Yesterday I decided I would clean my office.  The desktop was full of crap and I could not think straight.  It was also smelling a little funky underneath my feet.

Before:

As you can see it was a complete mess.  And it looks crooked.  Must have been my attitude at the time.

I had such a good adventure cleaning.  I always think of that statement that I could clean my room so well but I get distracted by all the neat stuff I find.  I found a folder of ancestry stuff about my Long and VanHoose families.  I had to rearrange it in chronological order.

I found a binder with all my girls' school photos.  Why did I get 8 X 10's every year?  I had to look through and sigh several times.

I found that I had three copies of Roget's Thesaurus, one a hardback.  I discovered that I still had a French Dictionary that belonged to my friend, Jeanie, in high school.

My Chinese yo-yo was tucked away and of course I had to play Three Musketeers for a while and fight the bad guys.  I had this yo-yo at the elementary school where I worked for 11 years.  I kept a spare in case some kid discovered me playing with mine and wanted to try.  I kept it all those years because I deprived little children of playing with it and breaking it.  Ha, ha, ha!!!

I discovered a root beer barrel which I almost devoured but remembered I am trying to lose five more pounds and just put it on the ledge of my computer next to my Wilma Flintstone plastic statue, the last tootsie roll I got from my favorite substitute teacher who died the year before I retired.  Next to one of each of the girls' diaper pins and a Triton fishing lure which was found on the playground the week after my brother died.  (He was a semi-professional fisherman for Triton and sold boats for them.) I also have a rock/coral that I found in Baja, Mexico while at my daughter's wedding.

There is also a tag from my Yogi tea bag that states, "I am beautiful, I am bountiful, I am blissful."  I try to remember that.

I guess I am like one of those Bingo whores who keep their little mementos for good luck.  I started with the Wilma Flintstone when I worked for WREX television in Rockford.  One of the photographers gave it to me and said he got it in his cereal that morning.  I cherish it.

I also found one penny.  Score!  My friend, Garnet, finds money all the time.  She always says, "Thank you God.  It's okay to send me money."  And so I say it now.

I came across my back up CD of I Tunes.  Thank you very much Addi.  I also found my instruction sheet regarding my IPOD.  Now if I could figure how to reload the thing automatically.  It tries to load everything I have and then tells me it can't hold the load.  Well I know that!  Load as much as possible, I tell it, and what does it do, keeps the same crap that was already on it.  So I do it manually.  If anyone out there can give me a hint with this, please do so.

I made a huge pile of stuff that I needed to put back into its home.  That took forever cause I got distracted by cool stuff while I was putting it back.

I took a couple of breaks.  One for coffee and one to do a jigsaw puzzle on my computer.  You see I am addicted.  No not to coffee, to the jigsaw puzzles.  I am also quite finicky about my coffee.  I made toddy coffee.  You put the grounds in the top and cover with water overnight.  Drain the coffee concentrate and I make ice cubes of coffee.  Boil water, add  ice cube and, voila, coffee with no aftertaste or bitterness.

It took me all day but I finally got around to the vacuuming.  I mopped my plastic job under my chair and gave the plant a bath.  It has been shedding.

What do you think?

Oh, come on, it does too look better.  That afghan hanging on my chair was made by one of my best friends' mothers.  I wore it once when I had to substitute in a children's play.  One of my three kings backed out on me at the last minute.  I wore this afghan and another one and a Burger King crown on my head with teddy bear pop beads around my neck.  Such memories.

Today it is 4 below zero and feels like 20 below.  I am staying in my jammies, wearing a toboggan on my head and turning up the heat.  Tomorrow, I will begin a new adventure.