Pandemic Level Mom Guilt

Photo credit: Fusion Medical Animation

My Mom guilt is in overdrive this morning. On the way to take kids to school this morning, my teenager reminded me that I STILL haven't taken her to get her learner's permit. 

The tears started flowing. I was already feeling guilty this morning and that was the breaking point of feeling like a failure as a Mom. 

Here's the deal. I have a major dilemma right now. I have an almost two year old. I decided early in the summer that, when the kids went back to school in the fall, I was going to put him in daycare. I even picked out the daycare, which is right between the other two kids's schools. It was perfect. I could finally work without having to stop every few minutes to care for a toddler.

He's never been to daycare because of Coronavirus. No more than he was old enough to start considering daycare, Coronavirus had hit. I had the other two kids at home, anyway. We did remote most of the year last year, too. But, things were looking so much better early this summer. People were getting vaccinated, including us. It looked like we had "normal" within sight. So, the decision was made.

And, even though that "normal in sight" was quickly fading with a new and worse strain of Coronavirus rearing it's ugly head, I stuck with my decision and registered him for daycare. 

He went the very first day that the other kids started school, which was last Wednesday. Then, that evening, I get a text from the daycare that they were closing the rest of the week because they'd had a case of Coronavirus. They were going to take a couple of days to clean the place and rethink their strategy to keep kids safe. Since I had already paid for the next week, I decided to go ahead and very reluctantly bring him back on Monday. Monday evening, he had a runny nose. By Tuesday morning, he was extremely sick. I thought, "This is it. It's finally hit us from my own stupidity and selfishness". 

Well, it turned out to be RSV and a bacterial infection. Double Whammy, but it was not Coronavirus. But, RSV is almost as bad. If he can pick up two different illnesses in the two days he was actually there, what are the odds of him not eventually picking up Coronavirus there? Slim to nothing.

I'm not doing this kiddo or me any favors by keeping him home and trying to work while taking care of him. He's bored and bored at a critical time when he needs lots of stimulus and learning opportunities. I'm frustrated trying to get my work done and still trying to do a good job of giving him that stimulus and those learning opportunities. Daycare will be beneficial for him and me. But, does the risk outweigh the reward?

I'd love to just quit my job and stay home with him. But, I actually like my job and have this little thing called a mortgage. I can't just quit my job. 

I'm sure that I'm not the only one facing this dilemma right now. What's the right thing to do? How do I keep my family safe? It's a question millions of mothers are likely asking themselves right now. I'm sure there are fathers asking the same question but, reality check, most of it falls on us. And, unfortunately, there's no good answers to those questions. 

I have no idea what decision is right. Neither is good. So, I'm going to throw my little pity party for myself this morning over a cup of coffee. Then I'm going pull myself together and take care of this sick baby and get my work done, too. And, at some point this week, I actually need to decide what I'm going to do. And, I'm going to take a look at the calendar and figure out when I can take the teenager to get her permit. But, seriously, Coronavirus has added a brand new element to the whole "Mom Guilt" equation. 

Housekeeping Sucks and You Have to Do It EVERY FREAKING DAY Until You Die

I've tried everything and let's face it, I'm disorganized. I mean, I've walked into a lot of other women's homes who are just as busy as I am and their homes are clean, neat, and even decorated with cute stuff on the walls. What's wrong with me? Obviously there's something wrong with me. At least that's what I used to believe.

For a long time, I decided I was just broken or wasn't born with some cleaning gene that other women were born with. Or maybe they just read the right article or watched the right YouTube video and it gave them some secret that my mother never passed down to me. 

Surely there's trick to keeping up with it all. I'm a big sucker for articles or YouTube videos like "5 Easy Steps to an Organized Home" or "20 Tips for Clean House". I'd much rather read an article or watch a YouTube video about decluttering and cleaning than actually freaking doing it. I mean why do it when I'm clearly broken and can't do it without that dang gene or secret? And, someday, I'll find that secret out and keeping my house will be easy.

I'm almost 50 years old and still struggle with a messy home. I'd like to be able to use my kids as an excuse or maybe even my husband. After all, they really do leave their crap everywhere. And I do have a lot of kids. But, even when I had only one, the house was a disaster. And I was down to two kids until the end of 2019 and my house was still a disaster.

Then in my perusing YouTube for what the secret is, I came across this lady named Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean and she actually had the secret. You know what it was? Drum roll....there isn't one. You just have to freaking do it EVERY FREAKING DAY. You have to establish habits that you do every day. Dishes get dirty every day and you have to clean them every day. Clothes get worn every day and you have to deal with them all the time. It doesn't end. There's no magic trick. There's no such thing as a quick fix. There's no cleaning gene that I can switch on. There's no article or YouTube video that's going to fix my broken cleaning gene in 5 easy steps.

Every thing on my messy kitchen countertop has to get put away EVERY FREAKING DAY. The dirty socks my son and husband leave everywhere have to get picked up EVERY FREAKING DAY. 

You know what? It worked. When I started spending time EVERY FREAKING DAY establishing habits of doing the dishes, doing the laundry, going around picking things up, cleaning my floors, and other BS chores that I FREAKING HATE DOING, my house looked better.

You know what else? It sucks. But, it sucks less and less the more I do it. If I don't do it every day, it sucks a whole lot more. Two days worth of dishes sucks a lot more that one days worth. A few weeks worth of laundry sucks a whole lot more than a few days worth. Cleaning off my countertop every day sucks a lot less than letting it all pile up for weeks and then not being able to even find what I need to cook when I have three hungry kids. 

It really does suck that there's not some magic trick, though. Having to actually do it really does suck but I kind of like having a cleaner house and clean underwear. 

You know what else I discovered? When I keep up with the laundry, I don't actually need 500 pairs of underwear or 10 pairs of jeans. And fewer pieces of clothing means less clothes to wash and more room in my closet. I didn't actually need 10 spatulas when my favorite spatula gets washed every day. 

Seriously, though, who would have really thought that the secret to a clean house was actually cleaning it? I sure didn't. It never even occurred to me that was the answer I was looking for. It really does suck, though. 

My house is far from perfect but, it's better. I'm happy with better.

My actual kitchen as I write this!

So, thank you Dana K. White at A Slob Comes Clean for letting me in on the secret that there is no secret or gene or trick to keeping my house clean. It really does suck, though. I really have a lot better things to do than clean my house.

 

Bad Photographs and God's Perfect Timing

I am never in family photographs. I'd love to say it's because I'm always the one taking the pictures. That would be true but not quite the full truth.  I think, like a lot of women, I don't like how I look in pictures. They remind me of how overweight I am. They remind me of how old I'm starting to look. They remind of how perfectly imperfect I actually am.

My youngest child turned seven this week. Naturally, I went digging through baby pictures of him trying to find the perfect pictures to post on Facebook in celebration of his special day. When I came across this one, I chose not to use it because I, in all my imperfection, was in it. But, for the last few days, I keep going back to this picture and looking at it again and again.  This picture perfectly captures a moment in time that completely changed our family forever.

We had only completed the adoption of our younger daughter (also pictured) a few months before this picture was taken. With three kids already, we weren't really planning on having another child. My husband had been hurt at work and had gone through multiple surgeries and was still in constant pain. I had reluctantly gone back to work after he was hurt instead of doing what I loved most - being a stay at home mother. Now, he was the one at home with the kids. Switching places wasn't easy on either of us. Being at home was the last place my husband wanted to be and being at work was the last place I wanted to be. On top of working, we lived in North Dallas and my commute to and from work was at least 45 minutes each way in good traffic. Life was exceptionally difficult during this time. 

But... (doesn't life always seem to have "buts"?)

When we received the call that our adopted daughter's newborn little brother was being taken from the hospital straight into foster care, we suddenly had a big decision to make. It was tempting to take the easy route. Considering our circumstances, we had every reason not to take him. But, God has better plans for us than we have for ourselves. He put it on our hearts to say yes to this little baby boy.

This picture was taken just a few days after he was placed with us. I was completely exhausted from taking care of a newborn while still working a full time job. I look awful in this picture. But, I also look like the beautiful disaster that all mothers of newborns are. 

I can look at this picture today and give myself the mercy I should give myself more often. I don't have time for make-up. I don't have time to go to the gym. It's OK that I'm getting older. It's OK that I seem to have more white hair in pictures than I see in the mirror. It's OK to look exhausted in a picture because I am exhausted from doing what I love, being these children's mother.

And it's OK to bite off more than you think you can chew when God calls on you to do it. I can trust that He has already worked out the details of how to make it work, even when it seems impossible. His timing is perfect even when it appears to us mere humans to be the worst possible time.

Happy Birthday, Little Man! 

X-rays, Loud Kids, and the Idiocy of Modern Health Care

Ebony hurt her elbow Sunday and last night it was swollen and really hurting her. I decided I'd better get it looked at and took her to the walk-in medicenter yesterday evening. We were there for over three hours even though there weren't really that many people waiting.

I really don't understand why you can't just say, "my daughter needs her elbow x-rayed" and just get a damn x-ray. No, we have to sit in the lobby for over an hour, then sit in a tiny examination room for another half-hour​. You finally spend 30 seconds with a nurse. Another half-hour later, you spend another 30 seconds with a doctor. Finally, another half-hour later, she gets the X-ray you told them she needed when you walked in the dang door. Couldn't we have saved a lot of time by just skipping the whole waiting on a nurse/doctor thing? Does the doctor really need to see her BEFORE ordering the x-ray? Either it's broken or it's not and he can't do anything before he knows which it is.

It's the same thing when I have a sinus infection. I should be able to just walk up, tell them I have a sinus infection and need a Zpak and let the doctor sign the prescription. Does the doctor actually need to even see me? A quick glance at my medical records would show that I have frequent sinus infections, so I know what they feel like. The Zpak clearly works because I'm not back in their office a week later still sick. Even better, let me go to a pharmacy and get it straight from them after a short consultation.

Sitting in a doctor's office with kids is a miserable experience.  Kids have a complete inability to be quiet in a doctor's office, even mine. No kid can sit for three hours straight without getting fidgety. Their phones and tablets are loud, even though I keep telling them to turn them down. Five minutes later, when they think I won't notice, they turn them back up. The toys I brought, thinking they would hold off boredom, are now driving me insane because they are loud. What was I thinking bringing that one? Ebony's ADHD medicine has completely worn off by this time of the evening and she's bouncing off the walls and talking incessantly, even with the hurt elbow.

That's another thing we spend countless hours dealing with - her medicine. We know what works. Why the heck do we have to go to hour and a half appointments every 2-3 months to get access to it? It's ridiculous. And I have to go pick up a paper prescription each and every month because it's a "controlled substance". I do understand that people abuse it. But, why punish every single person because a handful of people abuse it?

Can we not be trusted with our own health care? Can we not make our own decisions? Do we really even need a doctor to know that a kid needs something x-rayed? Why can I not go to Walmart, or at least directly to a pharmacist, and buy an antibiotic?

I know that given that freedom to go around a doctor in making health care decisions would be abused. But, isn't that the abusers problem? Why does that problem trickle down to me?

No wonder health care costs so much when my family is sitting in a clinic for three hours for a total of ten minutes worth of actual health care.

Rabbit Holes and the Cost of Lost Opportunity

I waste a ridiculous amount of time. I always have good intentions. I sit down on Facebook, intending to spend 15 minutes catching up on news, catching up on what everyone is up to, etc. Instead, an hour later, I look at the clock and realize I've fallen down every rabbit hole that presented itself. I've just wasted an hour of my life.

The real problem is, I do this regularly and not just on Facebook. I do it on Pinterest and Instagram and just on the internet in general. I also do it with TV shows. I sit down to watch an episode of a show I like but, after that episode which leaves me hanging, I have to find out what happens next. Four episodes later, I haven't done anything I intended to do and the last episode still left me hanging.

What do I think I'm going to find on Facebook or Pinterest that justifies how much time I spend there? Am I going to find some secret formula that makes my life perfect? If that existed, I would probably hear about it outside of Facebook. I've sat countless hours looking at these perfect kitchens on Pinterest, reading about all the tips and lifehacks about how to do it all. Meanwhile, my own kitchen sink is full of dishes and the laundry I put in the dryer yesterday and restarted 5 times already, is sitting there still waiting for me to get it out. All I'm getting in return for that investment of time is a feeling of guilt that my house isn't perfect.

There's a theory in economics called the "lost opportunity". Basically, we all have limited economic resources and when we choose to use those resources in one place, we've automatically chosen not to use those resources in every place we otherwise could have chosen to use them. We wish we had money to go on vacation, while all the trips through the Starbucks window over the last year could have gone to plane tickets to go on that vacation. We chose one thing and, in turn, didn't choose the other.

We can have that same "lost opportunity" with time. For all my talk of never having enough time, how much time do I waste on things that don't matter?

Yesterday, we helped Madison move into her dorm room in Stephenville. I thought I was ready for that, but I really wasn't. I was OK until it was time to leave and then it hit me like a brick wall that I was really leaving her there. This was it. She was staying and I was going home without her. I had the same desperate feeling I had the first time I dropped her off at preschool when she was two. Am I really going to just walk out and leave her here? Can I do that? Will she be OK? Do I really trust these people?

On the trip home, I was a disaster. I was full of guilt. Not because I left her there. I know she's fine there. She's a smart girl and will do great. I was a disaster because the cost of lost opportunities slapped me in face. I should have spent more time with her this last year. Her last day at home just snuck up on me like a snake in grass. Suddenly it was there and I know I had wasted so much time on things that weren't important.

I have to do better. I need to treat my time like the limited resource that it is. Time gone is time we never get back. It needs to be spent on something that matters, not lost in mindless activities. I need to make mindful choices to spend my time where it actually improves my life. No more chasing rabbits or losing opportunities that can never be replaced.

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered–how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” Psalm 39:4-5

Please be Patient!

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Teenagers and Tiaras

My thirteen year old daughter is such a girl.

My beautiful daughter!

Growing up, I was a bit of a tomboy and I guess I still am. I just never got into the make-up and jewelry. I've never worn a pair of high heels and I'm pretty sure that the last time I wore a dress was on my wedding day.

But my daughter is the complete opposite. Her room is just stuffed beyond it's capacity with "girly" stuff. There are clothes, jewelry, and make-up all over the room. It looks like an Ulta, and the Icing next door, exploded in her room. She has too much stuff.

To make matters worse, it doesn't just stay in her room. It's all over the house. It's on the back of the bathroom sink, the kitchen counter, the entertainment center, in our cars, and anywhere else she frequents.

I swear, she walks through the front door when she get home from school and things just start dripping off of her. Her backpack and anything else she was carrying is dropped just past the front door. The shoes come off in the kitchen, then the socks in the den. As she proceeds through the house, miscellaneous items drop off her like leaves falling from a tree.

To make matters worse our 18 month boy, who is naturally fascinated by all her glittery stuff, picks up the miscellaneous stuff and scatters it further around the house. Oooooh, "shiny"!

And then she wonders why she can't find her stuff when she's looking for it.

Now my daughter is an intelligent and very talented young lady. But, she tends to be totally oblivious to the world around her. Like, she runs into walls and trips over air she's so oblivious. Now, she does have a mild case of Cerebral Palsy which contributes to her falling down. But, I swear it's at least 50% just not paying any attention to her surroundings. She can leave a pair of shoes in the middle of the room and never see them again. She can walk past them for days and never notice them. She will only pick them up when she either needs them and starts looking for them or I point them out and tell her to pick them up.

So, how do I fix this? I really don't like having to tell her to pick up her stuff and clean her room all the time. I have scrounged around the internet and found a few ideas that would help in her room at least, if not the rest of the house. And maybe, just maybe, if she had a better place to put things, she might actually put them there. I know, wishful thinking!

I think this magnetic make up storage would be great:

And who would have thought of using cutlery trays or ice trays for jewelry? Awesome ideas, now to actually do it!

(Sources:http://laurathoughts81.blogspot.com/2011/03/make-up-magnet-board.html;http://beadup.blogspot.com/2010/04/fashionably-friday-jewelry-holders.html; http://www.maillardvillemanor.com/2011/07/cutlery-tray-for-jewelry.html

A Merry Cluttermas?

I went into Christmas this year with good intentions. My four kids were only going to get a few gifts they would really use. I was going to do my best to not add to the disaster that is our house. I really wanted our focus to be more on the real meaning of Christmas and not the "stuff". It did not work out as planned.

Where did it go wrong?

First of all, I didn't take into consideration that we are not the only ones that buy our children gifts. We have grandparents, brothers, cousins, and friends who also give gifts. Some do better than others. Some do very well and buy things my children truly use. But some have totally forgotten what it was like to have small children in the house and pick the one thing in the store that makes tons of noise and has no "off" button. Unfortunately, my children use these too. In fact, they tend to leave these kind of toys right front of the bathroom, so that I step on it at three o'clock in the morning and have no way of shutting the dang thing up.

I can totally tell that Chinese toy makers only have one child. Toys seem to get more and more obnoxious every year. They are either ridiculously loud with no volume control or off button, have a million hard little pieces that get stepped on and kill your feet, or they have parts, or even worse clothes, that little hands just can't seem to work and they need you to help them play with it. I swear it's the Chinese getting revenge on us for owing them so much money.

I've tried removing the batteries, when I can find our tiny little baby screwdriver set that never seems to be where it should be. But, children today are pretty tech savvy and either they figure out how to replace them or they get one of the older kids to do it. Then, I sit down to watch TV and can't figure out why the TV won't turn on. Of course, the batteries are gone out of the remote.

Second, not only do we have relatives that are kind and generous enough to purchase our children presents, a couple of our children also, despite our best attempts not to, end up each year on charity gift giving lists such as Angel Tree, etc.

A little history is required here. Only one of our four children came the normal way. You know, I got knocked up, then got married, and then gave birth. The other three have come a not so normal way. Someone else got knocked up but, was unable to care for their children, and God saw fit to send them our way.

Two of our children are adopted and a third is in the process of being adopted. And, because the two youngest came from the CPS/Foster Care system, some well-meaning person somewhere puts my already spoiled-rotten children on some "needy" list. I have managed to remove my children from a couple of these lists but, we apparently got added to a couple of new ones last Christmas with the new baby. I do appreciate the thought and I'm sure the vast majority of kids on these lists are actually in need of Christmas presents. However, my children have more than they could possibly need.

I'm not going to be rude and refuse these well-meaning, good people's gifts. And once the children have opened the presents, I'm not going to be some "Mommy Dearest" and immediately take their new toys away. But, it results in way too much.

So, I will do as any good mother does. I will wait. Then, someday, in the not too distant future, but long enough for them to not really remember everything they got, I will go into their bedrooms when they're not home and remove a few carefully selected toys (generally the noisy ones or the "foot-killers") from their mess and place them in a black trash bag and take them directly out to the trash. They'll never even notice they're their gone. That's how many toys they have.

I know, I know! I should take them to Goodwill or some place like that. But there's a drawback in that. I have to box them up and then the box has to sit somewhere waiting until I have time to get to the Goodwill. During that time, I have a high risk of getting busted. Some kid is going to look in the back my car or the hall closet and say, "Hey, what are you doing with my toys in this box?" It's a risk I'm unwilling to take. And, quite frankly, no one, not even people that shop at Goodwill, needs a toy you can't turn off.

What can I do next year to make it different? I have no idea! I thought I had it under control this year.

A Chicken in Every Pot and a Dumpster in my Front Yard - A Story of Excess

During the Presidential Campaign of 1928, an ad placed by the Republican National Committee in several newspapers and a pamphlet described how the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge had "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot.' And a car in every backyard, to boot." The ad concluded that a vote for Hoover would be a vote for continued prosperity. This promise of prosperity was promptly derailed several months later by the stock market crash of 1929 which plunged the country into the Great Depression. (hoover.archives.gov)

Today, we are having our own financial crisis in this country. A few months ago the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report which stated that a record 46.2 million persons, or roughly 1 out of every 7 Americans, were poor in 2010.

But what is "poor" in America today? It's certainly not what it was in the Great Depression.

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:

• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• 43 percent have Internet access.
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed:

• 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food.
• 83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat.
• 82 percent of poor adults reported never being hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.(http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor)

I would propose that the whole reason for the current financial crisis is the very attitude stated in that quote often mistakenly attributed to Hoover. That we all deserve a "chicken in every pot and car in every yard". I can understand the chicken, but the car?

Everyone had stretched their paychecks to the limit with too much house, too much car, and maxed out credit cards. And it finally all caught up with us. Basically, it was our "stuff" that put the nail in the coffin of our economy.

Personally, our finances are the one place that I am fairly organized. But I, too, am guilty of excess. Part of our organization problem is simply too much stuff. The one thing the "organized" types have right is that you can't organize clutter.

So, I am doing my best this year to de-clutter and to make do with less. I'm trying to go with the 80/20 theory. For example, if I only wear 20% of my clothes 80% of the time, do I really need the other 80%? Maybe a few pieces, but not ALL of it. If I use the waffle maker once a year, is it worth taking up room in the kitchen cabinets? If I need a pair of scissors or a pen, I never can find one because there is too much other crap in the way of finding them.

So, my first step in getting organized is a massive purging of stuff. I have literally had a dumpster delivered to my front yard. I'm not sure I could do the whole "minimalist" thing, but I would like to be able to find my keys in the morning. The next step is to stop bringing so dang much stuff in the house!

I know I "should" have a garage sale, put things on Craigslist, or take things to charity. But it will never actually happen if I do it that way. So, dumpster it is. Let the purging begin! Well, when it warms up a little.

Confessions of a Disorganized Mom

I really like to write and I think I'm pretty good at it. My husband has been pushing me to write for years.

So, for 2012, my big resolution was to "start writing".

But, like most of my previous years resolutions, it hasn't gone so well. I'm in the second week of the year and have written an entire two paragraphs. And those two paragraphs are lost somewhere on my computer because I'm not sure what I named the file.

My "start writing" resolution seemed like a really good idea when I made it. But, it turns out, it's a little vague. What am I going to write about??? I have a government degree (which I've never actually used), so it seemed like a good idea to write about politics and the sorry state our country is in. I could really stick it to those Commie Leftists and there sucky politics that are destroying our great country. But, somehow the blank page I stared at wouldn't cooperate with that idea.

This morning, I woke up early, determined to write. I didn't care what it was about, just write SOMETHING! So, I'm quietly sneaking around the house at 4:30 in the morning, trying desperately not to wake up my dear children, determined to write. Then I hit a snag in my plan. I could find my completely dead laptop, but not the cord. I could find paper, but no pens. I found pencils but they were all broken and I couldn't find a sharpener.

For 45 minutes, I looked for something to write WITH! Is that not ridiculous? It drives me crazy. And while I'm searching, my brain keeps going to the movie "Friday". I've always laughed the hardest at the part where they talk about having Kool-aid but no sugar, peanut butter but no jelly, ham but no burger. I laugh because it's the story of my life and I'd rather laugh than cry. I did finally find the laptop cord. You know where it was? Where it goes, in the bottom of my laptop case! I didn't even think to look there until desperation took over.

So, here you have it - my confession. I'm completely, hopelessly disorganized. I couldn't find my ass half the time if it wasn't attached. Is there just something fundamentally wrong with me? Maybe it's genetic, my Mom and Dad are pretty disorganized, too. That's a good excuse but it doesn't fix the problem.

To make the problem even worse, my husband and children are also disorganized. It's chaos in my house. Trying to get four kids dressed, fed, and out the door in the mornings would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. There's always at least one missing shoe or someone doesn't have clean socks. They probably do have clean socks, but they are all in a huge basket of clean clothes that haven't been folded and no one has time to dig and find the matching set.

I've made New Years Resolutions of "get organized" in the past, but I end up still just as disorganized and feel like a failure, too. But, once again, that's on my list of resolutions. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

I'm not sure how other people do it. I've read all the "self-help" books. I'm sure they are still around here somewhere, but have no idea where. I read the "organization" blogs. Those women just piss me off with their crafty, skinny, cutesy little selves. I don't have time to sew some cute little caddy to hang over the door and I couldn't find my sewing machine if I did. The problem with organization blogs is they are written by people who are organized.

But...maybe, just maybe, if I combine the two resolutions into one and write about my attempt this year to "get organized", maybe things will be different.

I really haven't thought this out very well and haven't had enough coffee this morning to make important decisions. But, if nothing else, I guess you guys can get a good laugh this year at my attempts to get organized. So, here we go with Brook's 2012 attempt to "get organized" and "start writing"....

P.S. Give me some grace, I'm new at this!