Go see Sarah

I participated in Sarah's first Follow-up Friday last week and she featured my little project (the Costanza wallet) on her site today.

If you're on the organizing/decluttering/getting tidy band wagon, go visit her! Her Follow-up Friday idea is great! Every Friday she hosts a place for us to look back at what our project was four weeks ago, see where it is now, and figure out what worked well or didn't work at all.

The bonus?

I'm being really good about tweaking and maintaining because I really don't want to show you something that I sorted out very well that looks like a tornado hit it in four weeks time! So my spot by the phone is still looking perky, my wallet is pretty empty, my desk is fairly clutter free, my fridge is sparkling...it's working...

How many weeks does it take for things to become a habit (or to break an old one)? Is it three? Six? The voices in my head say it takes three weeks to form a new and I'm going with that...so really, if I'm maintaining my organized spots for four weeks (and the systems/plans/procedures/schedules work) by the time it's Follow-up Friday, it should be routine. Right?

Happy Birthday Pax Lodge

I have a lot to say about Pax Lodge and what better day to say it than on the 20th birthday of that white building in Hampstead.

Well, there is going to be a better day because I need to go to bed instead of blogging.

So instead, a few thoughts and a few pictures. With promises of a few more stories and a few more pictures later. I have lots of pictures...just saying...

Thoughts:

• Pax Lodge was my home during a few of the best years of my life (so far)
• Pax Lodge introduced me to many of the people I consider my closest friends
• Pax Lodge made me happy. Or maybe more, I was happy when I lived at Pax Lodge (that sounds like I'm not happy now...but that's not true either...it's just different)
• Pax Lodge taught me more than I learned during my four year degree
• I miss Pax Lodge. I miss my Pax Lodge ladies
• Look at the happy faces in these pictures...Pax Lodge is a happy place!

Photos: (please excuse the quality or lack of quality of the pictures...our computer is still out of commission and I ended up taking pictures of pictures, not scanning them like I should have...)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAX LODGE!

Fixation

Don't ask me why, but I have this one thing on my mind and I can't get it to go away. I keep trying to write something interesting and my brain slides back over to that fixation. It's not very interesting. I don't want to write about it. It's not important. But it won't go away.

So I'm going to bed.

Goodnight!

Insomnia

Someone at my house has insomnia.

And it's not me.

And it's not Alex.

But someone's insomnia means we're both awake too!

Our delightful toddler was awake from just after 11 until about 5 this morning.

She wanted to eat breakfast and go to daycare.

She had a sore finger, thumb, tongue, ear, elbow, nose, eyelash, baby toe, belly button, you name it. The sore spot changed every three minutes too.

We rubbed her back and gave her a quick cuddle and left.

We ignored her.

We rocked her.

We sang to her.

We moved her to our bed.

We moved her to a makeshift bed on our floor.

We closed her door and let her scream.

We closed her door and let her play.

We closed her door and let her read.

We gave her water to drink.

We gave her a snack to eat.

We tried to get her to put her jammies on.

We spoke quietly.

We whispered.

We didn't speak at all.

We shouted.

We pulled our hair out.

There were tears.

She lay on a makeshift bed on her floor.

She went potty eight-seven million times and after the third time exclaimed with surprise "Nothing came out" every time she went.

She figured out how to get out of her crib.

Then she demanded that we go RIGHT NOW and get her a big girl bed that she could climb out of that wasn't "dang-ger-us"

(not necessarily in the order above and we tried some things MORE THAN ONCE)

And then, then she passed out. I woke up at 8:30, 2 1/2 hours later than normal, to find a toddler was taking up 5/6 of the bed. Which left Alex and I with 1/12 of the bed...each. We were both hanging on to the edge of the bed for dear life.

I am a mean mom. I made her get up and have breakfast and go to daycare.

You know what I found out? She's not the only one at daycare to have given her parents massive grief last night.

I hate you, time change.

It's Menu Plan Monday

Last week's menu plan was a success! I need to remind myself to keep it up - not only does it make life easier, but our bank account likes it too! Laura at Org Junkie hosts a Menu Plan Monday and I'm convinced it's helping us stick to our plan!


This week isn't quite as crazy, but I'd like to get moving on some of the stuff I'm organizing, so I've tried to keep our dinners simple.

Monday - leftover casserole from Sunday

Tuesday - Tortilla Pie

Wednesday - leftover Tortilla Pie

Thursday - Chicken Meatballs with potatoes and veggies

Friday - Salmon and rice

Saturday - Tomato Pasta

Sunday - Pulled Pork with coleslaw

Change

I'm okay with change. Most of the time. Really.

But not this change.

This is a change I hate.

I DO NOT LIKE the time change...

UGH...

I hated the spring time change before I had a kid - I didn't mind the fall change so much...that extra hour of sleep is nice - I don't like losing an hour. Now that we have J, both time changes suck! She either wants to stay up all night and won't get up in the morning (that would be RIGHT NOW) or she gets up early and is ready for bed before dinner is over (that would be in the fall)

We're less than a day into this and I already hate it...I don't envy the daycare tomorrow - 12 kids who think it's too early for a nap sounds like not much fun to me!

Five YEARS

Hey! Guys? Anyone out there?

Five years ago today, right now, for the first time, I hit publish post and scribbles, scratches and scrawls was born.

FIVE YEARS with a blog? ME? I wasn't going to have a blog. Umm, yeah, I have three and contribute to a fourth. Right. Not going to have a blog.

So not possible. But it is. And it's real.

Lots has changed since then.

• In 2006 I lived in the Blue House. Now I live in the Lyons' Den. And in between we lived in the ghetto Pink Palace.
• In 2006 I rented. Now I have a mortgage.
• In 2006 I had a boyfriend. Now that boyfriend is my husband.
• In 2006 I lived with a roommate. Now I live a husband and a kid.
• In 2006 I took the bus to work every morning. Now I drive.
• In 2006 I had worked for my "new" boss for just over a year. In 2011 I have worked for my "new" boss for just under a year.
• In 2006 I had insomnia a lot. Now I don't have insomnia at all but I wish I had more hours to sleep.
• In 2006 I think I had about four readers. Now I have more than that. And I think that three of the four original readers are still reading. The fourth one I'm not so sure about, but my bloggy-sense tells me she's gone (and I'm okay with that).
• In 2006 I regularly lamented that Punk lived in another city. Now she lives eight blocks from me.
• In 2006 my blog had polka dots on it. Now it has birds.
• In 2006 Heddy left me my very first comment. She started a new blog last month and I got to leave her very first comment.
• In 2006 my book club was still running strong. Now my book club is virtual.
• In 2006 my now mother-in-law was in a tooth and nail fight with Cancer. Now she's been cancer free for four years.
• In 2006 I complained a lot about a Blackberry a certain person I worked with possessed. Now I have my own Blackberry.

Lots has changed, but some things haven't changed a bit.

• Alex is still here.
• I still love to read.
• My paper obsession hasn't stopped. In fact, it has probably grown a bit.
  
• The most important things in my life are people: my family and friends.
• I missed Pax Lodge. I still miss Pax Lodge.
  
• I still blather on and on and on about all kinds of things.

So, thanks for reading and thanks Heddy for pushing me to start...I thought it would fizzle, but there seems to be no end in sight!

Tsunami

And now, I'm going to tell you a story about me. Because that's what you do when there's a life altering event affecting all kinds of people living in the Pacific.

When I was 17, I was away at boarding school in Hawai'i. I woke up one morning about 20 minutes before my alarm. I was wide awake and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized it was quiet. Very, very, very quiet. Now, it was before most people were up, but there were no birds singing. There were no dogs barking. It was silent.

And then the silence was split by a loud, angry sound. The tsunami sirens. I'd heard them before. They tested them regularly. But I'd never heard them like that.

A year before I woke up one morning and said to my roommate, "Did you know there was an earthquake in LA?"

Her response? "Oh yeah, that's old news."

Nope. It had just happened. We walked out of our room and around the corner to the top of the stairs. We could see the TV on in the lounge below. The TV was not allowed to be turned on between 8:00 pm and 3:00 pm the next day. Gathered in the lounge were all the girls from the LA area and those who had family there. We had forgotten to turn the radio off when we went to sleep, so we had heard about it on the radio before we woke up...which is why my roommate thought it was old news.

But this was different.

The campus felt weird all day. The air was strange. People talked in hushed voice. Some of the roads on the island were closed and some students stayed home to help secure their families' things, so there were empty desks in most classes. It stayed that way most of the day. The community seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and the cloud lifted when the sirens stopped.

That tsunami hit. I was hoping yesterday's tsunami would be similar. That tsunami, back when I was 17, was only 3 inches tall.

Functional Fridge

So, this isn't on my list of things to do in 52 weeks, but it needed to be done and replacing our appliances was the motivation I needed. We'll see how long it looks like this. We went from a standard fridge/freezer combination to a freezer on the bottom model.

So this is what it looked like before - see my lovely FridgeSmart containers from Tupperware. Melynda suggested I buy them. They arrived just before Christmas and I've already saved over a hundred dollars because of them...and they cost me less than $100.



Notice there is no light...I didn't replace it when it died last MAY because I thought it would motivate us to go shopping for new appliances. We waited so long, that it turned out to our advantage. We were only going to replace the fridge and stove, but we managed to save enough to replace the dishwasher too. I'm so happy with our purchases! Anyway, back to the fridge.

Now it looks like this (and can I say, I'm so glad our fridge was going to the scrap yard and I didn't have to clean it before it left):


The FridgeSmart containers fit so well and I love that I don't have to kneel on the floor to get in the crisper drawers. We even have a designated lunch shelf (under the cheese/meat drawer). It doesn't happen often, but occasionally when a hungry person comes home from the night shift, lunch for the next day is mistakenly eaten. So the rule: if it's on that shelf (second from the top on the right) it's not to be touched. And if it's elsewhere, it's game unless it has a do not eat label.

Leftovers live on the top right and they are game for middle of the night eating.

This is the old fridge. The door drove me nuts. The bar for the second shelf was a bit too low and most things just fell over.


The new fridge is awesome...it even has room for the juice and milk in the door.


Our freezer drove me nuts because I felt like whenever I needed something, it was in the very back and I had to unload the fridge completely.


Stuff in the door often fell on the floor when the freezer was opened. UGH!


But the new freezer is awesome...lots of space and with two sets of drawers that pull out there's room for everything AND if it's at the back of the drawer it's still accessible.


And, as always, there was stuff to get rid of.


All of this had expired:

• Two bottles of Little Creek Dressing (different flavours), each with about 1/2 inch of dressing left
• Two bottles of Kraft dressing, one with 1/2 inch left and one full one (UGH)
• Two bottles of lime juice, each with about 1/4 cup of juice
• Slivered almonds
• Coconut
• Maraschino cherries - these have been in here for ages. Like I think maybe I moved from the Hobbit Hole with them. I moved over five years ago!
• About 1/4 cup of dried out dried cranberries. I'm not even sure why they were even in the fridge
• Thai red curry paste - it was solid. Not paste-y, solid.
• And the best thing ever...Dijon mustard that had changed colour and expired in 2004. WHAT? That's how often I eat mustard, obviously

So my goals for my new fridge are to keep the finger prints off as much as possible (but I'm only allowed to clean it once a day - max) and keep the inside organized. Which is much easier when I plan my meals.

I get around to it...eventually

47. Buy a new fridge
48. Buy a new stove

So, when I say I'm going to do something, I do. Although sometimes it takes a while.

We've been talking about doing something about our kitchen for a while. At least since last May. But more likely since the day we moved in. Step one is complete (rollover alert).



So we have the new appliances. And I love them. Oh, I love them very, very much. I ended up taking part of the range hood off and deep cleaning it. I think it looks a lot better (we thought we might need to replace it, but it works...for now anyway)

Rebar has offered to help me turn the cabinets white and paint the walls. A certain uncle of mine offered his tile cutter for the back splash and a certain aunt offered that same uncle's labour for installing the back splash too (I'm not sure if he knows!).

We're getting there...

I discovered a number of things I need to toss...and rearrange. And organize. The new stove has a warming drawer in the bottom, so in the interest of using that lovely feature, I'm rearranging this weekend in hopes of finding storage for my cakes pans, muffin tins, and cooling racks...

And so, I get to cross TWO things off my 101 list!