to "the other side" to let in a dad that is dropping off Youngest. As we're standing there hanging out in the formal unused living room, I'm thinking, "Something (or someone) doesn't smell right." But we make our small talk, thanks for the car pool, see you soon, goodbye. I turn around and there right smack dab in the middle of the center cushion of my lovely leather couch is a pile of cat poop. That's what didn't smell right. And in case you are wondering, although my house isn't immaculate, I do have a housekeeper that comes once a week so it's pretty clean - except for that one pile pf cat poo.

So all of this just begs the question - if the presence or absence of a pile of pet poop in a home can no longer be a benchmark for cleanliness, what are we left with? How do we tell if it's clean?

I contemplated Googling "pictures of poo" to add a graphic but thought better of it...aren't you glad?

Comfort or show

On the Internet chat board that I visit, someone asked the question, "Is your house decorated for comfort or for show?" I answered there but that answer will scroll off in a matter of hours so I am also recording it here because my house that is a bit too comfortable for my taste now, will at some point be ready to show. And I'll be missing all this clutter - maybe.

"Is your house decorated for comfort or for show?"
Comfort...but I would like a little more show - some of these rooms are a little too well worn! The lab mix puppy is a little bit to blame with the chewing of anything she can get her teeth into - including baseboards and a nice little hole in the wall!

Then the sons, Tween and Youngest, share some blame since they like to play ball inside the house despite being told a thousand times to take the balls outside. And when I finally demand they stop throwing balls, they roll up socks and throw those. "Sock balls" I call 'em and they drive me crazy. They are everywhere - on top of the china hutch, under the tables, and in the corners.

Hubby, Ex-Marine, is a little to blame - he likes sports memorabilia - he calls them collectibles and I call them junk! He has Wheaties boxes from twenty years ago - with the Wheaties still inside. Or whatever you would call what used to be Wheaties twenty years ago - toxic dust? Not to mention his GI Joe collection - dust collectors every one!

Teenage daughter, Bookworm, shares a little blame with her cat and clothes and books. And of course my books, crafts, and junk contribute as well. So we are a bit too comfortable and I am ready for some show in my life!

Not a real greenie but...

Our little Cathlic school just finished up a fundraiser. Yawn - old news - anyone with a kid in Catholic school knows you are always either beginning, in the middle of, or wrapping up a fundrasier - they are non-stop. Our fall fundraiser was a wrapping paper slash knick-knack slash chocolate slash shipped meast slash you name it and it was in that catalog sale, I kid you not. Of all the items to choose from, I picked the one that I would buy even if it wasn't a fundraiser...a renewal for my Southern Living magazine. This is my kind of fundraising - buying something that I would have bought anyway but the school gets a little piece of the pie.

Friday was distribution day. The halls were filled with boxes and boxes of mercahndise...or so it appeared. Youngest came home with this good sized box. I took the picture with the Coke can as a point of reference for size. (Side note - I actually had fun looking around my house at all the things that I might use as a size reference...picture the same box with an Always maxi pad taped to the side...toilet humor - still funny even in my forties!)So with this universal size reference of the CocaCola can, you can see that this is a good sized box. It's the kind of box, you look at and say, "Oooh, that's a nice sized box, better not throw that nice sized box away. I'll need a box that size come Christmas."

So I really LOVE the box. But, what was in the box? It was the only thing that I ordered, my Southern Living magazine renewal. A slip of paper. A slip of paper that was maybe 5" x 8" x .0000001" - A SLIP OF PAPER! So I am not a real greenie..but even I know that is just wrong.