It's the thought that counts

I started the day's chores taking pictures. Before and after...messy and ordered...dirty and clean. I got a lot of stuff done in our living room. Which is the large room that holds the living room, dining room and kitchen. And I do mean LOTS! Every surface was decluttered, wiped and beautified. Every piece of purties on surfaces and walls was dusted, shined and leveled (there was quite a lot of pictures that were not straight).

Then, I sat down and looked through all the store fliers and made my plan for grocery shopping today. Which I NEVER do...I usually just goto one store and get what's on my list. I took a picture of all the adds on the table, my list and menu.

Somewhere between helping Bone Head with his English homework and Captain coming home...I lost it all. Lost the reason behind doing what I'd began. Lost the motivation to do a picture post about all that I accomplished in the day. Lost the nerve to post pictures of my really messy house. Lost the idea I had for what to write with those wonderful pictures.

But the most important one....I lost the damn pictures!

Monkey Man "borrowed" my camera. There's a lovely picture of the fish tank (at least I think it's the fish tank), some of the dogs and the ferret. And a really GREAT one of my butt.

But really, my house is really, really clean! Well...at least part of it.

You believe me, right?

Web Cleaning

I spent much of yesterday and some of this morning cleaning up my favorites files. But that's not the fun part! I cleaned up, sprused up, and freshened HERE!

This is the awesome shot I got from my front porch yesterday morning...while it was -12 degrees F.

Isn't that just too cool? I love it! I just happened to glance out the door when I walked by after getting my 3rd cup of coffee. Thrilled that this actually came out, since I had had 2 cups already, and I had zoomed to 12X on the camera and the little icon alerting me to "shaking" was going nuts.

Back to the task at hand for today. No, I didn't manage to clean out the fridge yesterday. I lost my nerve! Plus my momma was online all day, so I talked to her! HA!

Today the kids are home. Right now the boys are playing Wii, the girls are playing with the ferret, and I'm playing with my computer. The state of the house is, well...not good.

I keep telling myself...ONE more blog, one more page, one more cuppa...one more anything! Cause I'm sure I'll find some motivation somewhere...just gotta search hard enough for it!

Please do check out any and all of my friends' (yes they are my friends, even if they don't know it....) blogs over on the sidebar. They are great! Don't forget to READ all the way to the bottom (if you haven't yet) and see the new TWLOHA thingy down there (which may be moved soon). And don't forget to VOTE on your least-favorite cleaning chore!

I'm off to ruin my children's day off by making them do their chores. Muahahahaa. Well, maybe we'll play the game I made up (see below), they seem to like it...somewhat!

Cleaning Game

1. On small scraps of paper, write down as many house-hold chores that you would allow your children to do. Eg. wash window, sweep, clean toilet, mop, wash chairs, pick up toys, trash pickup (5 items), put away dishes....etc. The list can be as big or as small as you want! Put doubles in to get more of the same thing done!

2. Get two containers

3. Put all scraps in one.

4. Get kids...sometimes they hide under the bed...look there first! *

5. Each kid draws out one piece of paper, then does the chore.

6. When the chore is done, put the scrap in the 2nd container.

7. You can also make this a race, if you have competitive children. Have a container for each kid! Whoever gets the most done in a certain ammount of time WINS!

Check back (maybe monday) for another fun game that allows you to make your children do your chores!

* Really, I PROMISE that my kids do like this game! Once they get into it, they have a blast and it takes them about 45 minutes to get all the way through...and POOF the house is pretty clean!

Whistle while you work

So the kids have learned a new song at school. It goes "I'm a geek, geek, geek. But I don't care, care, care. Cause you're a dork, dork, dork. Wha!"

I think I've heard this 30 times this morning...and they have only been awake for 45 minutes. So, between 3 kids and 45 minutes...that's um...alot. Princess Pout even sang it to the dog.

This leads me to wonder what other gems of crudeness my children are learning in school. There's been a few things that I go "Hey, that's not how it goes...it goes like this"....course, I can't remember what that was now...lol But somewhere in the 20 years since I was in 4th grade...the actual song/saying/thingy has gotten transmutted and they got it all wrong now.

Okay, after that little diversion...it's back to the topic on hand...yup, you guessed it...CLEANING! It's been a few posts since I've actually gotten down and dirty, and it's tiiiime!!!

Recently, I've been dealing with hair...dog hair. It's everywhere! It doesn't help that there's 4 dogs in the house (one of which is mine), and they all do have hair! But the main problem is my dog. For some reason, he's shedding like it just turned 1000 degrees.

I'm no dog phsycologist...but if I had to guess, I'd say it's stress. He wasn't shedding before the other dogs got here. He's in his kennel* for the least ammount of time I can manage...with rotating the dogs' "out time" throughout the day, while I'm home.

So, on to the cleaning of dog hair. I've got a pretty great vacuum cleaner. It sucks good (ha). But I have to vacuum his kennel and around it at least 2 times a day, or the hair finds it's way into the whole house. It's easy, no big...a few seconds time. But it's doing a number on the ammount of vacuum bags I have to use! LOL

Ugh, is this post lame, or is it just me? Um...wait a minute-dont' answer that.

Today's to-do list!!!
Besides the normal day-to-day cleaning, that is!

The FRIDGE! Yup, just that. It's a huge job, believe me. If I'm brave, I'll take pics to post. But I'm not sure....I don't know if I'll want to remember this adventure forever captured in photographs AND in the blogosphere...

Snow removal

If you are as fortunate as I to live in a place where you just might wake up to see oh....8 inches of fluffy white stuff outside-You are familar with snow removal. Here's my take on it all.

If you want to do it the old-fashioned, back-breaking way...

This little beauty, while cheap, aint easy to use. Bend, scoop, lift and toss. It's a device that should only be used to punish children. By making THEM use it...

If you prefer the only slightly less back-breaking and way more noisey way...

This dandy invention must be the wet-dream of nearly every testosterone-driven man in the world. It's not nice, it's the evil dragon of winter. It will eat you up and spit you out, figuretivly & literally..ouch! *check out the last photo* haha

Then of course there's the sane way...

First you use one of these....

To call one of these.....

Then sit back in the comfort of your wam house with your choice of this....

I, on the other hand, am apparently not sane...So I used a combination of the first two to clear out my driveway.

I am, however, going to use some of this once I can move again to get to my favorite store.

Goes great in Hot chocolate...and I'm sure will help me recover my sanity.

*If you are curious just what a snowblower can do to a tin coffee can....

~*~ And I didn't ONCE use the 'c' word! HA!!! ~*~

Tag you're it

Manic Mom tagged everyone (and I do mean everyone) for this meme. And since I consider myself part of "everyone"...here goes.

You answer the questions, but you can only use ONE word to do so.

1. Where is your cell phone? purse
2. Where is your significant other? arkansas
3. Your hair color? natural
4. Your mother? teacher
5. Your father? funny
6. Your favorite thing? books
7. Your dream last night? absent
8. Your dream/goal? security
9. The room your in? Den
10. Your hobby? reading
11. Your fear? falling
12. Where do you want to be in six years? warm
13. Where were you last night? home
14. What you’re not? awake
15. One of your wish list items? babysitters
16. Where you grew up? Arizona
17. The last thing you did? eat
18. What are you wearing? pajamas
19. Your TV? on
20. Your pet? some
21. Your computer? running
22. Your mood? lonely
23. Missing someone? honey
24. Your car? frosted
25. Something you’re not wearing? brace (yeah i should be though...bad me)
26. Favorite store? none
27. Your summer? rainy
28. Love someone? many
29. Your favorite color? blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? earlier
31. Last time you cried? saturday

All done...how informative and yet so criptic! Love it. And yes...IF you're reading this, you are tagged! Lucky you!

I'll blame the lack of sleep...or the cold.

I swear I came up with some really great stuff to post last night, while laying in bed trying to goto sleep. I promise it was all really great, funny, and a rare look inside to the "real me". But, of course, I did fall alseep (eventually), and forgot it all.

Except to say that we still have at least one mouse. And the little bugger is either one very picky eater...or it's smarter than the average mouse. Peanut butter failed, as did the jelly (it was even strawberry), so I'll be off to get some spray-cheese to try that on our ONE remaining working mouse trap. Because while this mouse doesn't like our offerings...our doggy does! Aparently he's not much smarter, cause the snap of the trap on his tongue (or nose) isn't enough to stop him from trying to get under EVERYTHING if there's a trap under it.

Seriously...he tried like CRAZY to get under the bookshelf...which has a floor clearance of about 2 inches. I'm just glad it's attached to the walls!

It is offically 'winter' in Sarah Palin's state! Yup, the snow fell and stuck...and all the silly 4x4 drivers went off into the ditches. I'm really trying to have fun this year. I stuck pretty snowflake window clings on my kitchen window...trying to block out the yucky snow that's actually outside the window....it's not really helping.

It might help a little more if I didn't have to air-up a tie on the van at least once a day. I'd even be happy with the old cassette player/radio if that meant I didn't have to air up a tie in the FREEZING wind....but no. Captain decided that I needed a nifty CD player instead. Okay, okay...we didn't know that the tie was going to die when he got the CD player! But, that used our monthly "car money"...so I gotta stand in the wind and snow for a few more days...airing up that blessed tie (see it's blessed, maybe when I go out it will still be full...hahahhaaa)

Can your brain freeze while you are still living--er and maybe airing up a tire? I think I'll blame the cold on my impending insanity. Half-frozen brain trauma...yeah....I hear a vacation to somewhere warm calling me!

And there is still 6 months of this to go.....

Okay, the mouse isn't imaginary. I saw it on Sunday. It skurried from the utility room into the laundry/pantry/junk room then along the wall to behind the freezer then from the other side of the freezer to under the shelf we have for shoes.

So, yeah...there's at least one mouse in the house. Although, the traps are un-touched! Either this is one smart-assed mouse (ew mice?), or there's too much other stuff hidden to entice the mouse to eat of the death-trap peanut butter. Since I refuse to believe that these rodents have evolved or learned enough to know to stay away from traps (i mean we're out in the woods, where would they learn that...) (COULD they learn that?)

Okay, so I'm thinking there's food elsewhere...you know what that means....yup my favorite subject! Cleaning!

So yesterday I O.C.ed (my sis and I's term for detail cleaning) the kitchen/dining/living rooms. As well as the Den. I also rearranged the living room, and we LOVE it! I took every single item out of drawers, cupboards and cubbies and cleaned it all out, cleaned up the bottles etc. Cleaned the floors and the table and chairs...took apart the couch and cleaned all that.

Lemme tell you (should I be ashamed?) that I found a LOT of crumbs. This find lend me to the realization (with the help of Captain) that since December, we've only really been cleaning the surface. Haven't had the time or energy to really clean the place.

Okay, yeah...here and there I've done some major stuff...not even including the kids' rooms! But it really hasn't been enough or often enough to make a difference.

Today my plan was to do the laundry/pantry/junk room and try to hit the kids' rooms again. Yeah...but of course the day dawned mostly sunny and just beautiful. I don't know where my children are. They ate breakfast (eww we only have the apple oatmeal left, mom) and took off to the winds. That's fine by me, they've been driving me up the wall for over a week cause the weather has been horrible!

And so...I'm bravely attacking the laundry etc room today...by myself. I just picked up all the laundry that the kids have thrown on the floor (for fear of entering mouse infested area). If I can do it...I plan to move out the washer and dryer and clean behind/under those. And also try to move the freezer to clean around that area....it's empty so there's a 5% chance that I'll be able to move it.

And yes, I'm prepared to scream as if my life depends on it if I do find that smart little mouse behind anything!

Ps If I somehow have the energy or motivation after all that, I'm going to try to re-organize the shelves in the room too....they seriously need help...

pps. check back later today or tomorrow for a PHOTO post! About what? Well...Cleaning of course!

Real and Imaginary

Yikes! I posted a comment on one of my favorite blogs just now...without thinking that someone out there might read it, and then click on over here! So I thought I might come on over, take down the dust covers and spruce the place up. At least post something...something hopefully not related to cleaning or the weather...

*****40 minutes later******

Um yeah, can't think of anything. Haha, no really, it hasn't been 40 minutes. But I really can't think of anything.

Honetly, my life is consumed by cleaning. Dishes, sweeping, dirty toilets, laundry. With 6 people in the house and several "extras" all the time (neighborhood kids, friends and family), the place can get quite messy. And by messy I don't mean a few toys on the floor. I mean the sort of messy that makes you want to rent a front-end loader to just clear it all out and start over.

Oh pooh...I've already gone and wrote about cleaning twice!

Monkey Man came running up to me this morning in tears. He said that a spider stole his bouncy ball. I laughed and he glared. My first thought was something like a Dung Beetle rolling a ball of turds...only this being a large spider rolling away on his bouncy ball.* Funny to me, but not so much to a five year old scared of spiders (all my kids are scared of spiders, I think I did it to them when we lived in Georgia and told them to RUN SCREAMING if they saw one-um yeah). So anyway, I got ahold of myself and followed him to the ball-stealing spider.

He asked me what I was going to do. "Well, I'm going to go beat up that ball-stealing spider!" He cheered.

Sure enough, there was his bouncy ball, just under the stove, and when I rolled it away with my shoe (ew I'm not scared of spiders, but I don't like them much either), there was a rather large spider. And in true ball-stealing bulliness, once it fell off the ball, it ran AT me. AHHIEEEE!

Squish!** All is better! No bully spider is gunna get away with stealing my baby's play-things! Ha!

Of course, a few minutes later....M.M. uses said bouncy ball as a progectile weapon against his brother. Good thing he has bad aim!

In other "pest" tales...two of my children have reportedly seen mice in the house...in two different places. I dutifully bought a few traps ***, and wonderful Captain set them up. In the search for the best places to put them, we found zero signs of mice in the house. NONE at all. Not even in the crawl space...where we did find a half-eaten bag of stale cheetos, a pizza crust and a soda can...but not even one mouse turd! We did set the traps, though, just in case. Although, I'm pretty sure that the trap in the garage is um, full, the ones in the house are un-touched.

I'm starting to think that I've caused this pest scare as well. See...about a week ago, I helped the girls to clean their room (oh no more about cleaning!). And was totally disgusted. Needless to say, they are grounded from sweets/yummies for a little while. We found packaging for soda, chips, cookies, ice cream, candy and crackers. And several cups, spoons and two plates. Yeah. And no, they aren't allowed to eat in their rooms. Allowed being the key word here.

All of this was hidden quite well...jambed way under the bed, in between the bed and the wall, in drawers and even an empty bag in between the mattress and the box.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah!

While sweeping up tons of food crumbs off the floor, I laid it on thick. "I'm surprised you don't have bugs and mice in here!" Bugs and mice love this sort of stuff...lots of food and great places to hide! The girls looked dutifully ashamed (but didn't stop Princess Pout from stealing the rest of Daddy's Triple Strawberry Ice Cream a few days later and hiding the carton in her dresser).

So, yeah, I think with all of that, they got it in their heads that since they are the little pigs **** that they are, there must be mice in the house. Ha ha ha...jokes on me-who's out the $ spent on the traps we probably don't need.

* Interestingly gross...in searching for a pic of a spider on a ball (bug circus style), I ran across this rather disturbing site. I guess this guy's got talent, but who'd want these things?

** Yes, I squished the spider...I have no problems with that at all. Don't tell me it's animal cruelty, or bad luck or any of that. I love all of God's creatures, but Spiders are gross!

*** Yes, they are KILL traps...see above

**** Yes, I know pigs are actually very clean! And I love pigs. I don't love food all over the place!

Need foot products?

Okay...just a quick note to ask google ads WHY my blog gets foot stuff ads?

I don't think I've even written the word FOOT in the time I've been writing! Foot doesn't cross my daily vocabulary as much as one might think...unless you ask me about all the times that I've been sitting on the couch and someone sticks a foot in my face, telling me to smell it. Unless you ask about the time that someone stepped on a nail, I'd guess I would have to say the word foot. Unless you ask what's at the foot of my bed (um nothing). Unless you ask what's on my foot, duh, shoes. Unless you ask me what a footer is...which is a thingy at the end of an essay or something like that...I know what it is, just can't explain it. ha, so don't ask.

So, foot, to my knowledge, has never been written in this blog...until today...and I write this foot post in hopes that Google ads will put different ads on my blog. Hmm...may I suggest something else totally un-realted like....hmm condoms.

I don't know how, but my flowers are blooming

Do you rememer your 7th birthday? I don't. Well, maybe I could if I talked to my sister. She seems to have a perfect memory...or maybe it's just that she remembers some odd things that I don't remember. Like the fact that Dad drove a water delivery truck for like THREE YEARS...I didn't remeber that at all....so yeah, maybe she'd remember my 7th birthday...although she was only 5. lol

So.....#3 (Shorty) is turning 7 tomorrow. I'd thought about writing one of those touching, from-the-heart letters to her...one she'll probably never read, but speaks about how much I love her and can't wait to see the woman she's becomeing....yeah, um....Probably not.

There's just too much to do. Like usuall. Today is falling under the "ugh it's how late" catagory. Not that I've spent a lot of time goofing off this morning...at least it didn't feel like a lot of time. But it's already noon, and the list of things done is agonizingly short. Although I have already ticked off Monkey Man THREE whole times today. Whoohooo go me! Oh and I have gotten coffee (of course), although I'm not sure if one cup is gunna cut it...I may have to make more.

OH my! Bone Head got his hair done on Saturday! His hair was rapidly changing from baby blonde to darker blonde...and he badly needed a haircut. So, Captain took him and MM to the hair place. They came back with an adorable bowl cut for M.M. Shaved underneath and long on top :) And my eldest child came home with what I can only describe as a "Jonas Brothers" do. Yea...his hair is now dark brown (chocolate to be exact), with a blonde-blonde area above his forehead. He LOVES it. Shocked the heck outta me...but looks good. At least it looks like it's supposed to be messy.

Okay, okay...going to get busy on my list of adventures today. Yeah...adventures sounds WAY more interesting then chores. Hm...I may be on to something here. I'll test it out on the kids and get back to ya. "Hey kids...we need to start our adventures today". Hey, might work!

ps. Oh and yeah...the flowers are blooming...the ones that I didn't plant, and haven't touched are doing splendidly....the stuff I planted or take care of...isn't.

pps Okay...the tomato and the squash are doing good...but that's because Captain took those over. hahahahahahaaaa