I Need to Evacuate the Randomness from my Brain.

Here is one way to do so: make a list. I think I have blogged about my undying love for lists. This is not one of those lists. I do love lists where I can cross stuff off. Sometimes it is just a one liner cross off. Sometimes, it is an all out black out so that you can't even read what was just completed. I really haven't ever used check-offs. Nor have I used squiggley wavy lines through an item. I must admit to having used color coding for items yet to do and items completed.

In some areas of my world, I am uber organized. Others.....not so much. Spice cabinet? Organized and labeled.
My office desk at school for the first six months after moving to a new office? Still in boxes. Meh.

1. I love when Lionel snores and dream barks. (Folks, this is a King size bed.)

2. I have lost 32.5 pounds since April as of last Monday.

3. I just got rid of one bag of clothes that were ratty and two bags to sell at the secondhand store. That was so much fun....new wardrobe to fit the new body.

4. I bought a Meyer Lemon Tree and the first lemon is forming with five more blossoms on the way.















5. It has been way easier to lose weight this time around. Like freak-me-out-easier.

6. We have an intricate system of moving colder air around our house. Window unit plus the "Hawaiian Breeze" fan on the first level. The Breeze may be Hawaiian in nature, but the sound is akin to a jet engine at take off. That sucker is loud.

7. I rarely have reaction to mosquito bites. Which is good in Minnesota.

8. I haven't done anything to prepare for school starting like I thought I would (And that is on my summer to do list....) other than put the school calendar dates into my planner. Oh, I also went to school and GOT the planner. See? I am accomplishing things....

9. I am completely fine with the level of accomplishments in number 8. I am enjoying my summer and nap schedule.

10. Sometimes, I don't recognize myself in the mirror---my face looks thinner. I do a little inner I-am-proud-of-myself-dance when that happens.

11. I am learning how to knit this summer. I feel like I am 72. But I really like it. I am making my second hat right now. We will not be discussing the first hat----felting incident gone wrong. So very wrong.

12. Benchwarmers was a stupid movie, but I cannot control myself at the part where the guy who hates the sun has to go outside to get the girl scout cookies....I am laughing out loud by myself right now. With the Samurai sword and the screaming and the sticking the hand out to test the sun. Who is that guy again? The butterfly guy from Chuck and Larry??

13. Still laughing.

14. I took a mozzarella cheese making class Wednesday. I thought it would be starting from "scratch" and milk. Nope. I feel a little cheated as it was started from mozzarella curds. Essentially, the instructor heated up the curds to melt them together to form a fresh mozzarella ball. I think it should be classified as less "making" and more "reconstituting". Truth in advertising, my friends, truth in advertising.

15. What was the point of calling cards in a social sense? "Hey, I was here."? It seems weird.

16. In the battle of Me v. Spiders? I am losing. I thought I got all the cobwebs last week....month? Turns out not so much. I tell myself: "The house is 115 years old, spiders are going to live in your house with you." (The truth is, I don't necessarily fear spiders....I just have Spider Karma Issues. Like if I kill one, all the Spider Buddies will gang up and come and crawl all over me while I slumber. Someone else in my house doesn't help matters by talking about laying spider eggs in/on me while I sleep....)

17. I made a Plum Crisp last night. It was pretty good...the plums were ripe.

Ah....more space has been freed in my head. And now, off to walk the beast before it gets Africa Hot and Carribean Humid.

Protesting.

I am fighting the urge to make a list to quell the looming sense of overwhelmed. I am protesting the fact that the world doesn't stop if something like last week happens. The friggin' grass still grows. Clothes still get worn and need to be washed. Food still gets eaten and needs to be replaced by grocery shopping. Sophie still sheds hair that needs to be dealt with. Good lord, does it need to be dealt with. Hair balls the size of oranges hover and float as you walk by stirring up a faint breeze. Sometimes, if you make a large enough breeze and maybe don't look so closely, they just vanish. Disappear in a puff of smoke. (Did you see that? I just lied right to your face. They don't disappear. They never, ever, ever disappear.)

Maybe the first thing I would put on my list, and I am most certainly not going to make a list....but, if I WERE to make said list........the first thing I would probably put on it is to brush my teeth. For sure. Aim high, love, aim high.

I have conceded that I will most likely not be correcting papers today. Which is fine, I am okay with that. This past year I have loosened my death grip upon myself and the completely nutso obsession with correcting things and getting them back to students as soon as humanly possible. Why? Why would I feel this need? There are those high strung students that have to know yesterday what they got on the test they finished last block, there always will be these students. I was not really one of these students, so I can't really identify with this obsession......so why do I feel the need to ease their stress immediately at the cost of my having my own time of an evening? Nutso, I tell ya, nutso.

I have also arranged for the two neighbor twins to mow the lawn. Of course, it is supposed to rain today and I have yet to bring down the key for the garage. All in good time, my good man, all in good time. So mowing the lawn is off the list that I am not making. I don't even know where a pencil is in this house and everyone knows that if you make a list it must be in pencil. Pencil just sounds better on the paper than pen when you are decidedly crossing off a completed task.

If I were making a list, which I absolutely refuse to do, I would probably put a bajillion loads of laundry on the list somewhere near the top. Fine, I kid. Maybe three-ish loads of laundry. That doesn't seem so bad.

I had defrosted one of the two hambones from last week's baptism (We are "witnesses"....not of the Jehovah variety, but of the baptism variety. Easy mistake. I've never been a witness before. I grew up Roman Catholic. We had godparents. But then I quit Roman Catholicism. So, who knows what happens in religious type circles these days.). So. Ham Bone. I was going to make split pea soup today. Except when I went to look in the Hoosier cabinet, no split peas. So, I would have to go to the store...and that would definitely mean making a list because we have put the kibosh on going to the store for "just one thing". That is when the Impulse Buying Monkeys starting flying out my butt. Not really, but I tend to spend more than if I had a list. (I love lists. I really feel like making a list, but I have already declared today a list free Sunday.)

A colleague of mine lent me her Steam Shark or her Shark Steam or some weird name because it doesn't really look like a shark so I am not sure where Euro Pro came up with the name, but that is neither here nor there. Anyway, in order to not be a schmuck, I should use it and return it this week. But, first I would have to sweep and then swiffer........dog hair and dust respectively.....before I could Steam Shark. Can I make that a verb? Before I could Shark? Before I could Steam? Before I could Sharkenate?

Where do I begin? With gin? I keeeeeeed. It's only 10:57 in the morning for cripes sake! Everyone knows that 11 am is more acceptable. Imagine how much I would get done on my hypothetical list if I put gin at the top. I bet I would have a lot more fun doing a half assed job on all things listy.

My head swims less with a list. I can see progress instead of being overwhelmed. I can cross things off. And then forget about them instead of trying to remember everything like the storm window that needs to be repainted before it can go back up on our second story bedroom window from when we had the air conditioner in this summer. That kind of crap that gets forgotten and then suddenly someone is up a friggin ladder in a blizzard. Swearing. A lot. Christ. That does need to get done before that stellar moment appears.

I wouldn't need to put going to the hospital on my list. I won't forget to do that. Hopefully, a jailbreak has been thwarted today.

A Good Day.

No one says that anymore. "A good day to you, sir." "It was a good day." Today...today was a good day. For no particular reason, which is the best kind of good days. I walked with my mom and her friend this morning--a beautiful morn, crisp-ish, fall weather, yet warm enough to wear shorts, bright sun, fall leaves beginning to appear yet summer flowers sort of still blooming. Then I went to the co-op to buy bread flour because we are out and they sell it in bulk. I love the bulk food section at the co-op. All these things that I might like to try, but you know what.........I don't have to buy a big honking bag of it. I can take a taste size portion. It just makes so much sense.

Then to the cobbler. No one says cobbler anymore unless they are talking about desserts. I am here to bring it back. It just seems so much more civilized to say cobbler rather than shoe repair guy. Then, home to clean, roast more peppers, cook steel cut oatmeal for the week (We reheat it each morning: supes dupes good.), pickled some eggs (I hope these turn out better than the last...they were gross. Way too sweet, like there was a cinnamon or clove flavor or something. Ish.), still doing laundry, work on the powerball project, went to the goodwill to drop some stuff off, made pizza dough for supper, dug up the rosemary plant from the garden to pot so I can have it indoors this winter, walked Sophs, and just in general puttered. Tonight, we eat homemade pizza with homemade pepperoni and fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers. Then, we'll maybe watch a movie and just enjoy the evening. Tomorrow we are off to Fargo for family portraits, so it is good I got all that done. I am gonna gag pretty soon with all this positiveness oozing from me. But I do love me a productive day of puttering. Things that needed to be done, but that I was in the mood to do; serendipity, my friends, serendipity.

You can bet your sweet ass I made a list, though.

Lists.

Some people have a security blanket. Some people have a talisman. I have lists.

I love to make lists. I have been known to put things on them that I have already done that day; such things, that had I started the list earlier, would have been on said list. 

So. So what? They count. Yuh- huh, they do so. 

I have purchased special mini-mini legal pads specifically for lists. I have specific pens I liked to use or really sharp pencils. I KNOW I am a freakshow about this; I don't care. I like lists. I like trying to figure out how much I can get done in a day (Have rarely succeeded to this date), I love, LOVE, El-Oh-Vee-Eee checking things off (Although I don't check them off. I cross them out with a thin line sometimes so I can still read what I did. Sometimes I cross them out so you CAN'T read what I did at all. A Blackout Bingo approach. Very satisfying.).

Sadly, I often have multiple list going at once. It drives some people in this house crazy, I know this, but I can't seem to stop making new lists. It is a fresh start, a new page...a new list of things to do. Eventually, I do finish a list either by completing everything or transferring the last or last couple things to a new or previous list. There are at present, three lists in rotation in my world.

My grocery list. Begun earlier...in fact, upon returning from the last trip to the grocery store. They didn't have the kind of soup we wanted, so I started the next list and put that on it first. I add to it as the week goes and we finish staples or supplies.

My getting the house read to put on the market list. This one is almost done; just a few loose ends. Yes, we put the house on the market two months ago, but I can still have a list about this. I checked the rule book.

My To-Do list for today. I actually did not "write" this one. I found a new tool. This has amped up my freakshow level quite a bit if I continue to use this on a regular basis. For now, I was just playing around with it. I downloaded Firefox to our Mac today; it has been a little slow with the Safari Browser and I was hoping this might change it. So. On the Getting Started page they had a link. I clicked. The skies opened up, people, and the Angel Choirs sang. Click Here.

Did the choirs sing for you? The Alleluia chorus? A website devoted to list making. And you can send them to your phone and get reminders and you can send them to your calendars (If you use them; which I would if I could be organized about it) and you can send them to your Blackberrys.......which I don't have. But if I win the lottery, I will buy one and I will need one because I will have lots of money to do lots of things with and I will need a lot of lists. Oh my. I need a second.

Let's just say I like lists and leave it at that, shall we?