dealing with the chronic...

I should not be here with you now.  It's not that I don't dig you.  Because I do.  It's just that I have stuff to do.  I pretend I don't.  I do a couple of things and then a couple more to make it look like I did more than what I actually did and then I call it a day.  But I have been watching a lot of "Hoarders" lately.  It is FASCINATING.  With a capital everything.  And some days I find it a comfort - I do not have that kind of problem!!!  And other days I find it a challenge - I have a similar problem.  Here is the catch phrase that got my attention and alerted me to be sure to keep an eye on myself:  Chronic disorganization.  I think this is hoarding as an infant. You feed it and it grows.  I am 1,000 % chronically disorganized.  I don't mind throwing stuff out - so much.  I just do better at it when I have the distance of some years between looking at it last and letting it go.  I just don't know where the hello kitty to put any and all stuff while it's in purgatory waiting for it's eventual fate.  Nothing is in it's place.  Because mostly there's no designated place for anything.  I know.  I have talked about some of this before.  I talked all about how I was gonna change.  Don't we all, my brothers and sisters?  But watching that show, hearing that phrase, chronically disorganized, I'm taking notice.  So, right now, I should be upstairs.  In the "upstairs kitchen".  The "upstairs kitchen" is the area upstairs that was, in fact, a kitchen at one time.  A widower lived in this house prior to us and had turned it into a two-family home for his daughter and her son to share with him.  The daughter essentially had an apartment upstairs with a kitchen of her own.  We couldn't use it as kitchen - nor did we want to- according to the terms of our loan.  I was convinced that kitchen was the reason that this nice large house stayed for sale for so long.  Probably I should have paid more attention to the nefarious goings-on in the section 8 apartments at the bottom of our street and the decline of the other homes to the left and right of us as the true cause of the problem.  But I saw promise in that there upstairs kitchen.  I saw cabinets and counters and a sink and by golly, I was gonna craft it up with my impending children.  Scooby was 6 months old when we bought the house and a boy so I wasn't fully invested in his crafting interests and held out hope for the more to come.  But I forgot that I am lazy.  I don't like to clean messes which means that I don't encourage situations that cause messes.  Which means that  the upstairs kitchen has become a catch-all for all things craft related and  toys that haven't quite made it all the way to either of the rooms inhabited by children.  And my scrapbooking stuff.  Oh.  That's right.  I'm one of those people.  I LOVE scrapbooking.  And I don't understand anyone who doesn't.  I started out with the ginormous Creative Memories tote galore courtesy of my generous mother.  But then I entered my first scrapbook store and all bets were off.  Creative Memories was fine - and to many, it still is.  But I'm all about patterned paper and embellishments and Creative Memories is not.  Creative memories is about stencils and circles and journaling.  It's very minimal.  And, I'm sorry but their style is very distinct and I don't much care for it.  It's formulaic and plain.  I'm about the layout telling the story more than the journaling.  I'm all about the embellishments.  I know.  I said that twice - it's not a typo.  If I am a hoarder, if I am a shopping addict - it's around 2 things: embellishments for scrapbooking and groceries.    I think that I am getting better at the groceries.  I think.  Probably not.  Hubs has to do my budget every month and I keep going over it.  Probably because of groceries.  And clothes.  And scrapbooking stuff.  Look.  Stay on point.  I have a stockpile in my basement of groceries.  I know, I know.  Probably you have seen at least one episode of "Extreme Couponing" on TLC.  Eww.  For real don't compare me (or any of the blogs that I read and support around couponing) with that show or the people therein.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe in the power of couponing AND stockpiling.  And I believe that everyone has a journey to walk through from getting started with both and getting caught up in the thrill and the high of seeing instant gratification at the check-out and tweaking it so that you choose one of two paths:  greedy hoarding or responsible stockpiling.  The people depicted on that show choose the path of the former rather than the latter (since that saying can still confuse me - the former is the first and the latter is the last).  Responsible means that I have 18 bottles of bbq sauce so unless I'm getting it for free (and only then, I would only buy a few more to help see me through to next summer when they are on sale again), there isn't any point in buying more - to do so undermines the whole saving money bit AND it encroaches on hoarding.  Responsible means that if we don't eat spaghetti-os, I don't buy them at any price so that I don't deprive people who go to the store looking to get it super cheap to free because they need it and they need to save money on it.  That stockpile has blessed not just my family but other families who have fallen on tough times.  I can see clearly that God has blessed me to help others with my bargain shopping but it's still my job to be a good steward with the money He provides us.  I'm still fine-tuning my purchasing strategy.  I still make unwise decisions.  Don't we all, my brothers and sisters?  Anywho.  My friend told me that I'm supposed to flee from evil so I really try not to put myself into scrapbooking aisles or stores.  But sometimes it's unavoidable.  Like when I pull into the Archiver's parking lot.  Just kidding!  Sort of.  But I have gotten some truly cute scrapbooking stuff from close-out stores like Big Lots and Tuesday Morning.  Enablers.  hmph. Do you think I needed a new paragraph at any point up there?  Oh well, stick with it.  SO.  About the upstairs kitchen.  I tried to put in a scrapbooking space.  I have tried like heck to organize that space as well as my scrapbooking stuff and it is a nightmare.  It's not pulling together despite the organizers I have to make it do so.  And part of the reason why is that I will never scrapbook in my home.  It's just not going to happen.  I don't know why.  I just know it with certainty.  Which means that my scrapbooking stuff needs to be organized in a way that allows me to take it to crops (which is scrapbookese for scrapbooking event).  That presents with a new problem:  it would appear that I need ALL my scrapbooking supplies with me at any scrapbooking event all the time.  And y'all.  I have alot of scrapbooking supplies.  Alot.  Like hoarding alot.  And since there is no sense of sense when it comes to how I have that stuff put together, I spend most of my time at crops looking for something- anything- everything.  I also spend alot of time walking around because lately, every time I go to a crop my stomach starts getting all bloaty and uncomfortable.  I think it is the sitting.  Which would be weird because I'm all about the sit in my day to day.  Probably a little too much personal info, huh?  Oh well.  Maybe that happens to some of you and you have worked your way through it and have some tips on how to avoid the crop bloat discomfort.  Or maybe that happens to some of you and you had no idea it happens to anyone else.  Or maybe it's just me.  Anywho.  My scrapbooking supplies are - you guessed it - chronically disorganized.   I have tried to go by color but I don't know what to do with dual colored things.  Or patterns.  Or the word red written in blue.  You see what I'm saying.  I have tried to have all ribbons in one place and all stamps and inks in another.  But somehow I start feeling seriously cumbersome.  Maybe.  I can't remember. So long has it been since I have even attempted to get that stuff put together.  Because, remember, I'm a quitter.  If I wasn't successful the first time.  Or even maybe the second or third if I allow it all to go so far, I'm done.  So that is where I should be instead of here, now, with you.  I should be upstairs in the upstairs kitchen disabling my chronic disorganization.  It would make Hubs so happy.  Or laundry.  I should be in the basement doing laundry.  It would make Hubs so happy.

But I'm tired.  It seems like I'm always tired.  On the one hand, I take some medicinal aids that may contribute to my sluggishness.  On the other hand, Hubs likes to tell me that I should exercise more.  Because it gives you energy.  So, you have to have energy to get to the machine where you expend energy to gain more energy.  Exercise is stupid.  And contrary.  And stupid.  And on another hand, it's like 900 degrees outside these days.  It drains a girl.  Especially a girl with hot flashes.  And if I'm mentioning hot flashes, I guess I'm not so much a girl anymore.  I mentioned that a few birthdays occurred during my, ahem, hiatus.  One of those was the big one -my fortieth.  It was awful.  And probably it was awful because I kept saying it was going to be awful and there is alot of science and truth about self-fulfilling prophecies.  And maybe that's why I'm so tired.  I'm old now.  Old people are tired.  They go to bed at like 6:30pm.  Like right after watching the local news and catching the weather forecast.  Because old people are also all about weather.  They have to mention the weather where they are, inquire about the weather where you are (segueing into the all encompassing mystery of time zones and what time is it there because it is 5pm my time and you are one hour away so it's 6pm your time etc. etc.) and they have to be prepared for the weather that is to come.  Even though weather forecasting is some sort of combination of divination and tomfoolery and is always subject to change with no sort of justification or apology from the forecasters who never get it right.  I'm pretty sure that there is a chat room somewhere with virtual dice that all of the weather forecasters enter before showtime and they roll the dice and work together conspiring on some sort of systems map for the entire country that shows the results of the dice rolling.  Kind of like dungeons and dragons where the dice predict the results of a battle that never happens.  None of it is real and all of it is based on imagination.  But I'm not all consumed with weather yet.   Aside from complaining of heat.  I'm hot.  And I'm hot flashing in the hot.  And when it gets cold, I'm going to complain about the cold.  But for now, the heat is making me drowsy.  And the inactivity is making me drowsy.  And the meds are making me drowsy.  And my seemingly constant need for sugar now, sugar crash later foods are making me drowsy.  So if you aren't catching on.  I'm drowsy.  Like all the time.  Which looks cool and aloof if you are some sort of teenage boy heart throb from a movie like "My Sister's Werewolf Boyfriend Has a Hot Vampire Slut Sister I Want to Get With".  But I'm not that.  So I don't look so cool and aloof.  I look tired.  And I sound grumpy.  And I nap.  Which makes me stay up later.  Which makes me miss night sleep.  Which sucks when I have to get up to chauffeur little people around.  Which is exhausting because I still have to fight and yell about sitting down and buckling up.  NOW!  And I nap and start the cycle all over again.

OH!  But as long as I am here, let me tell ya something I am going to try (new!) soon.  I'm combining my crafty side with my sneaky cook side ( I don't know if that Missy Chase Lapine has copywritten the term "sneaky chef" but she has more money than me to duke it out in court so I'm just going to be surreptitious about it all...).  Okay, so you know how when you cook beets it stains pretty much everything?  Oh.  Right.  Beets are kind of gross so probably you don't cook too many beets.  But I cook them and put it sneaky like in my food.  And they stain everything.  Now.  I love ombre.  Between ombre and clothes that have contrasting color stitching - like white stitching on black clothes or vice-versa or some other such situation like so, I could fill a closet with such an adoration I have.  Since I don't sew, I can't personally do the contrast color stitching so much.  But I think I have a line on how to do the ombre.  I just take the white item of choice - likely a white t-shirt for this scenario- and hang it over a vat of dye letting the bottom rest in about an inch or two of it and letting it suspend there for an indeterminate amount of time.  The dye bleeds its way up and gets more concentrated towards the bottom where the dye is feeding in.  So are you putting this all together?  I'm using some of my beet puree as the dye. That's right.  If Martha Stewart can use beet juice as a natural dye for Easter eggs, I can do what I want with that stuff too.  I'm not doing this today.  I told ya.  I got stuff I should be doing.  So I hope to do this sometime this week.  And because I do dig ya, I'll tell ya how it turns out.  Heck.  I might even do a picture to go alongside.  I think I'm going to call my method bleeding beet ombre.

For those of you who read the title and jumped in hoping to hear a little about some sort of green herbage, sorry to disappoint.  I hope you got a kick out of what you did read and reconsider what Nancy Reagan always said:  Just Say No.  And as someone else might have said: Nope to Dope.  That might have been in reference to doping in the cyclist arena.  Or some other such beleaguered sporting league.  But the message remains the same... also, Crack is whack.  And Huffing leaves you with Nothing.  I made that last one up.  That's right.  Just now.  Off the top of my head.  And that concludes our public service announcement section for the day.  Also it concludes my post for the day.  I told ya.  I got stuff to do.