I started cleaning out the house. To me, part of Step 1 is about cleaning out the chaos, taking control of my life, as well as taking pride in my house. This past Saturday, I went through our clothes and Monday, I cleaned out seven years of toys that was just collecting dust. I have many, many opportunities in the past several years, but never got past bringing out garbage bags and containers to put them. I would just give up! Garage sales never worked out either. I tried to have the kids fill up one bin each and then told them if they sell anything, they could keep the money. The morning of the garage sale, the kids would end up removing everything out of the bins and cry that there was no way they could part with their precious toys.

Early on as a SAHM, besides starting a MLIS program, I got into different crafts. I have always like art, so it seemed natural for me to get into Scrapbooking. But we got to the point, where some months our checking balance was close to $0 because I was spending about $200-$300 a month. My excuse was that I will adjusting to living with one income. I made pretty decent money in web development, so I was used to spending and buying most anything I wanted. It was a big adjustment. The other crafts that I have got into in the past 7 years or so have been stamping, papermaking, painting on dominos, polymer clay, and most recently knitting. It got to the point, where I would start one thing and then get bored, then get into something else. It never lasted too long. My husband at this point was pretty much fed up with all my supply spending. But that part was like an addiction. I truly believed if I had all the latest tools, that my art would improve and that it would make me happy. Boy, was I ever wrong. That just led to worse addictions. All this clutter was poison to my already depressed mind. Also, I felt it gave me an excuse to surround myself with all this stuff and hide away from the rest of the family. I was wrong about that too!

Turning a New Leaf. Cleaning Out the Chaos and Mess that I Call My Life. How This Makes Me Feel.

I actually feel so much better that I am finally cleaning the house. This may sound stupid, but it true. By not surrounding myself with all the mess, I can actually think a little clearer and life is not so overwhelming. Even the simple things that made me anxious and stressed out before, is becoming a little easier to deal with. I am still unfamiliar with this feeling though. I’ve never felt it, but I am learning to like it.

The next step is to clean out all the drawers and closet, then to tackle my craft room. I will be selling all my craft supplies on ebay in the next couple months. That’s all for now!

The boys have two weeks left of summer vacation, although we made sure to fill their time with various classes. fun activities, and outings. We only took one trip, which was down to San Diego to Legoland and the Scripps Aquarium, which is part of UC San Diego. Brennan attended a one month Academic camp in July, took a one week Science camp, which he loved, and now the boys are in a two week, two day cooking class. Elden had pretty much been in his Tiny Tots class the entire summer, which was three days a week. This week they have the two days of cooking class left and then next Friday they go back to school. I am looking forward to Brennan staying in class until 2:30 and Elden will be attending preschool 5 days a week in the mornings. LA county has this great county funded preschool for 4-5 year olds for residents. You don’t have to be financially qualified either and it is free. The one that Brennan attended when he was in preschool was funded by cigarette tax money. I’m not sure Elden’s preschool is funded by, but I am so glad that he will be going everyday. Brennan is also still taking drawing and painting classes, which he thoroughly enjoys. I even bought him a nice sketch journal, you know the ones with the hard black covers, which he draws in quite often. I was thinking to enroll Elden in soccer, but I am not sure if I have already missed the deadline. Brennan pretty much does not express much interest in sports, and although he played basketball for two years, I am not sure we will be enrolling him again. Early on, I really was enthusiastic about getting him to play every sport, just so he can have the exposure, but it has really been a struggle, so I have sort of given up on trying to force it upon him. Elden does show some interest and has even been asking a few to hit baseball with him, so perhaps I will enroll him in T-ball, if we are already too late for soccer. Also, Elden learned how to swim within a month. Having a swimming pool does have it’s privileges. I was going to sign him for swimming classes over the summer, but the classed had filled up, so then we just decided to let him start swimming without his life jacket. I will have to start teaching him the actual swim strokes though, although he has been practicing kicking.

I do have to say that the summer has really passed by so quickly, but overall it has been a good one. Gonna wrap this one up.

But the class that I will be taking in the fall, which I finally paid for is described as such:

Principles and applications of metadata for resource representation and retrieval using various schemes. Includes metadata creation, management, and dissemination, especially for digital libraries. This course provides students opportunities to learn, evaluate, and apply principles of metadata for a variety of digital resources. Topics covered include metadata terminology, content and encoding schemes, applications of metadata standards for different purposes and environments, especially for digital libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage and scholarly digital repositories, and various approaches to metadata creation, storage, management, and dissemination, including harvesting and aggregating. This course will allow students to deepen their knowledge of organization of information, digital libraries and museums, institutional repositories, content management, and information architecture.

Other than my excitement about graduating in Spring 2010, I am also the co-chair / web coordinator for the American Library Association student chapter at San Jose State University, SLIS. We have lots of activities planned and I am I really am thrilled to be part of this group. I still work as a research / teacher assistant, and will continue to do so until I graduate. There is no way that I will quit this, since the husband will be getting 10% furlough cut. Any money will definitely help, no matter how small.

So that is my update on my school stuff. I still need to write about the kids and what they have been up to. Soon, I promise…

I want to grow some pretty flowers and other vegetables today, but perhaps I will do it another day. Perhaps on a brighter day. It is gloomy today. I feel alone, surrounded by family and friends. I feel alone. This darkness. This darkness is sharing my body with me. It walks next to me and my shadow. Creeping, closer and closer. I can’t seem to shake it. I’m tired, oh so tired. It doesn’t matter that I had a full night rest or if I’ve been awake with insomnia. I still feel tired. When will I feel rested and energetic again? Coffee doesn’t help much.

If my family knew, they would think what a failure I am. Yet another thing, she can’t do right.

I’ve been thinking about life changes lately, more then I really want to. Some good and some bad. I recently discovered this blog rawpomona.

This blog chronicles my journey as I transition my diet toward more unprocessed, raw, organic, vegan foods in an effort to transform my health. Pomona is the Roman goddess of fruits and orchards; it’s also my home, so it’s only appropriate I should name this blog in honor of her.

This is perhaps the life change that I need to take. I have gained more weight than is healthy in the last couple years, and also I do have a propensity in developing diabetes. My mom is pre-diabetic, and her mom was diabetic, although she developed it in her 90’s. Simply put, I haven’t been taking care of myself physically or mentally, so there is some changes that I need to take. I do want to watch this documentary “Raw for 30 days“, Morgan Spurlock – creator of “Supersize Me” before I start anything though.

I have been in denial for way too long and I need to start thinking about focusing on me and making myself happy.