Enjoli Woman...

Do you remember the 1980s "Enjoli Woman"?  She could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you're a man..."  That woman has had a nervous breakdown!  In fact, that's the exact line I used in my resignation letter in 1995.  I was battling being a career woman, wife and mother and I was losing!  It occurred to me then that while it's great that we think we can do it all, we really cannot.  Something or SOMEONE loses.  In my case, it's me.  And if you think about it, it's probably you.  We women tend to take care of others before we take care of ourselves.  When was the last time you exercised?  Me, two weeks ago.  When was the last time you sat down to finish reading your book?  Me?  I've been reading Water for Elephants for MONTHS now...  Like 9 or 10 months!  There is always something more to do other than what I want to do....  

Case in point...  I cannot keep my house clean, go to school, exercise and do my crafts all in a day.  Something goes by the way side...  Take a look at these pictures.  Yesterday, my hubby and I worked on our new bedroom in the basement that we are finishing for our college daughter.  (I'll have more pics of this in a later blog!)  We literally worked on it ALL DAY.  We were sore and tired when we finished.  So we ate dinner and relaxed by watching TV and  in my case, schoolwork on the laptop.

So, my kitchen turned into this:

 At least here you can see that I had washed SOME dishes...

 My kitchen is too small for this!!!

I KNOW!  This is embarrassing!  But my kitchen got like this after one day and with my focus on something else...  I looked at my kitchen after our coffee fiasco this morning (totally different story that I refuse to digress to!) and after breakfast and thought, "I do not have time for this this morning.  I need to do some schoolwork and then I need to finish my swaps for my Prairie Fairy event.  I only have two weeks left and I'm no where near finished!"  But I cannot stand it.  I just cannot.  So, I applied the FlyLady principle and set my clock for 15 minutes.  I subscribed to her ideals many years ago, but do not follow them as ridged-ly as I should (as evidenced by my kitchen!).   Within 15 minutes, my kitchen looked like this...

 You can still see the soap on my counter!

Still not perfect, but better.  I took pics just to show you how much you can get done in 15 minutes.  

Another 7 minutes, and it looked like this:

So my point is this:  We cannot do everything.  We just cannot be the "Enjoli Woman".  I don't believe it's possible.  But we can take 22 minutes to make ourselves happy.  For me, a clean kitchen is a happy Tracy.  Now, I can focus on my schoolwork and on my swaps and maybe get a walk in with my sweetie.  Of course, the rest of the house is a mess, but one step at a time.  

Let's quit judging each other... and most of all, let's quit judging ourselves!  Have a great day!

St. Augustine...

This past weekend, I had to drive to Florida for a bridal shower.  My little brother is marrying a wonderful woman that he met at the Florida State University.  I'm very excited that Alicia is going to be my new sister-in-law.  She's young, fun and compliments my brother so much!  She had the shower at her parent's mortuary in Green Cove Springs, Florida.  Yes, you read that right.  We had a bridal shower at a mortuary.  If it's any consolation, it is a BEAUTIFUL mortuary and has a big room where we were able to congregate.  When we pulled up, my mom asked "Are there any dead bodies in there?"  Alicia said "Are you sure you want to know?  We have one cooling in the crematory and one in the cooler..."  SO ODD!  But again, to us, it just seemed like a really big room.  It was lovely because while at the shower, we met Alicia's family and friends.  It is always so nice to meet new people.  You never know how they are going to impact your life.  If you keep your heart open to any experience, you may get blessed.  And I certainly did get blessed this weekend! 

Like I said earlier, I had to drive to Florida for the bridal shower.  I drove my mom, my little sister and my oldest daughter with me.  We headed down Friday and decided to visit St. Augustine for the day.  What started out as "I want to get down there as soon as possible so we can tour the city" ended up as us leaving Georgia at 12:18 pm and not getting down there until around 6:00.  So, from the git-go we were behind the proverbial "8-ball".  We made it to the historic district which stayed open until 10:00 and it was so unique!  With it being the oldest city in the history of our country, we enjoyed checking it out.  The sign below welcomed us to the city.   After I performed a u-turn, my daughter jumped out of the car and took a pic for me!

We saw the "Oldest Wood School House" in our country.

Yes, I know, it appears as if the house is leaning, and I believe it was... It's the OLDEST, for heaven's sake!

We also saw a water wheel that appeared pretty darn old....  You be the judge.

We saw what appeared to be really old homes.

We ate at the Columbia, which was an authentic Spanish restaurant.  The black beans were to-die-for!

But mainly, we had FUN!  We laughed until we almost wet our pants.  My sister can make me laugh like almost no-one!  There is something about her that cracks me up!  She's so darn funny!  You can see by this pic that her and my mom are giggling about something.  And my daughter is thinking "Why did I go on this road trip?"

All in all, while it was a short weekend, it was a fun weekend.  It is so important to connect with each other from our busy lives.  I believe that people are communicating less and spending less time together as a whole.  So it is important to come together and show each other that while daily life is important, that our relationships are important as well.

I have a project that I'm going to work on this week and will give you a tease for now...    

I'm going to take this napkin from my sister-in-law's shower and make her some Thank You  cards out of them.  Stay tuned....