We’re going to put a second bathroom in the house, down in our semi-finished basement. Problem: I need to clear at least two large utility shelf units just to TALK about putting a bathroom in.

Well. This is a struggle for an apocalyptic-minded, nostalgic, can’t-throw-away-stuffed-animals-because-it’s-too-sad, fully-prepared-for-every-contingency type. And about HALF of what we have is handmedown kid clothes, and those are staying: that’s MONEY we’re storing in those boxes.

So, the other half. It’s things like china we never use. Books from my childhood we never read and the kids aren’t interested in. Dolls and doll clothes I bought during the time we had to wait longer than expected for a third pregnancy and apparently I went a little crazy. Video tapes, some still in their plastic wrap. Childhood journals and papers and school report cards. “Heirlooms” Paul’s mother gave us (including a ratty, rotting hairbrush that was Paul’s pinehole father’s).

Some of it, I wish the entire world had a collective brain so that I could find the few people who are probably scouring antique stores and eBay right this second (well, or I guess a lot of shops are closed by now) looking for the stuff I have, and would love it and cherish it. But I can’t do that, even with the power of the Internet, because 99% of my responses would be antiques dealers pretending not to be antiques dealers.

Paul thinks I’m a little silly to care if someone else profits from something I don’t want and don’t want to sell. I don’t think it’s silly. To use an extreme and unfairly emotional example, if I wanted to donate food to hungry people, I wouldn’t want someone to intercept that food and SELL it to the hungry people. And in this case, I want to give my service-for-twelve (minus one teacup) to someone who would cherish the china—not to someone who will SELL it to the people who would cherish the china.

The clutter book I’m reading is just like “THROW IT OUT! Why let it take up valuable real estate?” And I see his point, but I don’t want to THROW OUT something someone else is pining for. So there, clutter book!

******
Pay-it-forward updates:

Our House is showing the giftie she got, and starting a new contest.

and the duck said… is showing the giftie she got.

I have a heart owie that there is no real Blogstle. I even spent a little time last night lying in bed trying to think of a way it would actually work. I came up with two ideas, both of which involve me being (1) a different/richer/assertive-er person, with (2) fewer children.

But it COULD happen, couldn’t it? Not the different/fewer thing, but Blogstle! I mean, THEORETICALLY? THEORETICALLY we could have blind pool boys and coolers of ice cream pints? There are no LAWS preventing us, at least. And no shortage of blind pool boys, obviously.

Well. At least we can enter contests:

Move Along – There’s Nothing to See Here is showing her giftie and posting a new, multi-winner PiF contest.

Honestly and Truly! is showing her giftie and posting new a PiF contest.

Righters’ Writings is showing her giftie and posting a new PiF contest.

Teacher Mom has a new contest up.

The Creamery is showing her giftie and posting a new PiF contest

My Very Last Nerve has a new contest up.

Mona and I have been wracking our brains: what can those of us who are NOT going to BlogHer do while everyone else is busy showing each other their cute outfits and talking about Promoting Their Brands? I was thinking of some sort of “All Eating, All the Time” weekend. We could call it This Little Piggy Stayed Home.

But I will still be fasting this weekend. I have stopped feeling sorry that I did not start the same day Erica did: 7 days is PLENTY of this.

Do you know, if I were designing Swistle’s Ideal Blogger Conference (Blogstle), I would want it to be a jean-and-tees event. Pajamas would be okay, too. Comfy shoes. Ponytails. Now entering the mascara-free zone.

Lots of food: big buffet tables of pizza and chicken and tacos and chips and these potatoes, a big freezer case of ice cream pints (container of spoons nearby), big pots of melted cheese and melted chocolate and pizza sauce for dipping. We’d skip the vegetables, even if we like them, so that no one could make anyone else feel bad by self-righteously eating nothing but a plate of produce and then claiming to be stuffed.

There would be no “early morning yoga” to sign up for, heavens no. There would be no early-morning ANYTHING to sign up for: if I have time away from the kids, I am SLEEPING IN. Things to sign up for would include:

• Breakfast in Bed (Served at 10:30 a.m.)
• Dessert in Bed (Served at 10:30 p.m.)
• Someone Else Doing Our Nails While We Sit in a Long Row and Talk
• Haircuts Without Having to Arrange Babysitting
• Seminar: Is This Fun or What?
• Seminar: Are You Tired of Hearing Yourself Called a Narcissist Because You Write Publicly? and Other Blogger Woes
• Debate: Pie, Yummy or Yucky? (Tastes Provided)
• Brownie Lesson: Bake a Batch or Just Sit Near Counter and Watch/Taste/Talk
• Debate: Fudge, With or Without Nuts? (Pound of Each Provided to Each Participant)
• Book Club Meeting: Everyone Lie Around With a Lightweight Book She Wants to Read, Reading Funny/Interesting Parts Aloud
• Fitness: Watch 1980s Fitness Videos and Make Snorting Sounds
• Lab: Try Every Single Sephora Philosophy Product Ever Made
• Hanging Around Talking

If you are interested in other events, please let me know and I’ll see if I can find an instructor.

One kid thing:

Me: Hey, you’ve got an owie!
Elizabeth: Well THAT much is clear!

And ONE husband thing, which is that Paul was singing, “There was a farmer had a dog and Bongo was his name-o…” and then he was “playing the bongos” on Elizabeth’s tummy, instead of doing the clapping sounds.

Oh, wait—one more husband thing:

Paul: What is that?
Me: Tea. With milk and honey.
Paul: And land?

Okay, and now I will show something that we can ALL enjoy: PET HUMOR!

[If you’re reading this from the future: I don’t know what used to be here, but apparently something that was deleted at its source.]

We have cats who have come THIS CLOSE to getting flung right through a second-floor window for doing basically that same routine (“basically” = “no baseball bat”) on me when I’ve been up most of the night with children.

*****

Day Two of the fast went fine. I was feeling hungrier, but perhaps it isn’t necessary for me to specifically say so. I had milky tea for breakfast and for lunch, a diet soda in the afternoon, and I had a cup of juice in the late afternoon when I was feeling tired and weird. After I ate dinner, I felt almost HIGH from eating. I actually said “Wooo!” I may have said it twice.

Here are the other participants, if you want to go see how they’re doing:

Chraycee of Walking on Sunshine
Julie of Miss Glass is Half Full
Stephanie of Seriously!?
MaryB of A Yankee’s Guide to Texas
Sarah of Redefining Perfect

and of course ERICA HERSELF, who is, I think, the only one of us doing this full-on rather than modified. Even with my major modifications (caffeine? sure! a chewable dinner? sure!) this is not exactly pleasurable, so I have been feeling EVEN SORRIER for Erica than I was before.

*****

Pay it Forward updates:

Mimi All Me received her PiF package from No Whey Mama. She’s posted a photo of the loot and also her new contest.

Bebellyboo is showing the giftie she got from Smiling Mama.

Wouldn’t it be funny to call this group fasting idea “Fast Friends”? OMG CHEEZY. BARF. Let’s not.

Here is Erica’s post giving the gist of the fast. It’s not a total starvation fast: it’s about 1000 calories a day. More of a “jump start for a stalled diet” kind of fast. It’s called a “fast,” but my guess is that this is more than celebrities generally eat. Of course, they are CRAZY and UNHEALTHY, but whatevs.

I’m making the modifications Erica suggested: I’m having liquids during the day, and then a meal at night. I’m going to have to take it easy with the coffee, though: I had it for breakfast and for lunch, and now I’m all ZZZZZZING!!! and also a little on the IRRITABLE side. I’m going to make some Crystal Light instead.

Anyway, here are the participants so far:

Me
Chraycee of Walking on Sunshine
Julie of Miss Glass is Half Full
Stephanie of Seriously!?
MaryB of A Yankee’s Guide to Texas
Sarah of Redefining Perfect

I have ALREADY screwed it up. I was at my mom’s house this morning and she was making cookies, and I ate two one without even thinking about it. It wasn’t like I thought, “Oooo, cookies! Screw this fasting thing!”—I just didn’t think of it at all. Then I was on my way home and I was thinking about lunch, and then I thought, “Oh, right—no lunch,” and then I was like “DAGNABBIT!!!!” as I suddenly realized about the cookies.

Well, pooh. I’m not in the habit of this yet, clearly. The temptation was, of course, to then say, “Well, I messed up THIS day!” and go ahead and eat, but that is the road to all kinds of weight issues (purging! drinking full-calorie Coke when you prefer the taste of diet! letting a doughnut in the morning lead to 3,000 additional calories because the day is “ruined”!), so I’m just going, “Okay, fine, that was a genuine mistake, and now let’s just continue with the plan.” (The plan, as you recall, is bitching and whining.)

*****

Pay-it-forward updates:

Clarabella has her new contest up.

Midwest Mom is showing the package she received and starting a new contest.

As you know, our Erica is doing a 10-day fast in preparation for surgery. Her post today made me feel a little crabby with her husband, who is being unsympathetic to the difficulty of this—and yet I notice he’s not exactly volunteering to join her for emotional support.

And I can’t BELIEVE I didn’t think of this earlier, but WE could join her for emotional support. We’ve already missed the first three days, which is too bad, and my “do it perfectly or not at all” personality resists even bothering: why start now, if it can’t be EXACTLY LIKE ERICA? How can we be supportive if we’re THREE DAYS BEHIND? But that is not the way things actually are, is it? It is possible to do things half-assed (or in this case, 7/10ths-assed) and still have it be worth doing, yes? And so I’m going to give this a try.

Erica has promised me (okay, I am making that up, but I plan to EXTRACT a promise) that she will do a post about what is allowed on her fast: it’s not a literal “no calories” fast (it’s something like 800 calories/day), so we will not actually be starving to death. And when that post is up, I’ll link to it.

In the meantime, I’m going to start first thing tomorrow (Monday) morning. It is FULLY POSSIBLE that within 10 minutes of The Start there will be a fudgesicle in one hand and a muffin in the other, but it is my intention to suffer mightily and bitch about it, here and on Twitter, because Erica is making it look like so much fun.

I feel as if I should issue some sort of disclaimer here. I mean, what Erica is doing is medically-supervised and medically-approved. What anyone joining in would be doing is flinging themselves into the unknown. A lot of us are not going to be ABLE to participate in this even if we want to. If your health is shaky, or if you’ve struggled with an eating disorder, or if you’re pregnant or nursing, or if you have a health issue, or if you exercise a lot, or if you’re very thin, or if you’re not supposed to screw around with what you eat for any other reason, you can still offer emotional support without actually fasting. You can do this by cheerleading from the sidelines, and by refraining from waving your food at the participants.

If you DO decide to fast, email me (swistle at gmail dot com) so I can make a link list of people who are going to be joining in on the suffering and bitching.

I was making toast. I made the first batch. I put in the second batch—and the lever wouldn’t stay down. I jiggled the handle for awhile, checked to make sure the toaster hadn’t somehow come unplugged, etc. etc. BORING, and then finally looked inside the toaster, where I saw a weird gooey green thing. After unplugging the toaster and messing around with the pliers, I extracted the not-actually-gooey green thing, and figured out what it was: a green plastic baby spoon, melted around the heating element.

SOMEONE (I’m looking in the 3-year-old department) must have put or dropped a plastic spoon into the toaster at some point. Then I made toast, and the spoon melted. The toast popped up and the melted plastic went solid again, jamming the toaster.

(Non-melted spoon, for comparison)

Problem: Toaster not working.
Diagnosis: CHILDREN.

*****

My Life has her new pay-it-forward up.

Laura won the contest over at The True Adventures of Axel and Outlaw, and now Laura’s posted her own—as well as photos of the package she received.

You know what I think is neat and cool about having Google Analytics? It lets me see I have a handful of readers from my geographical location—close enough that we would all shop at the same Target. Isn’t that CRAZY? We could seriously be passing each other in the aisles and not even know it! We could be stopping for lunch at the same McDonald’s! We might even live in the same neighborhood! And we wouldn’t even know! Doesn’t that seem bizarre?

Well, or else it’s people who know me in real life and are secretly reading my blog without telling me, and geez. Buzzkill.

Hair update: some of the orangey color came out in the first couple of shampoos, leaving behind an only slightly peachy blonde. The color is not as good with my complexion as my usual dirt-colored hair, but it is better with my HAIR than my usual dirt color.

Hey, question. If you put “key lime yogurt (2)” on the list, and your husband came home from the grocery store with “can of key lime pie filling (2),” what would YOU do with it? It seems like a very odd food pantry donation indeed. You don’t have enough to eat? Here, have a can of key lime pie filling!

THIS:

is a not-uncommon sight at our house. He just slings his foot up there. And look at the OTHER foot, so far away, and with little toe niblets splayed as if ASKING to be bitten off.

Now, here are the promised end-of-post contest updates for the nosy and the still-in-the-mood-for-contests:

Home2K9 shows the prize she won in Slynnro‘s contest (pretty, pretty prize, Slynnro!) and has her own new contest in the same post.

Here’s the package Under Construction received from My Life, and here’s her new pay-it-forward.

Here’s SaLy’s post about the package she got from me, and also her new pay-it-forward. Which I’m entering because I think it would be really funny if SaLy and I ended up in a loop like that. Her contest ends tonight, so enter quickly!

Here is something that surprises me again and again, no matter how many times it happens: how much less I get done than I intend to get done.

I have such excellent and reasonable intentions. “This summer,” I think to myself in the spring, “I will gradually clean up some trouble areas in the house. Nothing dramatic, no no no: it won’t be days and days of all-day cleaning while the children care for themselves like little savages. No, I will tackle it reasonably: ten or fifteen minutes a day will really add up.”

And here we are nearly halfway through July, and what has my progress been? Well, I did put away a few things that were stacked on the dining room table. That was the first day, when motivation ran hot through my veins. And I’ve managed to be consistent on another summer goal, which was to have the older two kids do some reading and some writing each weekday. But day after day goes by, and the house is not gradually improving as I’d imagined it would.

This makes me think of a question CP asked recently. She wanted to know how I fit all this in: all the blogs! the Facebook! the Twitter! the baking! Plus, of course, the five squalling children.

This is the most FA of all the Q I get, and so for all of you who are wondering the same thing, I’d like to refer you to All & Sundry for what I consider to be the Perfect Answer to This Question (it comes from this Q&A post):

I kind of want to be all Superwoman on this question and say, oh, I just set my alarm for 4 AM, but truthfully, I make time for the things I love. Which is to say I don’t always make time for cooking, cleaning, or scooping dog crap. Also, Riley goes to bed at–thank you, Jebus–6:45 nearly every night. That leaves quite a bit of time for ignoring the laundry while I sit, clackety-clacking, at my laptop.

Time, like money, is currency: everyone has a certain amount of it to spend. I think it’s EASY to make time for writing and reading, because I LOVE writing and reading. I get huge rewards in terms of satisfaction and personal happiness from the give-and-take communication of blogging—and, by extension, from things like Facebook and Twitter, which give me more of that. When I see time, I pounce eagerly: I grab those gleaming coins and shove them into the slot.

When I feel strapped for time is when I think about all the photos I need to label and put into albums. Or when I think of all the movies I haven’t seen, all the TV shows I would like to have seen so I’d know what everyone is talking about. All the albums I haven’t listened to. All the books I haven’t read yet, with more being published every second. The vet appointments I should be making. The craft projects I could be doing with the kids. The ripped shorts I should be sewing. The recipes I could be trying. The volunteer work I could be doing. The clutter I should be purging. “Where oh where do you find the TIME?,” I might say to you, if I saw your clean basement and your kids’ cool artwork.

Except I would NOT say that, because I understand about time. And about how we give spending priority not to what’s “fun,” necessarily, but to what gives us satisfaction, and to what we think is important.

I was like, “How come I’m such a total doll this morning?” I even made muffins with THREE helpers and didn’t get crabby. Then I remembered I woke up with a headache and took Excedrin for it. Excedrin = caffeinated. Thus my cheery disposition. No actual personality improvement has taken place.

Speaking of personality, it was a good thing I went into overloaded shut-down mode with anxiety over the flower situation, because my friend came home from the hospital yesterday. So if I HAD gotten flowers, she would have had to GO BACK TO THE HOSPITAL TO GET THEM OMG. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate flawed psyches and how they occasionally work FOR us rather than AGAINST us.