Hello All,
I have tried to start this intro 7 times, and keep backing off, just as I couldn't bring myself to post an intro at SS. I'm not sure why, but we'll see where this ends up. Maybe I'm afraid of what I will find out about myself!
My father is one of the most Born Organized people on the planet. When Katrina threatened N.O., he packed his whole life into one suitcase and 3 portable file boxes and left the rest of the car to my mom, who is his opposite. The only reason we did not grow up in any squalor outside of our own messy bedrooms was because dad didn't allow it and we had a housekeeper.
I can get organized, just not everywhere at once. I can't keep it that way for long.
I am married (23 years) to a man who is an archaeologist by training, which means he looks through other people's garbage. (He doesn't work in archaeology now, he is a fund raiser, so I tell people he is a professional beggar
) He went dumpster diving before it was called that. He still brings home treasures, some useful, most not. He is also a musician (wishes it were still the 60's and he could be the fifth Beatle!) and collects stuff. Instruments and other gear, magazines, stuff. Sometimes he clears it out and his music room looks great, but it descends again to the morass it used to be.
Number One Son is almost 17 and owns the world. Has inherited his father's height and propensity to bring home stuff others have left out for garbage. Occasionally he gets the bug and cleans his room, but he gets over that bug quickly.
Bigger Girl is 15 and that rare thing, a teen with almost no attitude. Her original diagnosis was ADHD, dyslexia, Ausperger autism, speech apraxia, and a vision imbalance. We were told if we worked with her very hard, she might be able to live in a group home someday. Thanks to neurodevelopmental therapy, she reads at grade level, plays piano, draws, sings, gets along great with a couple of close friends, has no problems paying attention, aced her homeschool speech class, cooks, babysits, earns money with her balloon animals, and is the one person whose room is spotless most of the time.
Number Two Son, age 12, is at once a mama's boy and an outdoorsman. He hunts, fishes at the creek, makes his own bows and arrows, climbs anything that holds still long enough, loves to be hugged and held, and now that it is summer I will only see him at mealtimes or if there is wrestling on tv. His room is a trash pit.
Little Girl just turned ten and is equally at home being friends with boys or girls her age. She hates girlie things, which she calls "sissy stuff". I am scared of what might be under her bed and her closet gives me nightmares.
The current pet count stands at 5 cats, 6 foster kittens, a garter snake and a squirrel. Word of advice: Never, Ever, Ever have a squirrel as a pet. They are messy and chew everything, even antiques. Blame DH, who thought it was cute (and it was, when it was on the bottle). Wild animals should be rehabbed and left wild.
As for me, I am a typical middle-aged SAHM. I homeschool three of the kids, but next year it will be only two (Bigger Girl will go to private school with Number One Son). I teach Finance and Advanced Cooking at our homeschool cooperative, 1st and 2nd grade Sunday School, and bottle raise orphaned kittens for a local cat rescue organization.
I am compulsive about the bathrooms and the part of the kitchen where food is actually stored and prepared being sanitized daily, but the rest of the house is almost wall to wall stuff -- papers, around 5,000 books (no joke, we have a library, I had a triple major in college, English Lit, History, and religious studies, I read All The Time), stuff my parents have given me and don't want me to get rid of because it was expensive or is a family heirloom, kid stuff, pet stuff, music stuff, stuff one of us thinks might be useful later, and just plain too much stuff.
After I found SS I started to make headway, at least in clearing my brain, then DH pitched a fit that I would belong to a group that had the word "squalor" in the title. We have had problems for a long time, but finally worked things out over the past 6 months, and we are now close and talk and share and I got up the courage to come back to find the site closing. Sounds typical for my life.
Our latest saga is that the house leaks when it rains. This is south Louisiana, a swamp; it is going to rain here. We only have two seasons, wet and hurricane, and the only difference is that hurricane is hotter. The water comes in where the A/C used to be, as well as by the back door. I say where the A/C used to be because we had to have it yanked so we could vacuum the water as it leaks in. Word of advice: Never, Ever, Ever buy a split level house built into a hill in a part of the world where the water table is high. You will have water damage.
So we live in the swamp now with no A/C and a leaky, squalorous house that we are not sure how to fix. Everyone says something different about what to do to stop the water, but no one guarantees what he will do will work, so we have to leave the A/C closet empty for now so we can get to the water when it comes in. We have had to move stuff out of that area to keep water from damaging it, and can't put anything back, so more squalor.
I always tell people my house exploded, and the funny thing is that no one seems to mind (except me and DH). The children's friends have no trouble with it and I've even been complimented on how it's wonderful that my house looks and is fully lived in. Yeah, lived in by tornadoes. After the pastor of our church saw it, he worked in to the sermon the next Sunday a line about how God doesn't judge a woman by her housekeeping!
Well, I've rambled as I always do when given a writing assignment. I figure I'm not too bright, so since I can't dazzle with my brilliance, I'll baffle with verbosity (and, back then, some bull puckey, too!). Always worked with the professors!
messymimi
