Sometimes, that’s very frustrating. I’m a plate cleaner. I like to get a task done, and have it off my plate. Unfortunately, that’s not how real life works. Real life is repetitive. Think about it, everyday you have to get up, brush your teeth, brush your hair, get dressed, make coffee, etc, etc, etc. Coming to grips with the fact that my living room will never BE clean and so I will be cleaning it everyday is a real break through for me. I’m telling you all this so that I can tell you I spent 15 minutes this morning organizing the last of my knitting stuff and I feel pretty pleased with myself. Except that organizing my knitting stuff will never be truly finished because I always have at least one set of needles out of place, because I am using them to knit something. And that’s okay. Life is messy, and I am learning to get over it.

However that stack of stuff I took off the shelf that I put my knitting stuff on? It’s sitting in my rocking chair. It’s been there for an hour, and it’s already on my last nerve.

May 26 Party Time? I have no idea, really. I walked out back to tend the plants at work, and apparently, someone had had a good time in the old garden shop the night before.

May 27 A Little Clearing I whittled this pile of assorted mail and papers down to about 4 pieces. One thing about getting behind on time sensitive stuff is that you get to throw A LOT of it away when you finally find your round tuit.

May 28 My Hand This would be the swollen hand that my unsister flicked with her acrylic nails the night she tried to fight me at our respective parent’s home. I guess she hit a nerve, because I couldn’t see a mark, but it was swollen and I couldn’t close it comfortably for a couple of days.

May 29 Hands I Love No real words needed, right?

May 30 Oooooh, baby This is the water heater That One ordered for me before he left on the 30th. You would think I would tell you that I was able to take a hot shower, but it was almost a full week before we had reliable hot water. The clerk at the store looked at all the CPVC Micheal was buying to do the installation and then sold him PVC glue to go with it. Grrrr!

May 11 I was so mad! Ok, here is the part I didn’t tell when I was talking about the camping trip. I ended up working a 10 hour day on the Friday before we left. And on Thursday, I told the kids what had to happen in the house before we could leave for the trip. They had a half day on Friday, so I expected them to pitch in. After I ended up having to stay late at work, I especially expected them to pitch in. And they did absolutely nothing except bring in the camp stuff and watch tv, eating food that made more dishes and wearing clothes that made more laundry. So, after I got home, around 9:30, I spent another three hours cleaning my house, including burning stuff I gathered in the dark. Sometimes, despite the best acne treatments, you just have to bust a zit, and that is what I am doing by getting rid of stuff they refuse to pick up. If the camping trip had been for the kids, I would have called it off right then, but it wasn’t for them. It was for me, because I wanted to hang out with them.

This is the pile of stuff I gathered on a quick walk through of the already cleaned areas on Tuesday morning, when I could actually see since I couldn’t turn on the bedroom lights when I got home Friday night because some of the kids were sleeping. I don’t think I’ve actually had to burn since this day. Maybe they believe me now.

May 12 Blooming Roses So, when I got to work on the 12th, I found this: a bush with three huge blooms, looking like a small bouquet. I love to stand and just look at my rose bushes at work. The are slowing down now, but during May, it was an eye feast every day. Big blooms, nodding in the breeze. I do love working with the flowers.

May 13 Really? That’s the best you’ve got? I took a picture of this ad because I hated it so much. The tag attached to the ring says “Virtually eliminates cheating since it’s so beautiful you’ll never want to take it off.” Really? If a pretty ring is the only reason you aren’t cheating on your spouse, you need more help than money can buy. I was disgusted.

May 14 Puppies!! She had a litter of 5, of which 3 have survived.

May 15 Lunch with Guitar Guy We finally managed to sit down in the same place at the same time after weeks of too much busyness to see one another. I was great to just hang out and visit.

April 21 Dead This, my friends is the pile of dead plants that I pulled out of the garden shop when I returned from my two weeks out of their. Clearly, someone needed to check into life insurance rates for them while I was gone. They expired from a lack of water. I continued to pull plants for about a week. At one point, I set up an intensive care nursery for the ones I thought I could save, but my manager said we didn’t have time for that, and the plants I was nurturing were thrown away. Her call, store’s loss.

April 22 DaBaby visits On the 22nd, Mama was in town and brought DaBaby by to visit me. It was lots of fun getting some midday hugs and kisses. I miss my kids a lot when I am at work.

April 23 Lizard! If you look closely in the middle of this picture, you will see a wee reptile. I see them quite often at work, but they rarely remain still long enough to take a good shot. Today, I won.

April 24 Fire the Third Hmm, they still didn’t believe me. This was the day I cleaned the living room. It still looks pretty good.

This was also the night of catharsis. I continued to cry up until this night, and most of the way through it. I cried for a lot of reasons this night. For loss and betrayal and the grown up me and the little girl me and for my children and it just went on and on and on. But when I woke up on Sunday I was a different woman. Actually, I was my old woman again. The depression that had plagued me for a very long time (years) had lifted somewhat, and that laughing, fun loving girl I used to be was clawing her way to the top. Somewhere in that night, I faced the ugly truth that a lot of really bad crap had happened to me in my life, and I grieved for it, and I tried to let it go. That’s not to say I’ve been completely perky since that point, but when I get down, it’s for a couple of hours, not….for the forseeable future. I can deal with that!

April 25 Hello Old Me You may not be able to see it in my face, but I sure can!

There will be no self portrait today. I am makeup-less and exhausted, and it would just be too scary to post. Sorry.

Also, my back hurts. That is all.

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That’s it. I spent the rest of the evening taming this:

and getting my work schedule into Google Calendar. Doesn’t a clean desk just feel so good?

You can see what others are doing by clicking this banner:

You can’t quite tell from the picture, but the babies got in there this morning and pulled out alllllllll the coloring books and puzzles. And then, of course, they pretended they could not remember where the stuff goes. What I need to do is label the shelves.

I’ll spare you the picture of my catch-all bookshelf, because no one knows where the books go, so they just drop them on that shelf “for now”. And I’ll also spare you from having to look at my filing unsystem, full of unlabeled File folders, so that I have to look at every piece of paper I have filed from the past 10 years, starting from the front and going to the back just to find what I need. And also, I have lost DaBaby’s social security card in there, and that is a real PITA.

You know what I need, right? I need one of these:

That’s right! A Dymo labeler!

And then everyone who can read in this house would be able to help with the game cabinet and the books. I could also label the kids’ school book shelves and their pencil boxes while we are in the back-to-school mood, not that we ever stopped, muhahahhaha. And the outside of their three-ring-binders. That would look so much better than the sharpie, right? And I could change it when I re-purpose the binder, as we all know I will do!

But they may NOT touch my files. Period. Not until they receive a certified copy of my death certificate.