Someone Call the Whaaaaambulance!

I would really like to sit around enjoying these. Then I'd like to take a nice, long afternoon nap.

But, no. Instead I get to finish one of those horrid, waaaaay overdue cleaning/organizing projects that I started yesterday out of sheer necessity (since that is the ONLY reason I do ANYTHING these days).

The schoolroom/office/library has been the stash-everything-room for four years, now. Everything I don't want to deal with goes in there, usually at the last minute when I'm having company over, of course.

Bins and bins of miscellaneous game pieces, important paperwork, school worksheets, blank paper mixed with not-so-blank paper, half-finished work books and coloring books, school supplies, camera paraphernalia, gift wrapping supplies, notebooks, puzzles, and the endless odds and ends that have no home.

So I pulled almost everything out of the room yesterday and have been going through it one piece of paper, one pencil, one game piece at a time. Now I'm at the 'I have a much greater mess than the one I started with (which is really saying something), and it's taken over my whole house' stage. I really hate that stage. Not to mention the fact that I neglect everything else (say, dishes) when I'm trying to work on a big project.

I got to bed really late last night, Lola was up more than usual during the night, Leif is sick and crawled in bed with us at 5:30 am, and Russ is attending a class all day today. Must do laundry and dishes. Unexpected financial paperwork/phone calls/trip to the bank today. Fun stuff.

The boys keep coming out and taking stuff out of my piles. Ooooh! Look at this! Oooooh! You can't throw this away!! Oooooh! I think I'll scatter these flash cards all over the floor and cut up this piece of paper into tiny little shreds. They have now been sent to their disasterous room. Think three boys living in a tiny room that hasn't been organized since Christmas gifts. Maybe I'll get to that next year.

Must. Go. Work. Oh, wait. I hear a crying baby. Sigh.

I'll share a few inspirational words so this isn't a completely brain-sucking post.

Don't worry about genius and don't worry about not being clever. Trust rather to hard work, perseverance, and determination. The best motto for a long march is, 'Don't grumble. Plug on.'

You hold your future in your own hands. Never waver in this belief. Don't swagger. The boy who swaggers--like the man who swaggers--has little else that he can do. He is a cheap-Jack crying his own paltry wares. It is the empty tin that rattles most. Be honest. Be loyal. Be kind. Remember that the hardest thing to acquire is the faculty of being unselfish. As a quality it is one of the finest attributes of manliness.

Love the sea, the ringing beach and the open downs.

Keep clean, body and mind.

~Sir Frederick Treves, 1903