Am I back? Yes, I think I am back.

I don't know where to start. My life for the past year has been hectic, to say the least.

We are moved in to our new home. We will have candles to light on the dining room table because I want the kids to not be afraid of them and my husband will show the kids how to be safe with a gas grill which also terrifies me due to being at a party where there was a problem with one 15 years ago. Each time we go over safety. Do we have a stable table? (I always say, "Stable and table rhyme! Cool, huh?") Is there clutter around? Is there anything above the candle than can catch fire?

My house is a bit bigger and the mortgage is larger than the old one, but we are managing. The kitchen is huge-- on the kitchen level it is only the kitchen, dining room and living room. There are four levels where we are more spread out. Of course only a few days being here, I decided that I needed a second refrigerator and a second dishwasher! My husband was shocked, but what can one do? We have a huge family. He asked how I could say that when I did so well with the postage stamp kitchen we had and I could only laugh. I complained and whined every time I made dinner in that kitchen! It is nice to not be eating off paper plates any more-- we didn't have a dishwasher and for our size family, the time to wash by hand wasn't worth saving the environment most of the time. (I got good at making sandwiches!)

My husband was gone for a week and I felt lonely in spite of all the kids. I went to the pound to look for a friends' cat and walked out with a chow chow. She and our dawg who was in the fire with us barely get along. He urinated on the stairs after he tried to turn her into dinner, but now they are OK together. The other day they were curled up asleep and the chow woke up and was silent and then Wag woke up and growled at her and she barked and he had a mouthfull of hair that he was gagging up and she sauntered away.. He likes to lie places and growl whenever she tries to go past him, something that he did in the old house with the cat.

The chow needs her hair combed every day and I often wonder what I was thinking when I got her, but it is nice to sit and comb her. She is low key except for when we have our walking time and she wants to run. There is a dog who lives up the road from us and she has never met it, but when she goes past his house, she puts her paws on "his" lawn and he goes crazy at the window. When he comes here, he does the same thing past our place! Her former owner was leaving state and took her to the pound. I had no idea what a chow chow was like, and what I thought was odd is normal. They are truly unique animals; when the lady at the pound said that Pouf liked me, I had no idea how she could tell because she ignored me. Apparently if she didn't like me she would have growled and barked at me. Pouf was no weak dog who would love anyone, and she let people know if she didn't like them! My husband came home from his trip and was aghast by all her fur and thought she was bigger than she is. She looks like a giant cloud that looks like a lion! She is older, but if I were to say my dog breed, I would have to say I am a chow chow person. This being said, I will probably always adopt pound rescues and when I am ready for a new dog, the right one will be there at the animal shelter waiting for me.

My windows in this house are great! Through the dining room window-- there is an arch on top, you can see the mountains through the arched window. We live in a neighborhood in Mat-Su that looks like Anchorage and I always think I will pull out on Diamond when we get out, but we are, alas, in the middle of Wasilla!

Since the fire I am an organizational freak. About three months before the old house burned down, I started getting rid of junk. I had lots of it. Much had to be secretly tossed because the kids and my husband hated to see me throw things out. Most of the clutter was clothes that I had no idea how they got there. (What had been happening was probably that well-meaning people, perhaps neighbors and friends, dropped bags of stuff off in the middle of the night and after I got mad a few times, I think the kids took them in and put them in the laundry area to be washed. I have had a few friends start giving us stuff and I just take it to the thrift store rather than get mad or insulted.) This house is getting organized.

The kids have problems with me now. I hold the line and expect them to fold towels a certain way, and stairs have to be vacuumed, including the "crease" of the stairs where the next stair goes up. I have been told that I have gotten demanding and mean, as I also expect the older kids to put away their laundry! I check it every day and until they organize it reasonably well, I will check every day. While cleaning the rental home, I found almost new stuff under dressers and behind beds. We spend money on these things! Yes, I like them to be clean and organized and be able to know where their stuff is!

So life is happening again. I am worn out, but I feel like I am settling.

Red Ambition: Cleaning Cloud's Bedroom

My blog pal Rick Rockhill sent me a note and said I was ambitious. I laughed and thought, "Compeer, Hospice and prison ministries got me out of the house. Cleaning the girls' room? Now that would be ambitious."

Yesterday I cleaned the room that my daughters sleep in. Cloud was gone for the night with some friends and I didn't have to fight her on what got tossed, I did not take before and after pics because the before would embarrass me. Peaches had moved a small night stand next to the door saying that it made for more room. All it did was keep me from going in. A dresser had been put in front of the closet and made getting into it impossible. Clothes were under the bed. I washed and vacuumed and cleaned. Afterward, all was cleaned and put away or being washed and Calamity Jane came in and did a cartwheel and danced in the new space. It had been six months since I'd actually been able to walk in their room, and Calamity Jane was very happy that she had her own dresser drawers and space in the closet again.

I also cleaned the main bathroom.

One of my best friends is Jewish and is getting ready for Pesach so she is deep cleaning and I am in this with her-- she is getting rid of flour, but I am just getting rid of everything else. It's nice. Today I am getting my linen closet clean and starting on getting the winter clothes out of my room and making way for spring.

Cleansing my Soul

I have not done a deep cleaning of my house in at least six years and let me tell you, I am only in my bedroom, but whooo-weeee. This is hard work. I have to have my husband gone while I do this which he is and I am in what would be a manic mode were I manic. I am dead tired and not very done at all. I should have taken before and after pics, but it would be hard to explain.

I didn't have stuff packed away. I've had stuff compacted away. A couple of days ago I bought an extra couple of plastic drawers on wheels and plastic cabinets. They are not part of my dream house, but they are giving me space to put things. Darrin is sweet and said that we are just in a transition to something better. My kids have carved their names into some of my other furniture or just broken it. This are all plastic, they wash.

I am silly. I have had a fear that when I got done organizing my house that I would die. I think it's figurative because parts of me die as i clean, like when I get rid of a dress or something frilly that I hope to never be able to fit in to again because it's just too small, or when I see things that just aren't me now like they were when I was 25. I'm moving things around, throwing stuff out. Much of it is in great shape, but if I set it aside, someone will say it is "good stuff" and not want me to toss it!

Darrin couldn't do this because to him all of my art supplies are the same. I can't toss them out! One never knows when I will go back to that artistic genre! It literally takes me all night. Had Darrin told me to do this, I'd have told him to f-off. No, it's not nice to tell someone that, especially one's husband who is so sweet, but it's a huge commitment to doing and you simply have to be ready.

If my house were personified, it would be an overweight person (this has nothing to do with over weight people!) with nice clothes that didn't match and gobs of bling. Clean, but not pretty!

I feel like I am getting rid of emotional baggage as I clean, too. I think cleaning liek this is good for me, but I've not had space or the energy until now.

Stuff is coming out and getting put back places, then something else moves and I put it some place else. It's exhausting.