Polly Doesn't Know Where To Start...

Just this afternoon I was chatting by phone to my Mum. There really isn't anything unusual about that, considering I speak to her most days, or at least every other day anyway. When she asked me what I was up to for the day I told her that I'd been blogging; her tone changed and she sounded almost excited! Then she asked me which blog?

I've been working on yet another blog recently. This time it's for the scouts. I was asked to delete the blog that I'd set up for the scouts in Tullamore some time ago, so this has been a whole new adventure that I've been adding to piecemeal for a while just so's I could get a feel for it and where the blog was going. Remember, in my last post on Polly's Peri-wrinkle's I told ye a little about what I'd been up to in regard to setting up the new scout group over in Edenderry?

Anyway, my Mum was summararily disappointed to hear this. She apparently misses the gossip over here on Polly's Peri-Wrinkle's and kind of made me feel a little guilty about the fact that I'm not keeping up with the times, so here I am! And I don't have a clue where to start...

I'm still fantasising about living in a clean and tidy, organised household, receiving my daily e-mails from FlyLady and dragging two of her books around with me as I hop from here to there and back again. I've been doing this for approximately fourteen years, or at least that's when I first encountered the system that she has adopted for her own and shared with countless others on a daily basis.

Shortly after I had my second child, returning home in mid-winter to a cold and damp cottage in the middle of nowhere I started to feel just a little bit stressed out about things and discovered an amazing book at one of my La Léche League meetings. This little book; "Sidetracked Home Executives: from Pigpen to Paradise" doesn't appear to be readily available in normal book shops but is available from Amazon.

I won't pretend that I embraced it immediately, if at all. What it did achieve though was to realise that there is hope at the end of it all and that one way or the other it is absolutely possible for the disorganised to become organised! Hell yeah...


So, I spent this afternoon grumbling about the state of our toilet. Having cleaned the sink and the soad holder to bright and shiny once more I always find the state of the loo disheartening and find it difficult to understand how it can get so grimy without anyone noticing. I suppose that's because I share my living quarters with three men, the grimy aspect of the loo that is!

Being a lady, I don't have to lift the seat on my commode unless I'm in the process of cleaning it. Being of the male persuation they do - say no more. Actually, now that I think about it, it's not really that surprising, considering they have to be reminded to hang the bath mat over the side of the bath to dry...

Thankfully one of my BNI Uibh Fhaili Chapter colleagues, a certain Mr Ollie McLoughlin of Midland Hygiene Products has a magical potion that liberates gas on contact with certain solids that seem to love the bottom of our loo. So I sploshed as much of the water away as possible and poured a liberal amount of the miracle liquid into the bown, hitting any stains or calcium build up on the way down. Within minutes, nay seconds the bowl was restored to its former glory again!

I've come to the conclusion that I am your typical Flybaby. Guilty of stinking thinking and perfectionism, I rarely complete projects that I start. I probably don't do as much around the house as I ought, after all, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right isn't it? That's right, I hear you say. Well, hey! Get real, will ya? Anything at all is better than nothing, no matter how badly or half heartedly a job is done, at least it's partway done, rather than not at all!

While I was cleaning the bathroom, sorting out all those samples of shower gel, shampoo, conditioner,etc I chucked out a load of manky old make-up, you know the stuff that's separated, gone oily or solidified. I pared three eye/lip liners, cleansed and toned my face, put together a bag for the girls at work stuffed with sample perfumes and mascaras, sorted out the stamps off old envelopes dumped on the bathroom cabinet and generally had a jolly good clear out.

Unfortunately at this time I carelessly dropped my lovely Estee Lauder stick blusher down the back of said cabinet and ended up routing around behind the radiator and underneath the cabinet. Not only did I find what I was looking for, I found all sorts of other treasures, lots of rubbish and plenty of dust bunnies! This of course where things started to go wrong, as I had to leave my task to go find a dust pan and brush/vaccuum cleaner...

Once away from the job in hand I realised that I'd been fuming about an incident that took place last Friday evening. Ridiculous, hey? Four days on and I'm still livid. So, I did what all flybabies do and allowed myself to be distracted for a while. I wrote at least three letters expressing my indignation/dismay/upset to my colleague whom I consider had insulted me and found that I was getting more and more steamed up by the minute (the whole idea of this exercise was to identify what exactly was upsetting me and deal with it!) Please God, this has subsided by the time I meet said colleague tomorrow morning - as my inability to be gracious about things may just have to make an appearance...

Two whole hours and one chili con carne later I am sitting writing on my blog for the first time in an age. The bathroom is clean, largely due to the fact that DG came home to find cabinets pulled out, the floor littered with rubbish and laundry and the bathroom pretty much inaccessible. Do you know, it only took another two minutes to finish off in there, it's definitely not perfect, but it's as company ready as it's going to be for the foreseeable future.

My nice colleagues will benefit from the potions and lotions secreted in my fancy paper bag from the hairdressers (I think that must have been all of a year ago that I last visited!), the dyslexia group has even more stamps to sell and Mr Ollie McLoughlin of Midland Hygiene Products will have another referal on Thursday morning. I have a clean bathroom. So, something good must come of everything bad and now that I've ranted just ever so slightly here on the blog I think I'll be able to go to work and leave without the police being called.

Now that's what I call a result...