spring clean

My office is currently a disaster. There's a blue mug of 3-day old coffee and a tall green glass of almost-evaporated pink lemonade from Friday's lunch sitting on my desk. Among other things that add to the clutter is a spoon, a pen, a highlighter, a pair of scissors, a couple of receipts, a copy of this year's Easter program design for next week, a handful of invitations that I just stuffed into 100+ envelopes tonight, a head band, a chart of a coffee table book mapped out in pencil, 2 church phone books, and a post-it note with some scribbled words.

This is the picture of how my office desk appears 85% of the time. Now, the floor is another story... it is also littered with a myriad of items that I choose to hop, skip, or jump over every time I exit this room. By the end of the night, I am sure I will have it tidied up. Or perhaps this wonderful task will get pushed off until tomorrow morning, but the nonetheless, it will be shifted into place by the time I start work. If I'm super busy, I can work in clutter because imminent deadlines drowned out the fact that the environment around me is utter chaos. Otherwise, it drives me crazy until I straighten the place up. I consider myself a creatively organized person. For the record, I tend to be tireless when it comes to record-keeping and document-creating in order to file away very important information. I can almost always go back in time and tell/show you proof of something happening because I find it important to record the important details in some way or another. However, in general, one could say I have my head in the clouds. Especially if you would walk into my office tonight.

Yet the good news is that while I can be cluttered, chaotic, and downright messy at times, it's never for long. The floor may be covered for a night, but in less than 5 minutes I can have it looking spotless. My oldest sister, Tonya, always joked that Tasha (my other sister) and I have a talent at "tidying up" quickly... but who knows what we have done to make it that way. Our cleaning style could be likened to the comics that show a little kid cleaning up his room, only for the child's mom to open up his closet door, and all of the clutter comes toppling out. It's not always a painstakingly thorough job that we do, but it's always an efficient one. That's how I roll. There's pros and cons to both ways. My mother and my oldest sister can organize and make sense out of a room like none other, but they'll spend all day doing it. At the end, it's a picture perfect project that should likely belong in a Martha Stewart catalog. To the contrary, Tasha and I could tidy up a disastrous room in 10 minutes, and while it may be done efficiently, it's not always with precise attention to detail. So there was have it.

Spring cleaning is always a good thing. This weekend, I did a little bit of "Spring Cleaning" in my closet. It is always nice to bring out the Spring time clothes and get rid of some old stuff. That was a project that was spread out over a few days since it took me so long and isn't something that usually happens in 15 minutes.

Among other exciting parts of my weekend include dinner out with a friend at One World on Friday evening and then a little bit of Barnes & Noble + coffee action. I love that store and never tire of browsing books and reading material.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend an experimental photo shoot with many other photographers in the area at a very old, cool house in Peoria. It was a cold, rainy day, but fortunately we were inside. It was fun to photograph some models and experiment with different rooms and lighting.

That afternoon, I attended G3, which is a program that my friend started for girls aged 6th-8th grade. We modeled this after the Washington and Peoria groups, and have had fun with it so far. Last month was our kick-off meeting, and we met at my house for tacos & games. This month's activity was a Busy Baker night. We made all sorts of cookies and baked goods, and piled them up on plates to deliver to the elderly. We opted for a visit to Parkside since it was rainy out when we finished, so we could make our deliveries indoors. :) We had a blast cooking w/the girls, and it was a very fun evening!

My mom's friends were over when I returned home with Kristi, so we all played card games and ate popcorn later that night. My mom and her good friend have played this one card game called Nerts for as long as I can remember. They used to play it WAY back in the day when they were newly married with one kid. They would play until 3am and then go get home made donuts in Morton. Nowadays, these sessions don't go until so late :) although the joys of this game have been passed down to the daughters. I taught this game to Kristi a couple of years ago, and so we started to play the game quite a bit with each other. Now, every once in awhile Kristi and I get together and play partners against my mom and her friend. Although they have many, many more hours and years of practice than we do, we can usually hold or own. It's always fun playing this game with them. For any of you who don't know what Nerts is... it's kind of like a cross between Solitaire and Dutch Blitz. You can play it with 2 people or with doubles. It's usually very fast paced and it's a lot of fun!

Today was a good day. Great messages at church... and then I came home and was quite productive all day long. I love days in which I feel I accomplished something. I had dinner with my family. I actually also made a delicious chocolate cake today... the recipe used a Devil's Food cake mix and had sour cream and instant chocolate pudding in it, so it was very moist. We had homemade fudge and ice cream on hand, so my sister's fam came over after dinner and we all had some yummy dessert. This dessert was actually suppossed to be for a girl's night I had planned for this evening, but it was rescheduled because one of the girls could not come and then the rest of us had other back-up plans that we reverted to instead. And trust me... I NEVER waste a chocolate cake. So I'm glad the family could enjoy it.

Alright... all this talk about chocolate cake and I've worked up an appetite. Furthermore, it's getting near that time when I need to be thinking about sleep. I'm thinking: bowl of Lucky Charms, then lights out. It's been a pleasure. I may post a Top Ten this week, so come back on Tuesday.

Love you all.

T