I need organizational help

I try and I try and I try and I just can't seem to get organized. I can't believe I'm admitting this in public. Guess I should delete this post before I send out my resume, just in case a potential employeer finds this blog and decides this is a bad trait, lo. But until then, you get to read all about it.

It's not like I forget to do important things. I never miss deadlines at work (or home). But my papers aren't filed, I've got piles of scrapbooking stuff all over the house, stacks unread or half-read magazines threaten to fall over, the stack of ironing keeps getting higher. I've got piles to coupons to mail to friends (I may need to stop doing this since it stresses me out). I forgot to deposit a couple of checks (but I don't need the money right away so I'm okay). Maybe my problem isn't lack of organization, but too much clutter? Anyone want to help me with that?

And toddler and babies make five

Today A and I had a little adventure in babysitting. We went to visit the twins (and the rest of the family, lol), then A went to do some shopping. While he was gone, I volunteered us to babysit since M & C had some errands to run. Thank goodness he got back before they left. It started off well; G was watching a video and the girls were quiet. After a while, the girls started fussing, so I'd pick up one, play with her a bit until the other started crying. Then they'd trade places. They got tired of that quickly so somehow I managed to pick both of them up and we went outside to watch A and G play ball. That was a lot fun. A always surprises me with his patience with kids.

The girls in the meantime, were trying my patience since they both wanted to be held, but not at the same time. A little fussing, a little crying, put one down, pick the other one up, repeat, repeat, repeat, lol. If M & C were going to be gone for more than an hour, I would have let the girls cry a bit, but I didn't want M & C to be coming home to crying babies.

Anyway, I've decided I'm not cut out to watch three kids at once, or if I'm going to, I need to work up to it, lol.

Crop circles

Or maybe I should say six degrees of separation. The other day, I was thinking about all the friends I've met through scrapbooking. I met S at 2peas, I think because of a swap. Then we swapped over at LM. And finally, we met in person for lunch. Through S, I met M, M, H, W, L, and so many more wonderful people. And because of LM, I've probably met 50 or more people at crops and many more online.

Last year, I met A and T at SupperThyme. I signed up for some meals and when I gave her my e-mail address, she figured I was a scrapbooker and we got to chatting. It turns out L knows A's DH through work and hence knows A. Then last week M came down to visit her SIL. It turns out her SIL knows A too and we all ended up scrapping together. So no matter who I know in the scrapbook world, we probably have another mutual friend. Good thing we're a friendly bunch, lol.

Stressed, who me?

I've got a lot going on right now, planning for a trip (more on that in a future post), changes in management at work, trying to get layouts done for scrapfest. I had to drive downtown today and if you know me, you know how much fun it was for me. Thank goodness we have a car with GPS. The drive took waaaay longer than I planned, the wait to take care of my business was waaaaaaay longer than I planned. A HUGE thank you to the lady who gave me her number. It probably cut off an hour or two off my wait. So I gave my number to someone else. It probably saved him three hours.

I'm overplanning, overthinking, worried about things out of my control. And the bad thing is, I'm not stressed enough to be losing weight. Just stressed enough to be stressed.

Received my first Carribean scam call

I assume it was a scam. I got a call from a local area code; didn't recognize the phone number, but answered anyway. No one was on the other end. Immediately after I hung up, I got another call. Again, I didn't recognize the phone number and area code. I guess I shouldn't have answered it, but I did. FYI, 869 and 876 are area codes for the Carribean.

Garlic breath

Yep, that's what I've got. Just finished up the last of the baba ganoush (eggplant) and tzatziki (yoghurt, cucumber, dill) that I got from the farmer's market. Yum! Just thought I'd share that with all of you, lol. A certainly doesn't appreciate it.

Progress and frustration

Last week, I had yet another idea on how to organize my scrapbook supplies. But to get it to work, I needed to move or get rid of a huge stack of magazines. I asked A to help this weekend because he's put a couple of boxes of stuff in the corner of our "library" where I wanted to reorganize. I thought we'd work on this today so passed up a day of scrapping with my buds. Instead, he worked on this yesterday so I did too. I got rid of a couple shopping bags worth of magazines and started to reorganize a bookcase. Then he moved a couple boxes of stuff in front of the bookcase "to sort through later" and now I can't get to the bookcase.

I thought we'd continue on today, but A's been working on the car all day. And I'm stuck here since he's working in the driveway and my car is parked in the garage. Well, I'm not really stuck since I could drive the other car (yes, we're a 3-vehicle family), but I don't want to. And I thought A was going to cook since he's the one who suggested BBQing the pork we bought this morning. But it looks like that isn't going to happen either.

But, trying to keep a positive outlook, I've moved on to cleaning another area of the house. Unfortunately, after filling the recyling can half full of paper/magzines/newspaper, the house doesn't look any different. Actually, I think it looks more disorganized now.

9:45

It looks like 9:45 pm is the new time for cranky old relatives to call me. With no thought as to whether or not my heart might stop when the phone rings at that hour. With no consideration that I might have to get to bed so I can get up the next morning to go to work. Grrrrr.

Yahoo! I broke 10,000!

10k of what, you ask? Yesterday, I finally reduced my e-mails to fewer than 10,000. Of course, that lasted less than 24 hours. But by the end of today, I brought it back down again. Monday will probably be okay because our parent company is on vacation. I expect the count to go back up on Tuesday. And by the end of the month when we get busy again? I hope, hope, hope, I can keep under 11,000.

Why so many you ask? Since I'm a project lead, I get cc'd on almost every e-mail for every project in the department. Plus I get pseudo-management e-mails. Yes, I know how to keep only the last of a mail thread. Yes, I know how to delete e-mails after a question is answered. But we have 11 pages of active projects and that's a lot of e-mails.

The scrapbook store didn't want my money

Yesterday, I stopped by my least favorite store to buy some rub-ons to finish a layout from the crop weekend. I had something I could use, but it wasn't exactly right. I was all set to pay the outrageous prices at this store, but alas, they didn't have anything close to what I wanted. Come on, who doesn't stock white rub-on letters? I can think of at least three brands/fonts that would work for me. They had only one brand in stock and it wasn't the right color. Since I had some time, I wandered around the store and was pleasantly surprised that the store wasn't as outrageously priced as I thought. Some things were a dollar more than other places, but then some things were a dollar or two less than other places. This is one reason I like shopping online. Most online scrapbook stores charge MSRP or a little less. Brick and Mortar stores sometimes charge more than MSRP. I did end up buying one small item, so they got $4.30 out of me. Now I have to decide if I should go to another LSS or just use what I have.

My scrapping weekend

I recently got back from a 4-day crop with my scrapping buddies. I got way more done than I normally do. I attribute that to several factors. One, I planned better and packed more efficiently. Two, I did mostly one photo layouts with very little journaling. Soooo much easier and faster. Three, I was (am) feeling a lot better about my pages. It is inevitable that I compare my pages to everyone else's, but I finally think that my pages can hold their own. I used a lot more embellishments than I normally do, but still, it was a lot less than what most people use.

Another thing I was happy about was that I was able to share my supplies with everyone there. Since I flew to this crop, I wasn't able to bring everything I own, though I did bring a lot, lol. Usually, it is ribbon I share, but this time, it was flowers. I'm always borrowing paper and stuff from everyone else, so sometimes I feel guilty. I know everyone is happy to share, but still....

We made a couple of shopping trips, one to a new store and one to the usual place. The new store, oh my! Great selection, good prices. The store looked very modern/industrial/art store-like, which I liked. The bad part was it was about half an hour from the B&B (did I mention we were staying at a B&B?), too far to make multiple trips (like any of us needed to buy more).

There is one downside to getting lots of pages done. I need to figure out how to organize my pages. Should I file them chronologically? By subject? Themed albums? Some combination of these? What do you do? I need to buy some more pages too. Does anyone have a good supplier for K&Co pages? Right now, they are my favorite, but Michaels doesn't carry them anymore. They are a little expensive so it was great when I could use my 40% off coupon on them.

Happy Independence Day!

Truly, I feel fortunate to live here in America. We're not a perfect country, but we have the power to change, to improve, to speak our minds. I've done some traveling overseas and really, we do have it better here.

As we were driving around today, I noticed a dearth of flags. There were only two homes with flags in the neighborhood. Both families are immigrants. What does that say about the rest of us? Are we taking today for granted? Are we too busy shopping or BBQing?

I remember my dad would put up our flag every holiday. I loved helping him take down the flag at the end of the day. I used to know the proper way to fold a flag, but unfortunately, I don't remember anymore.

Thank you America!

Packing for a crop

You'd think that since I usually crop away from home, and have flown to crops several times, I'd have the packing down to a science. Science experiment is more like it. I have one huge crop tote, but I can't fill it full of paper and metal embellishments because it will be too heavy. My other suitcases are too big or too small or soft-sided or too heavy or something else doesn't quite fit my needs. Of course, I'm too cheap to buy a new suitcase (have you priced suitcases recently?).

What I really need to do is get rid of stuff so I don't feel the need to bring everything, just in case. You know, because I might need something in the six boxes of ribbon, the two boxes of flowers (it was just one a few weeks ago and should be three now), the two cases of brads and eyelets and if I left any of that home, heaven forbid I'm forced to improvise or borrow. On the plus side, I'm not bringing my stamps (well, just two, no three, no four if I can find the set I'm looking for, lol).

Thus far, I have the above mentioned tote filled, a "small" carry on almost filled, and a largish suitcase half filled with clothes and a lamp (yes, I need the lamp and until Ott comes out with the lamp they announced in January, this lamp will have to to). The rest of the suitcase will be filled with more scrap stuff. I'm not looking forward to unpacking when I get home.

How much do you spend on a meal?

I just got back from the grocery store and spent a whopping $25 (big mistake shopping today since everyone is shopping for 4th of July). I say "whopping" because that's for one meal (including sides). Granted, I'm making more than usual because I want to take some over to my SIL's so she doesn't have to cook tomorrow, plus we'll have leftovers for us. But still. It was only two small bags of groceries. On the other hand, I spent $25 yesterday, just on dinner and dessert for myself for Girls Night Out. Let's say I get six meals out of this. That's about $4/meal. I guess that's not too bad, though I like to keep meals under $2.50 each when cooking at home.

Update on yesterday's post

I managed to fill two grocery bags with craft stuff in addition to the previously mentioned box. All went to the local Boys and Girls Club. I also filled another grocery bag with miscellaneous paper to be tossed. Of course, the house doesn't look any neater, sigh.

Why can't I toss things?

I been working at it for a couple hours and all I've managed to purge is one (small) box of scrapbook stuff. It is about the size of an LM order/priority mail box so that says a lot about how little I can part with. That's a couple hundred sheets of patterned paper, bunch of yarn from my fiber obession days, and a few miscellaneous items I'm RAKing on LM. Must be pretty crappy stuff since no one has taken them off my hands, lol. Back to work. Hopefully, I'll have more to donate and more to RAK soon.