The Thursday Challenge

Yes, months and months have gone by. I am slow, tired, blocked and wilting from the sun.

To move forward I have to take on a challenge - one of those 365, only with the left hand, backwards on Tuesdays or only with chocolate.

Now I know myself, my life and my lifestyle. I can not post every day but I can post every week.

So my challenge is to write about what ever happened on Thursday. Thursday you ask? Well I work from home on Fridays so I think I can remember some thing of interest from the day before.

As always,
I live in hope.

Start the Fall Cleaning Engine

I made it home in one piece from my annual feast of Authors. Tired, with a book list longer then I can ever reach, a house that needs attention and a family that needs time.

Every year the same thing happens, every year for the past twelve years,  and somehow I am never ready for it. Oh, I get the laundry done so that I have clean clothes, make sure there are meals in the fridge and freezer and the calender is up to date - if only the family would read it!

There is always the rush to get Halloween together both for the kids and the house. I can plan, plan, plan and it is still rush, rush, rush. And as always there is the race to plant the bulbs before the frost but after the squirrels.

Still we are about to "fall back" and I am almost ready.

The lovely Cindy in my knitting chair.

Authentic Start

I found this quote on the obit page in today's Globe and Mail -


"You can be authentic as long as you were attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible. "
 
Bernard Lonergan


Can can now lead my authentic life.




Cheers and Happy Back To School !!!!

Start the cleaning

September 1 is two days away. The eldest boy starts higher education next week. Today I am trying to find his floor. To my deepest regret I never trained the boy to clean his room - I can't even get him to get the dirty laundry out.

I do not have the cleaning gene, the changing of the sheets on a weekly basis gene or the never go to bed with a dirty kitchen sink gene.

For years I cleaned in fits. I would spend the day tearing apart the house and trying desperately to put it back together.  Then one day I found her, The Flylady, ( flylady.net ).

It has been five years and I am still fluttering. I have some of the routines down to a routine. I have decluttered and decluttered and decluttered.

Flylady promises that the family will jump on the wagon. I am still waiting.

Start the Authentic Life

It has taken me many years but I have half figured out how to surf blogs. I flip from one to another like a bored teenager with the remote control. I slow down when I come across one about knitting or parenting or family cooking, though I did stop at one about raising goats - must smell like my house.

At one point I was stuck in a cycle of "Family" blogs. Pictures of happy smiling clean faces, beautiful houses and groomed dogs. The mothers all wanted to live an authentic life. What does that mean. Are the rest of us living an unauthentic life. Does my laundry, cooking, cleaning and loving not count. Or is it a secret term, like a secret handshake that lets the world know that they have found the answer to all of life's questions and the rest of us are left to figure it out for ourselves?

As my life is not authentic does that make me a knock off old bag?

Start the laundry

Laundry, laundry, laundry.
Tell the tall guy to get out of his Dad's sock drawer and clean out the prizes under his bed.
Tell the almost tall guy to change his shirt, underwear, shorts and anything else because they should be clean every day.
Tell the oldest girl to stop shopping and please when she does laundry could she please do some "household laundry".
Tell the budding girl "Thank you' she is the only one who does laundry without being told.

Fold, fold, fold. You were told, told, told.