406 I'm a Basic Cable Dream

You could create a whole reality based channel around my life right now. You could have Super Nanny, Clean House, Biggest Loser, and What Not to Wear descend upon my house and entertain people for months.

As I have been looking around, and trying to formulate a plan of change for our house, I have realized one major thing... I am going about this all wrong. If I go through it all one piece at a time and try to decide what can go I am giving myself the opportunity to talk myself into keeping more stuff. Of course if I hold one of the gobzillion (yeah, I made up a new number) toys in my hand I will start to think of how it came into our home. Maybe it was a gift, and I hate getting rid of gifts. Maybe there is a cute story it sparks when I hold it in my hands. Maybe the kids see it and suddenly realize it exists at all and they begin to play with it again. For any number of reasons many of those things get carefully placed back into the pile of junk that is over-running our home.

So, here is my new idea. I need to look around and choose which toys they play with now. A SET NUMBER OF TOYS .... a SMALL set number. Then I need to ruthlessly get rid of everything else. The odds of me being able to accomplish that? Slim ... very slim. Most of Connor's toys are sets. Like his huge collection of train stuff. Or his Imaginext stuff. Just those two types of toys make up 90% of his toy collection. If they would just stay in his room then it would not be such a problem! Katie mostly draws and plays school, so why do we have hundreds of dollars tied up in Polly Pocket? I could gut her room and give her a desk stocked with art supplies and I think she would be mostly happy. Keep her Build-A-Bears and American Girl doll of course, maybe a few select other toys, but most of that stuff has got to go. She is 8.5 years old after all. Time to grow out of all the little pieces of plastic, yes?!

And to think, Christmas is right around the corner. More toys to add to the overflowing toy store that is our home. The kids were playing with their favorite toys earlier, each other. By "playing" I mean they were harassing each other, yelling and smacking at each other. Not listening to me at all, as usual. The perfect Christmas gift suddenly occurred to me. My kids don't need more toys! They need jackets .... straightjackets! It would probably be the only way to get them to sit in the same room without trying to destroy the room and each other. If I made them in fleece where they were soft and warm do you think I could make it around getting turned over to the authorities? ... No? ... Darn!

So, that covers Super Nanny and Clean House. What is my claim for Biggest Loser and What Not to Wear you ask?! If you could see me sitting here typing this blog you would understand. I am still thirty pounds heavier than I was when I got pregnant with Katie. The last time I came close to that pre-pregnancy weight I got pregnant with Connor. I start working out, and then life gets in the way. And my clothes?! I make myself cringe. I am rather dressed up for me right now. Velvet-y comfy pants and a red t-shirt ... it is what I slept in. Sure, I have the excuse of being in "recovery" mode from being sick, but honestly there are many days that I change out of my pajamas only to put on another pair of pajamas.

It is all a big snowball effect. The house is so trashed that it makes me not even want to try to clean it because the task seems so impossible. I feel so frumpy from being overweight that buying new clothes seems silly. And since I spend the majority of my days in "comfy clothes" there is no motivation to eat better and exercise. And around and around we go ...

Confession: I am afraid if someone ever did nominate me for one of these shows that the hidden camera would capture me picking my nose (not that I ever do that of course) or walking to the dryer half naked to recover some clothes. So, don't really do it.

Pictures withheld to protect my fragile ego. :)