Not Much to Say

I don't have a lot to say about December.  I quit tracking anything on the 18th.

There was Christmas of course.  Baking got put off until the last minute, but it did get done (unlike the last 2 years).  Packages for out of state friends and family went out at the last second also and cost a fortune to make it before Christmas.  Things generally went pretty well; the kids made out like bandits as usual.  They each had at least $70 cash/Target gc to spend when all was said and done, on top of presents under the tree.

Then I kind of took the last week off.  Christmas was over but it wasn't 2012 yet, and psychologically I wanted to start anything new on the 1st, no earlier.  So I didn't do much of anything besides get all the Christmas decorations and everything else boxed up nicely.  Now if Chris would just get the boxes out of the dining room...

Just to be moderately consistent:

18 - days tracking points
73,955 - points earned
4,109 - average points per day tracked
659,218 - total points earned in 2011
1 - injury (Chris put a knife through his finger unwrapping a toy.)
3 - dr. appts.
8 - Christmas events
11 - days off school
5 - UIL ribbons and medals won
1 - movie premiere (Sherlock Holmes was really good.)
$216.34 - total cost of Christmas gifts and cards (including shipping and postage)
8,067 - emails deleted
3 - books read
12 - blog posts

So there's the last month of 2011.  It wasn't a stellar year, but we all made it through to the other side.  Here's to 2012. *clink*

I'm Soooo Behind

It's well into October now, and all the screw-ups, mis-steps, and failures of the last 9 months are rearing up to bite me in the you-know-where.

Any progress I made earlier in the year - and some of it was considerable - has backslid so far that I'm nearly back at square one.  I haven't planned diddly and the upcoming holidays are looking a little bleak.  A major, crucial project that should have begun in August is still in limbo today.  Financial decisions are almost always regrets around here.  My house is a wreck - no better now than it has been at any point in the last 4 years.  I'm not looking forward to fundraisers, cold-weather clothes, pictures, cards, presents, baking, etc. in the next 3 months.

I'm frustrated with so many things, not the least of which myself.  I have issues.

Miss Me?

It's been far too long, I know.  I've been so spotty in my progress that it isn't really funny.  I've been tracking points all year...when I do anything.  I made it through most of the month of January, then skipped the first half of February.  Then I lost 4 days to the hospital but got right back in for the first half of March.  Skipped almost 2 months and then worked most of May.  June and July are empty, but I've been working this month.  My next mini-goal is to keep it up until after Labor Day, which will make this my longest streak of the year.

I've got a POA that mostly works for me, and now after a couple of solid weeks I'm starting to add weekly drills back in.  I haven't even looked at PCCX or holiday planning since January, which is likely to be my downfall in the next few months.  Now that school's back on and I have 3 out of 4 kids out of the house all day, yet it's not so late in the year that I'm tired of it all and just want summer back so I can sleep in the morning, I'm putting on a major push to not only get things done but get them done well and consistently and to keep track.  I'm also working 3 weight-loss programs at once to see which one I will settle on.  I *also* have a major (secret) project or three that I'm working on.  I really do like doing multiple things consecutively rather than add one on now, another one later, another one later, etc.  It's the overall consistency that I really have to work on.

So that's my goal, and I'm sticking to it.  If I don't post again in the next week, call out the cavalry.

Knock, knock?

No, it's not a joke, I'm just coming back in from a long absence and thought it would be polite. :)

I've started up here and there with a plan or a poa or basics, but I just wasn't getting anywhere.  And I could blame it on illness and things, or I could just suck it up and admit that I'm a lazy wench most of the time and just wasn't hauling my ample butt up out of this chair (or bed, more likely) to get any real work done.  I'm not sure what bit me Saturday night, but suddenly I thought I was really ready to get moving.  I decided to start in one end/corner of the house and move out from there doing anything and everything I could reasonably do along the way.

I woke up Sunday morning, ran over to the dollar store across town (which of course uses "run" in the sense that I drove, because there's no running from me, especially across our admittedly small town), and plunked down a bunch of money on cleaning supplies and came home to get to work.  Incidentally, all that stuff I bought?  2 things I thought I was out of I had several of, 2 things I thought I had I can't find, and in the first 5 minutes the new long-handled duster went missing.  Oh, and I still don't have anything that will cut through grease effectively.  And so it goes.

I really did work yesterday.  Probably a solid 4 hours all together.  What I got done was a generally unused, small corner of my kitchen - but it's DONE, man.  I'll give you the tour:

Oh yes, let's start here.  I was mixing dilutions of a few cleaners into empty spray bottles, when I spilled straight-up bleach onto my navy stretch capris. *headsmack*

I remembered to start taking pics after I moved the popcorn machine out of this corner and picked up the first few things - including the lid to a round, covered trash can which we haven't owned in about 2 years.  This is possibly the "deepest, darkest" corner of my house, kind of an afterthought corner in the back end of the kitchen.  The only thing it's good for is storing the popcorn machine, and as such has been much neglected an abused.

After picking up, sweeping, and scrubbing, this is as good as the floor gets.  The vinyl flooring came with the house all scratched up that badly,  I swear.  The tall piece of wood leaning in the corner is part of the door frame of C's room...a story for another day.  It's staying there, out of the way, until I work my way around to there and figure out how to reattach it decently.  Or maybe it's the one from my room?  One of us is missing part of a door frame.

That's my large freezer on the left, which at one point - when my desk was in this part of the house - was "cleverly" used as a white board.  The last brainstorm session stayed too long and now it won't come off.  At least you can't see it from the rest of the kitchen.  Oh, and one of the kids *coughCcough* added to it later, I found.  The hanging cords were disGUSting.  I barely remembered to unplug them before cleaning, but I did.

There are 2 windows in this corner, which was lovely when I spent the day there at my desk.  Now, they're really just pointless.  Worse, they're awful.  I cleaned the glass and trim inside, but they're no better to look through than when I started.  It doesn't photograph well, but the screens are torn, and there are hundreds of bugs, leaves, and other things stuck between the screens or storm windows and the interior pane.  I don't even know how to clean that all out.  I'll work on that later, when I'm cleaning outside I guess.

Here is the aforementioned popcorn machine.  It, itself, still needs to be cleaned, but it's back in its home now that the surroundings are much better.  It's hiding the cleaned and better contained cords.

Once again I started moving things before taking the opening picture.  Perhaps you can see above that there were random dishes stacked to the left of the microwave and others on top, in addition to Santa there.

The microwave was actually worse than it appears, because half the mess was on the glass plate that I'd already put in the dishwasher with everything else I moved from this area.  This poor microwave, by the way, is from around 1983.  I distinctly remember when we got it; it was such a "new" thing that the appliance store that sold them held cooking classes free with purchase for something like 6 weeks, to teach new owners how to use them.  I used to have the microwave fudge recipe from a class memorized.  The fancy button settings don't work anymore, the meat probe thermometer is long gone, and it isn't even-heating anymore, but by golly it's still kicking.

The left side done...

...the right side, not so much.  Those boxes there have been sitting, unpacked, since my mom moved in, in 2007.  I found Christmas plates, crystal glasses, and an almost full (large) bottle of rum.

The microwave done...

...and there it is.  That's a lot of Pediasure on the left, that used to be stacked on the floor in front of the microwave.  The picture on the windowsill is an old one of the family from when C was a baby; I found it with the boxes and cleaned it up.  Inside the buffet is almost entirely Christmas dishes, so I'll clean those and the interior shelves in November when I get them out.  There's no need to open it until then so I'll leave it alone for now.

So that was my Sunday triumph: one useless corner, one piece of furniture (exterior), and one countertop appliance.  Onward and upward from here.

I did something right

I wrote the new program specifically to encourage prioritizing and doing the important things over the piddly things.  And you know what?  It works.  It's come back to kick me in the you-know-where.  I did plenty of work today.  Hours, even.  Stuff on my list, stuff that needed to be done.  But it wasn't the stuff that *really* needed to be done.  The things that I had decided this morning were the most important.  So by dinnertime I'd worked all day but was at barely 65% of goal.  And it's a modest goal y'all, really.  I "wasted" the entire day working on less important things, and it shows.

But that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Checking in with nothing to say

It hasn't been much of a week.  According to my self-imposed schedule I was supposed to write this yesterday but since no one else would know that except that I just told you....well, let's just say it's not a big deal.  Although it did kill my streak of blogging every day.  Oh well.

About my house, since that's the whole point of this particular blog, I can't say a whole lot.  I have been making a concerted effort to keep my room picked up after Chris cleaned the heck out of it not that long ago, so that's good.  On the other hand, after ALL that work writing the new point system and making a lovely POA to go with it, I have made goal exactly once in the last week.  Oddly enough, if I don't get up and clean stuff each day I don't get many points, even if I spend the day "productively" sitting at my computer.  I can't blame the system since a) I wrote it, and b) that's what it's supposed to do.

One thing I have yet to truly understand, is how I can log such a small percentage of time doing useful things.  Around 11am the other day I'd been up for 5 hours, I'd been working or at least feeling like I was working almost all of that time, but I only had about 2 1/2 hours marked as cleaning or writing or whatever.  That's something I'll have to work on.

In the end, we're week 1 into the new year and while I don't really see progress I also don't see much backsliding into the pit, so that's good.  Right?  How was your first week?

I'm cranky today

I won't go into why, just thought I should mention it in case anything in this post sound snippy.

I'll own up; I haven't started the deep clean.  I can't really call it PCCX anymore I think, because now the whole group, year-long thing seems to be that.  In fact, we discussed at some length what the X might now stand for instead of extreme.  Excellence, exchange, execution (as in doing something, not killing someone), exercise, expectations, expedition, experience, experiment, exploits, exploration, exposition, extension...any thoughts, votes, alternative suggestions?  Let's remember that the PCC stands for purple chat and challenge...not my first pick for a group name, but that's what we've got so let's go with it.

That wasn't exactly the point of the post, so moving on...

I haven't started on the back pages (annual deep cleaning), because I haven't yet done even a decent, much less good job on the front page (dailies), and I've ignored the middle pages (weeklies) too.  Figuring a mere 1 hour each on the top 3 priorities, 1 load each of dishes and laundry, a whopping 15 minutes of exercise, and around 130 for 3 special challenges, the total is a little over 3,000.  I should have far more than an hour in each of those priorities, and there's usually more than one load of dishes, laundry, or both.  Five days a week there are weekly tasks.  Accordingly, I've set my goal at 3,500 for weekends and 4,000 for weekdays.  Reasonable.  So far I've made between 2,300 and 2,800 each day.  Why?

My back has been giving me fits for weeks and most days I can barely move without pain, but that's just a lousy excuse.  For one thing, I've still spent hours sitting here at the computer, so why don't I have more writing and desk work hours logged?  Everyone else around here is able-bodied, so why isn't there more delegating going on (half points for those)?  The facts of the matter are that a) I'm inherently lazy, and b) I don't know where all the time goes.  Those are excuses too, and I'm really sick and tired of excuses.  It doesn't seem to make me get up and do...um...stuff, it just makes me irritable.  I'll leave it at that.

The next time I check in I expect to have some progress to show for the time.

Progress? What's that?

I haven't sunk yet to the feeling of utter failure, but I can see it looming.  With the exception of a major computer clean-out (more than half a million files deleted, among other things) and 2 kitchen drawers, I have done nothing towards PCCX yet.

I can say that I'm getting better at keeping daily and weekly chores going.  My point total for October is doing well towards goal - too well, actually; I'll need to make some adjustments.  As I improve in the picking-up department then I think I can get into actual cleaning.  Hopefully that will happen before I'm out of time. :)

Wow that was hellacious

I don't know what got into me this morning, and I almost didn't make it through the day, but I accomplished a HUGE thing today. I did have help; I drafted the kids into picking up most of the monstrous pile. I started in the back of the house, in the boys' rooms, and swept EVERYTHING into the living room. In some (most) houses this probably wouldn't amount to much, but let me tell you, without exaggeration, that was a lot. When I'd gotten it all out of the boys' rooms, the back of the hallway, and 1/3 of my room, there was a solid mass of sh...stuff through half the hall and all of the living room, wall to wall to wall, a minimum of 6" deep. A good dozen baskets of laundry hauled downstairs later, it looked like the picture below.

I also moved C's dresser out of E's room. It's stashed in the hallway for now; I don't have anywhere else to put it that doesn't disturb someone else's room. Can someone remind me why the girls are sharing a smaller room than B has to himself? There's a little more furniture rearranging to do there, but that's a job for another day.

We always say that one cannot *clean* (PCCX especially) what is cluttered. I don't necessarily have a clutter issue, per se, as I don't have a lot of collections and things to be whittled down and weeded out, but there is a veritable ton of stuff just out...trash on the floor, laundry on the floor, toys on the floor, papers on the floor, everything on the floor. There's no way I can clean anything until all of that is gone. That's what today was about: taking back at least a couple of rooms so that I can get in there and really clean stuff. When I recover from today that is.

I started, I really did

Yesterday and today I've holed myself up in my room and tried to dig down to the floor. Dividing the room roughly in thirds: closet and floor between door, bed, and closet; 2 dressers and under the bed; and my side of the bed, 2 bookcases, and the third dresser. I've gotten most of the first third done. Only the nightstand remains to be cleaned up and out and under and behind. Oh, and my jewelry box needs to be wiped down but it's buried under a pile of things I found that need to be put away somewhere. The closet is in much better shape. I had Chris get a closet pole yesterday at the lumber store to mostly replace the lousy wire "system" that was in there. I'm not entirely sure that really helped much in the end...I'd be happier if it didn't sag so. I also got one dresser done. Emptied it and wiped it out, turned it on side and back and front and tried to bang it back into shape where pieces have shifted loose. It worked a little bit. I swept under and behind it and refilled it with Chris' things. I started pulling things out from under the bed, thought maybe I'd find Hoffa under there, and then moved on to other things. I've dusted corners for cobwebs, and I've dusted the ceiling fan, and I've cleared off a second dresser, and I've pulled out clothes to give away and store for next fall. All together I think I'm just over 1/3 done. I could wash and scrub and clean further in the areas I've gone through, but as much crap as I've had to sort through just to find the floor to sweep it, mopping and scrubbing can wait. Unfortunately, that was the easy 1/3.

I have 2 more dressers that need the usual emptying, moving, cleaning behind, and cleaning. Further, they also need pounding and restructuring to make them actually useful, and the one that I already did was the one that needed the least by far. It's this set of 3 antique Chinese dressers that belonged to my great-grandparents. They're great, carved, teak things, not very large by modern standards, but they'll do, if barely, if they're in proper working order. They're constructed entirely with fit and tension and dovetail joints, and over many decades, and many years of abuse in our house, many things have come apart. Some drawers are missing a bottom, or the slides are loose and the drawer falls out easily, or the whole thing has come wide and drawers and supports have come out altogether. There's a pair of nightstands that are the same way, too. On the positive side, the lack of mechanical joins means that in most cases a good walloping with a rubber mallet goes a long way toward returning the pieces to their proper placement. The down side is that I possess neither the skill nor strength to truly do the job properly. But something is usually better than nothing, so I'm going to tack a whack at it - literally - anyway.

There's also 2 bookcases on that side of the room. One of them is only missing a post or 2 for one of its shelves, so that's easily repaired. The other one...not so much. I was never able to put it together *quite* right, and the sides bow out just enough that the shelves can't stay on their pegs and many months ago....like almost 2 years?...the top 3 shelves fell down onto the 4th and it's just kind of sat there like a train wreck ever since.

There's also the disturbing amount of utter rubbish under the bed, that Chris moments ago was oh-so-helpful in attempting to force into the light of day. I'll be back to work in here more later tonight, but in the meantime, please excuse me while I go KILL HIM.

PCCX, Fall 2009, Retrospective

Yeah, yeah, there's 2 more days left. I gave up about a week ago. Oh believe me, I have plenty of excuses - reasons - why this week has been an utter downer, but this is neither the place nor time for whining. Positives, no failures, remember? (Yeah, I forgot too until I saw that post when I went to write this one.)

Ok, so, the last 8 weeks. I do have some minor triumphs, some details that I probably wouldn't have bothered with if not for PCCX nipping at my heels.

• I defrosted my freezer and cleaned the inside of my refrigerator.
• I reorganized and cleaned the inside of my pantry.
• I dusted - although not well - the ceiling fan in the kitchen that hadn't been probably since it was installed.
• I completely cleaned and organized a two-sided wall unit between my living room and dining room, flinging and dusting movies and books galore.
• I cleaned my curio cabinet and flung a couple of figurines.
• I replaced my shower curtain, which desperately needed it.
• I have all of my Christmas cards and photo gifts purchased and in hand.
• I have my Thanksgiving holiday menu and timeline resurrected, refined, and shopping list made.
• I have made a concerted effort - at considerable expense - to keep laundry from completely overtaking the house.
• I cleared and cleaned the unused side of my kitchen counter, though it is covered by small appliances - but there's no help for that and they are each usable from their current location.
• I washed 2/3 of the walls in the back hallway.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Oh, we all got new bedding and towels, but that had nothing to do with me, it was an early Christmas present from mom. But you know, that's a longer list than I thought I have when I started this post. I'll take it.

It wasn't a grand, or even a moderate success. But it was a little something I wouldn't have done without this process. So I'm glad I tried it, and I'm glad we shook things up a little even if I dropped the ball in the home stretch. And if you'll forgive me, I think I'll still post here on occasion, on pseudo-related topics. What the heck, right? Give me some place to make all my grand plans for the New Years PCCX in January. :)

My complete lack of progress

Somehow I completely missed week 6. I had to look at the calendar to confirm that it is almost over and Monday starts week 7. In other words, there are effectively 2 weeks left of PCCX, and I have accomplished almost nothing. Two pieces of furniture (wall unit and curio, both in the living room) and defrosting the freezer. In 6 weeks. That, if you'll pardon my saying, is pathetic. I'm not going to school, I'm not working a job, I'm not running kids to activities, I'm really not doing anything that should hinder my ability to clean, and yet here we are. I had a few really productive days recently, but they were all about daily and weekly chores, I couldn't get past all that into the PCCX list. Looking around today I can't tell that I've lifted a finger in the last week at all.

Enough whining. Yesterday Chris made a deal with me: so long as I was up cleaning he would be too, and sitting only when I sat. Unfortunately yesterday fell apart when we left to run errands. I'm hoping the deal stands for today (though he's down with a major toothache so I'm not so sure). If so my plan is to have him take care of dailies while I tackle bigger things. Kids can help him or me as needed. That's what they're for, right? ;) The other wrinkle in this master plan to take over the universe...I mean, cleaning the house...is that Mom is insisting we put together furniture and take out boxes and bring in boxes, and basically work down there until we're lacking gumption to do anything up here.

In the immediate future Chris is going to the store for large amounts of painkillers and something to eat, so I have some down time to fix up my POA which has been largely ignored - again - for a few days, and perhaps a few other things if he's pokey. Then, the rest of the day, we clean. Excelsior!

Progress!

It was only 1 piece of furniture and 2 hours, 15 minutes of actual work. It may as well have been the finish line tape of an Olympic race though, I'm so darned pleased. Somehow 2 hours became my entire day's accomplishment, or at least it seems that way. This is my first *completed* PCCX task I'm talking about. The fridge and the freezer and the hallway, none of those was totally finished. Today I cleaned off a wall unit/room divider between the dining room and living room with cabinets and drawers and two-sided shelves and hundreds of individual items to be dealt with and wiped off. The top is completely empty for the first time in...well, probably ever. I *hate* how Chris keeps stashing things on top of the big furniture. I guess he figures if only he can reach it only he can see it and he doesn't care. I've got news for him, it bugs the HECK out of me. Anyway, I just wanted to brag a little extra bit about my completed project. :) I missed the FB challenge by 15 minutes, but I'm ok with that. It's DONE, and that's what matters. Now if I can just carry that momentum into another day, and another, and another...

Oh, after pictures of both sides are in the gallery now; there's a link to my progress in the sidebar to the right.