So my friend Laura is in Ethiopia following her dream, her vision, her calling. She left behind her husband and her two small boys and is traveling on her own, faithfully responding to the call. It feels momentous.
You can read about what she’s doing in Ethiopia here.
And you can follow along with her beautiful photos and real life descriptions.
I’m wondering if her husband, Tim, will post his own “back at the ranch” posts. That would be entertaining.
I wasn’t intending to join Simple Mom’s decluttering shebang. After all, I’ve been faithfully overhauling closets and other unseen ‘crooks and nannies’ in the house for weeks now. Doing what my house needs when my house needs it. Or when I need it.
And then I got to the end of last week and realized that I had inadvertently done the week’s hotspot…the master closet. Out of necessity, you understand…it was time for the big maternity clothes switcharoo (goodbye small clothes, I’ll see you again in two years…a year and a half, if I’m lucky).
I didn’t get any ‘before’ pictures, so it seems rather unfair to post the ‘after’ picture…I wouldn’t want anyone to think my closet looks this good normally. Of course, I’m fully intending for this to become the new normal…but you know how it goes.
Also, I don’t have the patience to take one picture and then work for 30 minutes with the camera cord at odd angles, getting cramps in my wrist trying to get the picture to upload. I must have at least 200 photos to make that worthwhile.
Once I realized that I was on the Simple Mom decluttering bandwagon whether I wanted to be or not, I decided to do my best and join in the fun.
This week’s assignment is paper clutter. Lucky me, my paper clutter is currently one very small stack on the kitchen counter. Trifling.
That doesn’t include the two file drawers that have been quietly hiding in the closet for three years. Trifling. Certainly not bothering anybody. At the moment.
Of much more concern is all the stuff that ends up on the counter. My counter paper pile isn’t usually trifling. I just happened to be lucky this week.
So rather than reducing the paper clutter that exists, I have taken my own spin on the assignment and have been working on reducing the clutter that ends up on the counter.
This way I don’t have to take a photo, you see.
Mail Clutter
I’ve signed us up with the National Do Not Mail List. And have put Devo in charge of saving me one piece of mail from every junk mail company. There were great ideas and resources in the Simple Mom post and comments. Reduce waste! Reduce stuff that comes into our house!
Lists
I’m researching options for getting rid of…wait for it…my lists. My paper lists. My paper lists that I love. My paper lists that proliferate. And then get stolen or drawn on by small people. I have an iphone now (thanks, love!) and want to make all those lists available to me on-the-go. No more lists on paper napkins in the car, jotted on the backs of envelopes, organized in a child-enticing notebook.
Dropbox? Can’t edit on the iphone. Google docs? Wi-fi is not always available. … I’m working on a solution.
I am not, however, going to move to making my grocery lists on my iphone. I have a line up of magnetic notepads on the fridge, one for each store, and they work magnificently. Wiping hands, putting in passcodes, and finding necessary app does not work in the middle of meal prep (which is when I add to my lists…)
<This would be an excellent place to put a photo of my beloved grocery list line up. It’s so pretty.>
Calendar
I’m thinking seriously of ditching a paper calendar and going techno. I looove my calendar. (Well, I don’t love it quite as much since somebody drew on it’s pretty green cover, but I love seeing things at a glance and I love writing things down).
But that calendar is mostly just clutter on the kitchen counter…someone is always moving it or putting something on top of it (or drawing on/in it). And when I get appointments through email, I don’t often stand up and fetch the calendar and pen. I mostly just let the appointment lie quietly (sometimes forgotten, oops) in my inbox.
So I’m thinking google calendar. And an iphone app called Calengoo, which has really great reviews and syncs with everything. I like syncing. I’d like it better if it didn’t involve wires.
And if Devo moved over to google calendar, we wouldn’t have to spend stressful half hours going over our schedules…we could just sync!
I’ve started a trial run, I like it already.
Misc. (Mess)
Receipts aren’t a problem, we stuff them in an accordion folder by month. No sorting unless needed, dump after taxes.
Mail isn’t a problem (Devo takes care of that, and very ably, I might add).
Coupons are a problem. I only keep coupons from Joann Fabrics, Michaels, and Costco. But I paper clip them to…my paper calendar. Ummm….
Children’s art/projects are a problem. I’ve considered storing them in file folders…one file per year per child. But I’m also thinking of getting rid of almost all of our file drawer space (since we’ve obviously used it so consistently and extensively, cough). Should they eventually reside in a file storage box, instead of a file drawer?
As for the misc. (“mess”, as my Grandma calls it), I think a simple filing system will take care of that. So perhaps I should deal with the real paper clutter this week.
And I’m back in five, four, three, two…
I’ve flipped back in my calendar to the date of my last blog post….November 3. But it hasn’t helped much. Too many things missing.
I started out this post by reviewing the month. But I soon decided that I would (a) either get overwhelmed and never finish, never publish or (b) you would never scroll all the way down to the end. So I thought we would go through the highlights post by post.
Ready?
Quiet, this blog has been so quiet.
For awhile it was quiet because I was enthralled with other people’s blogs, learning new stuff. But I guess I’m over that because my reader is getting backed up and I’m sticking only with my old faithfuls.
For awhile it was quiet because I kept writing posts and then just tucking them into the drafts folder. I have quite a collection now. Don’t know why they stay there. Maybe it was a case of chicken.
Currently it’s quiet because I get to the end of the day, and nothing there is truly representative. The posts I conjur up in the daytime look vastly different to what comes out of my fingers at 8pm. And I like the daytime stuff better. So maybe it wasn’t a case of chicken, after all. (It was a case of turkey, haha).
In daytime hours, it’s hard enough to get the space to do what critical thinking I’m required to do…much less recreational thinking. If you know what I mean.
But, ugh, I haven’t been doing much of anything in the evenings. Not anything creative, for sure. Some mindless internet clicking until I realize that what I’m reading just isn’t interesting me. Read a chapter in a book here, a chapter there…none of the old stand-bys have been doing the trick.
The only thing I’ve been wanting to do after 8pm is to watch reruns of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Did any of you watch that? We must have watched a great deal of it in my childhood, because as soon as the theme music came on, I was swept away with happy nostalgia. Scarecrow has completely overtaken Iron Chef America, Devo’s and my previous mindless viewing choice.
But, hey, quiet isn’t bad! Faithful does not necessarily equal constant. I guess you could say that I’m consistently here some of the time. Which is pretty good, don’t you think?
Nesting Place :: The Nester talks (right to me) about what belongs in our houses with her confession It’s Stuffy in Here. Her thoughts on the matter have been a major catalyst in my recent Nights of Eradication.
Mila’s Daydreams :: A new friend introduced me to a new blog last night. And I’m already enamored. Adele says about her blog, This blog is my maternity leave hobby. While my baby is taking her nap, I create scene around her and take quick snap photos. Literally, sleeping baby with some sort of a scene laid out around her. Like the absurdly cute Little Pink Riding Hood – the head kerchief is just, just, just darling.
Juniper Moon Farm :: A small sheep farm in Virginia. With dogs. Sheep. Goats. And, most recently, a baby pig. Named Charley. Lia asks every day if there are any new pictures of Charley. We think we’d like a baby pig, too.
Baking Bites :: Upcoming on our Sabbath dessert list…Homemade Fudgsicles!
The Painted House :: A one of a kind post about Angela’s 90 year old neighbor, Mrs. L, who has lived in the same house for 56 years. Back when they got their milk delivered. While you’re there, let’s all wish we lived in North Carolina so that we could rent out Angela’s cottage in the mountains, or meet Angela herself who completely won my heart by emailing me the first time I commented on her blog – not to mention stunning us all with her beauty. A friend!
Blogspot :: I’ve been thinking of picking up, bag and baggage, and moving to Blogger.com. I came to wordpress with hopes and ideas of being, you know, HTML savvy. Due to an incompatibility problem between code and my brain, that didn’t pan out as expected. I’m thinking of something much more click and drag. I can do click and drag.
Click.
It’s really too bad that blogging time comes at the end of the day. When my thoughts just don’t have the get up and go to leap from one synapse to the next.
Fizzled. Reduced. Fried.
I know there was something I was going to blog about tonight. Last night I was going to post the video from Lia’s recital, along with a picture or two. But my computer couldn’t handle the exertion and my psyche couldn’t handle the computer.
I think this is Murphy’s Law coming in to effect, this end-of-the-day lapse I’m having.
As usual, I was still eating while everyone else had finished their dinner and gone on their merry way. So I finished my dinner on the back patio swing, watching the kids play with a pot of potting soil they had overturned. There were 45 minutes until bedtime and all I had to do was a few dishes, put on jammies, brush a few teeth, and the day would be done. Devo had taken the kids swimming this afternoon, and they were all bathed and ready for bed.
This reprieve from the usual end-of-day wildness was so invigorating, I began to entertain pleasant (!) thoughts of doing some housecleaning after the kids were asleep. Unusual, very unusual.
Well, I never finished getting the dishes put away, much less anything more adventurous.
Next thing I knew, Amelie was crying because there was something in her eye. Which would be the potting soil. Because if your sister puts potting soil on your head, it is going to fall into your eyes.
Levi had also been similarly, but more lavishly, decorated.
And by the time I was done showering them for the second (and Levi for the third) time, all enthusiasm for nightly pursuits of cleanliness had fled.
And this is really too bad, because we had a very very nice day. Got up on time, went for a family walk, got compost at the nursery, managed both naps on time, practiced the piano, cooked meals (okay, so it was pasta and burritos, but hey…), went to the library to pick up 40 pounds of books about volcanos and sea creatures, read said books, played dominoes, visited with our neighbors, weeded, fertilized, and mulched the tomatoes while the kids swam. We had a very nice day.
But as I said, it’s really too bad that I blog at the end of the day. It makes for one post-mortem after another. Haha.
I’m so excited to announce the launch of our new blog, Three French Hens at frenchhen.wordpress.com.
This is somewhat of a family endeavor. Although we haven’t really figured out where the ‘family’ part fits in. But, hey, we haven’t really started yet. It’s a blog dedicated to our ‘locavarian lifestyle’…that is, eating locally (as in, the backyard), and connecting with this deserty smogness we’ve landed ourselves in.
In case you were wondering, it’s named Three French Hens because eventually we are going to have three chickens and we are going to bequeath them with preposterously French names like Antoinette.
Anyhow, head on over, if you’re so inclined. I’ve been working on this for weeks (I know you won’t be able to tell yet, but it’s true) and tonight is The Night it launches into the big wide world. Enjoy!
BTW, Spinning in my Teacup will remain as is, a haphazard journal of our crazy daily life. So no need to worry.
Dear Friends,
I know it’s been too long since I’ve blogged when wordpress has signed me out of my account. There was that one unpublished post from last week when I ranted and raved about life being wild and overwhelming. But then I decided to just deal with it –this is my life– and I’ve been much happier since. Happier and more composed. Less catatonic in the face of adversity.
We went camping over the weekend. We had a campground all to ourselves, air mattresses in the concrete pavilion, a grill, and a refrigerator. I could see the ocean from my bed. The full moon was as bright as a street lamp, but infinitely more beautiful. It was perfect, perfect, perfect. Even including the competition for most mosquito bites. (Levi and I seem to be the most immune, Devo and Amelie the most bitten, Lia somewhere in the middle.)
Monday we bought the mount for my step dad’s flat screen and spent the afternoon mounting it and rearranging the living room. Jesse (my step dad) is currently in the Philippines at a golf tournament, so this is our surprise Christmas and 50th birthday present for him. Amelie and Levi were sleeping, so Lia got to spend some time at Grandma Ruby’s all by herself for the first time. She helped clear the lunch table, helped sort nuts for Grandma’s famous nut butter, and induced Grandma into playing somewhere between 14 and a million rounds of Go Fish.
Tuesday was a holiday for my mom (public schools here follow the Catholic calendar, so she was off for Immaculate Conception). We took everything out of her room, rearranged the furniture, organized the stuff, and put it all back in by lunchtime on Wednesday. Including a trip to the pool and dinner with my cousin’s wife and baby.
Grandma and Grandpa wanted to know when the home decorators were coming over to their side of the street, so today we mounted their new flat screen TV and we will rearrange their living room tomorrow or Sunday. 
We think of this as our contribution to three months worth of rent.
Liana’s bell choir Christmas schedule has started — their bell choir plays at different hotels and functions all through the Christmas season. She has something pretty much every night/afternoon through till Christmas. We’ve still managed to keep swimming, though.
My aunt Donna is set to come for a visit starting next Wednesday. She’ll be staying and Grandma and Grandpa’s so that will add a new dimension to our daily routines.
Today Levi figured out that crawling is a legitimate form of transportation. The world has become a big, exciting adventure. It’s so darling.
I’ve decided to go to yoga classes. I’m truly truly suffering without a regular class. There is one Sabbath morning that Devo and I might go to together while the kids go to church with my mom. My idea of a romantic Sabbath date.
We reach the midpoint of our sabbatical sometime in the next week or so. We haven’t decided yet when to start talking and thinking about the future. Maybe January. Seems like a misuse of sabbatical time to think about work.
I keep putting off blogging because all the pictures are on Devo’s computer. The obtaining of which would require at least one extra step in the process. I guess that it’s better to write without pictures than to never write at all…
Love, Leilani
Apparently I missed yesterday’s big milestone…my 500th post! So, instead, we’ll celebrate the 501st post.
Hello, my name is Leilani and I am a recovering perfectionist.
Wow, 500 times I’ve clicked “publish” and not gone back to delete the post 30 seconds later. I think that is significant.
I thought I’d celebrate by asking something of you dear, dear people – the people who’ve stuck with me through 500 (or less) posts.
So this is what I’m thinking…
I’d love for you to leave a comment and tell me the following things…
#1 Where in the world are you? Guam? South Africa? Florida? North Dakota?
and then, if you have another moment or two…
#2 How did you find my blog?
and if you have yet another moment and some available memory…
#3 What is one of your favorite posts? (Youtube videos count. If you don’t remember the exact title or the exact content, for heaven’s sake, don’t go looking! Unless you’re in the mood to browse, that is. Otherwise, just jot down a few of the words or thoughts that you remember from it.)
Happy 501, everyone! May the worst of the next 501 be the best of the last 501!
I did it. I just took off my two most viewed posts.
Disney Princesses got 46,509 hits since I posted it on May 25, 2008.
Disney Princesses – 23,976 hits.
Can you believe it?
If you googled “Disney Princesses” and clicked “images”, my blog was the first up. It got off the list for awhile, and then came back up first. And then I stopped checking stats and forgot all about it. Until tonight.
Being that I get comments like “i luv princesses”, I don’t think that it’s really pulling in the readership I’m aiming towards. You know, like, thinking people.
So, off it goes. Let’s all say bye-bye now.
(I still think they were good posts, so I’ll put them back on after awhile and take off the link of the picture.)
But if you’re interested, here’s an article my friend Trisha put us on to about Disney Princesses…for the thinking people.
I should have never, never assumed that I would be blogging the last few weeks. My apologies for stringing all of us along in the hope that I would find minutes together where the entire family was happy at a time I had available brain cells for putting together sentences. Hahahaha.
Devo’s parents left Wednesday morning after a relaxed three and a half week visit. I especially enjoyed our day at the beach (and got lots of great pictures). I think my favorite times, though, were the evenings when we would eat dinner on the back patio in the cool of the evening. The girls would play and we would just…sit. And enjoy the birds, the girls, the air, little bits of conversation. I’ve never spent very much time just sitting, but I’m beginning to find it addicting and refreshing. And then, lo and behold, we discovered we can see the fireworks from our patio…what a great Fourth of July!
So now we’re trying to get back to normal life and normal routines. Not that this week is normal. It’s VBS, biggest week of the year. (Two hundred volunteers and who knows how many children this week). Wild times.
Important updates:
1) Yes, Levi is still sleeping 8 hours at a time. Bless his little baby self.
2) Yes, we are still house hunting. And it’s starting to cause me emotional stress.
3) Yes, I’m still reading. Of course! Latest book is The First Paul by Borg and Crossan. And timely, as the VBS theme is Rome and Paul.
4) Yes, the meal plan is working. But it doesn’t work unless you go grocery shopping. Friday farmer’s market, here I come!
5) No, I have not found a new purse yet. But I’ve been looking faithfully. And carrying my purse in my hand.
6) Yes, I have been speaking more confidently. When I can get a word in edgewise.
Some days, more so recently, I wish I was a lyrical blogger. I think I started out as a funny bloggger. And somewhere along the way I turned into a this-is-what-I-did-today-and-I’m-going-to-jot-it-down-before-I-forget-because-I-think-it-is important-and-I-might-want-to-actually-remember-it-one-day.
But maybe new motherhood has softened me, made me want to express some of the beauty of life….to be someone who takes the AAAAAGGGGHHHHH of life and turns it into quiet, beautiful thoughts and lessons.
But that takes extra brain cells. And I’m afraid all of mine have been used up.
I was reminded of a scene in The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax books are always a balm for the soul). Old lady CIA agent is abducted from Mexico City and ends up leading an escape party from her Albanian jail. Leads it right over a cliff, where she falls and lands on a tree branch. Farrell, her companion, is trying to coach and coax her off the tree branch suspended in space and onto a ledge in the cliff.
Mrs. Pollifax says, “I prefer staying with this tree branch, thank you.”
Farrell said nastily, “For how many years, Duchess?”
Indeed!
He, himself, at two weeks of age, thinks that he is a one-month-old. No more newborn for him. <sniff> We’ve already graduated to size 1 diapers (benefits of mothering experience…it only took two blow-outs to convince me to move up to what seems like gigantic diapers). And today he is wearing his first 0-3 month outfit. I prefer him to look like a swaddled burrito over a stuffed sausage. We’re vegetarian, you know.How do you like the new spring look? It is also a new baby boy look in honor of the approaching advent.
It’s about time for something new and updated for my blog. I didn’t really want to move to a two column template, but now that I have, I’m glad I did!
We’re off to the youth retreat tomorrow. This year it looks like it will be warm enough that I won’t spend the weekend with numb legs and chattering teeth and forty nine sweaters. Devo’s been working like a … dog … to get ready. Every year and with the more children we have, the less I am involved in such preparations. Blessings on that veteran youth pastor’s wife I met three or four years ago who said that my job on events like these are to take care of my family. Not run around being the (unpaid) industrious youth worker and letting my family run amuck. She was very wise.
We reach the big developmental milestone of 32 weeks tomorrow. HOORAY! Baby still hasn’t decided which way he wants to turn. Gave me a fright the other night by turning all the way around while I had my hands on my stomach. A smooth 180. Now he’s running out of room. He’s spent part of this week bewildered with his lack of stretching space. But now he’s resigned himself and movements are dwindling down to wriggles.
When he’s laying on his side, I can feel his hard little head, his shoulder and arm, his body and back, and his round little bottom (which is encroaching on my ribs…I think we have another long baby here), and around to the thigh and leg. I don’t know if I’m just more experienced this time or if things are just lying differently, but it’s really cool.
I was looking at pictures of preemies born at 32 weeks the other night and I couldn’t believe HOW BIG they are! Devo and I both agreed that we can’t believe that there is a baby that size in my belly. But there is. And I’m glad.
Today is the last day of spinninginmyteacup.com. Time to change your bookmark to–
http://spinninginmyteacup.wordpress.com/
Not such a big deal for bookmarks, but I’m finding it rather cumbersome when commenting on other blogs. Oh well.
