BabyStep 31: I'm FLYing!

I did it, I did it, I did it! Yeah, I did it! Sorry, that stupid Dora song always gets stuck in my head.  Speaking of my head, it is absolutely pounding so this is gonna be really short.  I just felt the need to post up the last BabyStep which is basically FlyLady's way of telling us that even though we have completed the BabySteps this is not the end.  Now is the time to start picking up the other bits of the system (most of which I have been dabbling with for awhile) and keep on FLYing.

As a side note- even though I'm done with the BabySteps I am going to continue writing about my experience with FlyLady here on this blog.  I sincerely apologize for this lame and wit-less post,  and for the fact I have not been posting as much as I'd like lately.  Life has kept me busy and I am so not kidding about my head killing me.  It's hard to see straight right now.  I will not be able to post again until Tuesday at the earliest, so until then adios!

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BabyStep 30: Seeing Into The Future

Well, I just did what FlyLady said to do for this BabyStep, and checked my calendar for next month's events.  Not much to report here- no birthdays that warrant the buying of a card or gift (I am going to eat my words if there is and it just isn't on my calendar and that person reads this, so I hope I'm right!), no major events involving pre-planning, nor is there much of...anything.  Oh, I do have some library books due, and I do put those on my calendar so I make sure to return/renew them on time, but that's pretty much it.

FlyLady also mentions in this step to check out her Basic Weekly Plan and give it a few minutes of thought.  I did this a while back and have slowly begun to implement into my life, here is what I have so far:

Monday is the day we need to take the trash cans to the curb, Wednesday is FlyLady's assigned day to do those crap jobs we put off doing.  Friday is the day I go fill up and clean out my car, and I have moved my Weekly Pampering session of painting my toes to Saturday since I started leaving for my parents' house right after work Sunday night.

Somewhere in there I really need to have an "Errands Day", but I'm still trying to figure that one out.  It would be OK to have my basic grocery shopping on the same day of the week, but there are certain places I have to go for that one special thing that is totally out of my way from any other place I shop.  Case and point- cat food.  I get my cats' food from a Mom and Pop pet store near where I work, but to get there it's actually a couple miles past work in an area I never go otherwise.  When I'm low on cat food I have to plan ahead to make a special trip out there and this only occurs once every couple weeks.  The perfectionist in me wishes I could work it out so all my errands were done on one day and were all in close proximity to one another so I could get them all done at once- bam bam bam!  But, that's not gonna happen. Boo.

In other news:  The Home Routines iPhone app I use as my Control Journal announced about a week ago that they had submitted a new version to the application-powers-that-be.  I'm very excited to see the new features, but it's still awating approval!  I've been checking for the update several times a day every day, but still nothing.  It's driving me nuts!

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FLYing Into The Past

Take a good look at this house.  14 rooms available for viewing, including hallways and staircases.  Tramped through by hundreds of visitors per week.  Spiders who seem to re-web the place overnight.  Flies.  Mice.  1 staff member present for 6 hours per day, 5 days a week who has to somehow keep it clean in their "free time" between aforementioned  visitors, of both human and critterly nature.  Oy.  Double oy. 

This house is just one of the 10 buildings I am responsible for creating make-shift Control Journals for in the historical village where I work.  My boss has dubbed me the "Beautification Police" for the village side, and a friend of mine for the crafts side of the museum.  We've decided we want badges and tiaras as our uniform.  Management has yet to comply.

I began with the house I described because it is the largest in the village and I knew it would also be the hardest to figure out a way for one staff member to handle all the cleaning involved in the little time available.  I think I did an OK job, though it may have to be tweaked once the system is up and running to work out any kinks.  One thing I'm almost sure of- the young gentleman who will become the full-time interpreter in this house come late August is going to hate me, no matter how easy and streamlined I try to make this for him.  It is such a large house he will have to do more a day than anyone else just to keep up with it all on a regular basis. 

My house is the second largest in the village, with 13 areas needing to be cleaned.  A few of the buildings do not have full-time staff in them, so I have taken it upon myself to get in there once in a while to keep down the spiders and sweep the floors.  I started implementing a FlyLady-esque system to help me maintain the place awhile back and so far it's been working out pretty well.  However, on days like today where the heat index reached near 100 degrees it is rather easy to let my chores fall by the wayside...allowing the spiders to move right back in. 

All this to explain why I haven't finished off my BabySteps like I said I would- I'm busy trying to type these Control Journals up so my fellow historical interpreters can FLY!

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FlyLady Fortune

Just thought I'd pop in and let y'all know I'm still here after a few days with no blogging. I went home to my parents' house as per usual on my days off, but left right after work on Sunday this time instead of waiting until Monday afternoon.  I wish I could say it was an uneventful trip but I can't.  My mother was admitted into the hospital for the third time in recent months for another cancer related complication.  This time it seems there may be another major surgery to correct what is wrong.  Ugh.

When I arrived home tonight I got right into gear unpacking my belongings and going about my before bed routine so I can be all set to go tomorrow morning for work.  My roommate had gotten himself some Chinese food for dinner and offered me one of his fortune cookies.  I cracked it open and was surprised at what it said:

Seems pretty fitting for someone who writes a blog about FlyLady, doesn't it?

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BabyStep 29: Pampering With Polish

I'm in the home stretch with the BabySteps!  Today I took a look at BabyStep 29, which is to set some time to enjoy FlyLady's Weekly Pamper Mission.  Every week there is a new mission posted on the Home page and they can include anything from taking time to give yourself a facial, to the current mission of decluttering your music collection down to music that you really love and taking the time to listen to it.

I don't know how much I will do the actual weekly missions they throw out there, as I am not what I consider "high maintenance" when it comes to my beauty routine.  I pretty much cover the basics on a daily basis when I take off my makeup at night and brush my teeth.  In the morning I put my makeup back on, I color my hair every few weeks when the greys start to create a skunk-stripe along my part (yes, I am 27 and am somewhere around 40% grey.  It sucks.), and throw in shaving and plucking my eyebrows a couple times a week for good measure. 

Other than that I don't really have personal care activities that need doing, nor do I want to add any.  Sure, giving myself a facial sounds nice, but I never found they really did me much good nor did I enjoy doing it.  In fact, it was a hassle and felt more like work than pampering.  Over the years I have tried several things that many consider "pampering" that I also felt were more work than they were worth, and cost more money than I cared to spend.  Over the past year or so you could say that I have actually "decluttered" my pampering rituals and have narrowed it down to the above mentioned routines.

The point of all this is, while some of FlyLady's Weekly Pamper Missions may sound good and worth trying, overall I will be sticking with one pampering activity that truly makes me feel good:  painting my toes red.  I can't paint my fingernails due to my job (sadly, nail polish as we know it wasn't around until the 1920's after the advent of car paint, so it would be rather out of place with my 1860's look), so I just do my toes.  And I love red toes. 

(Not my toes, thank you Google Image search!)

No one really even sees them but me and my roommate (I don't even own a pair of sandals or flip-flops anymore), but when I am at home and barefoot I love looking down and seeing my vintage-looking red toes.  It makes me happy.  So- Sunday is now my designated toe-polishin' day.  Mmmm.  I wish it was Sunday...

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BabyStep 28: Green Tea and Gummies

BabyStep 28- I'm almost done!  Of course, when it comes to sticking with Flylady one is never done, but it will feel good to say I completed all the BabySteps. Today was the instruction that we need to remind ourselves to treat our bodies right by eating good food, drinking water and getting our rest.

#1- Eat Good Food.  Well, if you read my last post we all know that I have issues with this.  Need to work on that one.

#2- Drink Your Water.  This is a very big issue for me.  I am a bit of a pop/soda-aholic.  As in, I can single handedly drink a 24 can case of Pepsi or Coke in about 3 days.  That's BAD.  Really, really, REALLY bad.  Not only is it loaded with sugar, empty calories, caffeine, blah blah blah, but it also dehydrates you, causes osteoporosis, makes you bloated, rots your teeth, yada yada yada.  I have gone through spurts where I work on replacing the majority of this delicious elixir devil's drink with water, but I have never been able to stick with it long.  It's mostly the mental/physical addictions to the caffeine.  I feel like I NEED to have it.  If I don't, I'm convinced I will drop dead due to lack of my power source. If I don't have it, I really do get headaches from the caffeine withdrawal.  Plus, I really don't like plain water.  It's boring.  It's tasteless.  It's rather unappealing.  However when I DO drink it, I notice that I loose about 5 pounds in a week from flushing out my water weight, and I become more (TMI ALERT!) regular.  It is only after I am off of the pop that I can see the damage it was doing and didn't even know it. 

Recently I was introduced to something that has make cutting back on the pop bearable: Arizona Green Tea and Pomegranate mix.

First things first- I hate tea of any kind, and just the thought of a pomegranate was unappealing.  But I did a taste test without being told what this stuff was, and I thought it was juice or Kool-Aid, not tea.  It's THAT good.  Yes I realize it still has caffeine, but at 7.5 mg per serving, it's significantly less than the 35-55 mg per serving the average pop contains.  This is good because I am getting enough caffeine to ward off my mental addiction without the physical overload I was ingesting with the pop.  Also, this drink is calorie free, having been sweetened with sucralose, aka Splenda.  I am not receiving  a bunch of empty calories as I was with pop, and the sweetener is not aspartame, aka Nutra Sweet/Equal.  That crap gives me a headache like nobody's business.  Oh yeah, in the few weeks I've been drinking this stuff (with about a 50/50 ratio along with my pop), I have lost 5-8 pounds.  I'm sure most of this has been water weight from the Pepsi-bloat, but still.  Coincidence?  I think not.

So, although it's not water, I do feel justified in using this green tea awesomeness to combat my Coke-addiction (or Pepsi, depending on the day).  It's pretty cheap too- I buy it at Walgreens for around $3.75 a "can", which contains enough to make 3 gallons.  It ends up being a fraction of what my pop costs. 

#3-Get Your Rest.  I pretty much covered this back in the post where I set my bedtime, and I can report back that I am on average getting around 7.5 hours of sleep a night now. 

To wrap up and round out this "your body is a temple"-esque post, I would like to share one of my new loves:  Gummi Vitamins. I suck so bad at taking a multi-vitamin on a regular basis, but when I saw that they now make some in the form of gummi snacks I wanted to try them.  I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, and it just so happens they carry their own brand of these tasty little treats.

I found them grouped in with the other medications for $3.99 a bottle, which contains 60 gummies.  For an adult dosage of two gummies/day, this will last me a month.  Not too shabby, and OMG are they good!  I look forward to taking them every morning and get bummed that I'm only allowed two.  In fact, I am going to bed now so my unconscious state will make the time pass faster until I can take my next two.  Good night!

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BabyStep 27: Table For One

Oy.  Long day at work.  But I got to have some fun pretending my work house was for sale, and my character has a new love interest, so that's always a plus! ;)  Anyway, the Baby Step I was assigned today was to start making a point of thinking about what I will be having for dinner before 6:00 rolls around and add this as a step in my Control Journal.  Wah. 

I used to do this all the time- I had a menu planning day and a grocery shopping day, and even went so far as to work left overs into the whole equation to stretch my budget.  That was back when I was living with my then-boyfriend.  Now that I am with my roommate I have made the attempt to get back in this habit, but it's pretty rare when he and I share a meal.  He and I have more of a "you eat what you want, I'll eat what I want" system, with a mutual meal thrown in here and there.  Sometimes this happens when he makes something and is able to eat all but a tiny portion and gives the rest to me, and sometimes I will make a stew or the like in the crock pot and share it with him.

Menu planning and cooking for one person is kind of hard, especially when that someone eats like a bird, i.e. me.  I am hardly what you would call a foodie.  I like my food simple, especially when I am making it myself.  The fewer ingredients the better.  I also fill up quickly (a Happy Meal is about the maximum amount of food  I can eat in one sitting), so even if I make something easy like Hamburger Helper it ends up being enough for 5 meals for me.  I simply cannot eat the same thing that many times in a row before getting sick of it, so some of it ends up going to waste.  Sigh.

Right now I live off of the food I make at work, Ramen Noodles, cereal and Miracle Whip sandwiches.  That last one has two ingredients- Miracle Whip and bread.  I love it.  Sometimes I revert back to an old favorite of mine, A-1 sandwiches.  Double yum.  I am hardly what you would call a healthy eater, can you tell?

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Toilet Jewelry

Every month FlyLady chooses a habit for us to focus working on.  This month she chose "Swish and Swipe", the act of spending a couple minutes every morning swishing the toilet brush  in the toilet, and swiping away any muck around the sink area.  For this FlyLady states she uses things like old shampoo (soap is soap as far and she is concerned) for the swish, and glass cleaner and paper towels for the swipe.

I started doing this on a regular basis a few weeks ago as it was one of my more recent BabySteps, and so far it's been pretty painless.  I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to try out the new Scrubbing Bubbles Toilet Cleaning Gel as my "soap" during my Swish and Swipe.  I read some reviews (which were mixed), but decided to spend the $3/4 bucks at WalMart and try it out.

So far, not bad!  I bought the Citrus scent which isn't offensive, and after two weeks of use my toilet is still clean.  This product is not intended to keep your toilet clean all on it's own, but to extend the time in between regular cleanings.  The gel plus my daily Swish and Swipe seem to be doing the job, meaning I should never have to "really" clean my toilet again- yea! Sure, I could use whatever random soap product I have lying around, but this eliminates a step for me (always a bonus), and- I'm such a sucker for a gimmick.  At least this gimmick seems to work! Plus, it's pretty:

Yes, my toilet is so clean I felt comfortable showing you a picture of the gel, up close and personal.  It looks like a little jewel, doesn't it?  I read a review where a woman referred to it as her "toilet jewelry", and I am so stealing that term.  I just wish I could remember where I read the review so I could give her credit!  Oh, the gel does not turn the water blue; that is from one of those toilet tank tablets.  My roommate still wants to use them (despite the fact I find them ineffective at keeping the toilet clean), and I found no warnings saying I shouldn't use them along with the gel, so I gave in.  His reason for wanting to use the blue tablets:  He likes to make the water turn green.  You do the color math.  He'd kill me if he knew I told you that, but he's still camping, so ha ha!

My cat also appreciates the Swish and Swipe I do on the sink every morning, because nothing says love like a clean sink to sleep in on a hot July day:

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BabyStep 26: Jump In Where You Are

Much like my post from last Memorial Day, I also spent this holiday at home doing housework.  My roommate is away on his annual camping trip with his family and I decided not to go visit at my parents' this week.  Without Roomie here to feed my cats I would have had to just made it a day trip and I really just didn't feel up to it.

 

So- instead of grilling various meats and watching fireworks, I stayed home and did my FlyLady work as though it was any other day.  I slept in a little (a whole hour- whoo hoo!) before my cat Emily decided I'd had enough and stood on my chest demanding I get up and feed her.  I took my sweet time doing my morning routine (which on any normal day would be finished by 10AM but today drug out until Noon), and then set out to do a couple errands. 

 

My afternoon routine included some extra deep-cleaning that needed to be done.  The ceiling fan in the kitchen was just encrusted with thick dust that wouldn't budge with a regular dusting, so I had to get up on a stool to wipe it all off.  The glass shades that go around the light bulbs will be run though the dishwasher tonight.  Hopefully I will never have to do this again as long as I maintain it with my Weekly Home Blessing dusting.

 

I picked more mulberries from the tree outside the balcony; I'm doing this almost everyday because I can tell it's season is almost over and I want to freeze as many as I can before it stops giving for the year.  I have been using them in pies at work and they are quite yummy!

 

Now my day is almost over, but that's OK! I didn't have to work today because of the holiday, and my usual days off this time of year are Monday and Tuesday, so for me this is a long weekend!  That means that while the rest of you sucka's are taking part of the daily grind tomorrow, I'll be kicking back and doing nothing!  OK, that's a lie.  I'll be re-organizing my kitchen cabinets.

 

Today's BabyStep was pretty easy; I was to take note of the bottom of any email FlyLady has sent out.  On every single one she reminds us that we are not behind and to jump right in wherever they are.  Got it.  No witty commentary or deep contemplative thoughts on this one.

 

Oh yeah- Happy 4th of July!

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BabyStep 25: It Ain't Gonna Happen Overnight

OK, enough fartin' around. I've been flying for over a month and I still haven't finished the BabySteps. I haven't fallen off the wagon, but life gets in the way, you know?  It's time to knock the last of these puppies out.

Today's BabyStep is to learn how FlyLady's routines developed.  She wrote a personal testimonial about how this was done, one step at a time.  The gist of it was this:  It didn't happen overnight.  I need to remember this.  I still have days where I just feel too tired or lazy to do every single thing in one of my routines, and then I beat myself up the next morning and feel like a failure. 

The funny thing is, none of these things are that important.  If they aren't done the world will not come to end.  I need to recognize that I have done so much already and made several life-style changes in such a short amount of time, and anything I do in my day is benefiting me, even if it all isn't completed by the end of the night.  Not doing one thing does not erase all the other good things I did that day.

Sorry for the short (and not well thought out post), but it's time for bed.  So tired.  It's that funny life thing getting in the way again.

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