Tuesday Tune-up PWYC

[Twins' Mom]

I remember the days of driving kids around but mine weren't as social, LadyM.

I am going to work on a couple more insurance papers that have me puzzled. After that I will work at finishing the article so I can get it back to the editor. I think that will relieve some stress if it's back to her. There will be other questions, but this was a big batch.

I still haven't walked the dog but am checking off some of my p.m. routine. I'm still hearing thunder rolling around and would rather not yet. We had a nice rain!

[Lady Maverick]

DS15 has to be one of the most social people I know. He talks and knows everyone and he seems to be known by everyone (locally). He is kinda a hard fella to miss. DS15 is now 6'4" tall in his bare feet. The nurse made DS15 take off his shoes before she measured him at last appt. With shoes and a hat on he is easily 6'6" tall. Someday I ought to measure how wide his shoulders are. I wouldn't be surprised if his shoulders were 3' wide.

DD13 is not thrilled with my new game. I divided her room/furniture into 30 segments and wrote each segment on an index card. The index cards were shuffled and put into a bag. DD13 closed her eyes and selected one card from the bag. Then she has to list all the items in that segment of her room and deep clean it. I hope by breaking her room into small segments that she will be willing to CHANGE a small area at a time. Today she selected one card - Closet floor.
In her closet floor were -
5 pairs of shoes
4 bags
Big plastic tub of toys (that she never looks at or uses)
Wood Burning kit (she never uses)
blanket (why?)
Wax museum presentation (why?)
I required her to remove the last 4 items from her closet floor and we will store them in a different part of the house. I promised that I would not get rid of her things. We are just relocating them to a different room.
DD13 did as I asked after trying to convince me that she needed to keep all that stuff in the bottom of her closet. I listened to her and then calmly told her that this was going to happen. Again...reassuring her that her stuff would be safe in another location. She knows that I have never lied to her. She seemed okay with this CHANGE when I told her that we will discuss relocating the items with her counselor, and we will abide by her direction. I am definitely not DD13 favorite person right now. She had tears in her eyes. Change is not easy for her to do, and I recognize that. I am trying to help DD13 go through her massive amount of STUFF in tiny segments and as gentle as possible.

Hum....I need to take a look. DD13 has 5 pairs of shoes?? She only wears one pair...the same pair of shoes every single day since last summer when I made her buy a new pair of shoes. A month or so ago I talked her into buying another pair of shoes...which were exactly like her current pair but a little different color. So....what other pairs of shoes does she have? I suspect they might be from years ago and too small. I need to gently have her remove any shoes that are too small for her to wear. Gently....removing her unusable STUFF. Gently guiding her in making CHANGES.

[Lady Maverick]

I have one more teen trip to do today. I need to get DS15 from girlfriend home. It is about a 40 minute drive there/back. Should I do it before Golden Hour or afterwards? hum....decisions decisions.

[Twins' Mom]

And document went back. I am going to do a little more looking at some records, however, and still need to write a little biographical blurb.

I am sore from the fall earlier - the muscle I would be using to step up hurts like crazy! I'll take ibuprofen and benydryl to help my sleep, might put an Icy Hot patch on too.

[lucylee]

Looks like I've been out of pocket for a while... no special reason, just busy with the dgrands mostly. Saturday I had one of them all day, then Sunday we got up at 6:00 a.m. to go with DS to the church where he was singing. DGS came home with me after that and then at 5:00 p.m. we met to celebrate ddil's birthday.
Yesterday, I did stick to the plan pretty well, even though dgs' spent the night again and that always messes us my morning routine, hence my whole day is off. But late last night, I did turn some of my to-do's into TA-DA's!
* transferred phone photos to computer
* typed church minutes and emailed to council chairman
* saved ALL the FB ympathy notes following dh's death -- in preparation for doing a memory book. They are saved in Word, and need much editing (as do the phone pictures I saved) but at least they are in an editable form now.
* did all the laundry
* went to dbil's office and got letters of testamentary (sp?) showing that dh's will has been probated
* paid a couple of bills
* visited with pest control lady while she sprayed the house

Today, I haven't been quite as productive, but I did call dh's cousin, whose husband had surgery this morning. He is doing well.
I've talked to dmom and DS... dgrands are at Bible School at nearby church.

I just wanted to check in and let y'all know I had not fallen into a great depression or something. I can work myself into a crying jag at the least thing, but I'm managing okay.

Hope you all have a good evening!

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I remembered to power up my old computer and find the house leaving check list and update it.

I still didn't find the version I had in paper, but one 3 years older. There were only a couple of changes so much faster than retyping, and I then converted it to a google spread sheet with check boxes and then we added the cottage leaving list as a second tab, so all is in one place. I can have my tablet out and do the checking off then put the tablet in the car. Until now I've been carrying the book with the list around from room to room and getting into the car at the cottage with my increasingly worn notebook and trying to find a place to put it that I won't step on it. My tablet can fit in my big purse or computer bag.

I got the stuff swap mostly organized and got some deliveries done. I cooked dinner, opened all the mail and I just have to pay the bills and then I'll be ready to finish packing in the morning.

Dh has loaded everything I have out to take up to the cottage. All that is left to pack is our computer bags and the food, plus our tiny suitcases (because we have most everything we need up at the cottage now.) Dh packed is guitar and I had him bring it up. I honestly don't know when he expects to have time to play (these grands don't like to listen to it anymore.)

There's still some question as to whether the kids are even coming with us. They are freaking out over being away from their mother for so long (4 nights, 5 days.) I'm wondering if she's going to break down and decide they can't go. They are 5 and 7. I've had dgs7 for 3 nights before (when his sister was born) but dgd5 has only been away from her mother one night in all her life and that wasn't overly successful (she basically ended up sleeping in dh's arms. I spent far too many nights with only a few hours of sleep because dgs wouldn't go to sleep even with me lying in bed with him. Eventually, he'd camp on the floor of our bedroom. The bunk bed is what changed that and now he'll overnight in it.

I have 18 activities for them to do (and almost all are things that can be done repeatedly.) So they won't be bored and I intend to tire them out so they sleep. But dh doesn't intend to spend much time with them because they are so rude to him he doesn't like being around them. So I'm not expecting a happy time for me up at the cottage.

[Lady Maverick]

I so enjoy coming here and CUOP. I mentally talk to each of you as I am reading.

DD13 is all smiles now. After we finished deep cleaning that one small segment (closet floor) she became bouncy happy. Such a difference from the tears when we started it!
I did question what 5 shoes she listed. She had a pair of cowboy boots that are years old and have holes in them. I encouraged her to let the worn-out holey boots go, and we would buy her new ones if she wanted to wear cowboy boots (she doesn't). She agreed with doing that. Then we discussed the skates she had in the closet. It has been at least 2 years since she has used them. I asked if she planned on skating anytime soon and she said she had no desire to skate. We agreed if she wanted to roller skate we would go to a skaing rink. So those unused rolling skates were put in the give-away bag. That left 3 pairs of shoes - her everyday shoes, a pair of water shoes and a pair of dress shoes. I asked where her new shoes were and she went to a book case shelf and pulled out the shoe box containing them. They still had stuffing in them that new shoes have in the store. So now she has 4 pairs of shoes in her closet.
The 4 bags needed to be discussed too. I picked one of the bags up only to discover it was full of STUFF. So we teamed up to sort through the STUFF in the bags until they were emptied. Some of the bags had clean clothes in them so they were hung up and put in the correct place. We eliminated one of the bags and she was okay with that.
The bottom of her closet has been swept well and now is neat with 4 pairs of shoes and 3 empty bags ready to be used.

This process of cleaning her bedroom is not going to be easy, but it is so needed. I think it will help DD13 emotional self to be surrounded by neat areas instead of drowning in piles of her STUFF. Change isn't easy but we are going to get through it as gently as possible.