We’re going back to the basics today.
By basics, I mean I’m going to talk about the purpose of the Week In Review link up for a couple of reasons.
- I’m obviously and shamelessly doing some self-promotion for my link up. You should participate; you know you secretly want to. I bet it even keeps you awake at nights. Maybe I should come up with a Week In Review jingle or theme song you can hum while in the shower or during your morning commute. Hmm, I’ll get on that.
- I need to bring my new readers up to speed. Of course I’m assuming I have new readers and I’d really like that to be the actual case. I suspect my newfound friends probably look at my list loving ways and Week In Review shenanigans and think “Man, this lady is crazy,” to which I would respond with a resounding “Yes.” I am crazy, not in a homicidal maniac kind of way although I do have a fascination with serial killers, but more in a healthy yet mentally unstable kind of way.
Here’s the thing, I like order in my world. Structure is my bestie (next to the Hubby of course…blows kiss). I love having lists in my life and I prefer there be a plan in place….at all times. When any of these components is missing, I can get a little nuts, not in a murderess rampage kind of way, but more along the lines of clean all the things type of way.
In any event, the Week In Review is a celebration of our list loving ways; a virtual pat on the back and a way to focus on all the things we accomplished in the last week. It’s our moment to savor the feeling of crossing items off any of our Lists. Of course, there are multiple lists. If you are a true list lover, you can’t just stop at one.
For one brief moment or however long it takes you to write a blog post, you can forget about the things which still need doing and instead pay tribute to what’s been done; in list form. How’s that for curbside appeal? Me, I’ve got goose bumps just thinking about it. Not really, but I am excited which is why I strongly encourage you to jump on this band wagon, get listing and start linking up because this party is just getting started.
Before I begin my own mad listing ways, I must offer a note in my defense because one is definitely needed. I have a special guest coming to Cleveland this week, and let’s just say, she isn’t a planner. Oh, the horror. This means my schedule is completely up in the air, and I will be forced to be spontaneous. Shudder. As a result, my self-diagnosed OCD brain is shrieking at the top of her ever-loving lungs, so I’ve had to feed her in other ways. You’ll see.
Let’s get listing.
- I worked way too many hours at my job, including my monthly midnight to three a.m. shift, where I had a two a.m. show down with a House Centipede bigger than my face. It’s possible I’m exaggerating. It also doesn’t matter because he won.
- I vacuumed the entire first floor of the house, which means my special guest, Kiss My Broccoli, not the Centipede, is only allowed on the first floor. Alright fine, I might let her see the rest of my place, but disclaimers will certainly be made.
- I scrubbed the entire fridge. The Hubby helped me. I rewarded him for his efforts.
- I cleaned out the basement, washed the unfinished floors and started the process of deep cleaning those filthy basement carpets. I’m not sure how much I can express my distaste for doing any work in our basement because it is gross and being around anything dirty makes me ultra uncomfortable, in a my skin is crawling and I may have to run screaming from the building kind of way.
- Basement aside, I washed my floors an embarrassing amount of times last week for a multitude of reasons. 1) I have company coming. We’ve established that. 2) The cats knocked over a full glass of apple cider vinegar complete with dead fruit flies. They’re such gems. 3) I dropped an entire watermelon onto the floor and no surprise, it split open and it’s sad little watermelon juices poured out onto my hardwood. 4) I ran the coffee pot without the actual carafe in place. Coffee gate ensued, and 5) A sudden sideways downpour on Sunday night caused rain to come, well raining, in several windows. I may never need to wash my floors again.
- In other fun news, I had a late lunch date with the Hubby on Saturday. I found a caterpillar in my food. On one hand, caterpillars hanging around makes me think the food must be fresh. On the other hand, they aren’t doing a very good job of cleaning it. I had a weird stomach twang hours later which I’m convinced is now an intestinal parasite. Stranger things have happened.
- Speaking of strange, I ate Carrot Cake for dinner on Saturday night, and it was good. I regret nothing.
On that sugar filled moment, I’m going to wrap this up. It’s not over though; not by a long shot. Instead, I’m turning the microphone over to you so you can link up and get your list on. I can’t wait to see what you got into.
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Interested in participating in the Week In Review. Good, you should be.
- Your post should be about all the things you accomplished in the last seven days or so.
- Your post can be about food, social outings, workouts, home improvement projects, fun excursions, none of the above, or all of the above. The idea is to recognize all the things you accomplished in the past seven days. It’s an ode to yourself, a celebration of sorts, and a virtual pat on the back. Plus you get to write in list form, which rocks my socks. Although if you want to stick to prose go ahead; it’s your world.
- Add the Week in Review button to your post, link up and link back to Clean Eats, Fast Feets and get your list on. The link will stay open until Friday at midnight eastern standard time.
- Or you can be like me and make up own your rules. If you can justify it, I’ll accept it. How’s that for lenient?
Are you a planner? Do you do anything special when company comes to town?
FINNNNNE! I’ll go vacuum. FINE
It’s about damn time. 😉
I’m starting to get a complex that I don’t have a WIR post. Perhaps I should start a new blog just to ramble about what I’m doing and link it up to you.
But for now–yesterday the kids and I cleaned the fridge (ahem, like we do every Sunday. Yeah, that’s riiiight . . . ). My son was upstairs washing shelves and drawers in the bathtub, my daughter was the person in charge of bringing up dirty items and drying/bring down clean items. I stayed in the kitchen and decided who would live and who would go down the disposal. We pooped out before we got to the door, so that’s a job for another Sunday, but it is lovely to start the week with clean shelves and fresh crispers. Since I was working in the crispers, I put up a bunch of veggies from the farm share. On my FB page I shared a photo of how I do my carrots (since they are from the farm and not looking like perfect store carrots–carrot pants, anyone?) tops to Crystal the composting pig, tips to the soup pack, and the middles got shredded and frozen for later use. Ditto zucchini (though some made it into a pizza crust). Speaking of soup packs, I made a giant crock pot of vegetable stock all day and into the night last night (too lazy to deal with it, love the Keep Warm function). Today I’m going to riff off A Veggie Venture’s Greens ‘n All Beet Soup, because I adore the flavor of it but my kids will not do ‘batons of beets’ in their soup. And I sauteed all my beet greens because I love them. If I wasn’t already married . . .
We did manage to clean more than just the fridge–the bedrooms each got vacuumed by the primary occupant as well as the living room–but not by me 😉 (hashtag good to be a mom).
In an interesting parallel between my life and yours, there was a bug in the rice at the Indian buffet for lunch on Saturday. He was dead so I scooped him to the side and continued on; and my daughter and I ate cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory for our dinner (my son was out at Homecoming).
Have a lovely time with Heather!
No pressure on the WIR. I know it’s not your thing, and since I’m particularly fond of your thing, just keep doing you.
There’s something about the smell and look of a clean fridge. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy; it’s the same with put up produce.
You’re getting good at the hashtags.
I totally forgot you lived in Cleveland!! I was just there this whole weekend visiting the boy’s fam 😛
What?! Are you for real?! Next time you’re in Cleveland, I’m gonna whup your @ss for that.
Omg, your POOR FLOOR! I’m surprised you didn’t scrub the finish off this weekend with all that! Oh and I want you to know, I flipping lost it over “coffee gate”! Lol
I’m the exact same way when company is coming over…even though for the most part, my house stays relatively clean on a regular basis…I swear it’s just the accumulation of all the damn cat hair that makes me feel so dirty! It’s on the couch, on my bed, in my FOOD, and little hairy tumbleweeds skirt across the floor on all day long! I have threatened him one too many times with a razor AND the vacuum cleaner hose, but he just hasn’t figured out how to keep that shit from falling off yet! All that being said, I probably won’t even notice any at your place…or I might end up BRINGING some of my own! Ha!
PS, why did you have to tell me about that damn centipede?! Now my skin is going to be crawling for the rest of the day! *shudder*
PPS, the “men who do housework” eCard is by far one of the best ones I’ve ever seen! Haha!
PPPS, Damn Heather! Get your thoughts together! Just want you to know I typed out this BEHEMOTH of a comment on my phone…that’s true love right there! And I think it should be rewarded with copious amounts of eggs, cheese, bread, and granola! 😉
Since the floor washing incidentSSSS last week, I am now on floor washing strike. That’s right I’m done, although that will likely only last a week or two. Or until the cats knock something else over or leave me another present. Damn furry friends. They’re really are the source of all things hairy in my home. Lord knows I don’t have much.
The men who do housework ecard is hysterical and dead accurate.
I eat cake for breakfast a lot, and I guess if I end my night with cake that could be considered dinner right? Meh..no shame. I clean like a freak sometimes..actually a lot of the time. It’s my therapy. UGH I WANT TO COME VISIT!
You SHOULD COME VISIT! We’d go running and then make vegan cupcakes, which I would wash down with cheese. Sorry I couldn’t help myself.
Caterpillars are a great source of protein! 😉
Also, it must be a carrot cake trademark or something- muffins, cakes, slices here carrot cake flavoured all have that little carrot decoration on top. Carrot cake identity.
So pumped to see what antics you and the broccoli get up to!
Antics, now why would there be antics?! I have no idea what you could possible be suggesting. Wink, wink.
I have had house guests that don’t plan and it drives me absolutely crazy!
I have no idea how non-planners function with their spontaneous devil may care attitude. Go with the flow, they say. Nonsense, I say.
If I ever come to your house, I’m expecting first AND second floor treatment 😉 Haha. Just kidding. I’m sure Heather doesn’t mind at all the state of your house (but I suspiciously think it’s just about perfect and you would have a minor heart attack at the state of mine…). It’s just the company that she’s after.
Oh boy. I can’t wait to read about your adventures next week in WIR. Will it even be in list form? How crazy are we talking?
You found a literal caterpillar in your food?
Yes a literal caterpillar, although he was no longer living. I moved him to the Hubby’s plate and put down my fork.
Your suspicions are probably very right. The crazy cleaning was really my need to plan the things I actually can control. Sneaky OCD. You my dear would warrant full house cleaning. I tried to do for Heather too; I just ran out of time. 🙂
Your argument is very convincing! I did an update on my goals progress for the past month; does that count? It has bullet points!
I recently bought a little notebook that has dividers, so I now have my To Do lists, my To Buy lists, and my To Read lists (things to look up online later) and I am so, so self-satisfied 😛
Bullet points absolutely count. I hope you come on over and link up with me. It’d make my day, and now I need to check out your bullet points. Oh, that sounded dirty. Grrrr.
So I was just thinking about how much I love my Swiffer duster while I was cleaning my floors today… Cleaning is seriously one of the most therapeutic things there is. I don’t know if it’s just the act of keeping myself busy, or if the whole cleaning up my home is a subconscious desire to clean up the messy areas of my life, but it’s too late to get into the psychology of the matter. Let’s just agree that cleaning is the best form of therapy and leave it at that. Oh, no wait.. baking. Baking is the best form of therapy. But cleaning ranks up there too.
Oh there is most definitely some weird psychological reasons for the excessive cleaning. It’s my need to organize those things I can control, and it is therapeutic, almost as much as baking, but nothing can compare to baking. Speaking of which, I still want to make your Fig and Goat Cheese Muffins. I need those in my life.
Caterpillar in your food? Hmm – So sweet of them to not only give you food but a free pet. However, I think I would’ve traded in the little bug for a free meal, Ha!
I didn’t say anything about the caterpillar. 🙁
Dude. What kind of job do you do that you have to work from midnight to 3am? And that you can wear studded open toed booties to? My mind is spinning.
I exist in a no housework kind of spot. It works for me.
Also, I dig making lists of all the things we actually DID during the week. So much more therapeutic than a list of what we want to do that never gets done.
Genius, I say. Genius.
A no housework kind of spot…what is this place? Do they have fairy’s there too? Can I come visit?
I work in an Accounting Department so the studded open toed booties work perfectly with a pair of long pants. You get to see just a glimpse of excitement but not too much. Once a month, I run a bunch of reports and things in the middle of the night, although I get to do this from the comfort of my own home.
You should join the link up. 🙂
I very much like the idea of listing the accomplishments for a given week! Positivity for the win!! Hope you ladies have fun!!
I’m glad to hear it AND I’m thrilled to see you linking up. It’s fabulous to see new faces at the party. 🙂
Oh my god, your floor cleaning shenanigans had me cracking up so hard. Gooooooodnesssssss!!!!
Yes, I always clean before company. I would never invite someone to a dirty house, unheard of!
I am a list maker and while I LOVE a paper and pen list I’ve begun using Cozi app for all my list making. Do I sound app-crazy? Maybe. But I do love having all my lists in one place, never forgotten at home when I make an unscheduled stop at the store. And the lists link to hubby’s phone so he can see what we need without me having to find a list and send a text. I keep my to-do, errands to run, shopping for groceries, for clothes, for home goods, wish listing, everything in there.
I am a pen and paper list girl through and through because I love the cross out. So much satisfaction, so much relief in one simple sweep of a pen. Although this Cozi App sounds interesting. I’m intrigued.
I clean like a madwoman for company, too. No surprise there, right? Let me blow your mind even further and tell you I make a list before doing so… I feel like I should take a week off from lists after the ten million I’ve made over the course of the past few weeks of moving, but I’m pretty sure my world would fall apart if I did. Anyhoo, carrot cake for dinner? Well, it’s got vegetables in the name even, so I don’t see why not! And I’m torn about finding bugs in food too. Used to get my cabbage at an Asian grocery and it always had one or two caterpillars in it. So you know it isn’t grown soaked in pesticides. But still. Bugs. Ew.
Of course there are cleaning lists. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sometimes when it’s intense cleaning, I break it down by room. I can see you nodding your head in agreement.