I had hoped that during the last month I would get organized. I wanted to “get my ducks in a row.” Summer is almost over, and here I am. I didn’t get there! Every time I think I’ll get my act together, something comes along to make those ducks get out of line. Yesterday, just as I thought I was almost finished, my internet connection crashed. By the time I got it repaired, I no longer had any energy!

Does that kind of thing ever happen to you? How do you deal with it? How do you get your momentum going again?

It never seems to happen to my friend SusieJ. How she manages to find time to take care of four active boys and post on her blog every day (even while she is on vacation) is beyond me. She does it all well, and I want to know her secret. So, I’ve asked her to write a guest post, and she has agreed. I’ll give you more details later. I hope her advice will help me! I want to be organized!

In schools, I have often told a story about a young girl who was very disorganized. Her mother bought her a “Hundred Year Calendar” and showed her how to make a list of things to do, and mark them off when she had finished. She found the satisfaction of marking items off the list to be so great, that she got ahead of herself. When she finished the days work, she started on the next day’s work. Before you know it, she had marked off every day on that Hundred Year Calendar—and she had turned into an old woman, because she had used up every day of her life!

I have no desire to get that organized; I just wish I could get the laundry done!

On a bright note, the Share A Square Program is doing very well. Yesterday, I got a contact from a woman in Oklahoma, not very far from me, who offered to grab her crochet hook and come help. I’m hoping I can meet her half-way and ask her to put together some of these afghans!

I also got a contact from a woman who has supplied me with enough crocheted squares to make several afghans. Since she is such a hard worker, I had asked if she wanted to help me put some afghans together. However she had to decline. She told me that she is undergoing chemotherapy! People, if she can crochet that much while she battles cancer, I can find time to crochet every night. My thanks and best wishes go to her. She is an inspiration.

And, in other good news, a local bistro called “banter” has agreed to host a Share A Square Day! You can click on the update page to read more. We will get those 140 afghans together for the children at Camp Sanguinity cancer camp!

Here is that third one, which just got finished last night:

I’m headed to the post office to see what the mail has brought today, and I will post pictures on the update page this afternoon. At least that’s what I say I’m doing. Actually, I’m going to Jupiter House, a little coffee house on the square, here in Denton, that has a mocha that is just my size (and it might even be waiting on the counter!).

Technorati Tags: organize, Share A Square, crocheted squares, Camp Sanguinity, cancer

What kind of neighborhood did y’all live in when you were growing up? Think about that for a minute, and then consider where you live now. Is it the same? Does it have the same “feel?” Mine doesn’t. I’ve been pondering the differences this morning as I thought about two different subjects.

One of those subjects is “Why I Blog.” I wanted to write about that for the Carnival of Circular Communication, which has the theme “blogging” on this go-round. The other subject is the word “miss,” which is the theme for It’s A Blog Eat Blog World’s series called Manic Monday. I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

I miss living in a “neighborhood.” Don’t get me wrong, I have friends and I’m a part of several organizations. That’s not what I miss. I miss having “neighborly” people living around me. I miss a sense of community in a world where people tend to isolate themselves inside their homes.

I grew up living in 50s tract housing in a small town. The houses were small and packed closely together, with relatively small yards (unless you were mowing them, and then they seemed huge). There were no high privacy fences in the back yards; the most anyone had was a chain link fence to keep the dogs inside. Sidewalks wound their way from house to house connecting them like a huge “dot to dot” picture.

Everyone knew everyone else’s business, and that was good. We were neighbors, and we took care of each other. If someone got sick, a neighbor was sure to drop by to offer help. If there was a death in the family, neighbors brought food. If your child was getting “out of line,” a neighbor told you about it before your child had a chance to get into real trouble.

At any time of day, you could see your neighbors in the yard. Grown ups mowed the grass and weeded the gardens. Children rode their bicycles in the streets, skated down the sidewalk or played hopscotch on the driveways. Sometimes, people just sat in their lawnchairs on the yard in the evenings. When they barbecued in the back yard, they might call over the fence for the neighbors to bring some hamburgers for the grill and join them. Always, if you saw your neighbor, you waved and called out to them. More often than not, you went over to actually chat with them for a few minutes to exchange the latest news. The neighborhood felt alive.

The neighborhood where I live now is not like that at all. Oh, you might see people outside in the early mornings or late evening. They walk their dogs (so the dogs will leave the “mess” in your yard and not their own!). Children don’t play outside, at least not in the front yard, for there are no sidewalks on which to play. Instead, if they go outside at all, they are in their swimming pools behind a high wooden fence.

Drive through my neighborhood in mid-day, and you will think that no one lives in those big houses. You won’t see a soul, unless the lawn services are out mowing.

I know the names of the people who live on either side of me, but that is only because I walked over to introduce myself to them when I moved my house five years ago. They certainly didn’t step over to welcome me into the neighborhood.

A young couple moved in two doors down just after I moved here. Knowing that my other neighbors would do nothing to welcome them, I decided to greet them and tell them I was glad they were here. She was from up North and he was from Germany. I didn’t want them to think Texans were unfriendly, so I decided to give them the traditional housewarming gifts that my Mamaw might have given a new neighbor.

I took them a brand new broom (to sweep out the “old troubles”), a loaf of fancy bread from our finest bakery in town (to symbolize that I hoped they would always have “plenty”), and a lantana plant for her garden (since she was a gardener and was interested in plants that were from Texas). They were “unconventional” housewarming gifts, but they got my point across. Though she is young enough to be my daughter (and her baby is almost the granddaughter I might never have), that neighbor and I are fast friends.

You can see that this is not the neighborhood I remember from my youth. I’ve been wondering why it’s so different. Is it because, with the advent of central air conditioning, people don’t go out in the Texas heat? Do children not come outside to play because they have 100 television stations to watch? Are we just too busy to take the time to know our neighbors? Is it because people are so “transient” that they don’t want to develop relationships when they might move in a couple of years? Or, do we just not care anymore? Is it something I said? Are your neighborhoods like that, or is it just mine?

I don’t have a clue. But, I miss being part of a “neighborhood.” That is why I blog.

I know that I can go on-line and share my news, and that my blogging neighbors will drop by to chat. I can go to “their house” and talk. We can remain “neighbors” or become friends. While my blogging buddies won’t be able to pick up my child at school if I am too sick to move, they will jump at the chance to help in any way they can.

Recently, my friend Nigel asked me to drop by to visit one of his readers to give her some encouragement. He didn’t know that woman, except for on-line visits, yet he was neighborly enough to want to help. When I decided to try a wild and crazy dream for charity many people, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, jumped to help. Many people have written about it on their own blogs, and my friend Marcia even wrote a wonderful incentive for anyone to help with Share A Square. Those people out there that I might never meet face to face are acting just like neighbors!

My next door neighbors might not be overly friendly, but my global neighbors more than make up for that. Blogging makes me feel as if I am part of a neighborhood. The internet unites us.

Hey wait a minute! I guess I have to amend my statement. How can I miss living in a neighborhood? I do live in a blogging neighborhood, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China.

So, about that “missing?”

Never mind.

Technorati Tags: Carnival of Circular Communication, blogging, Manic Monday, neighborhood, community, Share A Square, internet

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”—Author unknown

“Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn’t like sushi—then you also have to teach him to cook.”—Auren Hoffman, Herald Philosopher

As we I prepared dinner for our company yesterday, I had “too many irons in the fire.” I was in the midst of stir frying some vegetables and called over my shoulder, “Honey, will you please peel those last two hard boiled eggs for me so I can make the Deviled Eggs?”

Anxious to help, and eager to please, my husband set to work at the task. Many minutes later, I turned around to see him at the kitchen island, with a look of extreme concentration on his face, struggling to tear away tiny pieces of eggshell from the first egg. “Don’t you know how to peel an egg?” I asked. His sheepish look said it all.

Hiding my exasperation, I took the egg from him and marched him to the sink. “Let me show you,” I said. I turned on the tap water, put the egg under the running water, slipped my thumb under the membrane beneath the shell, and ripped off that eggshell in two seconds flat. With a little bit of effort, he managed to peel the second one.

This was not the first time I have seen my dear husband struggle in the kitchen. Although he is always more than willing to offer help, his mother never taught him his way around a kitchen. Like most of us, she realized that sometimes it’s just easier to do things ourselves rather than take the time to teach someone how to do a task. My husband’s ex-wife did all the cooking, and this wife rarely asks him to do much in the kitchen. He fumbles with peeling potatoes, he can’t slice vegetables efficiently, in fact if I ask him to boil water he might look at me with puzzlement in his eyes and ask “What size pot should I use?”

My first instinct is to laugh. These are easy chores that I assume anyone can do. After the laughter subsides, I have to play Devil’s Advocate and think, “Hold on a second…” If he handed me a cord and a lamp, I wouldn’t know how to wire the lamp (it’s a “guy” thing). I’ve never learned to use the VCR to tape my episodes of “The Closer,” because he will do it for me. If the toilet is leaking, I call out, “Honeeeey!” Like most people, I only learn to do these simple tasks when it is necessary for me to know them.

This brings me to thoughts of one of my most embarrassing (and expensive) lessons as a teenager.

I was dressed to go to work, when I remembered that there had been a red light showing on my dashboard the night before. I knew nothing about cars, but realized that this indicated trouble. Daddy was in his boxer shorts watching television under the air conditioner. I told him of the problem.

“The car needs water,” he said. “Go fill the radiator.”

“What’s a radiator,” I said.

He threw his hands in the air and sighed, “Just go take off the cap at the front of the engine, and put the water hose in there. Fill it until you see the water.”

I asked if he would show me, but he didn’t want to leave the comfort of his easy chair. So, I asked my little sister. When she was twelve years old, she took apart the washing machine, repaired it, and put it back together. She should have been able to help. But, she also refused to go out into 102 degree heat to assist me.

“Just pull off the cap, and fill it with water,” she said.

Left to my own devices, I struggled to unlock and lift the hood on my Toyota (I had never done it before). I got the water hose, and looked at the engine. What a strange foreign contraption it was! I had never seen it before.

“Just pull of the cap,” I thought. “Where’s the cap?” AhHA! I saw a cap, unscrewed it, put the hose in and turned on the water. “Fill it until you see the water,” I mused. But, the water ran for several minutes, and it didn’t fill up.

While I waited for the darn thing to fill, I looked around at this engine that made my car go. Suddenly, I saw another cap! I quickly twisted off that cap, and could see a bit of water! “Oh, NO! I have the wrong cap!”

Yes, folks, I had been putting that water into the oil receptacle and filling my crankcase with water! I looked around to see if anyone was watching, switched the water over to fill my radiator, put the caps back on and jumped in my car and drove it to work. I didn’t know any better, and I certainly didn’t tell anyone. Does it surprise anyone to know that a few days later, my car broke down? According to the mechanic, my car had a “cracked head.” Perhaps I did, too!

That was an expensive lesson for me. It took many hours of checking out groceries at the Kroger Wyatt Grocery Store to earn enough money to repair my car. These days, I would hope I would have the sense to read the instructions, but that’s another thing I was not taught to do.

I have a book that lists 100 simple things everyone should know how to do. I sneer as I glance through the chapter headings: “How to Give A Handshake,” “How to Make A Bed,” “How to Do The Laundry,” “How to Balance Your Checkbook,” etc. Those are all as easy as changing a light bulb! But, wait a minute—changing a light bulb isn’t easy if you don’t know how to do it! Any “Aggie” can tell you that.

As parents, we do our kids a disservice sometimes; at least, I know I did with my own kids. We don’t stop to take the time to teach them how to do simple tasks. In that regard, I think we probably all need to work on our parenting skills. Like other girls of my generation, I was taught “gender specific” chores. I can do household work that would be expected of any woman of my generation. I didn’t learn to use a chainsaw (which would have been considered a “guy” thing) until I was divorced and had to do it. There are a lot of things I wish I had learned to do for myself. I’m pondering that for the possibility of a series of posts.

I’m just curious. If you were listing the top five simple tasks that you think every person should know, what would they be? What “guy” chores do we neglect to teach our daughters; and what “girl stuff” do we not teach our sons? What did you not learn that you wish you had? I’m not “tagging” anyone, because I don’t want them to feel obligated to answer. I can name many people whose insights I would love to see, because I think they would have some thoughtful answers. I hope you will give me some feedback (whether you are a blogger or not) in a comment or in a post. If you’d like to write a post, I’d love to link you here. If you are not a blogger, and have something to say about the subject, contact me and I will post your response on my blog for you.

[update:

Technorati Tags: parenting skills, simple tasks