I'm a Fly Girl

No, unfortunately not one of those hot dancing chicks from the days of In Living Color. I have NO rhythm and my hotness left the building about 15 years ago. Hubs still calls me a hot babe but you know he has to. He has to....he took a vow....for better or worse. It was better 13 years ago when we married. It is worse now that I am in the full on schlumpadinka (or whatever Oprah calls it...what does she call it Jennifer? My good friend Jennifer Aniston knows what the O says!) stage of life. You know, housewife in the late 30's, forgoing the makeup on most days, sporting the unflattering shorts and t-shirt with the hair in a ponytail.

Oh well, I am blessed that hubs still sees me through his rose colored glasses! Of course his view of me could be altered by the fact that he is getting older and the eyesight could be going!!

Speaking of getting older...when I blogged on July 12th I failed the mention the HUGE importance of that day. You see that is pesky brother-in-law Mark's b-day! Pb-i-lM takes joy in the fact that he is 2 years younger than hubs, his older brother. Which is not really revolutionary because, well, we all know hubs is old. What IS revolutionary is that I am in fact 7 years younger than pb-i-lm!!! Let's state some simple facts. When pb-i-lm got married...I was 14. When pb-i-lm's 1st child was born (my stellar niece Meagan) I was graduating from high school...I'll stop now. Simply put, Pb-i-lM is old and I am young...well younger than he is!!!

I digress. None this has anything to do with flies or flying!

So Friday night was scrapbook night. I hosted it at my house this month. There are 9 of us in this exclusive clique of fabulous friends. The problem with there being 9 (although it is rare that on any given month ALL 9 can attend) is that having 9 people around a dining room table scrapbooking, makes for really tight quarters.

I had this brilliant idea to have scrapbooking in our barn. No not a barn with animals in it! It is a glorified storage building really. But you know with overhead light and concrete floor. The beauty part of this being that I have 3 of the 6ft long tables, so we could all spread out and scrapbook. (However, we don't always scrapbook. We should re-name it girls night out with the potential for scrapbooking!)

The only potential down side to this great plan was that until the sun went down it could be a little toasty. Granted we can open the overhead doors to get cross ventilation and I had fans going...but it was a little warm for say an hour. The other problem was the flies! I knew the flies would be around until the sun went down. Because the flies always go away at night. They sleep or die or I don't know what they do but generally speaking if it is dark then there are no flies. Right? WRONG!

The flies were out of control while we ate. Understandable. We then covered the food up and threw our plates away, thereby eliminating the fly risk. Right? WRONG!

It was like the dadgum Ametyville (sp?) Horror! A zillion flies. After dark. After the food was gone. Who knew? I guess they stuck around because the conversation was so engaging and enlightening and entertaining. I can't repeat what was said because we have all taken the what happens at scrapbooking stays at scrapbooking oath. That and the fact that this is a G rated blog.

Well the girls were good sports and were swatting flies like it was an Olympic event. The floor looked like a fly graveyard!So I think that barn scrapbooking will be put on hold until fall or spring when the flies are non-existent. HOWEVER, you will not believe what my m-i-l told me. She was at my favorite Aunt Gay's house this weekend, who has a beautiful porch and backyard area. It is hard to enjoy sitting out on a porch in central Texas because, it is humid for one thing, and the mosquitoes will carry you off. My m-i-l reported that they in fact spent lots of time on the porch and kept the pests at bay by spraying Listerine!!!!!

Yes, Listerine in a spray bottle. She said they sprayed the area with Listerine and the bugs stayed away for the duration of their porch sitting! Holy smokes I will be testing this out. I'll get back to you with the results. The up side is that if you are sitting on the back porch and the neighbors stop by then you can give your breath a quick squirt too!! It is a win-win situation.

SO girls who knows, if Listerine works on fly infestation then scrapbooking in the barn may work out after all! It will be a B.Y.O.L party!! I don't know if I will ever convince them to enter the barn again!!!!

In other fly news, I am back on the Flylady bandwagon. I got on flylady a few years ago right before we sold our previous house. I eliminated all clutter. It was a breath of fresh air. I have pretty much remained clutter free since then. I always have a bag to go to Goodwill in my trunk. If it sits around our house for too long without being used or loved, then it goes to Goodwill!!!

We moved to our new house and I stayed on the Flylady ritual of cleaning. Not rocket science but totally revolutionary...your house stays perpetually clean. After a while I started slacking off because it was too easy! My house was always clean so I eased up a little. And
then before I knew it I was back to the dreaded and huge job of once a week cleaning that takes your whole day up and makes you angry! I panicked when someone would knock on the door because the house was in disarray.

Last month I decided to start back up with the Flylady method. Ummm...hello? It is so easy and really works!!!

On Monday it was "House Blessing" day. This is where you set a timer for 10 minutes for each of the following chores: mop the floors, purge magazines, dust, vacuum, clean mirrors and glass doors, change sheets and empty all trash.

Blonde rascal was grumpy. None of the neighbors were at home to play, TV time was over, I played Jinga with him but he was still grumpy. So I said you are helping me with the house blessing!!! He had a BLAST. It was hilarious!

He held the timer while I ran through the house like a mad woman sweeping and mopping. I was screaming and running with mop in hand, he was calling out the time remaining and jumping over the couch to keep up with me! I could probably add an additional 1/4 of mile to my morning run distance after that!! I mopped the kitchen, bathrooms and entry in 9 minutes thank you! He dusted while I vacuumed. We both armed ourselves with a paper towel and knocked out the glass in like 3 minutes. We high fived between each event!

When were done, we were laughing and sweating and blonde rascal said "I don't want to stop, what else can we clean?" Excuse me? Get a timer ladies, try it!!!

Blonde rascal and I are leaving for Houston on Sunday to visit my parents. Blonde rascal is the only grandchild so lots of attention is lavished on him when we go to see Grandma and Papa!
He has a ball and I get some down time to read. Read lots! Yipee!