Joe vs. Steve

It's a full out Blue's Clues war here. Quinn loves the show, but will only watch the episodes with Joe. That makes sense. He's three and three-year-olds don't like change. The problem is that Caly HATES Joe. With a flaming passion. And she's thirteen!

Meanwhile, I'm getting over my cold and still clearing junk out of the house. It's amazing to me how little of it we miss once it's gone. It makes sense though. The stuff that we're purging is stuff that's buried behind and under the stuff we use. It's the extras shirts in the dresser drawer that you shove aside to get to the shirt you love. So when it's gone, the drawer is a little roomier, but you don't miss the shirts. So I just keep reminding myself that somewhere out there is someone who would really love to have that shirt or those pants or that extra casserole dish. I'm donating all our extras to Goodwill, in part because I live too far from town for a yard sale to be profitable, and in part because I shop at Goodwill. I like finding a sweet deal when I'm there and I imagine that my old stuff will be a sweet deal for someone else.

I have a stove!

Whoo-hoo! I'm so happy. It wasn't just that I couldn't cook. It was that the parts were everywhere. No more parts on the floor is the nicest feeling.

Of course, my faucet is still not working right. Scott couldn't even really get to the faucet because of the stove being in the way. Maybe we'll have a chance to work on it this week. And as for the dishwasher, I'm thinking I'll start saving for a new one. It breaks down FAR more often than my old one did. And it just never did clean as well. Sometimes you have to know when to admit defeat.

On the flip side, my closets should totally surrender. They are getting their butts kicked. And once I get my kitchen back into shape, I'm planning on attacking the cabinets and getting rid of all the junk there too. Scott is a kitchen pack rat and loves cooking gadgets. Even worse, my cabinets have all kinds of inaccessible nooks and crannies. You know how old-fashioned corner cabinets are. There're way deep and you have to kind of reach around a wall to get to anything. The bulk of the stuff in them can't be pulled out unless you pull out everything in the entire cabinet. I'm thinking that I'll get a couple of plastic bins that fit in there and use the space to store Christmas ornaments or something else that I only pull out once a year. If the stuff is in bins, it'll be easier to get out when I need it.

The update

Just so you know, my kitchen is still impassable, and now my computer is having problems too. BUT my bathroom closet kicks ass!

I've been dropping so much stuff off at Goodwill that they all recognize me now. You would think that there would be an end in sight, but I swear I keep finding more layers of junk under the junk. That being said, I'm really really happy with the progress we've made. Office Depot has been having free after rebate products lately and I picked up some boxes and a labeler. As I purge the junk, I'm organizing and properly storing and labeling everything before putting the stuff I'm keeping away.

My goal is to have my whole house cleaned out one day. (Cue howls of laughter from anyone who's ever seen my house.) And while I may never reach that goal, I can say that I WILL have a clean bathroom one day soon.

Avoiding the fire by jumping into the frying pan.

I should be cleaning house. I NEED to clean house. It's a total wreck. But I hate cleaning. On top of that my stove is currently disassembled and all over the kitchen floor, the kitchen faucet has quit except for a small dribble, and my dishwasher is only getting the things on the bottom rack clean. So what should be a simple job of loading the dishes now involves walking through the kitchen on tiptoes so as to avoid stepping on the stove, washing half-loads in the dishwasher, and carrying water in from the bathroom.

Of course I have no similar excuse for not doing laundry. I just don't feel like it.

So... instead of cleaning, I'm sorting a bunch of our clothes and de-cluttering the closets. It won't result in a clean home, clean clothes, or clean dishes. And it involves as much work as doing the dishes and more than doing the laundry. So it doesn't exactly make sense. It just feels slightly less futile.

A better week

Last week was so sucky. Sorry, but it was. I'd go into the details but honestly you don't want to hear it and I don't want to think about it. It just sucked. On the plus side, this week seems to be improving. Among the other improvements was that I got my Amazon shipment of Jim Butcher's new Dresden Files novel, Changes. It was SO freaking good. I can't discuss it yet because we have a pact among the family that the ones who read a book first have to pretend they know nothing about it until everyone in the house have had a chance to read it. Zaven and I are finished, but Scott and Caly aren't. So all Zaven and I are allowed to say is, "I wonder what happens in that book 'Changes'? Bet it's good."

It IS good. But that's all I'm saying.

Bad week

Nest week official starts today. Because if last week is still going on, I'm thinking of leaving town and hiding. No one died last week. Other than that, it pretty much sucked.

She knows me too well.

The other day Caly offered to put some music on my MP3 player. I didn't have a player of my own until I won one a while ago and (being me) it took me forever to get it out of the box and put anything on it. Initially, I put an audiobook on it. The one drawback of having so many kids is that I don't get to sit and read like I used to. So audiobooks are great for me. After listening to the book, I let Scott borrow my player so that he could hear it. Then I got distracted. Long story, short... there's still no music on my MP3 player. So Caly offered to take the book off and put some music on for me.

She asked me what music I wanted and I told her to just put on things she thought I'd like. She knows that I like most kinds of popular music. I'm not that much into country or hip hop, but otherwise, if I can sing to it, I'll sing along.

So later in the day, Caly loaded it up and handed it back. And yesterday I put it on to keep my brain occupied while I cleaned house. I half-expected to have a tone of teen pop music to listen to, but Caly had been pretty conservative with the music she'd put on. In fact, I recognized almost all the songs as soon as they started playing. The only thing that threw me for a loop was when I heard the first few notes of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. I recognized it, but was kind of surprised that Caly had put it on. I tend to like music I can sing along with and Nirvana mumbles so much that I could never figure out what I was supposed to be singing. Then the I realized... it wasn't Nirvana. It was Weird Al Yankovic's Smells Like Nirvana.