A Much Less Depressing Update

I'm at a crossroads. 

I'm pregnant again; Holden is a year old, and Burgundy's almost done with high school and suddenly in love with all her opportunities. Yesterday she got herself appointed to the prom committee; today she picked up an application to join student council. Her Gold Award project is gathering its own momentum with one of the Assistant Principals now advocating with the district to allow her to use its facilities and advertise district-wide free of charge. She's spearheading an effort to get an elected student advisory committee for the Class of 2013 booster club, and she joined the district's robotics team, the Robonauts.

Meanwhile, we're trying to decide where to allocate our meager funds for traveling to potential universities over spring break. Rice remains her first choice university; she plans to apply there for early admission. Her second choice is Harvard, and Stanford and University of Chicago are tied for her third choice. After that she's lumped Princeton, University of Colorado, University of California, Abilene Christian University, University of Houston, Southern Methodist, Vanderbilt, and God Knows Where Else into her pile of, "Sure, we can try that," options. Since we live next door to Rice and they're already involved in her Gold Award project, we can tour there anytime. Her remaining, "OMG MOM I HAFTA TOUR THERE," options are in Massachusetts, Illinois, and California. We do NOT have that kind of money, so we have some tough choices. Harvard also is involved in her Gold Award project, so it seems prudent to tour there, and we can hit Princeton while we're at it.

I didn't mean for this entry to ramble on about Burgundy's school stuff, but I suppose that's the brain dump I needed.

How does all this put me at a crossroads? I guess because I don't know what to do with myself (other than survive). I would really like to bring in $500 a month regularly in home-based income by the end of the year. There are so many ways for me to make this happen that I feel like I can't possibly make any of them happen.

My options: Let me enumerate them for you:

1. Pampered Chef. I've done it before; I like their merchandise, and I like doing the parties. It feels crazy, but the tools sell themselves, and I really love cooking and teaching others how. 
2. Continue selling my bread. I have a couple of customers who would buy regularly if I baked regularly. So far, I haven't been able to make myself churn out a batch a week, much less the batch a day I would need to sell $500 in bread every month. It's do-able, though.
3. Tutor high school and early college students in English and writing.
4. Teach a class on finding and cooking local, sustainable foods.
5. Freelance writing and editing.
6. Prostitution. Ha ha, just checking to see who's reading.
7. No really, prostitution. Without a pimp, I could make a killing.
8. Okay, that took up three numbered options; any respectable list should have 10; surely I can come up with two more.
9. Home inventory: basically, I would help people inventory and document their homes' contents for use in the event they need to file with their insurance for hurricane, flood, or fire damage.
10. Life coach (because mine is going so brilliantly well). I seriously think the world could do with an attitude adjustment about fat people, and it needs to start with us fatties. Fat is not the problem; self-image, love of others, and poor nutrition and health are the problem.

Things I WON'T do:

1. Prostitution. Jeez, people. Give me a break. Nobody's going to pay a fatty for sex. I mean, I have WAY too much self-respect for that.
2. Knit for money. Just to make minimum wage, I'd have to charge something like $250 for a pair of socks. Too much work, not enough dollars.
3. Substitute teach. I am not a fan of other people's children at large. I love lots of individual offspring of other people. I do not want to endure abuse from the population of children at large in return for bureaucratic nonsense and $8/hour. Christ, I could do better with less abuse at Starbucks.
4. Work outside the home. I am qualified to make pretty decent dough working in the professional world, and I voluntarily gave that up to stay home with my children.
5. Ghost write someone else's blog for $.01 a word. Seriously? I can't even keep up with my own damn blog.

I have some pretty consistent problems (personal problems) that get in the way of making any of the money-making ideas work.

1. Follow-through. I no can haz. Really. My last order for bread (pizza crust, actually) was in October. I still haven't delivered. She's being very patient.
2. Enthusiasm. I get really sold on an idea really fast, and then I realize that in the grand scheme of things, I don't actually give a flying fart. See also #1.
3. Everything Else Life Demands. I usually don't have the energy to wash diapers and cook dinner in the same day. Running a business, even at 10 hours a week, seems a foolish idea if I can't keep the basics taken care of.

The foregoing lead me to a second conclusion: I have to do something about my energy and fitness levels. Please don't mistake this for, "I have to go on a diet and start exercising all the time because I'm FAT OMGWTFBBQ!" However, regular exercise contributes to better sleep and better energy levels, and I know it will make my next labor and delivery less agonizing. Better eating also contributes to better energy levels and improved overall health, and given my near brush with gestational diabetes during my pregnancy with Holden, it's imperative for health reasons to eat well right now. 

I hesitate to say, "From now on, I will take a 30 minute walk every day and eat only wholesome, local foods." I won't do either religiously; however, I've cooked every night this week, and tonight I made a delicious quiche with homemade crust and mustards harvested from my backyard five minutes before they were needed. 

Thus my crossroads. It isn't as easy as, "just commit." Even with healthful eating and daily exercise, sometimes I just don't give a rip. However, I only have two real resolutions this year, and both of them require me to be better organized, to increase my energy, and to put some routine and self-love into my day to day life. We'll see how it goes.

If 2 Days Slip Away, are the Days Slipping?

Or am I avoiding? I rather strongly suspect I'm avoiding. On the other hand, Burgundy didn't get home until nearly 8:00 PM last night what with set up for her science fair. I had my hands tied up in cake batter and Portuguese custard tarts when she came home. By the time she finished her tuba, shower, and getting ready for bed, I had finished the custards, cupcakes, and Swiss buttercream frosting (oh my God, die of rich, buttery, silken heaven right. now). Of course, when we finally sat down to evaluate whether she had all the information she needed to study for her 9-weeks exams that start two days after her return from spring break, it was 9:45 PM. Already 15 minutes late for lights out.

All day today, Burgundy will be at the Houston Science Fair; thus, I made cupcakes. I only made custard tarts because the Swiss buttercream frosting (oh my God, die of rich, buttery, silken heaven) required a cup of egg whites, and I didn't want the yolks to go to waste; the custard requires 6 yolks; the frosting took 7 whites. Match made in heaven. Oh, and wild kudos to Our Best Bites for the frosting and cupcake recipes.

Tonight I was supposed to meet up with some friends at another friend's new place to watch dumb movies, but the host begged off last night. Now I'm trying to decide whether to host it myself or just call the whole thing off. Love the idea of getting together, but I kinda want to be a homebody in advance of our trip to Hill Country.

And in ultimately crappy timing, my employer messed up my paycheck. It was an honest mistake; when they changed my status to be hourly instead of salaried, they calculated my pay based on half my annual part-time salary instead of half my annual full-time salary. The result was half a paycheck two days before we leave for Hill Country. Happily, we have no worries because we work it a la Dave, so we have an emergency fund that can handle the trouble. Meanwhile, the employer is plugging away at fixing the problem, and I should have my paycheck this time next week.

On the Second Day of Clutter . . .

Today we began boxing stuff up. The most difficult part is staying on task. Our job right now is not to sort, judge value, or purge her collections. We simply are putting like items into a box and labeling it. Easier said than done.

We started with scrapbooking supplies, which filled two boxes and her rolling case from Michael's. These include paper, stickers, markers, photos, notes from middle school, movie stubs, you name it. She did a very good job of handing things over and simply filing them in the appropriate box. With one stack she said, "Mom, this is very expensive stuff. Set it aside until I find a protective sleeve." Pardon me while I chuckle with a mix of pride and pretention. Would that be a chortle?

The bookshelves proved much easier even though we're not done with them yet. She identified four books she wants in the guest room, so we brought those in. The remaining have filled two boxes already with a fair remainder littering her bed.

In the final three minutes of last night's 30 minutes, we cleared most of her dresser simply by heaping her jewelry and assorted small boxes into one shoebox. We felt we'd run a marathon, but looking around the room, it appears we barely made a dent. That's okay, though. Slow and steady does the trick.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of this project is figuring out how to fit it into the rest of our busy schedule. For example, look at what yesterday was supposed to be:

All the stuff in red is Burgundy's commitments. In blue are mine and Mark's. Burgundy can't drive yet. Ugh.

Fortunately, her sectionals (uppermost red section) were cancelled, allowing her much more time to do homework and catch up on studying. Everything else stayed the same, but it felt a little less crazed.

Finally, I want her to start now with establishing routines. I see three major "conversion times" in her day where routines should be implemented: morning, afternoon upon returning from school, and evening before bed.

Morning:  This routine is pretty well in place, but not intentionally, and the bed usually doesn't get made.

• Make bed
• Get dressed to the shoes/hair/makeup
• Eat breakfast/make lunch

Afternoon:  Right now she leaves a trail of dropped belongings throughout the house and does whatever homework she remembers once she's had a snack (trailing crumbs through the house).

• Put away books and purse in bedroom on shelf
• 15 minutes free time
• Calendar review/organize task list
• Homework 

Evening:

• 15 minutes straightening room, putting away clothes, preparing school stuff for tomorrow
• Personal hygiene
• Lay out clothes for tomorrow
• If there's time, spend a few minutes journaling or reading; this is time to wind down and relax

Today we'll go back into the room and continue our excavation. Here are photos of the room after last night's efforts. I'm going to try to post daily room photos so we can watch it progress in retrospect.

View of the doorway from the bed.

Proceeding to the right.

And the closet

The book-laden bed

The window

The scrapbooking corner

And the desk with a better view of the scrapbooking corner

And on the First Day . . .

We spent the full hour trying to get her settled into the guest room. Not counting the time I spent before she came home rearranging the furniture nor the time I spent after our time together finishing her bed or putting up the robe hook on the door.

The makeup, jewelry, and hair supplies alone took up 15 minutes. I admit that I allowed us to get sidetracked detangling necklaces from the Jewelry Box of Doom. We spent the bulk of the time on clothes. I really wanted her to carefully think about how she set up the room. For example, she likes her clothes to hang, but she doesn't have time to hang them. I fold them fresh out of the dryer, so why not keep them in a drawer instead? For those that do hang, how much do you really need? How do you address crowding in the closet?

Then there are the shoes. Holy heavens, the shoes. I don't understand why anyone needs the vast cornucopia of shoes this child enjoys. She's no Imelda Marcos, but it's still kind of ridiculous. Four pairs of tennies? Three of them Converse-style fold-tops?

All the same, we worked our way through it, and Burgundy now is installed in the guest bedroom comfortably and with a view to routine. Unfortunately, between studying for a major test today, finishing homework, and her tuba lesson, she didn't get in bed until almost 10. On the upside, for the first time in ages, she was able to sleep almost immediately.

I got up with her this morning and walked through her routine with her. She seems to have a pretty solid routine, but she needs to work on efficiency. Hopefully later today I can post before pictures and an after panoramic of the guest room she's living in. I didn't re-hang the curtains, but they don't match the horrible pink walls anyway. I briefly considered repainting the room, but I reminded myself in safe time that it's Burgundy's room, not the guest room, that we're trying to perfect.

Before the Storm: Plotting and Planning

Today I will do two things: First, I will show you Burgundy's current bedroom state. Warning: This is not pretty. For starters, remarkable though she is, Burgundy is a teenager, and the state of her room reflects that. There is a crap-ton of stuff in her room, most of it where it should not be. Second, I will lay out our plan to reset her room to something usable.

First, the view from the doorway. I'm not going to give you individual commentary on every photo. Instead, just note the general lack of organization, the liquor-box-based storage system, the haphazard attempts at creating a cohesive look universally marred by half-finished projects and too much hobby paraphernalia. The pictures begin at the doorway and proceed from that view moving to the right all the way around the room.

I honestly have no idea why I expect her to be able to function well in this room. I get  a little panicky and out of control feeling just taking the pictures. And she has to live in this to manage her schoolwork, band plans, Girl Scout projects, and drama/choir endeavors at the church. Poor kid.

We're only going to work on this for 30 minutes to 1 hour per day. We're doing it slowly for a variety of reasons. First, I don't want either one of us to burn out. Second, she has a heavy school workload, and I want her to have breathing time in the evenings between or after the school and bedroom work. Third,  I've identified inadequate sleep as a major part of Burgundy's attention and organization issues. I want her in bed by 9:00 with lights out by 9:30. That means we have to wrap up our day - dinner, dishes, housework, homework, and self-care - by 8:30. That's a lot of work to pack into afternoon and evening.

So this is how the plan will shake out day by day:

Monday:
Perform a bare-necessities assessment of what she needs to function day to day. Things like makeup, pajamas, her few favorite bottoms and tops will be moved into the guest room for the next couple of weeks. That room also has been gutted of distractions and extras to make way for Burgundy to simply function while we work on her room. It currently has a bed, a desk, a bookshelf (mostly empty), a dresser with mirror, and an antique chest of drawers. I will rehang the curtains that Julia took down, and I might spend a few minutes with Burgundy rearranging the room to meet her needs.

Tuesday-Thursday:
Bring in and set up multiple small U-Haul boxes. Very carefully begin sorting her stuff into these. Wall hangings in one box, books in another box, stuff she needs to give back to other people in another box, clothes she wears in another, and clothes she doesn't wear in another, etc. Each box will be clearly labeled and stored in the hall linen closet with the label facing out. I don't know how long this step will take, but I am committed to removing everything from the room in an organized, controlled way. I don't want precious photos to get thrown out with unwanted scrapbooking supplies, so the real goal of this is to organize the clutter in a way that will allow us to carefully sort through it later. Because this step could take two days and could take ten, I'm calling it Tuesday - Thursday, but it could be over sooner or take longer.


Friday (or whenever the room is reduced to furniture only):

Perform an assessment of existing room setup, including furniture. Make any reasonable repairs (e.g., the gap between drawers in Burgundy's long dresser seen in photo above), assess what furniture needs to be replaced including the expected cost and practicality of replacement. For example, Burgundy wants a Murphy bed and has for some time. I have plans for one and think I could make it without too much trouble; however, I expect it to cost a couple hundred dollars. While $200 isn't much, I'm not sure we want to spend that money right now.  The assessment also should evaluate what works and does not work for Burgundy. We'll do this using the guidelines laid out in Julie Morgenstern's Organizing from the Inside Out. I think I'll write a full review of the book later. It's a very good book.

At this point, we'll implement the findings from OftIO where it's practical in Burgundy's guest room. Does she need better lighting? More bookshelf space? A file drawer at hand?

With assessment in hand, I will sit with Mark and look at whether and how we can replace or upgrade any of Burgundy's furniture. The assessment also should include a map of Burgundy's room, to scale, with to-scale furniture cut-outs. She and I will work together to decide how best to place the furniture in the room to optimize space and promote organization. This might involve buying smaller furniture, though I doubt it.

Saturday (or after completion of furniture assessment):
Do whatever shopping needs done. Likely a trip to Ikea at minimum. This almost always takes two hours, so if I only go shopping and call it a day, I'll consider this task a success. If it does fall on a Saturday and I'm not too pooped at the end of the trip, I'll come home and engage the furniture assembly/disassembly process.

This is my goal for the first week of work, and this is where I see potential for it all to go to hell in a hand basket. At the end of next week, we leave for a spring break Hill Country trip, so I will simply describe the rest of this in steps.

Step 5: Complete furniture assembly. Place in room using the completed room map as a guide. Ensure Burgundy is pleased with the final layout. Make any necessary adjustments.

Step 6: Move Burgundy and her bare essentials back into her room. Have her live in the room with only these essentials for two - four weeks. Take note of any needed adjustments in the written assessment we completed earlier. Of course, we'll make the adjustments in real life, too, but I suspect the plan will be very useful to Burgundy later in life. I intend for her to keep it.

Step 7: Once we've gone at least a week, maybe longer, without making any adjustments, we'll begin going through the boxes. We'll evaluate each item that comes out of each box. Love it? Hate it? Hate it but need it? How to deal with these items will be driven by the plan. When we open the wall decorations box and put them back on the wall, we'll take a week to evaluate. Are they distracting her from school work? Do they soothe her at night? Did she decide to keep something that, once on the wall, makes her cringe?

Each thing will be an intentional decision. The whole process will happen slowly and step 7 could take months. But I think it's a very important step to teaching Burgundy to honor herself exactly as God has created her by taking care of her mind and body through her environment.

Redecorating

I'm still working on the living room. I've made a lot of progress; unfortunately, I had to reset my expectations.

We don't have a television; instead, we have a projector that we hook up to our Wii and to the laptop for movies. The original plan was to mount four bracketless shelves (Lack from IKEA) on the back wall and use them to house the projector, speakers, internet radio, and Wii. One shelf also would provide a space for the laptop to sit when we watch movies.

Alas, I didn't measure the depth of the shelves in relation to the depth of the projector, and the front half hangs off the shelf. Not okay. I had already mounted one of the shelves, and I mounted it too high for the purpose, too, but that's a discussion for another day. I discovered all this Friday night, and I just let it sit. I was discouraged and irritable, my friend Christi was at the house, and I just decided not to decide.

I spent most of Saturday getting Burgundy ready for the military ball. We had a major snafu with the dress, and when we sorted that out, she wanted her hair in an updo. By the time she left and I turned my attention back to the furniture issue, my mind was able to look at the situation with a fresh perspective.

So I moved the large entertainment center/wardrobe over to the back wall and placed it under the Lack shelf. It turned out to be the perfect solution, too. All the entertainment stuff fits inside it, and a hole in the back allows us to run cords out. The industrial surge protector, which is huge and unsightly, is hidden on the top of the wardrobe under the ivy. When we're not watching, we can shut the doors, and it's all hidden away. I love this idea so much more than the original. I still have to find a way to bring in the dog kennel because the dog has decided that used Kleenex and bathroom trash constitute oh-so-tasty chew toys.

I also need to find a place to hang our pretty wedding photo. It doesn't really go anywhere. The frame just isn't right for our house, but I'm not willing to spend the money to replace it right now.

Well Mark and the girls have just left for school and work, and I need to get to work myself. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to post photos later.

Rearranging the House

My husband hoards. It gets overwhelming sometimes. He's slowly getting better (as in, over the last 7 years, he's begun to see reason about things like not having a garage full of books he won't read, but he still can't let go of the pile of movie stubs going back at least 10 years), and our house is slowly getting better along with him. 

::mumblemumble:: Well, it helps that I've started cleaning house, too.  ::mumblemumble::

So the books in the garage are starting to go away, but we still have all the "House Books." Like cats, they get in the way, sit on the couch when I don't want them there, poop on the rug (well, okay, they leave dust bunnies on the shelf), and generally command attention I do not want to give them. 

Lest you think I'm an illiterate, non-reading boob, I have a degree in literature. I love books. Reasonable books. But these are books on circuitry and obsolete technology (the 3.5 Floppy Disk Will Alter Our World), old magazines, phone books, etc. Jane Austin is welcome to crap on my carpet (metaphorically). Ma Bell? Not so much.  

Our most successful foray into controlling the books to date has been two 5 x 5 Expedit bookshelves, both of which are crammed into my relatively small living room. Well, I've had an idea. I moved one of the Expedit shelves into the formal den, which currently does not house a table, and in its place, I will mount four (4) and only four (4) bracketless shelves from IKEA on that wall in the living room. 

I will find a way to make do with only four because that's how many I already have, and I'm NOT buying more.The shelves will be not quite randomly spaced, but they won't be all in a straight line. Those four shelves will house our projector (stand-in for a TV), our Wii system, our speaker system, and a blank spot for the laptop when we want to watch a movie on the projector. I'm very excited about it.

Meanwhile, of course I had to completely unload all the books and other detritus from the shelf in order to move it. So while I loaded it back up in its new home, I decided that I should at least cull my own collection of books. Well, of all the surprising and embarrassing discoveries, I only found one (1) of my husband's books on the shelf. And it was worth about $20 (he sells books online). Awkward. Now even accounting for the three shelves that our electronics occupied on this thing prior to its move, I still cleared out seven (7) shelves on this case. That were double-stacked.

Mark graciously looked up every book I set aside for its value and listed any for sale that were worth more than a few dollars. There were two, maybe three books. The rest I boxed up and took to half-price books. I got $12 for those, and then dropped off another trunkload of clothes, knick-knacks, and other random things at Goodwill.

This has inspired me to cull the other shelf now, so that's my 15-minute daily project this week. Wish me luck!

Photos to come soon! I'm excited.