To make the Brit happy....

Honestly, I come in here and really have no idea of what to prattle on about!  The weather is still on crack and I'm cranky from being cold all the time.  I've always said I'm going to be just like my mother; cold and deaf.  We've done absolutely nothing today, which in a way has been nice.  I've spent some time on the computer catching up on the blogs and message boards I frequent, and I've spent some time knitting. 

I informed the Brit a little while ago that I am placing him in charge of a couple of family work days in the very near future.  Our basement is a nightmare.  In January of 2006, my in-laws and myself cleaned the basement from top to bottom.  It was clean, it was organized, it was tidy.  No one really spends much time down there other than myself, the cats and the laundry but the kids go down there just often enough to take something out and then not put it back.  Now multiply that by like a kabillion and you'll get a fair idea of what the basement looks like.  I have cleaned it not once but twice since the initial heavy duty cleaning and again it is a tip and I refuse to single handedly clean it again.  The bow-flex is down there as well and one day I would like to start working with it, once the basement is fit to be in again.

The front of my house is generally very tidy, but the backyard is another story.  Now, I don't mind a toy here or there as proof that we do have messy children, but when you get into dozens of sticks pulled off trees and wood from our woodpile moved to various and asundry places it gets a little insane.  The back porch is also a nightmare with a box of newspapers (for fires in the winter) pool supplies for the above ground pool for the kids, and then some stuff that needs to be hauled off to the dump.  When I look at the porch I shudder, feeling a bit like trailer park trash (no offense to any of you who may live in trailer parks...I used to live in one, but living in one does not make you trash.  Living in one where your yard or porch looks like mine, however, does.).  It would be nice to be able to walk out there and beings we bought some herbs yesterday to grow and that I would like to start some tomato plants, it would be nice to have a place to put them that was tidy.

I'm a little bit of a neat freak.  I don't mind a little clutter, but real honest to heaven messy is not acceptable to me and these two places need major work.  There would have been a day when I would have just shut up about it and gotten the job done myself, but I don't want to do that anymore.  It's good for families to take on projects together and it doesn't leave one person with all of it.  I handle the rest of the house on my own and that's fine, but dang it, I don't mess up the basement nor the back yard, so I'm not cleaning them alone.

Oh, and incidently, I'm having a good scale week.  Two more pounds to go and I'll be at a 20 pound loss .