Freaky Friday (now on Thursday!)

I wasn't going to post today since it's cleaning day, and that's not very interesting - but it was brought to my attention when my neighbor stopped over that my cleaning ways are perhaps a little "odd".

First off, she noticed that I was cleaning on a Thursday, and that apparently throws off the tide schedule, since my normal "like clockwork" cleaning day is Friday. Then she mentioned that every week when I clean house it looks like I'm moving out!

Moving out? I stood back and looked, and holy cow - it kinda does! This is normal weekly behavior for me:

This kind of made me laugh at myself - this is one of the things I've been trying to change about my Type A behavior, because this weekly clean EVERYTHING and rearrange furniture thing has gotten in the way of me being able to spend quality time doing fun things on a whim.

Friday was my regular cleaning day so it would be "perfect" for the weekend, and even though of course it doesn't stay that way for long with 2 kids and 2 dogs, in my mind I couldn't change. I am happy to say that now "Freaky Friday" is now on Thursday, so I can more fully enjoy my weekend! A huge step for me! I have heard many comments to the effect of "I wish I could clean that much", let me tell you - it's not a good thing. It gets in the way of relaxing with the family and just enjoying life in general. If you are a random cleaner with no schedule, consider yourself lucky, because it means you are spending time doing better things! I eventually want to get to the point that Freaky Friday/Thursday only happens every 2 weeks with just sweeping and wiping counters in between, I've done that a few times and while it made me uncomfortable, I think I can get used to it.

What I find interesting is that I don't even notice or care if other peoples' homes are disorganized or not super-clean, and as a matter of fact, I actually enjoy it, I wonder if it's because I'm jealous? I feel more at home in other peoples' homes if they look "lived-in"! I think a huge part of my problem is that we all live in just 900 sq ft - I'm afraid if I didn't clean the way I do things would get out of hand very quickly!

More Freaky Friday/Thursday happenings:

Dog Toy Laundry Day!

Watch the video to see how I love to torture my girls...

Actually I think they like it!

So what's your cleaning style? OCD? Anti-clean?, Random? Certain rooms on certain days, or whole house at once? Freaky minds want to know!

On TV Tonight!

New Series: "The OCD Project"

Synopsis: 6 people diagnosed with severe OCD move in together while cameras are rolling...

What more can I say? You know what I'll be doing tonight - watching this curled up on the couch with my 2 obsessive herding dogs, great minds think alike...

This is WAR!

Ok, so I fell of the organic wagon and broke out the Roundup. This bed is only a month old, several layers of cardboard, and 3-4 inches of mulch! Ugh, the nightmare that is Bermudagrass. As anyone that lives in the south can tell you, it's horrid stuff. I call it "bamboo grass", since it spreads by rhizomes underground and this chain-like crap above ground. The first pic is a closeup, the second pic is my border and how much of it I had to kill. At least I didn't use it near the veggies. And the worst part is that it will be back in just a week or so. Several treatments hopefully will do it. Expensive problem, though...will be trying a less expensive brand for the next round. I am on a self-imposed deadline of Thursday to be done weeding all of it, since today and tomorrow are only supposed to be in the 70's, which is incredible weather for this time of year to being doing hard chores.

On to better things...I pulled the shallots the other night! I am having to hang them inside since it is so humid most days outside I am afraid they might rot.

Here's Loch harvesting a carrot that he surely will not eat...

Loch & Finn posing with their harvest of carrots

I feel bad (kind of) that the first batch of homebrew that Sailor/Farmer/Husband made will not wait until he gets back for the first taste...I had to "test" it and make sure it was aging properly - it is :) !! It was absolutely fantastic and I wanted to open another tonight and "test it" again but I forgot to put one in the chiller, so I am settling for a glass of wine instead. Now we need to name it...

I am now officially the "crazy chick"... with bags all over my grape bunches! My son was watching me from his sandbox for a long while when I finally asked "What are you looking at, Loch?" (knowing the answer!), and he said "I'm not sure, Mom", followed by "are those lunch bags?", and finally "are you tired of packing sandwiches for my lunch?". Wow, I had been having a trying afternoon with the kids, but I could no longer contain my laughter at that point. Just when you think you can't take anymore headaches from kids, they come out with a gem and it makes you realize how awesome it is to be a parent.

I could go on and on about the garden chores this week, but if I don't quit now, I will not have any relax time catching up on the DVR tonight! By the way...any of you seen the new A & E show Obsessed? For a type A, anxiety ridden, OCD person such as myself, gotta say I love it!! Kind of fun to watch what might happen to me if I let myself slip over the edge :)

The Government Interrupted my Gardening!

Well, it has happened again!  My husband returned from 2 weeks in Arizona for his sister's wedding and was greeted with a message that he needed to be on the ship no later than midnight that same day!  Gotta love it when we are so harshly reminded that he belongs to the Navy and is just ours to borrow for a few months at a time.  He wasn't even here long enough to take a shower or see how hard the kids and I have been working on the ol' homestead!  Just enough time to pack his bag and get in the car so we could take him to the base.  So all the projects he intended to finish are in limbo for the next month or so.  I am left with half of a fence, trailer loads of compost that I have to get myself, and hoping the vines I have to cover the non-existent fence will survive in their pots until he gets back.

Those of you familiar with the deployment thing know that as soon as our beloved leaves, things break...BIG things!  Last deployment it was a water heater and a well pump, this time is no different.  We were preparing for a SCHEDULED deployment later this year by replacing our aging HVAC system, decrepit fencing that falls down every time the wind blows, and purchasing a generator for hurricane season, but NOOOOOO... last night I awoke to the sound of my well pump kicking on/off every 25 seconds.  At 3 a.m. I knew no one was up showering or anything, I checked for leaks inside and there was none, so I just laid there contemplating how bad this could really be.  As soon as it was light out, I stuck my head under the crawlspace (yuck!).  I heard it before I saw it...waterfall noise...seemed to be gushing out of a pipe and hundreds of gallons of H2O pooling up on the "vapor barrier"!  After taking a shower (what's another few gallons?) and crying, I finally shutoff the well pump and called in Joe the Plumber.  Thankfully for our finances, it was fixed in an hour with a new pipe, but Joe gives us the bad news that our pipes are really old and need to be upgraded (no surprise).  All this has transpired and been fixed and the sailor-pirate chaser-farmer doesn't even know about it yet!  Joe the Plumber was a real character, too...not much for words (or teeth for that matter) until he saw my garden and that my primary water source was a well in the suburbs...then he was all "don't get city water, the man will stick it to you" and "you should build a bunker to store your veggies".  Really?  A BUNKER???  LOL, this was kind of amusing seeing that he makes his money from those water pipes fed by "the Man".  I think he needs to move somewhere the moonshine flows and the militias are on the move!  Anyway, here is the offending pipe, all the damage came from the little pinhole on the upper right. I have no idea what the patch job is on that pic, that was before we got this place, lol.

So now that I am done venting about the above, we just started hardening off the seedlngs the other day, but have been plagued by severe weather the past couple of days, so haven't planted anything yet. 

 I finally got around to organizing my gardening papers & seeds, etc., something I have been planning to do for a couple of months.  Being so OCD, I am surprised I lasted this long with all my garden stuff strewn all over my desk!  I mulled over the idea of a bin, or file folder of sorts, but decided on a binder system.  The result rocks...I have laminated planting info, divider tabs for everything from seed types to monthly garden chores, and seed packets fit perfectly into photo sleeves.  It is the PINNACLE of my OCD/Type A Projects and here she is...

Next up... the the booby-trap for dogs...

No, it's not where all the good little stakes go when they die...!  It's to train the garden dogs to stay out of the beds!  It dawned on me the other day that my other raised bed garden is fenced in, which is why I have never had the dogs playing "agility competition" until now.  So before the plants go into these new beds, the kids gathered every unfriendly object we had laying around and stuck them in...working so far...we will see when the plants go in!

Aha!  I see I have just received an email...no doubt from the sailor-farmer who just found out about the water pipe carnage...better get that!