Happy New Year! We rang in the new year last night with dear-dear friends over on Osage Acres. Those people continually inspire me. :) I was able to get ahold of the waste people (wow, that sounds harsh, heh) yesterday and they will be bringing us a recycle bin tomorrow when they come to collect the regular trash. I'm excited about that.

I'm up early this morning (actually awoke at 8-ish), and am planning to get some schoolwork done and then get busy cleaning the house. I'd love to follow MJM's example of clearing out the clutter. The odd thing is, I don't know that there will be that much to throw away here. I think, here, we have more of a problem of things just not being put away where they should. That, and sometimes there's just not enough room for things, like in the tupperware cabinet, for example. I did go through that cabinet the other day and found a couple of items I'm going to trash, and a couple of items I'll add to the giveaway bag that really needs to come out of our bathtub and taken to the bin near WalMart. Once that's done, I can clean out the bathtub and maybe take a bath in it again. :) (don't gross out...we use a separate shower on a daily basis, heh.) Speaking of the shower, that's been an exercise in cleaning experiments, too. The shower is one of those one-piece jobs that's made out of some sort of plastic or vinyl, that seems to soak up soap scum and dirt, and no matter how hard you scrub it, the discoloration never seems to come off. I've tried nearly everything. So the other day when I was shopping, I picked up some of that Easy-Off BAM cleaner and tried it on the shower yesterday. It made a visible difference, but it's still not as squeaky-clean as I want it to be. I think I'll take my shower today armed with more scrubbies and a brush or something to see if I can get the discoloration out of the textured bottom of the shower. Cross your fingers for me that the fumes don't overpower me...I'd hate for Chris to find me passed out naked in a running shower wearing only a pair of yellow gloves. ;)

*thinks*

I'm hoping Chris will decide to take down the Christmas items today. He's thinking either today or this coming weekend. I just got word that Brenna's got another soccer game on Saturday (already??), so there blows a chunk of the weekend as it stands now. It'd be good if we could clear out the extra decorations so I can have room to sort the OMGSQUEE metric ton of fabric bestowed on me from Osage. I know it'll involve more spending, but I will need to pick up some tubs for storing it once it's all sorted into like types of fabrics. Chris was funny in the car last night...he'd said I could have oh, 4-5 yards of fabric, tops. We came home with 4 tubs of fabric instead. I don't think he had a clue how much fabric it takes to even make a single skirt. Once I filled him in on the (average of) 6 yards of fabric per skirt, and if Brenna and I each wear 2 skirts at a time, that equates to 24 yards of fabric each year (assuming I make one new set of skirts each year)...he realized that yes, maybe we WILL actually use all of this. I was also thinking about our house...since the kids and I moved in a few years ago, we've slowly been adding things to the walls, but haven't done much of anything about the master bedroom. It's got tall ceilings, so there are these huge open walls. I often feel like we sleep in a big white cave. I'm hoping that I can make some pillows with the smaller bits of fabric to put on the bed, and that maybe we can use some of the fabric for draping, too. (not drapes, but draping over the edge of things, or something like that, to make it look more cozy.) A million thanks once again for the huge gift of all of that. ((*love!*))

I took a brave step this morning, and wrote my morning weight on the calendar that hangs on the side of the fridge. *sigh* It's depressing me. I MUST start writing down what I eat again, and planning out the days so that I don't go overboard. I've not been to weigh in at the center in about 6 weeks, and I know I'm out of weight-loss weeks, but I should still be able to go in there and ask them to teach me how to maintain. I have the head knowledge of what I need to do to lose the weight...just need to stick to my guns and DO it. What I don't know how to do is how to keep it off once it's all gone. Maybe they will teach me how to do that and then I'll stop going there and will just stick to plan on my own. If I keep writing my weight down each day in a place that ANYONE can see it (*cringes*), then maybe that'll be enough accountabililty for me to lay off the cookies and chips.

Ahh, okay, I guess I better get cracking on that schoolwork. Happy New Year, all!