I actually have A LOT more to talk about filing, but I’m going to take it elsewhere.  I’ve got the website for my organizing business, so I’m going to post all these over on that site.  And I’ll link to it from here so you can know that I’ve written something, but I won’t post it here so you don’t have be completely excited totally bored overwhelmed by it over here.

I’m writing about it because I’m helping a client through this process right now and it’s helpful for me to write it down so I can work through the whole thing.  Paperwork can be really complicated, so it’s nice to be able to really focus on an aspect of it at a time, work through my thoughts, and get them down really clearly.  But I recognize that it’s not always terribly interesting to read.

I recognize it, but I don’t always understand it.   I mean, how can that not be interesting?

Anyway.  Welcome to the beginning of May, if you somehow missed that change-over.  Did April go by really quickly for anyone else?  And May looks like it’s going to be a very busy month for me.  We had plans to go to the Ren Faire in Atlanta last weekend, but stuck around the house so Justin could be sick at home instead of on the road.  He’s starting to do better, now that we’re on day 7 of him being sick.  Day 8?  MANY days. 

In other news:

• Tuesday is my sister-in-law’s birthday, so we’re trying to figure out how to celebrate that with her when she’s busy celebrating it with all of her college friends.  Plus, she needs to do laundry, so she’s got to come visit.  Mwha-ha-ha-ha!
• My parents are going to be within 6 driving-hours from our house all next week, so on Wednesday we’re going to go meet them half-way between for dinner. 
• Sometime in the next couple weeks my mother-in-law, step-father-in-law, and grandma-in-law are all coming to visit and pack up my sister-in-law for the summer break.  Apparently they may or may not be bringing their adorable puppy.    I don’t know when they’re arriving or for how long they’re staying.
• One of these weekends we’re hoping to go to Myrtle Beach to meet up with a couple friends.   I have no idea which weekend this is happening.
• Some local friends of ours are moving and they’re going to need help moving, I believe, on the 22nd, if we’re in town.
• And if there’s a free weekend somewhere in there, we’re still hoping to make it up to the Ren Faire.

Why does it all have to happen in May?!

Plus, of course, there’s the usual craziness with work.  We’re completing one or two projects each week this month.  Compare that to next month, when we’re planning to complete three in the entire month.  Who creates this schedule?!  Drunken baboons?

 But whatever.  Life is good!  It’s pouring down rain today and even that is good because it’s better than the 85% humidity and burning hot sunshine that we had yesterday.  And I remembered my umbrella.  And I got to talk with both of my parents last night and that was fantastic!  And there was a new Castle when we weren’t expecting one.

So life is busy, but life is good, and I’m feeling happy!  I think I’ll go for a walk. 

I went and sat on the porch of a nearby empty building and read my book.  It’s a great building, completely open inside without even a finished floor or electrical or finished interior walls.  It makes my head go all kinds of crazy about what I would do with such a building.  Answer:  I would turn it into four different businesses.  The first would be a studio for yoga and Zumba classes and whatever else I could get in there–massage, weights, whatever.  Because, Mom, you’ve inspired me, and when I get down to weight, I want to be certified to teach fitness classes, specifically yoga and Zumba.  So the front of the building, that looks over a small pond with a fountain and a great patio, would be a fitness studio.  Next would be a bookstore.  At the end would be a small cafe with smoothies and healthy sandwiches and stuff like that.  And the other one I can’t talk about, but it would hold a small set of offices, too.

In the lot across the street from this building, I’d set up a play set for kids to play on and map out how far around it is so parents could let their kids play on the jungle gym while they walk or run laps.

I had a lot of fun thinking about what I could do with this building.  Trust me, what I’ve mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg.  I have a lot of thoughts about this.

Anyway, after getting splashed with pond water from the fountain for a while, I went and sat in the lawn and read my book some more until finally going to find out what the story was with my car.  It turns out that they were able to simply patch the tire, meaning it was only a $23 fix instead of a $100 replacement.  For the record:  Nails are stupid things to leave lying on the road.

So it all turned out well.  I still have to figure out what to do about the paint on my car, but I’m hopeful.  I just have to do some research and legwork.

In other news, completely unrelated, I’ve started up my LiveJournal account again where I used to write about my diet progress, frustrations, and successes.  It’s over here if you’re interested in reading it.  Because this site here isn’t really the place to write about everything I want to write about when it comes to my diet.  Feel free to pop in over there if you’d like to know how that’s going.  You should be able to leave comments without having a LiveJournal account, but it’s going to give you one of those funky word things to verify that you’re not a computer.

And, of course, if you don’t care about my weight-loss, you can just stick around here and I’ll continue to babble about whatever it is I babble about over here.

But right now I think I should go to bed.

How about random happenings from the last several days?

Last night Justin and I went to look at a car.  We’re not sure about it yet; the owner isn’t sure if her daughter isn’t going to snatch it up yet, either.  So we’re waiting to hear back from the owner on whether or not it’s actually for sale.  And then trying to decide if it’s worth buying.  We’re still thinking.

Tomorrow night I’m going to my first practice with the music team at church.  It’s been a long time since I’ve sung with a church group (and even longer since I sang with a group other than church or family) so I’m a little anxious about it.  They’ve got me on a sort of probationary thing, where I’m joining them for practices for 4 weeks so they can decide whether I fit in or not.  I’m excited about the opportunity, but I’m also nervous about it.

Monday I brought brownies in for a meeting about 5S and had a frustrating meeting with not enough people about the problems going down.  There’s been a lack of communication and a whole lot of frustrations and it’s not been handled as well as I would like.  It’s still not great, but I’m (possibly blindly) hoping that things are going to get better soon.

I’ve worked out most of my macro problems in my Lean project!  I’m still not clear on how some of it works, but I’m getting a much more thorough understanding of it as I go.  I’ve gotten through 2 of my major milestones (with some minor tweaking still needed there, but it’s mostly set) and now I’m onto number 3.  And it’s different and a little more complicated, but I’m hopeful to have it worked out before too long.

Except it’s tabled right now because I have a project that’s actually in my job description to do so I have to finish that one first.  And it’s a very long and boring project.  Long.  And boring.  And I have to finish it before my deadline, so it’s what I’ve been spending most of my time on the last couple days.

I heard a good idea lately about how to get past a writing block.  Two good ideas, actually.  But they fall under the “Draft Zero” concept.  Anything you write is going to have to be edited several times, so the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect.  In fact, it can be absolutely awful.  And if you rewrite the whole thing, that’s fine.  But some of us get stuck wanting to have the first draft be something great!  To have what’s on the page reflect what’s in our head.  For it to be this fantastic piece of work.  And it’s just not going to happen.

A zero draft is a draft that you know without a doubt that you’re going to rewrite.  It’s very freeing because you can write absolute crap and go “Meh, whatever, I’ll do it better on my first draft.”  And a great way to make sure that you have to rewrite the whole dang thing is through a couple of options.  You could write the whole thing in the wrong tense, write everything in present tense when it should be in past tense.  Or write it by hand.

So I finally have a great reason to write in this notebook I’ve been holding on to since forever.  I have something like five journals sitting on my bookshelf that haven’t been written in because I just don’t write in a journal very often lately.  If it’s something really heavy on my brain that I can’t write about here, then I’ll head there.  But it’s just not something I feel the need to do very often.  But I *love* journals.  They’re so pretty!  And I wish so often that I had a reason to write in them.  And I’ve had this idea for a play rolling around in my head for a couple years.  I’m writing my zero draft in one of those journals.  And I’m scribbling and jumping around and making notes and writing dialog and having a grand old time writing a lot of really awful stuff.  And I’ve made more progress in a couple days than I’ve made in years of thinking about this project.  It’s so freeing!

And then I pulled out another journal this morning and brought it to work so I could log my food, since I can’t go online and do that.  I want to log my food and start losing weight again, but I get stuck on how hard it is to remember exactly what I’ve done during the day.  Eventually, I’ll get back to pre-logging my food and all that, but right now I’m at square one and just trying to figure out what the heck I’m stuffing into my mouth all day long.  Hopefully this journal will help with that whole project, too.

But I don’t want to talk about my weight or my eating right now.  I’m not ready to do that yet.  There’s been too much negativity about that in my head for so long that I can’t handle approaching it yet.  But I’m making steps to get beyond that and hopefully things will be changing there soon, too.

Anyway!  Did you know that those fingernail decal stickers that you get at the store are just about the perfect size to put at the end of push-pins?  It takes them from blah to fantastic really fast.  And I took a length of ribbon and hung it on my cubical wall to hold all my binder clips because they were just jumbled in a mess before and now they’re easy to get to and cute to boot!

And that’s enough of my randomness.

Have a great day!