Last year, my older sister spent months learning about smart phones with the idea that we could get mom one to help with losing things and paper clutter, and that she and I would also get one so that we can help mom use it. We went with the Palm Centro for various reasons (namely, that it didn’t require the $35 a month data plan) and I’ve spent several hours over the phone guiding my mom through its many uses (as well as helping her move from a PC to her new MacBook). She is finally coming around to liking it - it is not the simplest phone to use - but it has great capabilities.

Last night on my way to bed, my phone slid off the couch into a tall glass of water! It was very surreal. I had felt something slide of the couch when I was getting up, and heard a strange noise, so I turned around to see my phone completely submerged in a tall, wide Collins glass full to the brim with water. I actually heard it go GLUG! GLUG! GLUG! before I got my brain to tell my hand to fish it out and begin frantically wiping it dry. I so badly wanted to take a picture for my blog (!) but I knew I had to hurry. I tore of the back and left the pieces lying out to dry. This morning I realized that I hadn’t removed the SIM card, but it seems to be okay, as I put it in my ancient, primitive, Cingular phone that I used up until I got this one.

Then today, when I finally got a hold of all my loved ones through Gmail and Facebook, I learned that the thing to do is to put it in a bowl of rice to draw out the moisture. I hope it works.

Picture via popularmechanics.com. Click on photo to learn how it works.

I would have taken a picture of my own phone, but I left my camera battery charger at mom’s house in California when I was there over Christmas and haven’t gotten it back yet. It’s always something.

I hope this works. I’ll let you all know.

Here I am, tired on a busy morning. I have tons of school work and cleaning to accomplish before we go off skiing for the weekend. (This is our third year in Colorado, and only the first year we have skied, because we’re usually just barely getting through the week, without adding a lot of driving and exercise to the mix.)

But when I get myself to make coffee, put on some music, and this adorable apron that my talented little sister made me for a wedding, gift doing dishes without a dishwasher becomes a lot more tolerable. Almost fun! (Okay, that’s a lie!)

I love my pink dish gloves and various aprons. Aprons are especially important for me because we’ve lost the little round thingy that goes on the end of the faucet to direct the flow of water, so I always end up completely soaked in the front after doing dishes by hand. (I’ve also managed to break about 15 glasses this year. Housework is not my strong suit!!!!!! Hence, my extreme need for motivational attire.)

It’s been abut six months since I received my Clutterer’s Anonymous Starter Kit and I finally opened it up yesterday read through the materials, and put each page in a separate sheet protector in a new binder. I ordered the kit for $15 because there are no face-to-face meetings here in Denver and I thought I might start one myself. Hoarding has been in the news a lot lately, and we’ve been struggling with it personally, in my family. I’m trying to decide whether I have enough time to try to start a CLA group here in Denver before my husband and I move for his job. I’d like to spread the network of support. I think fellowship for people with similar problems has the potential to be very helpful.

After I went through the material, I called my mom and had a circuitous, roller-coaster-of-emotion conversation, that began and ended well. She is exhausted from our recent trip out there (in which we sorted through unbelievable amounts of stuff) and she is quite depressed. (I also suffer from bouts of depression and am suffering from my own mishap this week, in which I accidentally took my sleeping pill for two days instead of one of my antidepressants! Doh!)

The issue that made our phone conversation so difficult yesterday was as follows: Mom was able to accept the label of hoarder for a time, but now it makes her feel very bad. Strangely enough, it was she who first labeled herself as a hoarder! I remember speaking to her on the phone a couple of years ago when she pointed me towards a Compulsive Hoarding website and some articles.  But, it is difficult to find a balance between giving a problem a name so that you can treat it, and giving it a label which is counter productive. I think with all of the current publicity about hoarding, she doesn’t want to be seen, even in her own eyes, as being like those people on tv.

Don’t be mislead by my somber tone! I’m very excited about the possibility of starting a new CLA group in Denver and I am quite grateful for the time that we have been able to spend together working on mom’s storage units and talking about our hopes for her future. It’s just that the issue of dealing with hoarding, or with a recovering hoarder, is complicated for a family and it is a constant struggle for everyone in the family to reach common ground on this issue. There is no one right way to do it, and what is acceptable one day is not going to work on another day.

So I’m trying to move more in the direction of talking about chronic disorganization and excessive cluttering. Cluttering which is out of one’s control and has a negative affect on one’s life, possibly interfering with use of certain areas of the home. CLA is a 12 step program, modeled after AA, and is not for everyone. My mom does not find it helpful. I might give it a try though.

Oh, and as for the title of this post - I truly believe that Life is not a race!!! It may have taken me a long time to finish my education, to get married, to have kids (haven’t actually done that yet), to start a “career” (nor have I actually done that), to open the CLA packet, but what is the hurry? Life is the process, not the product. I like who I am and where I am right now. I don’t need to have “accomplished” more than I have, or to have reached any milestones quicker than I have.

This is especially true with getting control of chronic disorganization or compulsive hoarding. Some family members just want to throw out a lot of mom’s stuff without sorting through it, but if we race through the process, we won’t have lasting results. There needs to be an inner change as well as an outer one.

One of the tons of wonderful things I’ve learned from my husband is how to make vinaigrette. He’s very anti-bottled-dressing (I’ve gently reminded him that I grew up in a single parent home and wasn’t even aware that there was an alternative, aside from ambitious, gourmet types).

It’s incredibly easy and it’s almost the only thing we put on our salads. The only bottled dressing we’ve used this past year is Annie’s Goddess dressing (and ranch, which we don’t put on salads, but which I use to dip many, many different foods into, from veggies to pizza.)

Anyway, it’s so easy that, although we were too tired to cook tonight and Tim picked up pasta from our favorite Italian restaurant on the way home, I still made a salad AND a dressing.

So how does one make a vinaigrette, you ask? The materials I like best are a small teacup (see photo), because I’m usually making a small salad for two people, and a fork to whisk with. I’ve tried a bowl and a real whisk, but for me, the fork works better (I also use it to scramble eggs for french toast batter).

Next, choose your vinegar. We have been using sherry vinegar lately, but in the past we have used red or white wine vinegar, or balsamic vinegar. I’ve also heard you can use lemon juice, but I haven’t tried it. For myself, I’ve used a fancy fig flavored balsamic vinegar that I bought for my husband and he never used once. I put this on a salad that featured strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.

Put one or two tablespoons in the cup or bowl (eyeball it.)

Next, add seasonings that you would like to dissolve in it. I always add salt and cracked black pepper. You can mix it up by adding a dash of cayenne, as well, or white pepper instead of the black. This is also when we often add garlic. Usually a fresh clove pressed in a garlic presser. Raw garlic is very good for you but causes potent burbs, so beware!

The final ingredient before the oil is a tiny bit of dijon mustard. We sometimes leave it out, but it’s very good in the dressing. Try not to use too much.

Whisk a bit with the fork to mix the additions into the vinegar.

Finally, add extra virgin olive oil. A good rule is about 2:1 oil vs vinegar. If you are using a teacup, completely cover the top of the vinegar with the oil. Whisk, whisk, whisk, and taste. Add whatever you think is missing, toss on salad, and enjoy!

In which I discuss my hopes for the New Year, our upcoming move to the country, and ponder the reasons that I eat seafood, but not land animals.

This is the animal that sparked this post: The Large Black Pig, an endangered, heritage breed. I don’t eat them myself, but I do acknowledge that one of the ways to support these heritage breeds is to support the farms that breed them - by eating them!

This pic is from the blog for Eversfield Organic; it shows how cute these pigs can be. Click to visit their website.

I’m not one of those crazy vegetarians or vegans who freaks out if a bit of cooked meat touches anything that might go into her mouth and spouts diatribes at fellow diners as they are biting into their perfectly cooked steaks and burgers. In fact, I’m not even a vegetarian proper (the word for me would be something like lacto-ovo-pescotarian, because I eat dairy products, eggs, and creatures of the sea. I just don’t eat mammals - those that walk the land and have feathers or fur or wallow in mud (I haven’t eaten any of these animals in 18 years, and I show no signs of doing so for the next 18).

Why am I even bringing this up?
Well hubby and I have been very excited about our upcoming move to a small town on the Eastern slope of Colorado. We have been living in Denver for the past three years and love it here, but he has received an unbelievable offer to work in Montrose, CO,  and we feel that we cannot turn it down.

Our days are now spent listing all the ways our lives will change for the better in Montrose. The name of our future town has become for us a short-hand for all of our hopes, dreams, and New Year’s resolutions. We will eat better and exercise in Montrose. We will have a dishwasher! We will be able to hang our clothes out to dry, instead of using the energy wasting dryer. We will have a yard for our old dog to run freely in (without annoying any cranky neighbors). We will finally buy bikes and be able to ride them in town without worrying about getting run over! We will hike! We will ski! We may try out fly fishing! We will bake our own bread! And most importantly, we will have an amazing garden and start canning an preserving our harvest for the winter months!

Life will be perfect in Montrose!

Now, I’m not flaky: I am ever the tiresome realist. I know that moving is not a panacea for all our shortcomings and that each of these changes will take conscious effort on our part. It’s just hard not to let our excitement propel us forward through the short, dark days of winter, when we get up before the sun does. After we got over all the anxiety about moving from a great city, which offers tons of culture and bustle, restaurants and parks, we began to see all the positives.

We won’t have to fight traffic ever again! We will have the opportunity to have as much land as we want along with a nicely sized house for the same money that would limit us to a two bedroom house with nary a yard in Denver. We will have a two car garage again to keep snow off our cars. We will have a country garden, with tomatoes, herbs, and all sorts of veggies and fruit trees, without having neighbors fighting us for gardening space. The list goes on and on. For every worry that we have, there are several reasons why this move is an opportunity of a lifetime for us.

Enter the Hobby Farm dream. It turns out there are a collection of Popular Farm magazines about every aspect of living off the land on a “hobby farm.” A hobby farm derives its name from the fact that you won’t be able to make any real money off of your animals and produce. You will be able to provide for yourself, and sell a bit of the extra, but it ain’t gonna make you rich or even support you as a sole income.
I’ve been devouring the pages of these magazines, dreaming of all the ways I can expand my skills and interests to cultivate a gigantic vegetable garden and even have cute little farm animals! This isn’t so far fetched for me. I spent summers on my godfather’s farm, and even though he didn’t have any animals other than ponies, my neighbor friends did.

Our husband and wife comedy routine commences daily as I show him pics of heritage farm animals and say, “Get ready, babe, we’re gonna have chickens next year.” And he responds, “Like hell, we are!”
He just doesn’t see it yet. But he’ll come around. I’m kidding, I know I haven’t the discipline to shovel animal manure and chicken droppings every day - but I like to stretch my imagination to try the idea on for size once in a while. Lord knows he does the same thing. His latest dream, after we plant the orchard and the grapes for making our own wine, is olives. He’d love to find a strain of olives that would actually grow in Colorado and make his own olive oil. Now who’s the crazy one!

Anyway, the real reason for this long post is my disbelief, after looking at all the cute pics of farm animals, that anyone would actually want to eat them! The magazine boasts the docile, friendly, and loving nature of these animals, and in the same breath mentions how tasty their meat is! I know you’re not supposed to name them and all that, but for me that would be the whole point. I wouldn’t want cute black pigs, and funny goats for meat, but for outdoor pets! To give me a laugh and brighten my day and remind me that there is beauty and life in this world outside of my head.

So then why is it okay for me to eat fish and cute little lobsters (which purportedly hold claws with each other and mate for life!)? I’ll leave that for all to ponder and perhaps answer it in the future because this post has become so long it might grow it’s own feathers and fur! Just let me leave you with the knowledge that I’m not entirely bothered by the idea that it might be hypocritical to eat some living creatures and not others. I never said I was perfect.

We are back from helping my mom, resuming our normal workaday lives. I have lots to say about the hoard-busting process - much of it not yet processed in my own brain yet though.

As I’ve said before, my mom has a bit of a hoarding problem. She has several storage units and garages filled with piles of intermixed stuff that we are trying to get rid of so that she can live a functional life. We set up a triage to sort through as much as we could in one week and managed to get rid of 80-90% of what we went through. The problem is that for various reasons, (e.g., her having to move quickly without help over a decade ago, chronic disorganization, etc….) the stuff is all mixed up. There are books, clothing, magazines, knick-knacks, baby clothes, childhood toys, dishes, and anything else you can imagine, all mixed together in each box.

Our goal was to toss, send to Goodwill, or auction most of the stuff, while getting out any childhood treasures or pictures that each of us daughters (or mom) wanted to keep - saying goodbye to the rest.

The above picture is of my Holly Hobby doll that mom gave me when I was five and home from kindergarten with the chicken pox. I have strong memories of it because it was almost as tall as me and I loved it! It was something that I was hoping to find. After doing so, I walked around our sorting area, hugging it for about five minutes, got pics of me holding it, then took pics of it in the Goodwill pile and said goodbye.

So, goodbye, Holly Hobby! You are fondly remembered, but we don’t need to keep you anymore.

My sister an I are taking a break from mom’s house and hanging out at a local coffee shop with our laptops. The place is called The Library and is filled with used books. When C settled into her comfy chair she pulled this one of the shelf next to her and said, “Really? Do you really think this should be a book?”

This was Casey yesterday. I found him nearly sliding down behind the couch pillow, belly up, fast asleep. He woke up when I got out the camera. And now I am here, sick on the couch again.

It is time to be getting ready to go home to California for Christmas. This has always been a bit of a stressful vacation because of my mom’s illness. But it’s been getting worse, so this year my older sister is coming out for the second time this year (and the second time in a decade) so us sisters can all help mom get rid of stuff.

You may remember our first hoard-busting trip last summer. Now it is time to continue the journey.

I need to be doing laundry and packing, but after spending the past two days grading papers, I feel I deserve one casual relaxation day before I go to California to meet my sisters at my mother’s house and deal with Part Two of the Hoard-Bust-a-Thon.

But first a couple pictures of my kitchen for me to look at while I’m away.

I need to get up off my bum and get some stuff done. My flight leaves tomorrow afternoon and I’d like to be finished packing tonight so I can spend the morning with my husband before I go.

I’ll do my best to post while I’m there. I’d really like to post more about the actual process of dealing with a  family member who is trying to recover from compulsive hoarding, but unless you are on A & E’s Hoarders, which I KNOW you all have seen by now (how odd that something that made me self-conscious and different my whole life, became a TV show the very same year I discovered that there was a real name and therapy for it!) it can be very difficult to betray someone’s privacy. While going out there and helping mom is MY life and something I’d very much like to blog about in detail, it is HER house and HER stuff, and I have to be respectful of her right to not have photos of it posted all over the internet.

So, argh!

I was thrilled to find this weekly meme on Blissfully Domestic and couldn’t wait to join in myself. My older sister said something right before I got married that has really stuck with me. She said she hates it when she gets together with women and all they want to do is criticize their husbands. She says whenever that happens, she leaves the room.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever discuss things that our husbands do to upset us (with our closest friends) because no two people can go forever without having arguments, and talking is part of healthy problem solving, but I do think the culture of man-bashing is crap.

Hence, my love of this meme!

So why is my husband so great? He works his butt off and is providing me a life in which I’ll be able to stay home with my kids when they’re young. He does this even though sometimes he fears that work is sucking his soul away. He could be hopping from job to job, or barely holding one, but he’s responsible, even when it’s tough to hang in there.

It isn’t necessarily a fair deal. I will get to be home and organize my day the way I want to (don’t get me wrong, I know it ain’t easy being a SAHM, but I do know that when I’m at the park with my kids on a sunny spring day and he’s stuck in a gloomy hospital, he’ll be envious of my freedom) and I’ll get to be there for all joyful moments of watching my babies grow. And when I do work at various times in my life, as I am right now, I have the option to work part-time because we don’t rely on the money I make. Because of this, I get to choose work that I find fulfilling instead of doing it out of necessity.

My husband is a good man and I’m lucky to have met him!

There you have it ladies and gents. I just took this quiz about whether or not I would make a good retro housewife and the results are not at all surprising!

You Would Make a Horrible 1930’s Wife

You are way too non conformist, independent, and sassy to be an ideal retro wife. You may be so wild that you aren’t even considering marriage! Good thing we don’t live in the 1930s anymore!