I'll Think About That Tomorrow...

This time of year is hectic. Parent/teacher conferences, end of quarter responsibilities, gymnastic meet season begins, inservice presentations, and holiday performances (I'm singing three this year) all seem to be scheduled at once. You think I would remember just how much of a catastrophe my house becomes, but every year I'm surprised.

Today is the first day after conferences, and it's also Veteran's Day (Thank you, dear Veterans!), so I'm off work. I was looking forward to a restful, lazy afternoon. I'd made myself promise that I would ignore the mountain of laundry, stacks of mail, and the myriad assortment of misplaced items on every surface. I refused to hunt down every missing sock behind couches, chairs and stacked in piles at the top of the stairs. Stealing socks is a fairly recent event that is a new hobby of my cat, Angel. Today was a day to relax. After all, as Scarlett would say, "I'll think about that tomorrow."

I was doing pretty well with my self-imposed mandate. I ignored the dust bunnies that shimmered in the sunbeam streaming through my open window. I turned a blind eye to the stack of boxes in the corner that needed to be unpacked and put away. And after a few deep breaths, I even kept my cool when I walked into the upstairs bathroom and every towel we own was wet and thrown on the floor. If I was taking a day off, my kids could too. Right?

But then I saw them. FIFTEEN spider nests. There's a cover to an old, whole-house fan on the ceiling at the top of the landing to the stairs. The nests were all along the same wall next to the cover. The creep factor was too much. Out came the vacuum. Out came the orders to the children... To oldest teenager: "Get the towels to the laundry and start a load. Clean the upstairs bath. Rake the leaves on the front lawn to the curb." To younger teenager: "Clean the family room then pick up, vacuum, and dust your room." I tackled the spider webs then decided I needed to mop the ceiling and the walls as well as vacuum and mop the stairs.

My sudden obsession with clean could very well keep me up until midnight. So I decided to enlist the help of FlyLady.net. That's right. FlyLady is a systematic cleaning process for those of us who are overwhelmed, overextended, and overdrawn. She's awesome! And it works. I know, I've used her in the past. Why I drifted away I'll never know. But I'm BACK!

So now that I've put FlyLady's cleaning system in place, I have NO excuses for not getting back into my writing routine. None.

Is it too late to join NaNoWriMo?