Cheers to 'To Do' Lists!!

So, once again, I haven't been around much lately.

Maybe you've noticed.

Or, then again, maybe you haven't since...really, let's be honest... I haven’t had much to post about because I was stressing out some kind of bad. But the family is sleeping soundly and beautifully and here I am... Up again. Great!

It's just that I have all these lists jumbling around in my head lately...all To-Do Lists of some sort: things I have To Do for work, things I have To Do at home, things I have To Do for the kids...and mixed somewhere in there, dizzy amongst all the other demands, is my list of things I want To Do… for myself.

Despite how manic I can be, I'm usually pretty good about putting that list at number two falling only behind my kids’ list. Take right now, for instance: I'm sitting in a kitchen strewn with week-old mail (we get a lot of junk...trust me, it's A LOT), trying to write up a contract, surrounded by letters, bills, drawings, and notices (which we have surely ignored for way longer than is proper), and countertops that I have been saying I was gonna clean for the past week. But here I am: blogging instead of doing what I "should" be doing. I could rationalize it by saying that every once in a while, you gotta throw out the to-do's and just say "Forget it" and have a night to yourself, but if I'm gonna be really honest, then I have to admit that I've done that pretty much every night for a week. Sunday, it was "Forget it, I think I have a fever, I don't care if the kitchen is a mess." Monday it was "Forget it, I feel like crap but at least I don't feel sick anymore, so I don't care if the kitchen is still a mess." Tuesday it was "Forget it, I ate a good meal with my brother and is family, I finally feel like myself, so I am going to spend all my time with the kids, and I don't care if the kitchen is a mess." Wednesday it was "Forget it, I meant to get to it today, but I'll deal with the kitchen tomorrow." And today, well, today it's "Forget it, I'm drinking wine and it's my Friday, so just forget it in general."

But in spite of the fact that I usually do carve time out of life's chaos To Do the stuff I really want to, sometimes blogging falls by the wayside. And I find that, for some reason, lately I have been thinking in "list-form" a lot. So after toying with the idea I've decided that every once in a while (or whenever I please to do so), I will have a List Post. 'Cause truth be told, my brain never shuts down and I very often have something I want to say, but usually I just don't have the time (or energy, mainly) to sit down and put together a cohesive, poignant, perhaps funny, usually sarcastic post on the matter. So, I present you with the first of my new series: "My Life, in Lists."

List of things I can never say NO to:

1. My daughter saying “Come on Mom” as she puts the feather scarf around her neck and pulls my hand towards the tutus!

2. My kids (well Madi) asking for "one more chapter" or "one more book" or anything reading-related.

3. An offer from my mother or mother-in-law to watch the kids.

4. A gorgeous day at the beach.

5. A night out with The Girls (or day out, or lunch, or any gathering, really, in which I may feel like I will miss out).

6. The snooze button.

7. Red velvet anything.

8. A foot rub.

9. Good salsa.

10. A really good book.

11. Date night (even if it's just at home after the kids are asleep) with Hubby.

12. Trashy celebrity magazines.

13. Cadbury Mini caramel Eggs (unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on the current number on the scale, they only sell them at Easter time).

14. Watching anything with Drew Barrymore or Cameron Diaz in it!

15. Another glass of wine.

Cheers!