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.

You guys, I am such a stupid mess about the flowers! Your suggestions were so helpful, and I was particularly interested in Laura’s: she suggested calling the hospital gift shop. This appealed to me because I wanted the flowers there as soon as possible, and what could be sooner than RIGHT DOWNSTAIRS?

The gift shop was already closed when I called last night, so I got ALL SET to call this morning—and I got one of those people on the phone where it is obvious they get no joy out of their job at all. Her attitude was like “Who CARES, they’re just FLOWERS, what matters other than the price?” I got her to describe some options for me, but everything sounded awful (“You got your three blue daisies and three blue carnations in a vase….or you got your red and yellow carnations in a teddy bear mug….”), and she said they didn’t have more coming in until 1:00.

So I thought FINE, I will go with Proflowers or 1800Flowers, since both of those got good reviews from the comment section yesterday. I browsed both, and I found a purple orchid arrangement in a cool green display thingie, and it was $50, which is a lot of money but this friend is totally worth it, and also it’s NOT a lot of money as flower arrangements go.

So I filled in my address and her address, and then it said it would be $15 for delivery and another $5 if I wanted it today (me: “Oh, crap, I could have ordered last night if I hadn’t been waiting for the hospital gift shop!”), and I thought, “SEVENTY DOLLARS?”

As I said, the friend is completely worth the money, that part is a no-brainer. But are the FLOWERS worth the money, THAT is the question. Seventy dollars will buy something very nice if I take it to a store that sells something other than flowers. And when twenty of the seventy are spent before a single flower is called into play, that is REALLY FRUSTRATING. What I want is a good value for her: if $70 is spent, I want $70 of flowers, not $50 of flowers and $20 of fees.

Well, and I’m a not good with this kind of thing. I am a SLOW thinker, VERY SLOW. I take a lot of time to adjust to new ideas and new things (fees! this bouquet or that one! this deliverer or that one! yesterday or today! website or phone!). And yet time is of the essence here! So I am not in my element. Plus, I have a phone phobia (it’s Too Many Revelations About Swistle’s Psyche Day!), not a “ha ha, I don’t like the phone” thing but an actual diagnosed phobia, and so although I physically CAN use the phone, I pay for it, and you can basically see for yourself what “paying for it” means (frantic! panicking! over nothing! for hours!).

How about a little contest info to get things back in their usual steady groove? This is the morning for the Yoo Hoo! post. Here is a list of winners of Pay it Forward contests who have not yet gotten in touch with the blogger who held the contest:

Christina, Steve, Clara and Elena won the Twists and Turns contest

Ecchs won the Move Along – There’s Nothing to See Here contest

Pink Elefant won the Our House contest

Anybody else not connected? Email me (swistle at gmail dot com) and I’ll add them to the list.

I suggest we give the winners until, say…Saturday the 12th? And then after that, time to choose a new winner?

Quick! I have a friend in the hospital, and I want to send flowers. I Googled “flowers,” and there are too many places to choose from. I need to hear good/bad flower delivery experiences, and I need to hear them NOW!

Fine. Twitter it is. IT’S ON, TESSIE.

*Clap-clap* Okayyyyyy, people!
Where was I? Oh, yes! I was being perky and enthusiastic while clapping sharply. Because today is the day you should email me (swistle at gmail dot com) if you have tried (1) emailing your contest winner and (2) leaving a comment on your contest-winner’s blog (if either of those is possible), and still you haven’t heard from your contest winner. I’ll make a YOO HOO! post and we’ll see if we can get everyone in touch.

Also: if you have opinions on when/how to discuss The Facts of Life (that term will ALWAYS make me break into mental song: “You TAKE the good you TAKE the bad you TAKE them both and THERE you have…”) with children, scoot your expert and/or opinionated buns over to Milk & Cookies.

I don’t want to overwork the contest thing until you all are so sick of reading about it you faint and then die, but Bikini and I were trying to think of a way that those of us who are a little on the nosykins side can see what everyone GOTS. Plus, maybe some of us would like to enter more contests.

So what about this: IF YOU WANT TO, when you receive your giftie and take a photo of it and post your own Pay it Forward contest, email the link of that contest to swistle at gmail dot com. I won’t make a big tiresome deal of out every single contest (I’d do one single big-deal post, but all the contests will be starting/ending at different times so that won’t work), but I’ll tack them on to the ends of posts for awhile. Just until the post-holiday blues fade.

And remember, tomorrow is the day you should email me if you haven’t been able to contact your contest-winner.

Well. Last night I colored my hair an ill-advised color, and are you noticing what an excellent term “ill-advised” is? It implies that it was not MY independent decision to use a color called “Tempted Peach” when I know perfectly well that anything in the apricot/peach range clashes with my skin tone, which is “Rosy Non-Peach.” No, it was my well-paid ADVISERS who screwed up.

And sure enough, thanks to those idiots my hair is now the exact color that too-dark-for-blonde hair turns when you try to dye it blonde: a golden orangey-yellowy color, the kind that looks damaged even when it isn’t. The word “trashy” “brassy” springs immediately to mind. Furthermore, my eyebrows are the exact color of “too nervous about permanent blindness to color them.” Which is also the color my roots will soon be. There is really nothing like that combination of cool-toned light-brown hair with warm golden orangey-yellow.

It is a senseless waste of time to post a hair report without including a photo. I know whenever I see anyone trying to pull that crap, I immediately start the whining and nagging, and I keep it up until I get to see a photo. So I tried to get a good picture of my golden orangey-yellow hair, but the pictures kept coming out too forgiving. “Gee, maybe it’s not as bad as I think,” I’d say to myself, looking as the photos downloaded from the camera. Then I’d look in the mirror again.

This is the best I could get: the foreground of the photo, where you can see the back of my head, gives a moderately accurate idea of the color; and then you can also see a sample of the “too forgiving” effect on the me in the mirror. Also: rueful expression.

Good night’s sleep, little chocolate-creamered coffee, things look a little happier now.

OMG, were those Pay it Forward contests SO FUN!? I do indeed seem to have a little case of what Michelle aptly terms “post-holiday letdown,” but I think it will pass. It was just so fun to wonder who would win each contest, and then so fun to put together a box for SaLy, and then…..now that part’s over! Sad! No more gifties to buy!

I am reading a book about clutter-reduction by that guy who was on Clean Sweep. I don’t know if I can give him my full attention, since one of the episodes I saw of that show had him mocking a woman who was saving handmedown baby clothes. She had a toddler and they were planning to have at least one more baby. He made her play some stupid competition game for the privilege of keeping such a ridiculous, frivolous, space-hogging item as perfectly good baby clothes for a soon-upcoming baby.

Still. Clutter. A problem. So, I’m giving the book a chance. Paul doesn’t always understand about saving baby clothes, either: he’s all, “These take up so much space! Why do we even HAVE all these clothes!? You’re only 6 months pregnant! Is it really worth it to save the clothes when we’re not going to need them for SO LONG?”

I can already tell that one of my biggest problem areas is going to be “stuff that’s too good to throw out, but I have no one to give it to.” I might have a free yard sale: I HATE managing regular yard sales, but I can put stuff on my lawn and let other people take it away. Or I can do Freecycle, but it drives me crazy the way people will say they’re coming to get something and then they never show. And I think in the future we should do another batch of Pay it Forwards, this time for “stuff that’s too good to throw out.”

William went to a kindergarten where the pick-up policy is that the parents wait outside the classroom and the teachers send the children out—so you had to be there a little early. This meant there was some stand-around time before the class dismissed, and it was a fun time for chatting with other parents. Some of us started arriving even earlier, on purpose.

Statistically speaking, about half of the families on a class list are going to split up. Out of the twenty families with kindergartners in the class, only two had split up so far. Once this had occurred to me, I had several times when I would be looking around at all of us, thinking, “Which?”

Recently the same thought occurred to me about the blogs I read. Some of us are divorced and some of us are divorcing, but not as many as statistics estimate WILL BE divorced. Over the years, if we all keep hanging out, it’s going to keep happening. Pa-chow. Pa-chow. Pa-chow. Some of us may already have an inkling that we may be in that group, and others of us are going to get blind-sided.

I don’t even find it depressing so much as interesting. Like looking around your graduating class and thinking, “Some of us are going to be happy, and some will be successful, and some will struggle their whole lives, and some will have sad tragedies, and some….” etc. It’s that feeling of knowing the future but not yet knowing how things will be assigned or how they’ll happen.

Well. *brushes hands briskly* Enough of that! Carpe etc. Gather ye etc. Eat drink etc. Don’t borrow etc. Sufficient unto the day etc.

1) Book about a mother who lost three babies in infancy AND has to submissively allow another daughter to be sold to a silk factory.

2) An hour with the Registered Sex Offender list. There are two RSOs in our neighborhood. Both were convicted for crimes involving children under age 13.

3) Ending of miniseries, carefully recorded, cuts out. Nothing seems to be wrong with the DVD. Nevertheless, the last 2 minutes are unviewable.

4) Mosquito bites.

5) Reeky house.

6) We really should be saving for retirement.

7) Target seems to have a new policy about filling their aisles with pallets.

8) Fun pay-it-forward contests are over.