Everybody's back to work... the farmgirl edition

The hens all went back to work just in time for the holiday baking we've been doing. If you look closely you can even see that a few of those eggs are pale green... my Easter Eggers are laying!

The New Year. The new year is an opportunity, of course, for buckling down to face resolutions and inner revolutions and the most important of all, closet organization. It ought to be for me a time of much, much writing. Lists and such. And the occassional blog post.

Instead:

Football games. (Feel free to pause a moment for the Oregon Ducks.)

A new man door f0r our detached garage (I have dreams of converting this into a schoolhouse/guesthouse. Also: "Man door" (?!) -- there must be a better word for the door through which a person walks to enter a garage.).

Selling my beloved, of late Madeleine's beloved, black Quarterhorse mare Seven. (My reaction to this event in all its swiftness, in a severely depressed horse market no less, astounds me and I just can't seem to find adequate words.)

Happy New Year to you and yours. I sure hope I can find a little time to make a resolution or two. How about you?

Matching! And Organizing! Concentration!

Remember that game you used to play with your mom and dad's cards? Concentration is what we called it. My brother and I would spread all 62 (64? I can't remember. Challenge me to any card game and you will win. Except maybe concentration. I'm so good at that. Except this long parenthetical proves otherwise. Who's counting?)... anyway, my brother and I would spread out the whole deck, upside down, in a perfect grid on the floor.

I was a little particular about the grid and its spacing. My brother, nearly three years younger, just wanted to slap 'em down and get on with the game. Brothers. It was always a stretch, literally, to organize the middle just right so the grid looked more or less orderly. This would be important later, when mentally photographing the split-second overturning of a card to find a match.

My brother is a chemical engineer. He's all slapdash and "whatever," clearly, to this day. Me? I'm a (mostly) stay-at-home mom with a blog. Which one of us was paying attention in the big concentration game of life, I'll never tell.

Oh! The REASON for this post?

I have decided to get more organized in the New Year. How novel! you say. Feel free to leave me tips in the comment section. Or hire me a personal organizer. Either one.

Because this is not the first time it has crossed my mind, I have a few (dozen) books and torn-out magazine articles on the subject. All over my office floor. Plus (bonus!) all the new magazines have refresher courses for me.

It occurs to me that one's entire house, indeed, life, should not be a huge game of Concentration. One (that one being me) should not have to close one's eyes and picture where they left their keys, underwear, smallest child. One should decidedly not have to overturn any playing cards to find any of those items. Puh-lease.

So I decided to start the big effort, yesterday, with a shopping trip. What did I buy? Certainly not clever lined baskets or totes or filing cabinets or even bookcases. I bought bras and underwear, people.

I bought five new bras, none of them flesh-toned or nursing-capable, and two pairs of panties to match each bra. The angels of organization are singing as I type that. Can you hear them?

Now, this very morning, I shall attack the organization monster with a vengeance. Clearly I am girded for the chore.

(First stop: Throw away all nursing bras and maternity panties and tidily arrange my new lingerie drawer. Next: Cup of coffee and self-congratulations. Finally: Peruse more magazines to plan the whole attack. Disintegrate into overwhelm. More coffee. Keep you posted.)