Archive for April, 2008

Inspiration Collection   

April 16, 2008 | 3 Comments

You know the people who inspire me? The ones who can tell you, in 5 words or less, what inspires them! My good friend Shauntelle asked the question over on her blog, “what inspires you?” Well, I can’t exactly answer that in a simple comment, so I’m answering here.

I’m so all over the place that I can’t really say that any one thing is my inspiration. But I’ll share what comes to mind this morning.

1. The pure joy that is a preschooler up to his elbows in finger paint. I want that uninhibited sense of pure creativity back! It’s there, hiding in the back of my soul, buried under years of responsibility. I can’t wait to be a grandma so I can join the little ones in finger painting without that annoying little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to clean it up when we’re done.

2. Women who do it all, raise large families, homeschool their children, run a home business, and still manage to keep a peace about them that makes me want to just sit in their presence for half an hour to recharge my own spirit.

3. Edward Abbey - author of several “coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive - even frankly antisocial” books, including my favorite, Desert Solitaire. It would take me weeks to decide on just one quote that inspires me from this book, so I’ll share one of my favorites from the introduction:

When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not. . . . This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot — throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?

4. Pioneer women who raised 10 children in a one-room cabin, with no heat, no running water, and none of the modern conveniences that I can’t imagine living without. Those women remind me of how strong we women are when we have to be.

5. Victorian mansions. The lives lived in those old homes was so much more graceful than my own. I miss that gentility and elegance in modern life. Yes, I know - all that gentility was enjoyed on the backs of generations of the poor, but somehow when I tour a home like this one (the David Davis Mansion in Bloomington, IL), all that cold hard reality fades away and I relax into the fantasy of polite society.

That’s enough for now, I think! I’m sure, the moment I publish this post, five more things will come to mind.

Tackle it Tuesday: The Laundry Room   

April 15, 2008 | 8 Comments

Ok, this is one of those tackles that makes me look around and wonder WHY on Earth it took so long to figure this out. Ah well, that’s life, right?

My laundry room has always been a messy area with piles of dirty laundry arranged on the floor - one pile for whites, one for colors, one for reds, one for jeans, one for towels and linens. As you can imagine, with a family of 5, those piles get big and topple over on a pretty regular basis!

When you have little boys doing their part to carry dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room, that doesn’t exactly contribute to the neatness factor. I’ve never caught them at it, but I suspect sometimes those piles of laundry are a bit too tempting and get jumped in too!

Sure, this isn’t exactly a life-altering burst of inspiration, but it’s amazing how a half-dozen plastic bins can make a huge difference! Last weekend, I found 32 gallon plastic bins on clearance for about $7 each (ok, so they’re pastel blue and purple, Easter colors, but who cares? They’re in the laundry room!). I bought one for each of my laundry piles and voila! No more laundry on the floor, and the whole laundry area takes up a lot less space.

This was such a spur-of-the moment Tackle, I don’t even have before pictures (although if you saw my Basement Storage Room Tackle, you’ll get a pretty good feel for what the laundry room looked like….). Here’s the After picture though - I’m sure you can see the vast improvement! That reminds me, I need to switch laundry while I’m down there taking pictures!

As an added bonus, the clothes are easier to sort now too, because the piles are clearly separated. So now I have boys who can carry dirty laundry to the basement and put their own clean clothes away, I feel a lesson on separating laundry coming on! (Hey, at least I can rest easy knowing that they won’t go to college without a clue how to achieve clean clothes.)

Recipe for Spring Break Sanity   

April 8, 2008 | Comments

Another writer I know recently asked how to survive Spring Break with the kids home from school.  First I have a guilty confession to make.  I kind of look forward to the days when my older son is home from school.  But that’s a whole ‘nother post!  Here’s my recipe for Spring Break Sanity:

1. Take a deep breath.  You can do this!
2. If it’s not physically dangerous to be outside (i.e. severe
   thunderstorms, blizzard, wind chill below zero, or a heat advisory)
   kick the kids outside for a minimum of 1 hour.  If it’s raining,
   fine.  A little water and mud never hurt anyone (although it will do
   a number to that freshly mopped floor….sorry!).  You stay inside
   (where you can see them, of course!) and pour yourself a cup of
   coffee/tea/soda/water or whatever spells comfort in your world.
3. Brainstorm 5 article ideas and research markets for them
   while you’re waiting for editors to get out of
   meetings and call you back.
4. When the kids get back inside, escort them to the shower -
   odds are they’re going to need it, even if the weather’s fine!
5. When they’re clean, feed them.  That always buys me at
   least a 1/2 hour of sanity.  Use this 30 minutes or so to come up
   with an obscure task or project for them to do.  I like scavenger
   hunts for things that don’t actually exist
6. After lunch, send them on their quest or sit them down for a
   project.  Free art time is good too - dump a bunch of random stuff on
   the table, provide scissors, glue, and construction paper and see
   what happens.
7. Chore time!
8. After they’ve worked so diligently, reward them with an hour
   of TV or computer games or whatever activity Dr. Sears would probably
   frown upon.

Congratulations, by now it should be mid- to late- afternoon and you’re practically done with the day!

Crisis Management - How Not to Fall Off the Face of the Earth   

April 7, 2008 | Comments

I haven’t posted here in - what, over a week now? - and I’ve missed it! Unfortunately, just as everything seemed to be chugging along fairly normally, 3 separate crisis situations landed in my lap. And that’s not counting the fact that my husband and one of the boys were sick all weekend, and today I have all 3 boys home with fever and coughing.

That reminds me - gotta call the school and let them know the boys won’t be there today!

Ok, that’s done.

So I have two reasons for posting today. (Ok, 3. I feel horribly guilty about not posting in so long!) First, crises happen to the best of us. No matter how organized and on top of things we try to be, stuff happens. Second, life turning upside down is not an indictment on your ability to manage your life.

I spent a good chunk of last week flirting with a relapse into major depression because I blamed myself for the mess life had become. If I had only been more organized, more disciplined, more psychically in tune with circumstances beyond my knowledge or control, none of this would have happened!

Perhaps.

However, until I develop psychic powers and the ability to function on less than 8 solid hours of sleep (better yet, 9), crises are going to keep happening. That’s just reality. What matters is how I deal with them. I’ll be honest, by gut instinct is to curl up under a blanket and hide. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them go away. Most of the time it just makes the crisis bigger.

So, I’m being brave this week. I’m facing each crisis individually, as rationally as I can, and dealing with the uncertainty. What else can I do? If I try and hide, the boys come find me

Guess what? Facing these situations head-on makes them less scary. I might not have made a lot of friends today as I dealt with things, but that’s not the point. Ok, so I’ve been downright blunt today. (I like to call it “honest”!) I haven’t sugar-coated anything. I’ve explained, in some detail, exactly what the problem is as I see it and exactly what actions I expect from each individual person involved.

So far, so good. I can’t say that anything is 100% solved yet, but at least I’m not hiding from the problems any more.

As for the second reason I’m posting today - that life turning upside down is not an indictment on our ability to manage - sometimes circumstances are simply outside of our control. And sometimes there’s just so much going on that something falls through the cracks. It happens! And life goes on.

And you know what? Anybody who gives you a hard time or makes you feel like a failure because you missed something either has entirely too much time on their hands, or is covering up their own failures.  Ignore them.  They aren’t particularly helpful, and therefore you don’t have time for those people.  People who encourage you and reaffirm your inner strength, on the other hand, are the emotional equivalent of dark chocolate and a really good massage.  You always have time for them!