End Of Week Wrap-Up and Surprise Comments!

No BabyStep tonight (I know, you were sooo looking forward to it.  I'm sorry.), but I did want to do a quick end of week wrap-up before I head over to my parents' house tomorrow morning.  It's not for anything fun, like Memorial Day festivities.  No, my car lease is ending next week so I have to go with my Dad to get that process started and figure out what I am going to do about a car come June 9th.  It's going to be a long day/weekend of decisions, number crunching and paperwork.  Can't you just feel the joy oozing from my pores? (That was my attempt at sarcasm, by the way.)

Wrap-up Topic #1:  The Battle Against the Ants has ended (I hope), and I won!  Thanks to those who left comments with suggestions on how to get rid of them, and although it wasn't actually one of your suggestions that did the job, one of them did lead me to something that worked. 

This morning I was reading the suggestions and decided to start  with sweet-smelling dish soap set out near the spot the ants were coming into the house.  Apparently after a few days the ants are supposed to be attracted to the smell and will climb in the soap, only to drown in the grease-fighting goodness.  Interesting.  My roommate has some pink-grapefruit liquid dish soap sitting by the sink, so I set a saucer of that out on the balcony.  Not one to just take advice and run with it, my Google-holic self started searching the Internet for others who have gone this route to see what success they had with it.  While getting blissfully lost in Internet-land, I found myself on a website that had several ant repelling/killing methods, including the soap.  As I scrolled down the page another method caught my eye: plain 'ol black pepper.  Hmmmmm.  Supposedly putting a line of this along the doorway would repel the ants.  I had this too!  Two ant-killing/repelling strategies must be better than one!  I grabbed the pepper and poured some in front of the door, balcony side.

Now, for the last few days I have come home to find ants all over the apartment and my cats going ape-*hit trying to chase them down.  Today I walked in and found:  nothing.  Not a single ant.  I looked out on the balcony and couldn't see any there either.  So far so good!  I checked the soap-dish and there weren't any downing victims there, so I have a good feeling it was the black pepper that did the trick.  I know I'm a little weird, but I actually feel kind of bad the soap-trick didn't have a chance to work! So, thank you to whoever suggested it, but I'm sorry I didn't set up my experiment in a professional manner to find out if it worked or not!  Moving on...

Wrap-up Topic #2:  I had an interesting and exciting commenter today!  Apparently NikkiStarr, producer of FlyLady's radio show reads my blog!  My blog!  She left me a message on an older post, and here's what she had to say:

"I live 2 doors down from The FlyLady, and I promise, she is far from perfect and she openly admits it. It's part of the reason I listen to her advice. I can't take advice from someone who is perfect because I'll never be. I also have the privilege of producing her radio show. She is the kindest person I have ever met in real life. She has never called herself a guru, and her only mission is to help others. If tough love is needed she does provide it, but always in a very kind way. She's never been angry at anyone on the air. She doesn't tolerate whining and she NEVER whines herself. Also, the What Part of Baby Steps don't you get tweet was a serious question as we're always striving to make sure we communicate correctly. We should have included a ? at the end. We often post the No Whining picture if we've received a lot of whining posts or emails. Just a reminder that you can do anything for 15 minutes. Most of the time I whine longer than it takes me to just do what I'm whining about. That might just be me though. I struggle to embrace the "Do it now" principle. Thankfully, there is no perfect in this system.

I have been enjoying your blog and wish you the best on this journey. I can't wait for you to have your own home! No matter how these baby steps turn out that will be the best! I hope it happens soon. I'll keep reading and hoping it does! <3"

My first thought was "Someone who actually knows FlyLady reads my blog! Holy crap!"

My second thought was "Someone who actually knows FlyLady reads my blog... Holy. Crap..."  

I mean, this woman speaks to FlyLady on a regular basis.  Has she mentioned my blog to her?  Does FlyLady know I exist?  Does she know about some of the more tongue-in-cheek things I have said on my whiny days?  Does FlyLady know I whine?  Oh God, FlyLady knows I'm a whiner and  that I write about her.  FlyLady is coming after me, I just know it!

I kid, I kid.  Seriously Nikki, it's great to know that you follow my blog and I appreciate your comments!  I hope you continue reading what I have to say and take the snarky (I love that word) things I say in the manner they were intended.  Which would be snarky, but lighthearted. ;)  Now please, tell FlyLady not to hurt me!

Gotta go finish my BBR, see ya on the flip-side!

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BabyStep 14: Pencil Me In (Plus Some Gossip!)

Guess what?

(What?)

It's that time again!

(What time would that be?)

The time where I tell you what BabyStep I am on and what it was all about!

(Oh, goody!)

Sorry, I just got a little sick of starting of my posts the same way all the time. Thought I'd stick my neck out and show my dorky side. (Not that it doesn't show most of the time as it is.) Anyway, yesterday's assignment was BabyStep 14: Read an essay that Kelly wrote. It was all about using calendars.

Personally, this is one thing that has actually stuck with me since my first go-round with FlyLady. I tried using a wall calendar so my then-boyfriend could see it too, and I got all fancy using different colored pens for different event types. (Red for bills, green for paydays, blue for personal events, you get the picture.) I loved the color coding, but not the hard-copy situation. I didn't like not being able to access my calendar from work, and hated having to use White-Out when plans changed. Since my then-boyfriend didn't seem to be checking the calendar anyway, I moved on to a digital format.

Enter Google Calendar. I loooooove Google Calendar. I spent so much time searching for and trying different online calendaring systems, I think I fried my brain. But, I found the one that works perfectly for me, so brain cells be darned!

The main reason I like it so much is the color-coding system it uses on the month view. I like to be able to glance at the month and just SEE what is going on. My fried-brain just took to it naturally. Now that I have the iPhone I can access my Google Calendar on the phone's browser, but the month view just isn't the same:

Ahhhh! No color coding!  No one glance planning!  With this, I have to click around on each day to see if there is an event or not.  I can switch over to the desktop view, which looks like this:

Ah.  Much better.  I can see what's going on.  Trouble is, the interface for adding/editing events in this desktop view doesn't fly so well on the phone.  There are third-party iPhone apps that have created calendars that look and behave like the Google Calendar, and can sync with it as well.  I'm just not paying $7.00+  for them when that is the exact amount I currently have in my checking account.  (I so wish I was kidding about that.)  I just wonder why Google can't do what these app guys have done- make the mobile-month view look like the desktop-month view, but have the interface more streamlined for the iPhone.  Puhleeese do this Google.  I live for the month view.

I will now apologize to those readers who are not iPhone users for my above ramblings.  It's my new toy.  I'm sure I'll bore of it eventually and stop talking about it.

OK, complete change of topic- who saw FlyLady getting a little, um, crabby with her FlyBabies today?  I was checking my Twitter updates and came across this:

What the...?  Anyone else take at least the tiniest bit of offence to her tone?  But wait, we're not done.  There was another Tweet with a link to her Facebook page that landed here:

Oooook.  I think FlyLady is just a bit grumpy today.  Actually, this is one of the things that turned me off to her before.  I used to listen to her Blogtalk radio show back when it was brand new, and there were times when I could just hear her wanting to strangle some of the callers.  If you know FlyLady, then you are aware of her no whining/don't be a martyr rule, but give me a break. Even though the program itself is free, I'm pretty sure she makes plenty of money from all those timers and scrubber things she sells.  Shouldn't she try a little harder to disguise her irritation?  First she tells us not to strive for perfection, but then gnashes her fangs at us in a very passive-aggressive way when we can't live up to her own personal level of perfection.  Sheeesh.

Am I the only one who wonders if one day she will just totally loose it and flip out, ending that which we know as the FlyLady Empire? 

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