Flowers in January

I love fresh flowers.
I used to buy myself fresh flowers as a treat, just because.

They're pretty, they brighten every room, and they are, well, cheery.

Flowers are Cheery!

After the break, a friend who was watching my cats offered to help me completely gut my house of all excess clutter -- so that my life, that of a mom with three kids, before we get all judgey and wonder why a friend would feel such a strong desire to help clean out a house... how messy could it be! -- and for the price of some still-owed dinners, spent a few weekends (and a few more to come, yay!) helping me gut and purge.

Purged: I have made four or five trips to Good Will since returning from Oregon after Christmas. Four or five trips where my truck has been filled with donations. Filled, to overflowing. Filled to the point of 'okay, remember, no backing up because you can't see out the back window.'

Gutted: Lets just say no one has a need for Tumeric, expiration date 2007, a dusty Pampered Chef gingerbread train mold from pre-2000 and a bag of flax, circa 2006.

The entire first level of my house is clutter free. Everything has a place. There's room. My cabinets, oh the room!

So, being thrilled (who wouldn't be) at how not cluttered/messy/crazy my living areas appeared to be, I've introduced flowers.


At first, the flowers were just on the table, but then I realized, they are even cheerier, and make the room and spaces even brighter, when they are spread out a bit.

Just a bit of color

The downstairs sewing/working desk.The counter.

My biggest motivation to finish the upstairs is the smallest of reasons.

I want to add flowers upstairs, too.

It's the smallest things that bring the greatest moments. And just looking at the flowers makes me feel a bit better, a bit cheerier.

Yes, even the bathroom

Saturday night, with the cats

It's been a full week practically since I rambled!

It's been a crazy week. People are crazy, I'm thermonuclear, apparently, (alas, every day, I work to be the river. Rivveeer, I'm a river...)

I'd tell you all about how much fun I'm having with my fat cat on my lap and the other cat all leaned up against me, because that's exciting, being all cuddled up on the couch with the cats. I mean, what else would you rather be doing?

This is my weekend.

It's a bit sad, right?

That's my Saturday night. I've got Walking Dead on, because it's kinda addicting, and some tea, because I'm seriously coming down with a cold from the IT guy who came to work with the plague on a day when our co-workers were acting like crazed asylum inmates, so despite his plagueness, we locked ourselves in our shared-office.  Umm, or perhaps we were the crazed asylum inmates locked in... either way, I can feel this cold coming.

Happily, my cats are keeping me warm, because it's January.

January.

Still.

Can't. Take. It. Need. Spring.

Flowers!

I'll buy flowers!

And, sadly, I'm so tired, because of this cold thing that's coming, I can't even talk about all the excitement about getting rid of six years of boxes with the help of my friends. Six years of boxes... take up a lot of room. Okay, they were empty, but there were a lot, and we had to break them down, and we took them to the recycling place. It was kinda liberating. I dislike having so much clutter, so much 'stuff.' I'm so excited that I've de-cluttered and tossed so much 'excess' out. I'm excited to keep going. Except tonight.

Tonight, not so much.

Tonight, I'm on the couch with cats drinking tea, cuz it's Saturday night.

It was all going well... until

The garbage disposal stopped disposing.

The beans simmering on the ovens had no matching hot dogs.

The milk for the cereal, which replaced the not-hot-dogs-and-beans ran out.

Everyone wanted eggs when I just wanted to eat my beans-on-toast-with eggs.

The game on the computer crashed.

There weren't enough blankets and the bed wasn't fluffy enough... what do you mean, the bed wasn't fluffy enough, you're a nine year old boy!

The overtired boy who wanted to sleep alone left only to have the other overtired boy who never wants to sleep alone follow him.

At least the teenage girl fixed the garbage disposal and did her homework!

And, and at least I wasn't Edith, on Downton Abbey, to be left at the altar, /omgiosh.

So it was every one for themselves and in the end, in the end, the teen girl chilled and didn't fight with the boys, and the boys did what all little boys do, even little boys who are nine years old and big boys do, they crawled into mom's bed.

And I, the mom,  am doing what all moms do, giving up on any notion of an actual good night's sleep!

Sometimes... sometimes the little boys win.

Most Boring Post Ever

This will be a boring post.

Do not read if you expect or desire to be entertained.

I've successfully spent gift card money finally!

I didn't want to purchase anything with you know, my money, and I didn't want to spend any of the gift cards I had until after I'd fully purged my closet, and ensured I didn't gain 20 pounds over the holiday!

Success! But I've seen a preview of spring fashion, and I'm pastel-erized. Pastels. All. Pastels. How horrifying! I dislike pastels. Especially springs' favorite new shade, 'mint-doesn't-look-good-on-anyone-but-we-keep-bringing-it-back.'

It's been a quiet Saturday, there may have been a nap.

A three hour nap.

It happens. We Skyped with Husbear, which always cheers the kiddos up, and I'm doing my best to not look at Oxfords online, since I have no more gift cards and a great weakness for Oxford-style shoes and boots. Now that I own a pair of awesomely epic boots, my sights are turning to Oxfords, despite the no-budget-for-Oxfords thing.

Le Sigh.

Time for some Rick Grimes, because nothing makes a Saturday night like a good Zombie fest.

Rick Grimes zombie tests are seldom boring, unlike my posts, which oftentimes are.

G'Night.

Huszombieland Day 8

Don't know what happened to the past few days - it all seemed to flow into one long day.

It was Tuesday, now it's Friday night.

All sorts of High School drama unfolded at Drama Girl's school - a threat, and it was all under control but then they cancelled school and some kid is going to have his life seriously ruined once they find him.

Was a zombie at work, seems to have worked out well. There isn't enough coffee on some days!
But then Husbear, the moment I opened my personal computer at work, skyped in! He had a bottle of wine and was relaxing in his hotel room.

I was four hours of work left to go at 3:30 on a Friday night with children at home waiting to be fed and entertained, and he's reposeful with wine and no children and a wine trip tomorrow!

.....ARGH. Days like this, I want to join the Zombies.

Or at least go hang with Rick Grimes...

 It's been exactly one week.

Two more to go...

Huszombieland Day 5

The cats made their first attempt last night. On the stairs. Barely escaped. The white fur of the young Cogs gleamed in the moonlight and gave them away. Still haven't located Queen Ninja. She is far more clever than the rest.

Dry shampoo not the miracle elixir promised to so many... hair is limp, lifeless and may drown in its oiliness. Will see what effect it has on my abilities to survive the day.  Drank extra-strong brew to compensate. How long can I live on extended dosages of dark brewed coffee?

The boys are dressed and ready to go. Not sure what they're up to, can't get to the bottom of their maniacal scheming... they are being so good, but, the question lingers... why? Why now, when never before?

One of them is singing, I can hear it, a happy, joyful voice - it's eerie.

Huszombieland: all is calm

Husbear is off for three weeks to another country where there's great cheese, wine and scarves. Yes, France.

I'm home with the horde. It's like I've entered an apocalyptic wasteland where my only chance of survival is to give up and turn into a zombie. 

Wait, that may have been last week.

Day 1, a Friday, and this is important to note, a non-school day:  went like this:

Daddy gets on plane. Same ole same ole.
Mommy distracts everyone with rad viewing of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pizza and soda for all!

Day 2: Weekend

K kids, go play video games.
All day.
Victory! Go parenting!

Day 3: Weekend

Grocery shopped, cooked a dinner and successfully achieved bath time. 
I'm awesome at this mom thing. I rock.

Day 4: 

Monday.
We know weekends are easy. Open the door, and let the kids go. Parenting lite. But this is serious. This is a school day in January with no sign of vacation until Martin Luther King Day.

Okay, lets keep it calm, peeps. Lets not do anything crazy. Lets pretend everything is normal, nothing has changed, and Daddy's home, he's just upstairs on his computer, invisible.

/whistle.

Get Drama Girl up and out door on time, make grumbly noises at the amount of sugar teen girl dumps in her coffee.
Get boys up.
Shower. (A win for all!)
Boys are ready and out door and at school on time...
Look around for signs of alternate universes colliding.. nope, it's really true.
Day goes by. Smoothly.

As of right now, Dinner is simmering on the stove waiting on rice, the boys are calm and everything is mellow. All is calm and quiet.
.....

Day 4 - smooth sailing... too smooth, too quiet...
I shudder for the days to come...

But, as a lovely angel said, appearing in front of me on my way out the door after work -- be calm, for maybe, maybe it will be smooth sailing, and will be calm. For. Three. Whole. Weeks. 

No one will meltdown. The routines of waking, school, homework, dinner and bed will be maintained in an orderly, routine, non-yelly, non-shouty fashion.

All will be calm. All will be bright....

January the 1st, of the Year 2013

The year is starting off mellow, and that's always a good sign. No need to jump right into change, turmoil, drama, etc etc. I finished up Project Life (that photo album/journaling thing) for the year, and am continuing with it, since it's such an easy way to manage well, memories.

I'm going to focus on the every day moments this time, and see how that works! I love photographing random moments that would normally pass, where no one's posing, the face and cheesy grin isn't the center of the picture, and there's no 'event,' just... life. I am not doing 'resolutions' since they're silly. I am instead refocusing. November through December is always a rough time for my routine, because I've got birthdays right before Turkey Week, right before the holidays.

 I look forward to January as a 'chill' month, where mostly I hibernate a bit, get in shape for spring running, gardening, and outdoorsing, as I like to refer to it, and dreaming, oh the dreaming in January of the months of March, April and May. How I love to dream of spring! I'll be doing that shortly! 

This year, you'll (my invisible readers, my four friends-who-read-my-blog, and the random family member that logs in to check the blog) see a lot of comments on my writing, my 'the artist's' way'ing, running and exercising and random pics of every day moments.

 I'm looking forward to 2013, and the months ahead. Though it's a new year, it feels like a continuation of the best of 2012.

 Happy New Year - this year, live as well as you can, laugh often, mind less and, above all, most importantly of all, do carry on.

Happy 2013!

It's hard to believe that another year has passed, only it's not, really.

It's even less harder to believe that my last post was Nov. 21.

Where does time go?

It just flies....

This Christmas we traveled to Oregon to see my sister and her husband, and Ty, lovely, hilarious, chatty, Ty.

I think the boys might have been a bit much for him, but he was a true sport!

Here are the pics from the trip!