I’ve been crying a lot this week, but it’s definitely happy tears! Wow! I feel like Sally Fields when she received her Oscar and said, “You like me!” Last week I actually asked you to like me on Facebook; a concept that goes completely against the way I was raised. How pathetic it felt to ask you to be my friend!

Well, I was overwhelmed by the response! I received such wonderful comments from so many of you! Many of you told me you thought of me as a friend already because of my books. Many of you used the word “honored” in being my friend. It reminded me of when I was little and we got a whole bunch of Valentines from our classmates in a bag we’d decorated up at school. I am humbled by your love, but now I’m really worried.

I’m having trouble with “social networking.” I’ve actually hired a person to help me use it to spread my word of finding joy in everything we do. Unfortunately for now, that joy eludes me when it comes to Facebook. Right now I know how to get onto my Facebook pages for me and my husband and for my Inner Kiddies. I’ve been “liking” stuff and “commenting,” but I’m not sure what happens to those likes and comments?

I went on my husband’s page to see who he had as friends (he’s never been on his page) and found he had four friends and guess who was at the top of his wanna be friends list? My ex-husband! Now why in the world does my ex-husband want to be friends with my husband? I deleted him with glee. Now that was fun!

I am a reformed slob. I made the decision to get organized on June 16, 1977. I was 35. I learned a lot through that transformation. The most important of which was to understand that before I did one thing to organize my chaotic life, I was alright just the way I was. That backed-up laundry didn’t make me a bad person. That an unmade bed and a sink full of dirty dishes didn’t mean I didn’t love my family or my home. That having to re-inoculate the children because I couldn’t find their medical records when we moved to a new town didn’t mean I was a bad mother.

My challenge to change my ways came from a deep desire to have more fun; to be able to play guilt-free and to feel the freedom of taking care of the routine and mundane tasks that make a household run smoothly, so my family and I could really enjoy this delicious thing called life. My motive to get organized was to have more free time to play.

All Squares are Created Equal
January has 31 squares on the calendar. All squares are created equal and we’re the ones who make some squares more special than others. We tend to make that first square in January special because it can be kind of like the starting gate at a race or the start of a sports game. There’s such energy in “the beginning” of just about everything. But now that it’s close to the end of January I’ve been taking a second look at the squares that are left and I’ve decided to keep that fresh start feeling going in them.
All it takes is a little focus on the wonder of the ordinary. Today I watched an interview on Oprah’s new channel OWN. She interviewed Mark Nepo who wrote The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have. One of his quotes was, “The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.” I think that’s the key to living each square filled with energy and awe. Have you ever heard the term, easy date? Let’s be easy dates! Let’s slow down enough in the course of each square and make sure we get every ounce of love and joy we can sop up before the next square comes.
Mark reminded us to want less and love more of what we have now. He said, “Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.” and “God is under the porch and on the mountain top.” We are immersed in a miracle called life and as humans we can get buried temporarily in our problems and forget the truth, but if we can pause and breathe we give ourselves a chance to remember we are loved and life is good.
Be easily pleased in the squares you have left; easily pleased starting with yourself and then your family, your friends, your country and your world. Start now to see good more quickly than you see wrong, understand more quickly than you judge, relax more easily than you get upset and laugh more effortlessly than you complain.
Every square can be January first if we practice being thankful for what we have, loving who we’re with, adoring who we are and spreading light by being kind to everyone we come in contact with.
Have you ever noticed it’s easier to have happy squares when you get enough sleep? Let’s be selfish about getting the sleep we need. Let’s be firm about a bedtime that gives us the rest we need. We can’t start our squares with that fresh start feeling if we didn’t go to bed at the right time in the last square. All squares are created equal, but it’s totally up to us how we’ll get the most out of them.

I think most genetically disorganized people love drama. I know I do.
My Aunt Tottie was extremely disorganized and was she ever dramatic! My BO (born organized) mother used to roll her eyes over the way Aunt Tottie lived. She was a lousy housekeeper, wore baggy clothes day in and day out and rarely put on make-up, BUT when she did get cleaned up, she was a KNOCK OUT. Mom said when they were young; Aunt Tottie would get all gussied up to go out dancing and she’d make an entrance that would drop jaws. She said she looked just like Lauren Bacall.
My aunt loved to get a reaction from BOs like my mom. I remember one time; watching her in her messy kitchen, make orange juice from a can of frozen concentrate while she talked with my mom. She couldn’t find a spoon to stir the three cans of water into the orange lump of concentrate, so she just stuck her whole hand into the pitcher and stirred with it. My mother was horrified.
I think one of the payoffs to being disorganized is the reaction we create. We do love drama and the bigger the mess the more fantastic a clean-up will look. When you keep your home “company ready” you lose the drama of being able to say, “Tah Dah!!!!!” When you look good all the time, you just look good all the time and you don’t get to hear “Wow, you look fabulous!!!!!!!!!” We lose the exclamation marks when we get organized, so we need to get them somewhere else.
There are two places you can get them back. One is your creativity. Being disorganized can seem like a curse, but there is a precious gift in it and that is your creativity. In fact you probably already know that your creativity has gotten you into many messes, because when you’re in creative mode you lose track of time. When you get organized you’ll give up the explanation marks for the contrasts between “before” and “after,” but you’ll get them back with rave reviews from what you’ll create when you have an organized life.
The other way to get your exclamation marks is immediate; by watching movies. I think that’s why we love to go to the show, subscribe to Netflix and buy DVDs. It’s probably why prisons show movies. The inmates get to vicariously partake in the drama on the big screen and get it out of their systems. Part of my success at being organized is because I include watching at least two movies each week into my routine.
Your assignment (should you agree to take it) is to get your drama fix from a good movie this week, not from a real life mess. Make it a weekly must as you have fun getting organized.
Then, when your life is organized you’ll start getting a parade of exclamation marks because the world needs what you have to create.

New Year! New Day! New eyes! I love fresh starts filled with new resolve, but I don’t bust out on January 1 like a bucking bronco that’s just been let out of his shoot at a rodeo. New Years Day for me is always a big rest day. I like to stay in my pajamas and bathrobe, fix a big breakfast and talk about the fun we had the night before at our annual New Year’s Eve party.
Every year since we built our home here in Woodland, we host a New Years Eve party, for the neighborhood, but with a slight twist. We celebrate using Eastern Standard Time. So when the Time Square Ball drops at midnight in New York (we watch it on CNN) it’s nine o’clock here on the west coast and everybody at our party cheers, kisses and goes home! By 9:30 PM we’re in bed!
Back to the first day in January, I like to spend it evaluating. One of my dear friends who came to the party told me that she has a pretty notebook she only writes in once a year on January 1. She gets the book out and reads what she wrote the year before and then she writes the thoughts that come to her throughout the day that apply to the new year. She said it’s so fun to look back and see what her goals and thoughts were for the last year and see what she learned and accomplished and it helps her reevaluate her goals and dreams for the current year.
Sarah Ban Breathnach wrote, “Begin today. Declare out loud to the universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy. That’s one of my goals for 2012; to begin each day proclaiming my eagerness to learn through joy.
While I was resolving to be joyful, my new IPhone 4S (I guess that’s really a big deal) Terry gave me for Christmas was quietly charging getting ready to hurdle me into the 21st century’s cutting edge communications system.
Unfortunately, my joyful New Year’s Resolution went right through the window which was almost followed by that piece of uhhhhh equipment I’ve vowed to master this month. The part that really ticks me off is everyone (under 12) says these things are so easy to use. This week I’m going to the AT&T store and give myself another chance to learn with joy. (I’ll text you if that happens.)

Accomplish a lot while you wait!

Even with our instant news, instant photos, instant everything society, we still have to wait a lot and we don’t appreciate it. We get antsy when we have to kill time in the checkout line at the grocery store, so they created jiffy lines to speed us along. We get cranky and horny (over use of the horn) waiting for traffic to budge during commute times and we sure don’t like waiting for our computers to download, upload, reboot and defrag.

My husband’s business is all about waiting. His company creates on-hold music and messages for busy businesses that have to put customers on hold while they hook them up with the department or person the customer needs. I do the female voice on these messages and it’s fun to think I can entertain those who have to wait for whom they really want to speak with.

“Thank you for calling Flackmeiszer’s Vacuum Repair and Sales. We’re sorry to have to put you on hold, but one of the Flackmeizers will be with you in just a moment. While you wait, I’d like to tell you about our fantastic new vacuum cleaner, the Dust Bunny Buster by Electrosucks. This amazing machine is so powerful it’ll suck the grout right out of your tile floor if you’re not careful! The Dust Bunny Buster. Not recommended for families with small pets.”

Hurry up and wait...

Sunday, December 18, 2011 will go down as one of my most favorite Christmassy days ever! We are at my bonus daughter Kristi’s home for the holidays and it’s a bustle with expectant excitement in its purest form; children. As grandparents, we’ve missed this part of the season since the days our children were young. For two decades we’ve only been able to share Christmas day celebrations. There is so much more to this season than December 25. Parents of young children please don’t miss this precious week BEFORE the day of.
On Sunday morning Terry and I woke to the smell of bacon frying. Ted (my bonus son-in-law) does a ritual, Sunday morning breakfast which includes pancakes, hash brown potatoes, fresh farm eggs and the best hot coffee around. I laid in bed letting my nose sell the rest of my body on the prospect of getting out from under the cozy covers so I could take part in the breakfast celebration. My ears joined into the nudging by focusing in on the laughter and camaraderie of our grandchildren, Tanner 13, Kyle 11 and Kaytee 9.
The morning also held a massive dose of gratitude on each of our hearts. Just two days earlier, Kristi’s living room had been crowded with eight paramedics as an ambulance waited in the drive-way to rush an incoherent Tanner to the hospital. That morning he had fainted at school and Kristi brought him home, concerned he was coming down with a bug.
When he awoke from a nap and was unable to tell Terry who the quarter back for the Patriots was (even though Tanner is a devoted fan of the team) our apprehension thickened. An hour later he was at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Terry and I were thankful we were able to be there for Kyle and Kaytee when they got off the school bus at 3:15. The children were consumed with concern for their older brother when we relayed the alarming information in the most alarmless way we could muster. That afternoon, we all went through the motions of ordinary life waiting for updates like a mother in labor waiting for her next contraction. The afternoon dawdled into evening when we were given the best news, no tumor, no meningitis and no stroke.
At 11:00 PM Tanner had been inspected inside and out and had regained his speech and cognitive abilities and was released from the hospital. The final opinion was that he suffered a complex migraine headache probably brought on by hormone changes of early adolescence. Whew!
Back to the magic of December 18. Ted and Kristi’s gift to us was a trip into Boston to attend the Holiday Music of the Boston Pops. I’d always wanted to go to Concert Hall and it was truly a dream come true. We got all dressed up as if we were prepping for a family portrait. The boys looked like clones of Justin Bieber and Katie sparkled from her blingy boots to the sparkles in her long French braided hair.
The last encore song the orchestra played was I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. When I heard the line, “just like the ones I used to know,” tears filled my eyes remembering the happy Christmases my mom and dad created for my sister and me. What a gift we can give our children by being what this season is all about. It’s about love and joy. I’m so grateful once a year our society makes a big deal about love and joy. “May all your Christmases be light.”

Every year just a few days before Christmas I start looking for the Christmas letter written by the mouse family that lives in our house. Mrs. Cheddar (Mozzarella) is the one who writes it and I’m sure she’s a SHE because she leaves writing it to the last minute. I’m always amazed that she finds the time to write, considering how busy she is.

Well, the letter came today and as usual I love sharing it with you all (with her permission of course).

Dear Friends,

Merry Christmas from Washington State! We hope you all had a great year! As you all know by now, I hate Christmas letters because most of their authors brag about where they’ve traveled and what their kids are doing. I don’t even know half the mice I read about in those letters, but I know they scored big points to win the soccer tournament and that they got straight As.

Our cousin Mickey’s Christmas letter is the worst one every year. He’s so obnoxious. He thinks he’s such a big deal. Just because he’s rich and famous he thinks we can’t wait to read what he and his family are up to. What a bragger! I’m surprised he doesn’t attach a copy of his income tax return so we all know how much money he made. We just got his letter today (that’s what prompted me to write ours).

First of all it ticks me off that he puts his photo at the top of the letter and it’s obvious he’s had numerous face lifts. (How can you not change with time?) Anyway he and his family (he’s on his 79th wife) just “summered” in Aruba and are now on a big deal cheese tasting spree in Wisconsin. Last year they went on a Disney Cruise (on a ship he owns) and his wife got cooking lessons from that rat in Ratatouille (I think his name is Remy). Big deal. I learn all I need to know from Rachael Ray.

34 moves last year!

TRADITION!

As I get ready to have a Thanksgiving feast at our home, I’m a little troubled. I have so many questions and I’m not sure I’ve come up with the answers that make me happy.

This is my first low-carb Thanksgiving! If it were just Terry and me, I’d be fine, but I wonder if I should impose our new lifestyle on our family, especially when I’ll be messing with TRADITION?

How will they like mashed cauliflower and gravy as opposed to mashed potatoes and gravy? Should I make both? I’ve got a wonderful new cookbook Marla gave me entitled Paleo Comfort Food and there’s a recipe for bread using almond flour (which we love) and I could make dressing out of it, BUT what if it isn’t as good as what we are all traditionally used to? And how dare I break tradition? Is it too late for me to start a new tradition? What if all the new dishes I make flop and no one will ever want to come back for Thanksgiving? Am I willing to risk that?

Dare to mess with "tradition"!

Well, now that my troubles are on the table, I’ll address each one. How will “they” like mashed cauliflower? I don’t know because I’ve never mashed or tasted it mashed. I heartily believe in the cardinal rule (does “cardinal come from the bird or the high up guy in the Catholic Church?) to never try a new recipe on company.