Introductions

The room measures about 4 feet by 9 feet, if you count the counter top space. If you add the closet, the room size almost doubles. It has more items in it than, well I don’t know, maybe the national deficit has dollar bills. I kid you not. Especially if you count every last bead, button, sticker, sequent, and extra circular photo packet of both my daughters over the past however many of years they have been doing umpteen million activities. The room, my craft room, portrays an exclamatory picture of my disorganized, cluttered, disarrayed life and projects a major chaotic thorn in my side. What is its current state on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 as the worst? Probably a 6½. I can still walk into it, I can shut the closet door, and there is still a little bit more counter space for more things just to be placed on it “for now.” It would get a much higher number (and most of you out there, and people around here, would look at it and think that’s for sure), but I have seen it worse, much. And, I know that last summer, I paid Carley and three of her friends, who were raising money for an Italy trip, big bucks to “organize" it. They got a great start on it and miraculously, I have undone very little of what they did (you should see how nicely the hundred pieces of tissue paper are folded and how all the rolls of ribbon are all in one place). However, they could only do so much in an afternoon (half a closet to be precise)and many a cabinet and drawer still need order. Remember that door number two that I conveniently skipped; well…its task was to clean out the farthest cabinet in the room. You see, I know myself pretty well and putting “organize craft room” on one piece of paper for a task was something that would never happen. So, I broke it down, one cabinet at a time. I still did not feel up for the task; so, I went on to door number 4. “Organize middle cabinet in craft room” (honest,the whole box is not about the craft room). I felt I could not escape it; so, I decided I would go back to door number two and would tackle the job. Now, because I know what is in that far cabinet and I know the stories that I can tell from just one shelf alone and because several other of my blogging siblings caught my disease of lengthy blog writing this week, I also decided that I would keep this blog short by just introducing what I will be taking on this week. Task behind door number two, here I come.

Oh oh,maybe this one won’t be so short because there is something else I want to introduce you to(actually, this one you all know well, it just may be a little fuzzy in your memory). It is a very welcome visitor, unlike the unwanted visitor that Bill blogged about, that showed up this weekend. Spring! I say "visitor" because I have lived 50 years in the Midwest and an all out celebration during the first week of March of spring's arrival is entirely out of the question. A hearty embrace to a “visitor” is not. If you are nice to visitors, they might stick around. Here are the top ten reasons I knew it was spring knocking on our door.

1. I went outside for a run and returned immediately to swap the long sleeve shirt for a short sleeved one then still actually sweated.

2. The soccer chairs (now Lacrosse chairs) were sprung from their hooks on the wall. Carley’s team won both games; she was an animal and scored a total of 8 goals.

3. When we went to the dog park, there were tons of new doggie faces and boy were their tails a waggin’, excited, I am sure, about the nice weather. One was so excited it climbed on Carley’s lap and well, peed.

4. When I went to start the charcoal, I went straight to the classifieds. No wasting time, this time, on which part of the paper to part with. And I stayed out there, and stayed out there, to make sure they were lit of coarse.

5. I got reacquainted with sidewalk chalk. Kelley had a gig (no he has not joined a rock band, it was a lawyer thing; I call it a gig because his name was in the program) in Lawrence on Friday. So we went to KC on Thursday night. Friday, while he did his thing, I watched Nico and we became Picassos with the chalk.

6. We also got reacquainted with Cayden’s (who remember is almost 5'9", but only 13) love for really short shorts. Wow, does that girl have some legs.

7. When we got home from our trip Saterday evening, we were greeted by a lovely tree frog serenade.

8. At lunch yesterday I did not ask about the soup de jour and later craved chicken salad for some reason.

Number 9 and 10 are the top two reasons I know spring is preparing to stay.

9. I read a lovely, touching blog about the birth of a baby goat. Actually, I read it a few times; thanks for sharing, Susie.

10. And lookie who we found in our bed (one of our outdoor ones of course).


Happy almost Spring everyone!! Now I must get busy. It will be hard to work inside tomorrow, but yet another sign of spring is in the forecast: showers and storms.