Spring Lessons in the Works

Happy Spring Everybody!

My little posies. :)

Oh, my dear month of April. Every year it's here and gone before I know it. I've had to take a little detour on my path to learning. It seems that while you can learn something new every day and tackle spring cleaning and write a blog and keep up with all the everyday stuff . . . it usually comes with the price tag of a 2 a.m. bedtime.

My husband keeps offering to build me a padded Velcro wall so I can put the kids in little terrycloth suits and just, ya know, stick them up there. "They'd think it was fun and just think of all the stuff you could get done!" Every time he mentioned it I always chuckled and thought how funny my husband is and what crazy and unique ideas he has. Until I learned today that Velcro walls actually exist.

And you can rent them. 

I gotta say, that looks pretty fun . . .

"Why do you need a Velcro wall?" you might find yourself asking yourself.

 (If you are the sort that would ask such a thing of yourself.)

Well, I will give you the example of my daughter's recent birthday.

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I Learned to Laugh "Today"

I set out to make a layered birthday cake. It was on my to-learn list ever since my lesson on how to make a cake from scratch. Of course, I was also running around trying to get the house prepared for the Par-tay that night. What a bustle of activity! I whipped up the cake from a box. Although I am a new fan of scratch cakes, I still have a few boxed ones to use up. I planned on putting my extra time into decorating the cake, anyway. Most girls I know that are her age want ponies or princesses or butterflies on their cakes. And their parents buy beautiful works of art from the local bakery. Because of Waybum's food allergies we can't get a lot of bakery items. And it's alright because those cakes cost more than the presents we bought for her.

Waybums wanted a dinosaur cake. A pink dinosaur cake.

So, I got started . . .

Mmm. Strawberry cake.

I put the cake in the oven and set the kitchen timer
and bustled about on the preparations.

Like clearing off the table.
Which on that day was a hefty order. . .

AAAAAHHH!

I had started sorting the kids' clothes and downstairs toys on top of the table and somehow other things layered on top and before I knew it, FEMA showed up and asked if I needed some help. . .

I worked on it for awhile and was ready to throw my hands in the air and have people eat their hamburgers on the driveway. And then I started scolding myself. Out loud. Why did I volunteer to have a party when I am in the midst of an ongoing, massive organization project? Am I crazy? What was I thinking?

-BeeP!-

Cake's done.

I took the cake out of the oven and put it on
the rack on the back of the counter to cool.

I figured, "I'd just let Super Hubby clear the table when he gets home and I'll work on the bedroom."
Because the biggest design flaw in this place is that you can only access the main floor bathroom by going through the master bedroom. So I was in there reclaiming it from the laundry (again) and pondering that I don't know who remodeled our house, but it seems to me that they didn't really think it through.

Here is one example of their throw-it-togetherness:

Let's put an arch in the bedroom - wouldn't that be cool?

Oh, but there's a window frame in the way.

Ooh! Let's just cut the original 1900s window frame to accomodate

the cheesy plaster decor. But we'll paint it after we put it in....

I mean, really?

Anyway, I was contemplating this when Waybums came running into the bedroom.

"Mother! Come to the kitchen quick!! It's an EMeRGeNCY!"

I ran to the kitchen, going over the possibilities in my brain on the way there.

Fire? Don't see how that could be. The oven's off.

Flood? Sink's off and dishwasher isn't running...

Tornado? Well, it may look like one hit. . .

I got to the kitchen and realize that the natural disaster was . . .

Little Sister.

I had taken the precaution of pushing the cake to the back of the counter, but it seemed that I underestimated the ingenuity of a little person that smelled
strawberry cake and wanted to sample it. On the sly.

Little Koda, tiny thing, had dragged a chair to the kitchen and climbed up onto the counter and was leaning over a decimated layer of cooling strawberry cake.

AAAAAAAHH!

LoL! Ok, so I can laugh now.

In fact, it didn't take me very long to laugh then.

(And now you know why a Velcro wall would be so handy for me.)

I guess what I learned from this experience is that

things get stressful it sometimes and make me want to . . .

 . . . well, you know.

But I am trying my hardest to take everything in perspective.

It's just a cake.

It's just a messy table.

It's not going to ruin life as I know it

and I am sure that we'll all survive.

Super Hubby picked up another mix from the store

and instead of a two-layer cake . . .

Waybums got a three-layer cake.

Tah-dah!

She said it was the most beautiful cake she ever saw.

(Of course she also thought the apple-flavored potato-starch Easter grass was yummy,

so there's no accounting for taste, there.)

And because she's just such a sweetheart,

she had insisted that Koda should get her own cake, too.

That is, after she served her sentence in time-out.

And as for the table . . . it got cleared off.
(Thanks to heroic measures from Super Hubby.)

Although I found it amusing to see what it looked like after the party....

What was all that fuss for again?

You'll be pleased to know that it has fully recovered since then.

When something seems overwhelming I am just learning to stop and evaluate.

My new motto is

"If it's going to be a funny story someday, why not laugh now?

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Just one of the many lessons I've been learning. Anyway, with April being such a busy month, I plan to take a brief hiatus until after the first week of May. I have been lining up some pretty cool learning experiences, so I'm excited to keep you posted!

Until then - Get out there and learn something fun! :)

Today I learned to strengthen my Organization-Fu

There are two groups of people in the world. You can tell what sort of person they are by their purse. (Especially if they are guys. Of course, people call those "murses" - You know - "male purses" and whatnot. You know I love that things just need an "M" in front of them to become "man-ified" objects. Manny - male nanny. Mantrums. The one that makes me chuckle most is "moobs" - Hehe.)

Oh. Where was I?

Ahh right, the categories of people with purses...

The first category contains the Born Organized (BO) people. You probably know at least one. They are the ones that can find things in their purse. Their purses are typically small and orderly and full of useful things. They have a compartment for their lip gloss and the lip gloss is in it. When their phone rings, they open their purse and pull it out. When someone tells them something interesting they pull out their little notepad and pen and write it down. Clicky-click. And they put it back where it belongs.

The other sort of person is a SLOB. I tried to think of a few acronyms that would go with SLOB. I came up with "Sadly Lost Object Borrower" but that's all the further I got. Their purses are typically large and and chaotic and contain completely random objects. They do not have lip gloss, and they did not even realize that's the purpose behind that compartment. When the phone rings, you get to listen to the entire chorus of their ringtone because every time they move something around their phone gets buried deeper. When someone tells them something interesting they pull out the crayon that somehow wound up in the lip gloss compartment and write it on the back of a receipt from two years ago.

Ummm.
I belong to the latter category . . .

Because when you realize that you are somehow carrying around a barnacle in your purse you just have to admit that something went wrong when the organization part of your brain was developing in the womb.

Anyway, today I was looking for some place to put away stuff in my over-stuffed pantry and I had a rare organizational moment. In a previous fit of trying to be organized, I had hung an over-the-door shoe organizer on the inside of my pantry door in a (failed) effort to sort mail. It was a good idea in theory, but a bad location.

As I swung the door open and lamented my lack of space, I noticed that in my previous haste I had put a box of spaghetti in one of the compartments. *Light Bulb*

Check out my newly organized pantry!

Tah-Dah!

It turns out that those extra couple of inches between the door and the pantry shelves were extremely valuable. I was able to clear two and a half pantry shelves of stuff and had a little room to spare!

I feel so brilliant. And organizy.
*patting self on back*

And since I have a birthday party to prepare for tomorrow,
I'll let you get back to the daily grind. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Tomorrow I'll be learning to make a layer cake!

I'll keep you posted!

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Bonus Lesson

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Last week I called my husband up on his way home.

"Hey, Sweetie?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you pick up some shampoo? We're almost out..."

"Ok."

(Real riveting stuff, I know.)

So he came home with some Herbal Essences "Hello Hydration" shampoo. He figured just the shampoo would be fine since we still had some "Color Me Happy" and "Long Term Relationship" conditioners leftover. But on the back of the shampoo bottle is asked the question,

"How many bubbles are in a bottle of champagne?"

and it teased,

"For the answer see the Hello Hydration conditioner bottle."

Mwahahaha! How sneaky is that? Because they realize that "inquiring minds want to know" and chances are the consumer is going to be curious enough to at least pick up the bottle of conditioner in their hand next time to read the back. And if it's already in their hand it's a short trip to the shopping cart.

So the last time I was at the store, I looked up the conditioner bottle.

*******Drumroll*******

There are 58 million bubbles in a bottle of champagne.

(I know it was just eating away at you sweetie, and I have to take care of my #1 fan.)

According to Wikipedia, the early process of making champagne was so perilous that cellar workers had to wear iron masks to protect their faces from spontaneously exploding bottles. And if one bottle burst it could set off a chain reaction that would cause 20-90% of their profits to turn into a pile of shattered glass and sticky champagne on the floor. Talk about bursting one's bubble.

Anyway, I prefer drinking my grape juice before it spoils. :)

Hope you are gearing up for a great weekend!

Toodles for now...