To Do List - Now 'Til We Leave

1.  Have a good cry.  That way I can emotionally handle the rest of the list.

2.  Shower.  Daily.

3.  Wrap all the Christmas gifts before Christmas Eve so I can go to bed before two for a change.

4.  Clean every forty minutes from now until D-Day.

5.  Take a load of crap to the dump...or just send it to work with Andrew so he can make use of his company's dumpster.

6.  Watch a Christmas movie without doing anything else at the same time.  

7.  Make corrections to Joyce's personal history, insert pictures, make cover, bind eight books.  Before Christmas Eve.

8. Make salmon dip for the family Christmas Party on Friday.

9.  Find a storage unit in Vancouver.

10.  Pay the bills, make a grocery list, and go grocery shopping on the busiest grocery shopping day in the month of December with five kids in tow.

11.  Cry again, just for good measure.

12.  Remind the kids hourly that Santa is watching them.

13.  Pack the kitchen and the bathroom.

14.  Organize the things that need to be kept out of the storage unit; clothes, a few toys, fishing equipment, bikes, important paperwork, stash of movies, computer, beds and bedding...  I hope that's all.

15.  Sit at the hospital on Tuesday with mom while dad has heart surgery again.  Pray for easy-peasy, in-n-out, no complications.  

16.  Feel guilt for leaving mom, especially while dad is an invalid, and also for not visiting all the family we don't see often before we go.  

17.  Figure out what I'm forgetting, because I know there must be a hundred things I've neglected to do.

18.  The most dreaded task of all:  Clean the blinds.

See - except for that last one, it's not such a big deal.  I can do this.

"My Laundry Owns Me"...

That's the phrase I used to explain my laundry habits to a friend I was talking to the other night. She tried to hide her disgust when I uttered my confession, but her eyes kind of glazed over and her smile reeked of disdain and pity; as though she was horrified at my revelation of slothful housekeeping.

You see, she had just told me that she does all three large loads of her laundry every Monday and has it washed, dried, folded, and put away all on that one day.

Well, hurrah for her!

She does laundry for three. Herself, her three year old daughter, and her girlie man husband who only wears one outfit a day.

I, on the other hand, have a family of six. I am the only one who manages to go through one pair of pants and one shirt a day. Everyone else has work clothes, play clothes, wet clothes from swimming, gym clothes, school clothes, the clothes they sharted in... Not to mention the sheets and the towels.

So while I am happy for my friend and her ability to anally finish her laundry by tackling all three loads once a week, I am OK with my system, too.

What is my system?

Wash enough of it that it doesn't suffocate us. And don't even dream of having it all finished until the last little boy grows up and moves out of the house.

As long as everyone has fresh underwear, who the hell cares?