More FlyLady

Today I planned to get up at 6 am. Hahaha. My mom decided I should get up anyway, so she set an alarm for 7:30. The alarm had a 5 minute snooze. I snoozed it until 12:30. I was feeling really depressed because I had missed the first day of the routine. But voila! I looked at my email, and there were about 15 emails from FlyLady. Some of them were unrelated, but a few were really encouraging - I decided to do my routine anyway. First day of forming a habit. Progress not perfection. I finished my so called "morning" routine at 3. But I did it. Happiness.

Bulletin Boards and Photos

When I made the lists to stick on my bulletin board, I ended up rearranging the entire board. I have one side devoted mainly to utility, and the other side is full of pretty things. But I do have a comic strip and a poem on the utility side, because they didn't fit on the pretty side. The pretty side is divided in half again. Two thirds and one third, actually. That's where the ribbon cuts across, so that is where divides. The bottom part is a photo gallery/album. One or two of me, one or two of Alexandra, two of my mom, a couple with friends in them. I don't have a single picture of dad. I need to find some. Then I need to make room in the photo gallery for them. *sigh*. The top half (two thirds) has cards with pretty pictures, a magazine clipping of some yaks, a dream-catcher, a glass fish, and two fans. If I cut out more magazine clippings, I'll put them all just up on the wall, and move the yaks one too. I probably should do that, it's really over-crowded.
Alexandra's pictures are all silly. She makes faces and says they are not very flattering, but she acts silly whenever I try to take a picture. She says she hates having her picture taken. It's very aggravating. I also tried to get some of dad, but they didn't come out so well. The cat is extremely photogenic, but doesn't move into different positions. So I shot a bunch of pictures of myself. Not for those with fragile self esteem. I actually managed to get myself framed properly in a lot of them, but I look even worse than I do when someone else takes my picture. Finally I had a system where I would make my expressions sideways into a mirror while holding the camera straight in front of me. So I am looking sideways in a lot of them. All this made me lose track of time, so I was very late for my voice lesson.

FlyLady

Yesterday I finally gave in to my mom's urgings and looked at FlyLady.net. It's a website to help disorganized, messy people keep their houses clean. There are so many of these, but FlyLady is amazing. I was reading some of the stuff she has, and it's spectacular. So, with FlyLady, I am going to attempt to clean up and keep clean my room. The rest of the house I can contribute to keeping clean as well, but mostly my room.

FlyLady is about little steps, and making progress, and forming habits. There's the 15 minute whirlwind clean where you just pick up and put away everything you can as fast as you can for 15 minutes. You can do 10, 20, 30, whatever, but 15 is the recommended dosage, at least for beginners. Then there is the amazing, revolutionary first step: polish your kitchen sink. Uh-huh. Because you can ACTUALLY CLEAN something, even if it is the thing that doesn't matter. Also, for me it is a way to be perfectionist without facing an entire room and eventually giving up. My mother seems to have taken her counter from this concept. That's the counter that you can't put anything down on even for a couple seconds. Well, a couple seconds is allowed if you're watching it, but not if you're putting it down and leaving the room to get something, or putting it down and doing something in another part of the kitchen. Crazy as it is, it works. The counter is the one clean surface in the house. So, last night I polished the sink. Now here we get to the habit part. Polishing the sink takes a minute. FlyLady wants you to polish your sink every night as her first step (or maybe this is the second. the first step being actually doing it the first time).

So, in my room, I have decided that "Shine the kitchen sink" = Make your bed. I have never made my bed in my life before. I have never seen the point. In 14 to 16 hours I'll be sleeping in it again anyway. But, it is something encouraging to clean. And it will keep me from piling stuff all over it. Before I make my bed the first time, I have a good half hour's work to make it at all possible. Oh boy.

But FlyLady's methods are inspiring me to far more than just keeping my room clean. I have compiled a morning routine and an evening routine, something she recommended. I wrote them out and have them next to each other on my bulliten board. With matching cute little silver pushpins in the shape of shoes. The things that I feel the need to point out.
My morning and evening routine include a lot more than the room/house cleaning stuff though. Last night I remembered to pray five Psalms because they were on my list. This was something I didn't do the night before, or the night before that, and it was that night that I POSTED about it. Magic. It must be magic. I also include prayer on my morning list, after five minutes of doing my vocal exercises. And of course, the bedroom sink - making my bed. Do you know, I think I'm going to have to vaccum my bed before I make it? So much crud on the sheets. I'll wash the sheets too, because I can take a hint, but you know, it really hasn't been that long since they've been changed. Mom is right. I definitely cannot eat in my room. I think some of the crud is crumbs. What if we get roaches? They are impossible to get rid of. Although, I haven't really heard of anyone around here who's gotten them. But we'd get ants anyway, and they are bad too. I didn't eat in my room much until my computer came in here a little while ago. Will have to fix this.

This post is getting very very long. But I still have more to say. I shall say it in another post. Solutions!

Frustrated rant

I have three and a half years to go until I go to college. If I don't decide to take a year off first. Which I probably will do. So why would I WORRY about it now? Smack the dumb freshman over the head. I don't think or worry about getting into college. I think about "how on earth will I choose the right college?" But mostly I stress out about the fact that I am interested in way too many things. Okay, this is more than about college. But college is sort of a good example. Because in college I want to study theatre, writing, journalism, astronomy, quantum physics. And just when I thought that was it - a managable, if odd array, I rediscover my interest in art. And I'm discovering more interests that weren't even in the picture before. (see earlier post about counting on fingers).

Moving away from the specificity of college, and careers, the problem is still there. I want to learn SO MANY things. I want to learn four new languages currently: Spanish, Icelandic, Gaelic, and Welsh. I want to learn sign language. I want to study people's finger counting. I want to learn physics. I want to read classics. I want to write. I want to sculpt. I want to paint. I want to act. I want to learn about nature. I want to become part of a "garage band" so that I can play music, and sing, in a smaller group and with more freedom to do what we please. I want to Do Great Things (clean up the meadow by Thorndike field). I want to improve in rock-climbing. I want to see if I am any good at teaching younger kids, because I think being a teacher would be great.
The worst of it is that I start things, but because there are so many of them, I get inspired to do something else long before I finish. Practically before I start. Now, the finish what you started stuff is fine and dandy, but by the time I finish the first thing, the other inspirations have run out too. I'm like a little kid - incredibly short attention span. And it's depressing. I'll never finish anything while it's still enjoyable. Or even get most of the way through. Or half way through. But I guess that's really no worse than feeling horrible because I never actually accomplish anything. But it takes more discipline.

If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans

Just looked at my New Year's post. Ahahaha. I should have remembered at least that there was no way I would consistantly update my blog. What was I on? Sadly, I have not started physics on my own, joined a class, or started a class. I have really ignored things spiritual, with a little "oh!" on Sundays. I plague the cat as much as ever.
I HAVE done a bit more writing than usual, but I am still suffering from way too many stories at once.

Okay, now I will do it over again. (this is what's known as a running gag, folks). I will try to remember not to bother the cat, at least not much. I will attempt to not go more than two weeks between blog posts. (got to tell people that I'm doing this, cause everybody gave up on me.) Physics? sigh. During the summer, maybe, along with all the other eighteen million things that I will do "during the summer". I will try to read at least one psalm every night. This one sort of goes along with practicing my vocal exercises 5 to 15 minutes every day, and keeping my room clean.
Running gag, folks. But I will try again. I'm just not totally sure why.

Strange Studies

I am now beginning a study on how people count on their fingers.

No, I mean it.
Yes, I know what I just said.
No, I'm not pulling your leg.
I'm studying fingers.

"But why?????????????????"
My friend Elizabeth and I discovered that people count on their fingers in tons of different ways. So we wanted to see how many and how strange ways there were. We asked a bunch of people to count on their fingers for us, and started hypothesizing about why people count different ways. Pretty soon we realized that we had to write it all down and do all this in a more orderly fashion if we were going to make head or tail of it.