1.  Doing creative projects (like I did just before Christmas) makes me feel happy.

2.  Doing decluttering/organizational projects (like I am supposedly doing now) makes me feel frustrated, discouraged, and depressed.

3.  Not doing the decluttering/organizational projects (ie, having clutter & being disorganized) also makes me feel frustrated, discouraged, and depressed.

4.  Perhaps I would do more creative projects if I could just get the organizational ones done.

Here's my little Fuzz, aka "Woolian", at the Sunday School Christmas program.

The play the kids did was called "The Unfriendly Beasts".  It was supposed to be on the 21st, but church was cancelled that morning and so they did it on the 28th.  The kids were great and the costumes were adorable.  I am hereby violating my policy of not posting pics of other peoples' kids on my blog.  After all, they're in costume...

You can see from the above picture that there were four sheep in the play.  Two of them were among the "stable" animals.  Since Fuzz' character was not a stable sheep, Spaz concluded that she must be an "unstable" sheep.

During rehearsal, every time the director said something along the lines of, "All the stable animals come down around the manger," I had to resist the temptation to call out, "Unstable animals stay put."  Because, you know, I am about three decades past junior-high age and have to show a little maturity.

Fuzz/Woolian and another sheep called Shiloh were "hillside sheep".  They had their own special little scene late in the play.    (I'd post that portion of the video if only I had the capability of getting my videos on my puter.)

The above pic was taken during the performance, but most were taken during the dress rehearsal (eight days earlier, thanks to that weather glitch!).  I was much more free to move around and get better pics that way, plus I could relax and enjoy the actual performance.

You can see my neice, "Camelot" at the end of the risers in the pic below and in some of the other pics as well.

"Shiloh, who were those shiny men?  What were they talking about?"

"Come ON, Shiloh!  Let's go see that baby!"

"Rise up Shiloh and follow..."

Fuzz had a little solo here and she did fabulously!  She sang wonderfully, her voice was loud & clear, and she was very expressive & animated.  She blew Hubz & me away-- we didn't know she had it in her!

"...the echoes of that last No-e-e-el..."

"Come on Shiloh!  I'm going to go see that baby and you're going to come with me!"

"We've come to see the baby!  Is he here?"

 Is she not an adorably cute little sheep?

I know I need to post some Christmas pics.  Instead I am posting more weather pics.  Don't ask me why because I really don't know.

I have an uncle who spent his first 30 years living in the northeast and midwest and has spent the last 35 living happily in the Pacific Northwest.  His philosophy about the weather out there is, "At least you don't have to shovel rain."

So what does he know?
 

Lovely, isn't it?

Back to the outside.  Our driveway, fortunately, is paved, but the neighbors' is not.  They were out of town for the weekend, so Hubz put in some warning stakes to keep them from driving into these deep potholes when they returned.  I'm glad he was a good neighbor.  So were they.

The overflow from this driveway ran down into our pond...
 
   

...which in turn overflowed and ran back onto the same neighbor's property.

Like most people, we are on a two-week break from schoolwork.  The problem is, my kids keep acting as though "Christmas Break" means a break from chores and the like as well.  "What?  Chores?  You can't give us chores!  We're on Christmas BREAK, remember?"

Uh, no. After not-so-patiently explaining for the seventy-third-and-a-half time that Christmas break is just a break from schoolwork, I finally decided to capitulate-- sort of. "Fine," I said the other day. "Christmas break means a break from EVERYTHING. No chores, no anything.  BUT, it's over Monday." (Meaning we'd get back to schoolwork and normal routines TODAY instead of having another week off.)

They decided to stick with the original plan and I've heard no complaints about chores since.  Thank goodness, because I really did not want to get back to the schoolwork routine today, either.

However.  I turned my planner page to this week and saw that I had written down all sorts of things to get done this week while we are on "break".  I think I wrote this in November or maybe even October.  It's always easy to plan what I'm supposedly going to do a month or two down the road.  Apparently last week was my "break" and this week is school-organization week for me.  Over the next five days, I'm ostensibly going to:  clean and organize my desk in the schoolroom, take everything off the bookshelves & reorganize them, declutter the bar that is supposed to serve as a craft area, plan out all my history for the next couple months, make some decisions & more of a structure for language arts, plan some fun "electives" for the kids to choose from and figure out how to incorporate them into our schedule...  and by next Monday, the currently-vastly-disorganized schoolroom and teacher and schedule will be totally organized and ready to operate at maximum efficiency for the rest of the school year.

Um, yeah.  It was a nice thought.

I think I'll go back to bed now.

I feel as though as was up until 3 am sewing pajama pants.  Maybe because I was  up until 3 am sewing pajama pants.  Probably not the brightest thing to do, but hey.  Sometimes it is late by the time I kick it into gear, and I just have to keep going while I'm on a roll.

My computer and/or internet connection is acting as though it was up until 3 am sewing pajama pants, so we'll see whether I actually manage to get this posted.

I am pretty pleased with myself.  I got my MIL's photo collage finished in one day (well, OK, I was actually 2 hours into the next day, unless we say that "day" doesn't start until sunrise, so let's say that).  Then yesterday I painted wooden wall decorations for my sibs' family gift bags and got those all done in one day, and then followed up with the aforementioned pajama pants, which are now finished as well.  (I have 2 pair yet to go, however.)

Meanwhile Hubz has been hard at work in his shop the last few weeks building gifts for the kids.  He did this last year and enjoyed it so much that he is back at it again.

And here's what I wrote about that last week, when I actually wrote most of this post.  (As happens often, I kept falling asleep in the middle of blogging, thus it did not get finished and posted at that time.)  Anyway, I wrote:  "I am glad he is finding and nurturing his creative bent once again.  Glad and a bit jealous, as I have yet to dig up and revive my own creative spirit.  The juices just aren't flowing, and haven't for a long time.  I am making a gift for each of the kids; I saw how special it was for him to do that last year and wanted to get it on it myself.  But I'm not really doing anything creative.  I have a problem with my left brain trying to horn in on whatever my right brain is trying to do, with the sad result that my creative efforts & inspirations tend to get shipwrecked on the rocks of perfectionism & overanalysis.  I just don't want the inevitable frustration that that whole scenario produces.  So for my homemade gifts, I'm just sewing -- a fleece poncho for Fuzz & pajama pants for the other three.  It's a start.  Maybe next year I'll venture into something more artistic & imaginative."

I am feeling a little  bit better about my creative juices now.  The project for my MIL helped.  I was a little creative with last night's pj pants, too.  I'm getting there.  Anyway, on with the rest of the post, which is actually about Hubz' creations and not mine...

Back to Hubz and his gifts.  He's a create-as-you-go guy and it's been really fun to watch his ideas take shape.  I am the only one allowed to see anything.  It is all so cool.  He has similar theme for each piece, but with very different interpretations.  There's been some frustration along the way as well, as he gets "builder's block" or finds that something he thought would work actually doesn't, but he's pushed through.  I'm proud of his persistence and admire his skill and originality.  I can hardly wait til the kids see what he made them.

I will try to be good and post pics after Christmas.  Meanwhile, it has occured to me that I never did get around to posting my pics of the stuff that he made for them last Christmas.  So to whet your appetite for what's coming, I now present the Hubz Giftz of 2007...

This piano-themed shelf for Cheez is what started it all last year.  He built it just a couple weeks before Christmas and was so happy with it that he decided to build something for each of the others.  Cheez was quite happy with it, too.

He's quite the talented dude, isn't he?  Next up was a TV/gaming stand for Biz...

The TV sits on top.  There are two slots one the left to hold Guitar Hero guitars and a drawer in the middle for controllers.  (As though controllers actually get put back in drawers.)

Huz had had a bit of a scare with that one, as the first coat of finish was still drying when we were hit on December 23 with a blizzard that knocked our power out for 33 hours.  He was afraid the shop would get too cold and the finish would be ruined, but thankfully it survived!

The storm also prohibited the completion of Spaz' & Fuzz' gifts before Christmas, so they had the fun and anticipation of waiting for theirs.  Spaz got his on the 27th:

What do you mean, What is that?  Isn't it obvious?  Yeah, I didn't think so.

The close-up helps for sure, right?  No?  Okay, I'll tell you.  It's a "tower" for army guys and Lego people, complete with working elevator (which is what you see in the close-up here).  That might seem a bit juvenile for a 12-year-old, but you have to know Spaz.  He will probably take army guys and Lego people to college with him (and maybe even on his honeymoon, just in case he & his bride end up in a town without a McDonald's Playland).

Spaz' gift was the most frustrating of all to build as it involved a lot of trial and error.  Hubz says "Never again".  Fuzz', on the other hand, was a lot of fun for him and a creation that he just might consider making more of.  She got hers a couple days before New Year's.

Is that a cool easel or what?  That roll of paper at the top is 1100 feet.  She's used the easel profusely and still has a lot of paper left.

Would you say my Hubz is talented?  Just a little?

So those were last year's presents.  And if you think those were pretty cool, just wait til you see what he's working on this year.  I will try very hard to not make you wait a whole year!

I just had to take time out of my busyness to get that posted.  (After all, once he's presented this year's gifts, those pics from last year will be really anti-climatic!)  But this is probably it for me til after Christmas.  Otherwise only half my kids will get their gifts from me.  And other stuff will get neglected too, like food and gift-wrapping.  Not a good thing.  So no more posting for me for a few days.

Have yourself a wonderful Christmas!

I'm supposed to be making a photo collage for my MIL, but I haven't even made it to my art desk yet.  I've gotten a little carried away playing with photos...

As though my 72-y/o MIL would even like those.  Here's what I'll probably end up using:

Even so, she probably would appreciate normal old unartsified pictures.  And had I just stuck with those, I'd have shut my computer about... um, 4 or 5 hours ago.  And I could have spent that time at my art desk making the collage and I'd be finished by now.

Or not, because I'll probably spend 10 hours at my art desk thinking and arranging and rearranging and cutting and pasting and experimenting and undoing and redoing...

Not to mention that I could have showered and eaten, neither of which I have done yet today.  (Chocolate and coffee don't count.)

It's 3:38 pm.

Now you know why I don't do projects.

...but electricity, heat, and water are so delightful!  Glad we still have them.  Last year's Sunday-before-Christmas storm knocked out our power for 33 hours.

My Fuzzy little sheep is supposed to be onstage right now with her Sunday School classmates performing "The Friendly Beasts".  I knew when the phone rang at 7 am that church was going to be cancelled.  The kids will do the show next week instead.

And since we've no place to go, I really ought to get busy working on my MIL's Christmas gift.  But first, a few pics...

Note to self:

When I start obsessing over the fact that Cheez' Fun Gift is wrapped in red & green while Biz' and Fuzz' are wrapped in blue, and whether the Media Gifts ought to just be called Book Gifts since that is what they all are, and how I should code them all lest I forget which gifts are which four days from now (because heaven forbid that one kid should open a Fun Gift while another is opening a Clothing Gift), and what the Miscellaneous Gifts ought to be called anyway... it's time to just quit wrapping and go to bed.

Still.  I might actually get all my wrapping done before Christmas Eve this year.  Now that would be a noteworthy accomplishment.

Another note to self:

Not the best post here.  Readers deserve better after yet another six-day drought.  What happened to all those clever & interesting headblogs from the past couple weeks?  Go to bed now.

And another week goes by.  Ever notice that the more bloggable stuff you have, the less time you have to actually blog about it?

Here's how my weekday schedule has gone for the last week-and-a-half:

Daytime- do school with the kids; go somewhere and/or do stuff around the house related to food and/or Christmas.

Evening- go somewhere.

Night- settle into my comfy chair with my computer, begin downloading photos or reading blogs, and promptly fall asleep; wake up in the wee hours in my chair, close the computer, and go back to sleep.

EVERY DAY.  Really.

And weekends...

Daytime- go somewhere; go somewhere else and/or do stuff around the house related to food and/or Christmas.

Evening- do stuff around the house related to food and/or Christmas.

Night- same as weekdays.

I thought I would get a little time yesterday afternoon to sit and relax with the computer before decorating the tree, but no.  I yakked after church and got home late, then ended up having to help Cheez with clean-up after dinner.  By the time that was all said & done, it was 4 pm already and Fuzz was clamoring to decorate.  I told her, "Forty minutes.  Give me forty minutes and then I promise we'll do it."  I settled in my chair, opened my computer, and started downloading a week's worth of pics.  Spaz likewise settled into the chair at the computer desk to kill some Tokugawans or whatever it was he'd been looking forward to doing.  Meanwhile Hubz, who does not actually know the meaning of the word "relax", looked out the window and said, "Hey, with the snow melting and all, it would be a great time to tip the trampoline and get all the snow off it before we get pummeled again tonight."

There went Spaz' war with the Tokugawans and twenty of my forty minutes.  And when we were finished tipping the trampoline, I brilliantly remarked that while we were at it, we may as well just take the whole mat off so we wouldn't have to deal with snow on the tramp all winter.  And that took care of my other twenty minutes.  Decorating the tree pretty much consumed the rest of the day and evening, and then I opened up my computer and fell asleep in my chair.

So the blog has been neglected.  (Well, mostly.  I started two blog posts during the last week, but they don't count since I never actually finished and posted them.)  But I am much further along with gifts and decorating than I usually am at this point, and that is a very good thing.  I also am much less stressed than I normally am at Christmas time.  I still have some projects to do over the next 10 days, and some school --just math & history-- to do with the kids this week.  But most of the running is done.  I think I get to stay home all day and evening today and tomorrow; hooray!

'Tis the season.  I'll try to get back here before too long!

Oh my; it has been a week since I posted.  And it has NOT been for lack of good blogging material, I can assure you.  It's just that everything I've thought of posting would take more time than I can spare.

But I'd better post something, so here goes...

A few observations from the past week:

(1) You know you have strange children when they go around the house singing, to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby":  "Aaahhh, step on all the lonely thumbtacks/ Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow/ Aaahhh, step on all the lonely thumbtacks...."

(2) After piano lessons, Fuzz told me she'd been given a piece fromThe Nutcracker called, "The Fairies of Sugar Plum Creek, or something like that."  Anyone want to venture a guess as to which Little House book we've been reading?

(3) I washed the jeans that Spaz had inadvertently borrowed for a day.  I put them on and discovered a hole in the knee.  After one day.

(4) I should have followed my gut and NOT allowed Spaz to read a library book in the bathtub.

Our week also included story-writing, sledding, shopping, going to my neices' musical, and starting to decorate for Christmas.

This has been Life At The WACKOS.  Stay tuned.

To follow up yesterday's post about underwear, I'm following up with one about boots, sandals, socks and pants.  Trust me, this was totally unplanned.

My winter boots are ones I originally bought for Biz.  Mine wore out around the same time he outgrew these, so I swiped them.  Somehow I've managed to retain possession of them in spite of Cheez & Spaz, perhaps because someone gave us a pair in the same size shortly thereafter.

I also have a well-worn pair of summer sandals that were passed on to me (in considerably better condition) by Cheez.  I'd purchased them for her so she wouldn't wear her beloved duct-taped sport slides to church; she was never that thrilled with them and was only to happy to give them back as soon as her big toe gave the slightest hint of overhanging the sole.  They've served as my everyday summer footwear ever since, and it shows.

These things were passed on to me years ago, and I remember thinking at the time, "I know my kids are getting older when I'm wearing their hand-me-downs."

More recently, Spaz was in need of navy blue socks one day and so I loaned him my favorite pair.  (They were technically women's socks but looked plenty masculine enough.)  He liked them and tried to keep them.  Now we fight over them.  Because the kids sort and fold the laundry, those socks (my socks) usually end up in his drawer.  I bought him his own pair (yes, in the women's department) and he still ends up with mine.

Sharing socks with Mom is one thing.  I don't think he'd want to share any other clothes; nor would I.

That's all I have about the footwear, but hang on.  Now I'm going to tell you a story about a pair of jeans.  It will all tie in here by the end, I promise.

A couple months ago as I was going through clothes to see what he had for the fall & winter, I came across a pair of black jeans that had once belonged to Biz.  "I don't really like those," Spaz remarked.  "They're not all that comfortable."  Spaz doesn't think any jeans are comfortable and usually wears them only when he has nothing else clean.  I set them aside, as he had plenty of other pants.

Several weeks later we were shopping, and Spaz came across a black & gray crew-neck shirt that he really liked.  I agreed that it would be nice for church, but said, "I'm only buying it if you'll wear those black jeans; none of your other pants will really go with it."  He consented and I bought the shirt.  The problem was, once we got home we found that the jeans seemed to have disappeared.  They weren't in his drawer, nor were they on his closet shelf with the off-season clothes.  Perhaps I'd put them with some clothes I'd given away.  This was rather a bummer.

Last week I was doing laundry and came across the long-lost black jeans at the bottom of the jeans hamper.  Hooray, we still had them; I hadn't wasted money on the black-&-gray shirt after all.  The jeans were washed, dried, folded, and put in Spaz' drawer, and on Sunday (yesterday) I laid them out with the new shirt and he put them on.

When I looked at him at church, I thought to myself that the jeans didn't seem to fit very well.  They were baggy in the behind and just plain ill-fitting, and they didn't look great on him.  So much for that outfit.  As the day went on, however, I really didn't think much about it.

Then this morning I was looking for my own black jeans and couldn't find them.

You already know where this is going, don't you?  I found the jeans he'd worn to church yesterday on his floor in a heap, where clothes always seem to be deposited despite the rule they they need to be hung on a hook.  I took a closer look at them, and... sure enough...

Oh boy.

I went to the storage closet and took one last look through the bin of Biz' hand-me-downs.  There hidden at the bottom was a pair of size 14 black jeans.  I don't think it was the same pair I'd remembered from before; they were a totally different style, and if they were the same ones, they wouldn't have been at the bottom of the box.  Doubtless I had given the others away, but no matter.  We had a pair now.

I carried them up to his room and said, "Hey Bud, I found these in the Biz box.  I don't think the ones you wore yesterday were a great fit."  "No," he agreed, "I didn't like them.  They felt weird."  Yeah, I bet.  If only you knew.  Breathing a sigh of relief, I picked them up and said, "Let's just get rid of them and you can wear this other pair instead."

Into the hamper went Sunday's black jeans --my black jeans-- and onto Spaz' wiry teenage bod went the nice, well-fitting, masculine-looking boys' black jeans.  They looked wonderful with the black-&-gray shirt, and all was right with the world again.

I can't think of too many things that would gross out a 13-year-old boy more than knowing that he wore his mother's pants, and in public yet.  He will never know.  Unless you tell him, and you won't.

Now if only I could get my socks back...