Nobody Pee

• My office floor is empty
• My desk is cleared off
• The car is cleaned out
• The lawn is mowed
• The bottom of the stairwell is painted
• The bathrooms are all clean
• The garbages are emptied
• The pool is winterized
• The dining room is tidy
• The TV room is tidy
• The Primary invitations are made
• I take bread to Sister Doerksen
• I call the people I visit teach
• The windows are all clean
• All of the miscellaneous baskets in my house are emptied

I'm getting happier and happier. 

Just, please, no one use the bathrooms
until the rest of my list is finished.

I'll Be Happy When...

• My office floor is empty

• My desk is cleared off

• The car is cleaned out

• The lawn is mowed

• The bottom of the stairwell is painted

• The bathrooms are all clean

• The garbages are emptied

• The pool is winterized

• The dining room is tidy

• The TV room is tidy

• The Primary invitations are made

• I take bread to Sister Doerksen

• I call the people I visit teach

• The windows are all clean

• All of the miscellaneous baskets in my house are emptied


I know I'll be happy then.  I just know it.

Homemade Taco Seasoning is Disgusting.

Why did I have to quadruple the recipe?

"Did You Wash Your Hands?"

"Yep. I did it while I was going to the bathroom.
I can reach the sink from the toilet."

"You mean, before you wiped?!"

"Uh-huh."

Efficiency gone wrong. Gross!

Life is Really Getting Great...

when you can sit down on a Saturday night with your ten year old and enjoy the same chick flick together.

My Favorite Household Chore Is...

Vacuuming up spiders.



I got a 4-inch one today.

It's like Murder She Wrote.

Except I'm the criminal; not the Angela Lansbury.

It's very satisfying. In a creepy sort of way.

"Why Are You Throwing Away My Picture?"

This is my least favourite question in the whole world.

And the silver medal for least favourite question goes to...

"Where's My ________[e.g. brown puppy with the white spot that I won at the fair two years ago and have never ever mentioned or played with and looks like all of the other stuffed puppies in this house]?"

I always answer with a vague, "Hhmmm, I don't know where it could be or how it got in the garbage." But I believe there will be a day of reckoning where I will have to own that they all went to Salvation Army and the trash as soon as I could possibly sneak them out of the house.

I think that will be a bad day for me.

What's That About?

I have an irrational, disproportionate discomfort with being the last person to comment or ask a question before the end of a class.

In high school and college I would start watching the clock at about ten minutes before the class ended, and no matter how badly I wanted to clarify something, add my insight or answer a question that seemed to be stumping everybody else, I wouldn't let myself do it. Because it might be the last comment of the class. Gasp! And oh dear if it turns out that the question I asked 16 minutes before class ended winds up being the last question. Uugghh! Now I go through this same clock-watching exercise in Sunday School and Relief Society. Thank goodness I wear a watch.

This morning as I suggested a brilliant name for my cousin's fish on her blog, I realized that I kind of have the opposite thing going on for me in cyberspace. If I'm not the first to comment, I pretty much won't do it.

I think it might boil down to the pressure of having to be clever. I can't cope with it. (It's why I'm grateful to have a blog readership of four.)

If I ask the last question it will be what echoes in everyone's brains as they walk out of class. Like saving your bacon for the last bite so you walk away from the table with a bacon-flavored tongue (yumm), but in a bad way. If I comment when others have already typed their witty, loving, insightful words, well... I guess I just won't.

What does this say about my personality? Maybe I should work on this? Well, add it to the list.

Won't Anything Work?!?

I am so sick of all the crap everywhere I could scream!!

Wait a minute. I did scream.

I do scream!

It doesn't make a difference.

I dumped out 3/4 of it while they were away this summer. They didn't even notice.

And then the junk mated with other junk. Or spawned. Or multiplied through mitosis. Or cloned itself.

But somehow, in a matter of months we're back to the same old place.

Stuff everywhere. Five puzzle pieces here, three baby toys there. Two winter mitts that didn't make it into the winter gear storage box. One Christmas ornament, four dolls, one deck of cards, two light sabers, 17 odd socks, the favourite pillowcase, 9 hair baubles, a comb, seven sweatshirts.

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Have I mentioned that I could scream!?!

The Crap makes me so mad. (Pardon my French). Unreasonably mad.

There's a little me sitting on my shoulder telling me that my reaction is illogically out of proportion.

But the little red me with horns is coaxing me to throw it ALL away. All of it.

No more puzzles, pony tails, ponchos, or pear scented lotion. They can all just sit on the couch and look out the window and count the birds that fly by.

NAKED!! (The people, not the birds. Well, both actually, I guess.)

So tonight I started PLAN #42--The Junk Trunk!!

See, this one is going to work because it has a catchy name.

The idea is simple. I dump everything that is not put away into the Junk Trunk (See it rhymes. It's reeling you in too, isn't it?) They can dig through it if they need something. When the Trunk is full, I dump all of it in the garbage. (Sorry, landfills. Sorry, posterity. It's either fill the landfill or the asylum and my research shows that landfills require less taxpayer support.)

What Are You Good At?

The next time someone asks me
what I'm good at.
Or what I like to do.

I'm going to say that I like to
make To Do Lists.
And I'm really good at it too.

Do They Make Shower Karaoke Machines?

"Oh what a beautiful mooor-nin'! Oh what a beauuuuu-tiful day! I've got a beautiful feeeeee-lin'--Everything's going my way. Do-bop do do do do doooo do. Do-wop do do do do dummmmm...

"Dankashane. Darling Dankashane. Wah-bop. La-di-dah. Do-di-dah. Du du du...

"If I had a million dollars (If I had a million dollars), I would remember the words (I would remember the words)...

"Give said the little stream. Give Oh Give. Give Oh Give."

Of course, I can remember all those words. But no matter how jazzy Give Said the Little Stream gets, I'm just sure that my shower's acoustics and my vocal transcendence would be better utilized with all of the lyrics in tact on a Bare Naked Ladies Song.

They make everything in the world. Surely they make these.
And, by the way my birthday is just around the corner.

Does Squeegying the Shower...

...and Walking the Kids to School Every Now and Then Count as an Exercise Regime?

"Regime" makes it feel so likely to work.

Do You Know What Tempts Me To Lie?

When I do Chas's hair and it looks awful. I let them believe he did it himself. I even add that "Santa brought him his very own gel in his stocking."

When one tiny little, turns out to be stinky, toot escapes the hatch. Thank goodness for a baby to blame it on. He doesn't even mind.

When an official, permanent, document asks my weight. I'd tell anyone rather than tell that document that is going to be typed and stare me in the face every time we go through the border for years to come. The irony is that my history will show that nailing down any weight in type would be better what the real weight will be two years from now.

When something costs $1.94 and I bought seven of them. Can I just say they were a dollar each?

When my children are exhausted and cranky at 6:45 on New Year's Eve and I realize that a three hour movie only gets us to quarter of ten. Is setting the clocks forward a lie? Or is it more like optional daylight savings? It sure made for a cheerful New Year's Day.

Why is it OK to Whistle in Public, but Not OK to Sing?

Why can't you stand facing the back of the elevator?

And why can't you sit at the same table with someone else in a cafeteria?

Why are you allowed to sneeze in public, but your stomach growling is faux pas?

Sometimes social customs just drag me down.

Where's My Watch?

And the car keys?
And my purse the size of Connecticut? (It seems it would be impossible to misplace.)
What did I do with the grocery list I just finished writing?
Has anyone seen my cell phone? (Can't call it, of course, because it hasn't been charged in days.)

Why can't I get my act together?
When am I going to learn?


I asked Dallin if he would still love me when I was old and had Alzheimer's. He said he was sure adding old age wouldn't change anything, since he loved me with Alzheimer's already.

Is This Plant Going To Make It?

It's not looking too promising.

What Could Be Better?

It started earlier this week with a bowl of Breyers Brownie Mudpie.

But it wasn't salty enough.

The next bowl had a bit of peanut butter stirred in. Yum. Almost like a Ben & Jerry's flavour.

The next one was the same.

But that got old.

Tonight I discovered the chocolate sauce in the fridge.

I have arrived.

The brownie mudpie. The peanut butter. The fudge sauce.

Good thing I have also arrived at the end of the box.

Why Am I Blogging? (Part IV)

It's like a grocery list for my questions.

You know how when you realize you need sour cream or cleanser or cinnamon it nags at the back of your brain until you write it down?

Oh, no. What was it that I was supposed to remember at the store.
Was it sage? Baking soda? Tissues?
Why didn't I write it down?

Even when I write it on a scrap of paper doomed to be lost long before the grocery store trip, I still feel better. And that annoying voice saying: Cleanser. Cleanser. Don't forget the Cleanser. You're going to forget, I know you are, finally leaves me alone.

It's that same way with all of these questions plugging up my mind.

Blog on scrap of paper and have done with it.

How Could It Possibly Be 11 O'Clock Already?

Kindergarten pick-up time.

All I did was nurse and clean two bathrooms.

Stinky. (The bathrooms and the pick-up time.)

Oh, and I wrote this little blog.

What If I Made a List

of all of the things I do today
instead of all of the things I need to do?

It might be a really short list.