De-Clutter: (verb) 1. “to painfully throw away tons of stuff that you thought you should keep for the past fifteen years but turns out you just left in a huge heap in your closet causing you to be unable to find the few things you actually wanted, and then later forgot that you even owned.”

2. “To Take neatly stacked piles of things from closet and spread all over room, causing your skin to crawl and mind to explode and dinner to not get made even though you are really, really, really hungry.”

3. “Reclaiming emptiness from mess.”

I had an anxiety dream about my job that starts in the fall. In my dream, the school year had begun, and I forgot to show up to work. Instead, I tried just picking up my kids and going home. I was greeted by all the kids there at school, who were all hungry and tired from their first day of school. What’s for snack? was the constant refrain. It was then I realized that I was supposed to be their after school teacher.

And I’d kind of forgotten to prepare for that, as I also forgot to show up to the job. I rooted then through the pantry, trying to find some snacks left over from camp. Then I tried to get the kids to do some kind of activity. The hostility from the older kids was intense. They rolled their eyes at me, walked out of the room, snickering behind their hands. It was awful.

When I woke up from this, my heart was beating kind of fast. I realized with a jolt that the summer is halfway gone. What am I doing this summer, I asked myself? My life is so disorganized. I have no structure. I am not taking care of business, and I’m not getting this place ship-shape. I am not planning ahead for the fall.

That dream was a wake-up call. I need to get myself in order. But I feel really stuck, paralyzed. I don’t know what I can do to get out of this feeling of trying to move a mountain. I am just able to get to OT appointments and provide three meals (sometimes just two) to the kids each day.

This is not an easy place to be, mentally. I feel really stuck.

This year I had extra ambition and rented two plots in the community garden, rather than just one. And they are bigger plots than last year, because when we tilled at the beginning of the season, we tilled right into the path. This is the path along the edge of the fence, so it’s no big deal.

I’d estimate our patch is about 23 feet by 12 feet. Big! Very Big! There is still one big bed that is basically empty. I put in tomato seeds, way late into the season. But who knows? Maybe these little seedlings will grow and give us a late harvest.

My free time to plan and organize this big garden was pretty limited this spring and early summer, and we got off to a late start.

So now that we are into July, I’m feeling a bit impatient and also frustrated by both insect damage and rabbits who seem to like bean plants, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and more. We are free of damage from deer this year, as far as we can tell. The new fence seems to keep them out. How else could I explain the fact that there are actually tomatoes on the vines?

We must have been invaded by rabbits last year, too, but because there was so much deer activity, we blamed it all on them. Now I know that bunnies are brutal.

Today I went to the garden to harvest my first cucumber, knowing it should be about ripe. I found that about half of it was left; the rest clearly chewed away by Peter Rabbit. There are three more still growing on the vine, within a few days they should be ready to harvest. I sure hope that the bunnies will chance to leave them be.

Bunnies also are responsible for chomping down little bean plants all throughout our garden, all except one little patch in my plot, where I am starting to see some little tiny purple green beans. (Purple green beans, you say? Are they purple or are they green? Well, they are a lovely shade of purple right now, but if you steam them, they turn green.)

Meanwhile, insects have eaten every bit of leaf off of the sunflower plants in our plot. Just really left nothing but stem, and the little buds at the top where the flowers will be.

I have several tomatillo plants that are coming up nice and fast. They are a quick growing item. I haven’t seen yet any signs of blooming. Part of me keeps wondering: gee, are these really tomatillo plants or just some clever weed that grew here instead?

My tomatoes are blooming, and a few have little baby tomatoes on the vine, and that’s encouraging. I’ve got a crookneck squash plant with blossoms. I’ve got great looking basil, and a few marigolds to brighten up the place. My cayenne pepper plant has peppers, and so does my jalapeno plant. I’ve got a few eggplants that aren’t blooming yet, but are growing taller and looking more promising. And carrots that seem to be growing, though slowly, their little curly tops visible by the pepper plants.

So there is a lot of life happening in my garden — many varieties of veggies, and clearly it’s going to offer me something for my trouble. It’s really pretty hard work maintaining a garden. I really appreciate how much work it is to grow your own food.

I keep thinking: WHAT DID THE INDIANS DO? About pests like insects, deer and bunnies. They probably did something smart like trap the little bunnies and deer and eat them. That is not something I can reasonably do at the swim club.

Meanwhile, the pumpkin plants are looking fiesty and strong (let’s hope vine borers don’t attack them) and the watermelon plants are just getting started. I can tell you, though, in another plot I saw a baby melon that a rabbit had gnawed in half. EVIL RABBITS! If you touch mine, I really will KILL YOU! Ok, maybe not really.

I think I will invest in another fence to deter the rabbits further. Maybe even put in a Hav-a-heart trap. And then eat the rabbits after I club them to death.

Kidding.

I think.

…that cup of ice coffee I enjoyed with dinner.

At some point during the weekend, I came to see everything around me as being at a level of filth that was just intolerable. The house had begun to look and smell like the inside of a car that has been on a cross country trip with four young children. I wondered what kind of mentally ill person was responsible around here, anyway? Who would let themselves live in this fashion? Dishes, piled up… flies were delighted but not me. I suddenly had this flash of shock as I thought about how it must seem to my kids, to live in such a messy place. I think it was getting on their nerves as much as mine, as they frolicked about and teased each other mercilessly.

I have a pretty low tolerance for when they are squabbling. I wouldn’t mind that much, but for the telling. Mom, Annie won’t give me back my half of the silly putty… Mom, Carla bumped me with her head! Mom! Maaaa-ommmm! It makes me say things like “well negotiate with her. Offer her something in exchange. Distract her. And if that doesn’t work, then GO TO YOUR ROOM BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT! Do you need a trip to the ER? No, so why are you trying to get me involved here??” (Mother of the year award coming right up! Sarcasm: just one more service I provide!)

But amid such mess as was our house, the squabbling just kind of fit right in. I found myself recalling information I’d gathered way back in my grad school days– learning about how the environment that a person is in can really shape their behavior. Of course they were going to be miserable in this house in the heat, the awful humidity… with me being busy playing scrabulous washing the dishes and preparing meals

rather than playing with them, and with every surface for play already cluttered with toys, and laundry and quite possibly guinea pig turds.

Something, something, had to pull me out of this squalid existence. It feels like today we suddenly started to really tip the scales and head in the right direction. In fact, it’s been a solid week of chipping away at the dishes, the laundry, and sweeping up, and so forth. D helped a great deal with this long weekend of ours. The weather had a way of helping as well, because today was off and on rainy rather than perfect pool weather, so I didn’t get up to the pool (or my garden).

In addition to doing a bunch of laundry, D came up with an innovative way for us to communicate the things we’d like each other to do over the course of a day. He suggested that we each make a list of three items for the other — it could be anything you want your partner to do for you from Give a Backrub to Mow the Lawn to Put the Kids to Bed to Apply for a New Job. Anything at all. The rules: Only put three things on the list. Expect that 2 out of 3 Ain’t Bad. 3 out of 3 is a pleasant surprise. And 1 out of 3 is Not So Good.

So, I looked around and realized that the huge laundry clutter in our bedroom was really getting me down, and yet I had no desire to sort and put it all away. I put that as one of his 3 things, and lo and behold! He did that task. This then inspired me to further clean up our bedroom, and I swept the room out and cleared out under the bed as well. I would certainly never have done that if the dresser were still cluttered. You see? The environment of my bedroom was paralyzing me from doing anything to improve it, because the dresser was a hurtle that seemed too awful to tackle. My bedroom closet is still a horrible mess and a monolith that I am not sure I can tackle. But with the dresser clear, I feel a little more easy about giving it a try.

D had been wishing I’d cook up a big yummy dinner, with lots of leftovers for him to take to work over the week, so he wrote that on his list. Getting this information early in the day gave me a chance to think ahead: sure, I can cook dinner, I thought. Dinner is important to me, too, and I like cooking. This in turn helped me get focused on grocery shopping, and planning some meals for the week. I ended up making a big pot of curried chicken, a pot of basmati rice, baked BBQ chicken legs, and a big container of salad. I also prepped some things for tomorrow’s dinner.

What tends to happen to Drob and I, is that our creativity kicks in when we have a problem to solve. The novelty of a creative way to handle expectations is very helpful to me. I can deal with small, concrete wishes, written on a piece of paper in a way that I cannot deal with a houseful of chaotic needs ricocheting off the walls.

I don’t know if this will be something we continue long term– it often happens that we have a good system going that Really Works until, that is, it stops working. Then … we try something else.

In my dream world, there are all these Very Clever Solutions to Life’s Problems… I find My Little Ways and teach the secrets to successful and happy living to my kids. I tell them all this Wise and Awesome stuff and they are able to help run the household like a well-oiled machine.

The truth be told, I really hope to someday be able to have some level of organization that I can pass along to my kids. How can I expect them to clean their rooms, or find their shoes, if all around them is a constant whirlwind of chaos? In short, I can’t expect that of them, in that circumstance.

There needs to be a system in place, and it needs to be consistent and simple. And when I forgot to do it, there needs to be a fail-safe way of getting back on target.

So far, though, I don’t have this magic bullet. I just have my creativity, my unreliable energy levels, and a husband who is a lot like me. And I have coffee. That counts for something, as surely I am going to need it in the morning.

Here I am, a week into my summer. A full week or so I estimate it.

I am discouraged at the moment. The weekend was busy, and we spent it doing mainly fun things, camping out at our swim club and hanging out with friends from a community group that we are part of. Swimming, gardening, camping = fun! Hitting my ankle by accident with the claw end of a hammer while trying to pry a tent stake from the ground, not as fun at all. Going to the ER to see if it was broken last night, was actually not bad at all. I was greatly relieved to learn that the hammer had not managed to fracture any bones. In fact, it didn’t hurt all that badly at first, so right after I hurt my ankle, I went swimming, packed up all the camping stuff into the car and put in a few hours in the garden. It was after doing all that, about four hours later, that the pain got so severe that I wondered if I had somehow fractured the ankle, as I could no longer walk on it.

Today I can walk again, so that helps! It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did yesterday, when I could not walk. It is still quite tender, though. Gladly the pill I took for the pain seems to really work.

But I am so overwhelmed. My home is a wreck, still. It’s been a full week since I finished camp and I am still not anywhere near caught up. My long distance service has been shut off because I neglected that bill for so long. There are late fees on nearly every bill I pay (for the business I “run”). I discovered flea bits on my cats and need to get them some anti-flea stuff, that liquid I squirt on the backs of their necks from time to time. My recycling piles are over-flowing. My hedges are too bushy. My lawn is tall and tickle-y when I walk on it. Everywhere I look, be it upstairs, downstairs, in my email (overly full inbox), in my bookkeeping software, everywhere…. it is a mess.

I am having so much trouble just seeing where to begin. And of course, tomorrow we are back at OT for Annie. She has three sessions each week. And both girls are starting twice weekly swim lessons tomorrow. Plus, I’m supposed to do home exercises with Annie as well. I want to. I know it will help her.

When am I going to take care of business? When am I going to transform this place from a dung heap to a live-able home? I hate how things are. I feel so discouraged and overwhelmed. I need a huge bustle of energy to come along. How can I make this all happen?

One little thing at a time, I guess.

Today was Monday.

I keep forgetting that, though. Somewhere over the weekend, I realized that summer is really here at last. So begins what kind of feels like an eternal weekend. There is no school. There is no After School. There is no childcare.

Plus, Cammy is off in Florida doing wild-n-crazy schtuff to celebrate reaching age 21. Plus visiting her mom, and sisters. She’ll be back within 3 weeks, so it’s not that dire or anything.

But anyway, here am I suddenly — going from the high intensity of running camp for two weeks, to the completely different world of being here. And I have no childcare.

I am not a stay at home mom. I never have identified myself that way. I think it’s more apt to say that now that it’s summer it’s my kids who stay at home. Although that is not strictly accurate either.

Today Annie had her first session of occupational therapy, thus beginning a sixty day treatment period, in which she’ll have about three sessions each week. Her therapy is located about 40 minutes away from home (by car). Annie is healthy and developmentally advanced for her age in many ways, but for one. She seems to be a bit delayed in developing her fine motor skills. This is mostly showing up in the way that she grasps a pencil: with her hand in a fist, rather than with her pointer and thumb working together in a tripod.

While she’s quite talented at drawing with this grasp, it’s something of a red flag. Upon getting her evaluated, I was surprised to learn that her “core strength” and “upper body strength” are in need of development. This “laxity” as they call it is one of the reasons that she is so darn flexible (she can put her foot behind her head!).

Luckily the therapy began in the summer: I can’t imagine how I’d ever manage to do this during the school year! It is also reassuring that the therapy is really pretty fun for Annie. I watched today as she got to swing in a big inner tube (working on balance and core body strength), roll on an exercise ball, and color with special shorty crayons. Her therapist was positive and friendly and good at establishing rapport.

Thus begins my summer. I will also be taking my kids to swimming lessons. And I’ll be working in our corner of a community garden, which over the last few weekends Drob and I worked very hard to get started. We still have a good deal of space to add things to, and I’m still in the dreamy phase of “what ELSE is fun to grow” even though at this point, I don’t think I’ll start too much more by seed. Maybe some cukes if the ones I put in two weekends ago still look sad and pathetic. I may have started them (indoors) too early and waited to long to put them in the ground.

Oh yeah, and of course I have a lot of catching up to do with the business that I still run. Clients still send me updates for their websites, and I still have to send out invoices for web hosting and other services, and call people back when they have a question or two. Making return phonecalls is one of the worst challenges, now that the kids are home from school. I just despise making phonecalls when I will be interrupted by squeaky lil ones. I feel terribly unprofessional when that happens, so I often don’t call people back.

Instead, I try to address their message by responding via email. This is not always possible, naturally. I would not be able to do this if the reason for their call is that their email is down. Hah!

Meanwhile, there’s a ton of catching up to do around the old homestead where laundry and dishes and grocery shopping fell completely by the wayside during the two weeks of frenzied day camp activities.

Summer is here, oh yes. Time to relax, garden, do bookkeeping, pay bills, wash clothes, do dishes, cook and clean, mop floors, clean catboxes, organize children’s rooms, generate invoices, go to occupational therapy, and swim lessons, and update client websites.

Summer… that time of year when there’s just nothing to do but sleep late and laze about the house drinking iced tea and eating little cucumber sandwiches.

Oh yea, right, wowser, sure. Forgot to mention that my NIECES are coming to visit me. In about, say, an hour! They were supposed to be dropped off tomorrow but that plan was changed (WITHOUT consulting poor, exhausted me).

Ok, so I have to deal.

I will.

On another topic. Cammy gave me a really cute dress! I was just reading somewhere about how having a nice new dress can make you feel so good.  It’s true!

Here’s me in the dress.  I wore it when D and I went out to see a play last night.

Me, I’m tired. I’m not making much sense … and I have some websites to update tonight. Not happy about this, but I will just have to deal.

I will. Somehow .

OH yeah, and yesterday I was offered the After School Director job for next year. Yay! I’m currently trying to negotiate the terms of it a little bit. I think the whole camp thing is fun, but it’s a full time job, albeit a very short term full time job. I do not feel it’s reasonable to require a part time employee to work full time for two weeks each year, without any additional compensation. I kind of doubt my negotiation will be successful. These folks are a) stubborn and b) broke. The school really doesn’t have much to throw around.

Week 1 of camp is complete, and I think it was successful in virtually every way.  The repercussions of having put such an intense amount of energy into my work this week? Exhaustion, relief, sunburn suntan.

I had a really good assistant, Marta:  a young teacher who has recently trained with one of my favorite teachers at the same school where I’m running day camp.  Marta is a funky and cute young woman with a nose ring. The kind of nose ring that goes through the middle of your nose, as in, between the nostrils.  Yeah, so she’s not only sweet with the kids, but cool, too! It was really nice having her youthful energy, and she’s clearly trained well as I see her mentor’s approach within her teaching.

Alas, Marta can’t return for week 2, and instead I’ll have another parent whom I know come and help out. She’s experienced, too, but the only real drawback is she’ll bring along her two kids as well (just like I do). Her kids are … a handful, shall we say?

But aside from a bit of shopping over the weekend, I feel pretty ready for this second week of camp. Week 1 went well, and there is a core group of kids who will be with us again next week and their behaviors are pretty good and the routine we established seems to work.

Bye-bye pit of tension. Hello exhaustion!

I have not blogged in so long, it’s kind of a weird thing. We do get distracted around here, a lot. There’s a lot of things to be distracted by.

Tomorrow we’re headed to a school-wide camping trip - off to Bear Country (cue music) where we’ll be hanging out with the kids, sharing food with friends, roasting marshmallows, and all that fun stuff.  Today one parent told me that she and husband HATE camping and it’s the worst day of the year for them. Boggled the mind, this did: and also it opened my mind to the reality (oh Hai, realuh-Tee!) that (gasp!) some really ordinary looking people may actually be completely alien under their skins.

But what really got me to start blogging again, or at least, to write this particular entry is my BURNING NEED to TELL THE WORLD that I stepped on a yellow jacket two days ago, and got stung on the bottom of my foot and it has hurt and itched and itched and hurt.  Now it’s stopped hurting and ITCHES LIKE HELL.  There, now I told you.

Thank GOODNESS I have a blog.

Now, it being nearly 11 PM, I think I better start looking around for my camping supplies. [grin]

It has been said that bloggers are the new voices of opinion. I use the fabulously passive voice here (it has been said) so as to avoid having to justify my own claims. Information flows fast and furious, and we all get to say whatever we want.

Our thoughts are neatly inscribed on the eyeballs of a few friends or maybe a dozens of casually interested strangers. What fun to think that some power can be had just by typing up my opinions!

But want to know what’s even MORE fun? Participating in a telephone poll! I was (randomly?) chosen to be part of a poll of some kind and just got off the phone. It was clearly designed to be answered by someone who’s not yet really quite decided for whom they’ll vote.  Part of the survey was to ask me to react to statements about John McCain and see if they would “put doubt in my mind” about McCain.

Hah! Funny! I have no doubt about McCain at all. Why, I would absolutely NEVER vote for the guy, so there’s no doubt here at all!

Here are some of the points raised by the pollster:

- McCain is too old to be president (I didn’t agree, because I don’t care that he’s 72 and a skin cancer survivor, I just don’t think he should be in office due to his political beliefs.)

- McCain has a nasty temper and is easily ticked off (Oh really? All the more reason to keep this guy the hell away from the trigger!)

-McCain admits he doesn’t know anything about the economy or domestic issues, but is really only focused on foreign affairs (well, shoot! That pretty much disqualifies you from being the president, dude. Sorry!)

-McCain is even more of a war hawk than Bush. He wants to keep a permanent occupation of Iraq, and will likely want to bomb, bomb, bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran! (Um, no thanks. I don’t really like the continual killing, I’d prefer less killing with my presidency, thanks.)

So, asks the pollster, do these statements put any doubt in your mind about McCain?

“No,” I answered, “none at all. I have no doubt that he’s a total bastard and should be kept as far away from the Oval Office as possible.”

I think I seriously entertained the interviewer — she thanked me and said it was very enjoyable talking to me today.

I expect that as time goes by, more Americans will also agree with my lack of doubt about McCain.