Yesterday I did something that made me feel very, very naughty. I was buying groceries and looking for our usual laundry detergent. They were out of All: free and clear, the kind I usually buy, and I was forced to look around and consider the possibilities.

We have sensitive skin in our family, although I have noticed great improvements with Maggie over the past year. My in-laws use a detergent that used to make me itch, but either I’ve become accustomed to it, or Tide changed the formula, because I can use it now, and suffer no bad consequences. So I bought a bottle of Tide.

The part that made me feel like I was breaking all of the rules, was the fact that I bought Tide with a “touch of Downy”. We don’t do fabric softener. It can be irritating to sensitive skin, really bad for the environment and your dryer, and when I was first married and in college we were so broke that the thought of dropping THREE WHOLE DOLLARS on a bottle of blue stuff with no sanitizing value was just too much for me, and it stuck.

The thing is, I love the smell of Tide mixed with Downy. My mother in-law smells like this. My friend Cori smells like this. I could sit in between both of them all day, squished in a little smell-o-riffic cocoon of yumminess. (I am extremely smell sensitive, and I will noticed how you smell. I am forever weirding people out by telling them how good they smell. I’m learning to keep myself in check, especially where random men are concerned- but seriously, some people just smell good enough to eat.)

So I convinced myself that it would be ok, just this once, to buy something with just a dab of fabric softener. I’m such a rebel. Could this be a slippery slope? Will I be buying economy sized jugs of straight fabric softener a month from now? Quick! I need an intervention!

and they open- like so:

Nifty keen, no?

Finally scrapped this photo.

I have had it.

My children have no respect for their things or my things. I can tell them no until I am BLUE IN THE FACE- and they still feel the need to do whatever they want. My mother bought them a great backpack filled with some classic little kid games. I want them to be played with at the table, under my supervision, and they continually defy me and sneak them out of whatever hiding place I put them in and strew the pieces all over their already messy room. Why is it messy? Because, starting a few weeks ago, they think that cleaning up has become passe. They used to clean their room up, especially if I helped. Now, they just sit there and watch me do it, and no matter what I say or take away- no help.

They have broken some of their Christmas gifts already (nice gifts, not crap) because they won’t follow instructions or put them away. They have no appreciation. Jonas even threw a two year old tantrum at Barnes & Noble today over a stupid neopets magazine he wanted! Hello! You’re FIVE. He is not usually like this. The past two months have warped my kids. Granted, Maggie was good and she got a book, for which she even said, “Thank you Mommy, for my Dora book” in the car on the way home, but still. Enough.

I am so fed up.

I have decided that this year, I will buy no toys. Even for Easter and Christmas- I will purchase nothing but clothes, a few books and educational games. I might even stop ordering Happy Meals! They don’t need the crap. I don’t need the mess.

A few years ago I stopped buying treats all together for Jonas for about three months. He got totally out of the gimmes and became very grateful and polite about getting treats. Apparently the lesson wore off.

Does this make me a big meanie?

I am a musical person. This isn’t really the season in my life where I truly celebrate that, it is the season for paper and glue and being a mommy. It is ok that my music happens by singing in church and along with the radio, it is still there. It is still deeply important, and it will wait for me.

Felt like doing a layout with this photo and couldn’t find the words to describe how I felt that day in the mountains. It was a really hard day. A gut wrenching day; but it is over and here I am. Ok. Still singing. There was music in my soul that day, and certain songs that calmed my heart and nudged me in the right direction. I am a person to whom God speaks, and He usually opens my ears with a gentle melody and a powerful lyric. So this layout was born. A little cheesy, but all me.

I used My Mind’s Eye paper and transparencies & Inque Boutique “French Quarter” alphabet stamps.

I have been online almost non-stop for days. DAYS! You’re wondering how this is possible since I have left no blog updates to prove that, but seriously, my carpal tunnel hurts and that can mean only one thing.

It is Design Team call time at the Nook. And I’m the one who wades through seventy-five applications filled with information and links that need clicking. I’m the one who sorts these into three folders, flags and unflags her favorites, finally chooses twenty to move on to the second phase of the call, and then who really goes crazy as she comes to truly enjoy so many more of these completely awesome, talented women than she will ever be able to put on one team, all the while knowing that if she doesn’t choose them, most will disappear into the internet and never be heard from again. Then, if that isn’t bad enough, I’m the one who gets to let go half of her current design team, through no fault of their own, but because design teams need new blood. It’s the nature of the beast, but it still involves me firing people. Firing with love, but firing nonetheless. I get a little strung out.

So that has kept me busy. So has creating this newsletter for my upcoming classes in January and February. (For heaven’s sake click and look at it! Do you realize how much preparation all that creating and uploading took? Oy!) Seriously- it is loaded with all of the scrappy goodness I’ve been creating in the past few weeks.

I have also been sucked in by the temptation of online shopping, which, in January should be expressly verboten, but somehow I can’t catch that vision. Particularly when yet another Christmas devoid of traditional Norwegian goodies has left me with a krumkake craving. I caved and bought myself the Krumkake Express M839-a $60 beauty promising to make me fat and happy. I will learn to cook this if it kills me.

I also ordered the kids a V-Smile (Because they need more toys! They aren’t spoiled enough!) and myself a new set of scriptures since Maggie has shredded sections of mine into bits that resemble dead seas scrolls. Yes, the online shopping has been dangerous. Thank heaven for Christmas money and the recent ads someone bought on the blog (tucked away in old posts, all unobtrusive-like- but still paying for a krumkake griddle).

When I’m not on the computer I’m chasing kids and spending hours in my shredded scriptures because, people, there is peace to be found in those, and I need the peace.

So, busy, busy, busy here. But happy. Things are kind of hard, but hard isn’t always bad.

It is currently very hard to type. That would be because I have my head inside my pajama top so I can breathe only the sickly sweet air coated with Vicks Vapo-Rub. With the kind of congestion I have going on in this happy new year, simply slathering it on my chest and hoping my nose gets a little wasn’t working well enough. I am very skilled in the one handed typing.

The cold hit two days ago. Within one day the skin on my nose had literally begun to crack, bleed and peel. This is what happens when sensitive skin meets the chafing of frequent nose blowing. It doesn’t matter how soft and sultry the tissue is, fact is, it is still paper, and it still chafes. By bedtime I was near tears every time I tried to blow, so I resorted to some of my highly questionable but tried and true cold relief methods.

#1: Ditch the kleenex. Find yourself a nice bed sheet that you can haul around with you like a giant booger blankie and use it as a jumbo sized hankie. This really cuts down on the aforementioned, much hated chafing.

#2: Remember that tube of lanolin you bought when you or your wife was going to nurse her first baby? You probably used it once and tossed it into the medicine cabinet. That stuff on a cracked, peeling schnoz is the most sweet relief I have ever felt this side of an epidural. Put it on before you go to bed at night and I swear, you wake up with a new nose.

#3: Sidle up to your spouse and in the most seductive, stuffy voice you can muster say, “hey baby, wanna rub me in?” Then hand him the Vicks. At least you’ll have something to laugh at while he wonders for a second if you’re actually serious.

So I’m gross. I’m a sick, snotty, cranky, achy, swollen eyed, peeling nosed blogger. Watch out world!