So far so good?

I should have known any new endeavor was going to have a few bumps in the road.  Things are going a bit slower than I had hoped and certainly less than perfect.  I am also find myself getting a bit sidetracked. This is ironic as hell since the whole point of this adventure was to improve my daughter's ability to focus! Personally, I blame the mouse. The result of the unauthorized party in my pantry was me cleaning the whole thing like a crime scene and also reorganizing everything into plastic boxes. It also got me looking at my other cabinets as potential havens and then they had to be cleaned out and reorganized, too. Hey, wait a minute, what about our daughter? Oh, right, the honey bun, I did make a teeny bit of progress with our video game addict.  I found these write on wipe off wall stickers. They are not the most attractive things but they don't damage the walls. Directly across and at eye level from where her majesty likes to sit and play on her computer I wrote the dreaded list. It says "Before technology, did you: get dressed, brush teeth and hair, do chores (hamper patrol, dishes in sink), eat breakfast, read for 30 minutes, and be outside for 30 minutes or Wii fit, dance, or board games.
Score one for mommy and Claire's therapist! She has adhered to this list so far twice with only moderate whining. We use this on Saturdays and days off from school. The real test is coming. Can we survive this new schedule for an entire week off for Spring break? I have a nice bottle of white waiting for me but I digress. We, as a family, have had all the willpower of last week's pancakes when it comes to this kind of stuff so naturally, any real change is going to be painful for all of us. The "No Pain No Gain" part only works when you attach enough importance to the "Gain" part to tip the scales. I'm already sitting on one side of the seesaw with my best friend, Anxiety.
Things have a way of working themselves out, God forbid I should remember that, despite the evidence. I am referring to a handwritten journal I'd been keeping in which 95 plus percent of the things I was freaking out over worked out fine. They say you can't believe everything you read, but what if you wrote it?

Promises, promises

  Well, here it is, six months into the new year and so far I've managed to write every day during the week, at least. It hasn't been easy coming up with ideas, weird since I live with a walking wealth of material. I am embarking on a research project for executive skills. I have a long way to go but I am making progress. We all could use some reminder about these "new habits" we are trying to acquire. Instead of those "Live, Love, Laugh" decals people put on their walls, I need ones that say "Are your dishes in the sink?" and "Have you hugged your spouse today?".
   One thing that my source of inspiration reminded me of was how much fun she is the morning. My little fourth grader is about as lovable as a cactus before school. This particular morning we were grousing about having to pick out clothes, among other injustices.  Since she was a toddler I have always tried to limit her choices to between two things in the morning but no, even that was too much for her majesty. Then I remembered the advice we received from her specialist, make life as organized as possible. I'm sure plenty of you are already doing this but it looks like it is now necessary to get our outfits picked out in advance.  As usual, we're just late to the party.
   I would love to have one of those California closet sort of bedrooms for all of us but sadly, that is way not my house. Our daughter's room is a small library with stuffed animals, a bed and dust. Her closet could best be described as "groovy" or maybe "totally tubular". Our house, like its owners, is a bit older than most. I am not able to put one of those hanging tiered shelves in the closet so it looks like I'll have to see if I can figure out a substitute. We also get to have to have to establish another new habit, yay! How many write on wipe off things can you put up before it starts to feel like we live in a memo pad?
   I dream, of course, of that mythical creature, "the clean room" like any other mom. Luckily, I can attach a profit motive to this dream. If I can convince her majesty that she can sell some of her old junk at our yard sale and make money, I have a shot at thinning the herd of crap, and dare I say it?, see a clean dresser surface? Yeah, I know, get your head out of the clouds! We dream big around here. It looks like more things will have to disappear by stealth. I'm waiting for things to start emitting distress signals and suddenly become fascinating to my girl. She seems to "know" when I'm thinking of selling some old toy.
   Generally, despite popular opinion, I try not to get rid of anything that is not mine without consent. I'm sure my spouse would make Sanford and Son look like a shaker family. It's always been up to me to bring up the subject of disposition with him. I'm guessing it's  because my family has had yard sales since I was a kid. Whatever we were done with was either sold or passed along to someone else. We also shopped at flea markets regularly. Economic sense has no stigma. I'm hoping I can set our daughter up with her own table, assuming she can sit in one spot that long. (See "dream big" sentence earlier.)
  What's the big deal about the yard sale? It certainly isn't the money, although that helps. It's the cheap excuse to see our friends and the aftermath. We plan breakfast that day, I end up getting my garage cleaned out, and everything we want to get rid of gets herded into one place. I look forward to having more space and hopefully, the less crap we have, the easier it will be to organize, right? While I'm  fantasizing, I may as well go the whole hog and think that maybe our girl will catch on to the concept of selling her old things to make money, making proper change, and if I get really crazy, the idea that working gets you money! I'll keep you posted on this dream, wish me luck.