Blank Slate

I completed one of my favorite rituals this morning. It's 2011, so time for the new calendar to go up, and the old calendar to be retired.

I am a planner. I need to know what I am doing, when I am doing it and how long I am doing it for. I can be spontaneous-just tell me when and I'll mark it on the calendar. I don't do impromptu. I live by the creed "if you're coming to see us: come in. If you're coming to see the house, call 2 weeks ahead and avoid the cupboards."

My husband is not a planner, so I have assumed the social convener role for the family. I keep track of my work deadlines, my husband's appointments, my evening activities and meetings, my mother's appointments that require transport and what days of the week my daughter is in school because she's still on a variable schedule. I keep track of birthdays, anniversaries and other important (sad) dates that might recall a quick phone call or e-mail to let people know we remember and we care.

Every New Year's Day, I'm faced with a blank calendar. All those lovely, blank squares full of potential-it's enough to make a planner giddy with anticipation. I have a system. First I transfer the birthdays and anniversaries from my calendar in my purse to the wall calendar, and then to the new purse calendar, although I usually buy a 2-years-at-a-time calendar for my purse so that I'm not scribbling future dates on a piece of paper.  Then I colour code the calendar with the days that my daughter is actually in school, shaking my head at the dubious wisdom that has her in school exactly 1 Friday for the month of January. Then I add my choir schedule, the PWAC monthly meetings, and any appointments that have already been established for the new year. It doesn't take long to fill up the squares.

I always take a few minutes to flip through the outgoing calendar.In the hustle-bustle of life, it's easy to forget the year that has just exited, although for my family, 2010 will not be one we forget. My husband and brother in law lost their mother, my daughter, her grandma, my father-in- law, his wife and I lost my funny, kind, loving mother-in-law who remembered dates better than any calendar, knew and understood what 2nd cousin once removed meant and marked every trip she had ever been on by the food that she ate. She vaguely remembered the landmarks, but the pecan pie..oh the pie. She's left a big hole in our lives that won't ever be filled. I lost 2 acquaintances to cancer, and I lost my brother of my heart to Hepatitis C. A quick glance through the calendar's entries for the funerals I sang at in 2010 shows we weren't the only family struggling with a not-so-festive Christmas.

2010 is gone. 2011 is new, shiny and like the blank spaces on my calendar, gleaming with potential and anticipation. I wish you blank days to enjoy as you wish. I wish you happy occasions, parties and gatherings to fill your days with. I wish you work opportunities, prosperity and good health.I wish you an abundance of good news, leisure time, and enough money, time, friends, health and happiness to fill your lives with love, positive feelings and energy, and prosperity.

I wish you enough of whatever it is that will enrich your life. Happy 2011.

Confessions of a Clutter Junkie

Every parent has moments when they feel like the worse parent on earth. Some of these moments are monumental, like the time my husband sat helpless a foot from our daughter as the tricycle she was riding tipped and broke her leg in two places before he had a chance to react. In the vast scheme of things that I will encounter as a parent, my recent plummet into crappy mother regions was not on par with the first broken heart, but it still left me feeling inadequate and useless. You see, I lost my daughter's report card for swimming, and had to send her back to a new session without her report card to prove that she'd graduated from Bubblers to Floaters.

We had the report card before Christmas. My in-laws remember looking at it just before Christmas when they babysat so that we could attend my husband's work social. My husband and I clearly remember a conversation about stashing the report card in our daughter's swimming bag so that it WOULDN'T get lost in the pre-Christmas panic to hide the clutter. I vaguely recall placing said report card in said location...and now have no idea where it is.

I have always been a stacker. From the time I was small, I filed my things in piles. It drove my "packer" mother crazy (Packer-noun-someone who places things away in drawers or cupboards. Whose desk and dressers are pristine, coffee tables free of magazines, mail, bills or clutter...she starts to twitch after about 20 minutes in my home) and she once threw out all the notes for an essay that I was working on because she thought it was junk, because it was in a pile on the floor near the garbage. Like any stacker, I can lay hands on anything on my desk in seconds because I know what is in every stack on my desk...as long as no one moved them. The company I worked for instituted a "clean desk" policy, so that all the piles of paper had to be cleared from our desk every night....Packers rejoiced; stackers cleared out the bottom drawer of filing cabinets, lifted our stacks FROM the desk TO the drawer at night, and then reversed the procedure in the morning, complying with the spirit if not the letter of the dictate...My stacks were under control...until I married the Clutter King.

My husband is an Uber-Stacker and has a genetic predisposition to hang onto things. When 2 stackers marry, chaos and clutter can result, and factor in a small house, a small child, 2 cats and a ton of toys, books, crafts, yarn, tools and other miscellaneous stuff...and the results aren't pretty. My husband will move my stacks to look for things that should be in his stacks...the cats will knock OVER the stacks...the kid will move the stacks...you get the picture. I no longer know what is in the stacks...and chaos results.

The added piece to this is that my daughter must have been a squirrel or a magpie in another life. She loves to stash her treasures...but never in the box that they orginally came in. The Mr Potatohead case became the new home for the plastic menagerie. The Barbie box holds the tea-set, and who knows what treasures I'll find in her Dora backpack...She also moves her treasures periodically, so even if I think I know where to locate something...it's often been relocated when I go looking for it again. I've put a moratorium on removing game pieces for Shoots and Ladders or Candyland, after Backpack went AWOL for a number of months and we had to substitute Lumpy. Diego went missing 3 times in 12 hours..until Mommy dropped the boom and issued the moratorium.

Our house has been out of control for a few months now, and persistent health challenges have sapped my strength and allowed the dust bunnies to stage a coup and take over the house. My husband arrived home on Boxing Day with a Grind and Brew Coffeemaker...and a Robot Vaccuum. He was wise enough to give me the coffeemaker first, because the vaccuum was "to help me keep the house clean"...it's one of those vacs that drives around the perimeter of the room in concentric circles, sweeping as it goes. It's a wonderful plan in theory...but you have to pick UP all the stuff from the floor first, and that's a full time job in our house. "Spot" as I have called the vaccuum, and flat out refuse to learn how to operate it, is no match for a 4 year old with playdough and Barbie shoes...

I know I have to get a handle on the clutter and the chaos. I'm overwhelmed by the enormity of it...but it has to be done. The mere thought of tackling my daughter's room leaves me shaking...but it's a small room with too much stuff and it needs a thorough sandblasting. If I approach it from the standpoint of a treasure hunt, maybe it will go better, or I'll try the "set the timer for 1 hour and see what you can accomplish" method of clutter busting. That MIGHT get me in the door...about a foot.

I know the report card will materialize eventually. I have to tackle the clutter shortly because I need to find all my tax documents, which are currently in hidey holes because I didn't have time to file them before Christmas. If I tackle the clutter, it will make things easier on all of us, so I need to square my shoulders, take a deep breath and start...now if I can only find the broom and dustpan.