December 27, 2008 – Write From Karen

I am not a clean freak, but I have a limit to how much clutter and crap I’ll accept lying around before I’ve had enough.

I’ve had enough.

I’m cranky. I’m on edge. And I’m feeling very impatient largely due to my chaotic surroundings. I have stuff jammed into each corner of my house. Our Christmas decorations are still up. There are clothes and pillows and shoes all over the place. There are bags of used, crumpled gift wrapping I need to throw away. Actually, there are bags of trash I need to throw away along with boxes to tear down and throw away. Our refrigerator is overflowing with food, I have a tin (half) full of fudge that I MUST finish off today so I can stop thinking about eating it and then feeling guilty about eating it.

In short? My house is in need of some TLC but I can’t really get to it right now because my nephews are still here and cleaning up now would mean I would have to clean up again after they left and it makes me REALLY cranky when I have to do something twice.

So, I’ll grit my teeth and take it on the chin until I have a chance to clean up.

It’s no one’s fault my house looks like this – it always looks like this after the holidays. And I guess I’m just not used to it being so … well, cluttered for lack of a better term.

I feel disoriented when my house is out of control like this. Which is really confusing to admit because trust me when I say, I am not a clean freak. I leave that title to my husband.

But this time of year? I get a bit crazy about the cleaning and making sure everything is put back into place, which is hard because now we have new stuff – stuff that I’m not SURE where to put. So, it sits there until I can’t take it anymore and then I stuff it into a corner and forget about it until summer time when my husband is sick of looking at it and forces me to FIND places for the new stuff.

It’s not that we have too much stuff, it’s that I don’t know where to put the new stuff that we have. It’s like I have a brain fart or something when it comes to organization – I just sort of freeze and stare at it like it’s an alien being or something – thank God my husband does the organizing around here or I’d be one of those odd people you hear about on the news who has all sorts of crap piled up to their ceiling but their closets are empty.

And I’ve been a workout fiend since Christmas. I can’t stop moving because if I stop moving, then all the gooey, delicious sweets I’ve been shoving into my mouth will catch up to me and it’ll be that much harder to work off when I get serious about doing so.

So I eat fudge, cookies and candy and then promptly get on the treadmill and walk for 90 minutes. Perhaps I should just kill two birds with one stone and eat WHILE I’m walking on the treadmill.

I’m usually so careful about what sorts of junk food I eat, how much I eat and WHEN I eat it. For example, if I had some junk food one day, then I’ll take a break from junk food and not eat any of it for a few days before the next binge. And in that time period, I’ll work out combining Turbo Jam with the treadmill.

This sounds neurotic, I realize, but it works for me.

But then the holidays come around and all of the delicious gooey junk food stares me in the face and overpowers my senses so rapidly that before I know it, I’ve left tread marks on the backs of small children just so I can get to the crap that much faster.

The fantastic, melt-in-your-mouth, delicious, fattening, I’ve died and gone to heaven crap.

You never knew the holidays messed me up so badly, did you. 😀

So *taking a deep breath* I’m feeling a bit calmer now and forcing myself to relax and shrug this impatience off. We have already made plans to take decorations down and put the house back into order tomorrow after Bible study (well, the guys don’t know we’re doing that yet, but suffice it to say, it WILL happen), so I just need to chill out and enjoy the chaos for a few more hours because in the grand scheme of things?

Holidays are messy, no matter how you look at them. *smile*

And …

And I CAN NOT write any more until I eat more fudge.

I need help!

And a napkin.

Make that two napkins. *blush*

I’m trying to systematically move all of the posts worth saving from my old blogs to this blog – this could take a while, then again, maybe not. *grin* So please, bear with me as I post some old stuff.

Originally published January 25, 2006.

I randomly ran across the photo on the left (sorry, I didn’t keep the link) and it reminded me of a piece Mushroom King brought home from art class. They look similar, don’t you think? I thought MK did a pretty good job capturing the 3D look. I could never do this as a child (heck I still can’t do it) so I was dutifully impressed. (If you look at MK’s drawing long enough, your eyes cross. Cooool 🙂 )

And speaking of art; for those Oprah fans out there this is probably old news, but I stumbled onto child prodigy Akaine Kramarik’s website and was awe-struck at this 11/12 year old girl’s talent. Below is a drawing she did AT THE AGE OF 4.

Did you read that? Four people. I almost don’t believe it. It doesn’t seem like a four-year-old would have the motor skills necessary to draw something like this. But this is nothing, if you want to see some truly amazing work, visit her site and take a gander.