280 emails later.....

Wow. Okay, I had a GREAT weekend. For the most part. My baby girl learned to climb out of her crib not too long ago, so my husband built her a toddler bed because we couldn't find one that we liked. It was so cute, that we decided to go ahead and redo her entire bedroom. Then we decided that the boys, who share a room, needed her room, because it was bigger, so we needed to swap rooms first. This was a HUGE undertaking!! You have no idea how much stuff my children have. I had no idea how much stuff my children had, lol!!!

First, I took her comforter to Home Depot, and used their handy little color matching machine to match the colors of paint I wanted. My husband painted the bed, and we are having a large M laser cut to mount on the head board. We moved everything the boys had out of their room and into the hallway, living room, and kitchen. We dismantled their bunk beds and put them outside (my husband had such success with the little one's bed, he wants to build them their own beds as well.). We painted her room a beautiful sage green color, with hazelnut cream trim, and moved her into that room. We were so inspired by how well it turned out, we've decided to redo the boys' room next.

In the midst of all the mess, I could feel myself start to get agitated. With three kids, everything is always cluttered and messy in our house. I hate to clean house, and it's a constant job. It occurred to me during this, that it's not the kids making me feel like I'm losing my mind, as I've often blamed them for, but the fact that everything in my life is out of order. It makes me feel out of control, and I don't like that. Kind of a big introspective moment for me.

So I'm working on controlling the clutter. I rejoined FlyLady a while back, and that is helping a lot, with learning had to make lists and routines, and the mini missions of decluttering one thing at a time. Her motto is "you can do anything for 15 minutes" and you can. While we pretty much worked nonstop to get the rooms moved around, so that we could complete this project in one weekend, I did incorporate some of her ideas into the project, like do we love this? If not, why are we holding on to it? I managed to take 3 GARBAGE BAGS full of baby clothes to a dear friend that just had her baby prematurely and had not had a shower yet, and was totally unprepared. She also got the baby carseats ( BOTH of them) that our little girl had out grown, and a bunch of toys and blankets. I have 5 garbage bags of boy's clothes that will go to bless someone at the Salvation Army. Most of these things had been given to me by other people, my children never wore half of them, but I was holding on to them because ??? Maybe it was a feeling of guilt because they were given to me, so I needed to keep them? Who knows.

Anyway, my load is much lighter now, and I am working on decluttering everything else. I bring all this up because, since we were working so hard this weekend, I never found the time to get online and take care of anything. I logged on this morning and had 280 emails to wade through. I deleted all the obvious junk mail first, and group notifications because I'll be visiting those later anyway, and then found a great email from Kendra Thornbury, someone who's blog I subscribe to. In her post, she talks about feeling peace by going with the flow, and not having peace because you are fighting against the flow. There was a great little ten reasons why part at the bottome that really got my attention, mainly because it was part of my light bulb moment that I experienced this weekend.
Here it is:


10 Ways You Stay Out of the Flow and Fight Upstream:

1) Frustration
2) Holding on to Emotions
3) Resistance
4) Clutter
5) Control
6) Fear
7) Force
8) Victim Consciousness
9) Doing Things the Way You've Always Done Them
10) Attachment

10 Ways to Get in the Flow:

1) Relax
2) Create a Daily Practice to get Still
3) Allow
4) Surrender
5) Feel Your Emotions
6) Do Things That You Feel Alive In
7) Become Self-Aware (then will know when out of flow and can change course)
8) Learn to Hold a Healthy Detachment to Everything
9) Practice Acceptance (of self and others)

AND number 10?

You guessed it...

GRATITUDE. :)

I have been experiencing every single thing in the first ten. This is something I am going to work on!

Today, I am grateful for the abundace my family has, even if sometimes it doesn't seem like it. I am grateful for my wonderful husband, because he's an incredible father, he doesn't bat an eye when I decide to do something like remodel half the house in a weekend, he's creative, and handy. My middle child (he's 6), said to me today, don't worry mom, if we break it, Daddy can fix it, because he can work on anything, he's an awesome builder. Unfortunately, we were discussing him not taking care of the Playstation, which most likely, my husband CAN'T fix, but my kids think he can, and that's a great thing.

Grateful for Other People's Lives

I'm sure you've heard about the plane crash in the Hudson River today. It was incredible! So today, I'm grateful for the pilot of that plane for saving so many people's lives, not just the people on the plane, but all the people on the ground if he hadn't made it to the water, and for the flight crew, who stayed behind to make sure everyone made it out of the plane and on to the wings to be rescued.

I'm grateful to the ferry boat captain, who quickly changed course to come to the rescue, and get those people off the plane's wings to safety.
I'm grateful that not a single life was lost in this horrific crash.

I've had a lot going on over the last several months, and as a result, I've forgotten to be grateful for a lot of things. My life has felt like it was spiraling out of control, and I can't seem to get a grasp on it, to stop the spinning. I haven't had any focus, I'm scattered.

I want 2009 to be the best year ever. As a result, I need to set my goals, get my priorities in order, and be grateful for what I already have.

I am grateful for the opportunities that I have to better my future, and my family's future. I am grateful for the love that is all around me. I am grateful for my life.

I've been Neglecting you...

And I'm sorry. I have neglected this blog for a few months now. As 2009 rolls in, my New Year's Resolution (or one of them anyway) is to be more productive. I am revamping this blog entirely. All of my work from home stuff will be archived. I've created a new Working From Home blog, and will be renaming this one.
I want this one to be a more personal one, with a more positive outlook. This will be my gratitude blog. I want to talk about things that make me happy, like great books I've read recently, things I've seen, etc. Basically a place to express my gratitude over all the blessings I find in my life each and every day.

But I promise to be a more faithful poster!

Man auctions life on Ebay

I was cruising the news articles today, and came across an interesting tidbit on MSN about a recently divorced British man living in Perth, Australia, who is auctioning off his life on eBay. His house, motorcycle, car, clothes, even his job are all for sale in a package deal. Fake bidders have jacked the price up to $2.1 million. The general consensus is, if this guy doesn't want his life, who would?

I've always believed, if you weren't happy with your life, do something to change it. I've never believed in wallowing in self pity, nor understood people that did. It's your life, you and you alone have the power to change it. I guess that's exactly what this guy is doing. Seems pretty drastic, but then again, sometimes you have to take drastic measures. Except for the part about his divorce, his life really isn't all that bad. He's got a 3 bedroom house, a car, motorcycle, a job. He's got the life many people really do wish they had, not all that exciting, but stable. He's got a roof over his head, transportation, clothes on his back. He's looking for something different, and he's going about getting in a different way than most people. I hope it works out for him.

I've been working on changing my life, one step at a time. My goal is to be home with my kids full time, and I'm getting there. I'm creating multiple streams of income, and they are starting to establish themselves as steady and reliable.

Would you change lives with this guy? What do you wish was different about your life? You can have that life, if you are willing to work for it, and do something about it. Believe me, if I can change my life, you can!

Is there a song that makes you cry?

Many people have that one song. The one that makes you lose it, no matter when or where you hear it. I never really had one until my grandfather passed away last April.

First, I want to say that anyone that knows me knows that I don't listen to country music. My tastes in music tend to run towards the harder edgier stuff. Anyone that has visited my myspace page knows this is true, and are genuinely shocked to hear some of my favorites. There's this one song though, Tim Mcgraw's "Live Like You Were Dying". I had heard it plenty of times before my grandfather ever even got sick, and it never made me cry before that. Even though I don't like country music, living in south Alabama, you tend to hear a lot of it, even if it isn't something you would play yourself.
Anyway, Papa wasn't feeling well for most of the summer of 2006. He was very, umm, cantankerous when it came to doctors. He hated going, and he had no patience. A few times, my grandma would actually get him to go, and he would get so mad sitting in the waiting room that he would walk out. The pain got so bad around August, that he finally was persuaded to go and behave himself. He was promptly sent to a urologist, where he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had let it progress for so long, that the only treatment available was to remove the male hormones. This did nothing for him. After that, it was a pretty rapid decline, and he passed away on April 5 of 2005 at the age of 79. It was so hard to watch a man that was so full of life and so constantly active waste away in such pain. To give you a clue to that, he still worked full time as a small engine repairman up until he was diagnosed. He even tried to go back to work after that and wasn't able.

Anyway, for some reason, ever since he passed away, every time I hear that song, tears start rolling down my face and I can't stop them. There is no real significance to it, other than the song is about the singers' father who is diagnosed with a terminal illness and then begins to live life to the fullest, and do all the things he wanted to do before he died. My grandfather didn't get to do much after he was diagnosed. He was in too much pain. But he did live a long full life, with lots of people that loved him so very very much, including me, his oldest grand daughter. He was the first love of my life, and I can't believe how much I miss him.

And on that note, now that I have made myself cry all over again, please urge all of the men in your lives to get tested often for this. It would have been so easy to treat this if he had taken better care of himself, and now it's too late.