My Girl is Leaving to College and My Decluttering Project Goes On

Thirteen years ago exactly my girl was going to Kindergarten and I was blogging about my life changing forever. Now she's leaving to college in just three weeks! She decided to go to Long Island University. In the end they offered her the most money and between scholarships she received from them and a scholarship she just received from MD Anderson this past week, she ended up paying 95% of her fall tuition.

Big Ass Balloon from Miranda's Graduation Party

So Long Island University it is and I'm going to drop her off in New York in three weeks. We are flying there and I'm staying for four days to help her settle in.

The decluttering project continues and I've made some impressive progress, slowly but surely. One of my best friends came over yesterday to see my new bed and she was surprised at how big my room looks now. I showed her a little bit of the method to my madness.

My To Do Lists

In order to not get anxiety and overwhelmed I make myself a To Do list. When I have most of the list checked off I make a new list, I move the things I still need to do to the new page, and I add more things. Making a list soothes me and makes it easier for me to eat the elephant one bite at a time. 

I'm finally at a point where I don't feel overwhelmed and I feel like I'm almost finished. All I have left now is Seth's room and clearing out some of my dad's things that are still in there. One bite at a time!

Daddy Can No Longer Be Located

I originally received this email from TMobile's FamilyWhere in March 2018 after my dad passed away and I cancelled his phone line. This is the GPS service I had on his phone so I could find him when he wouldn't answer his phone. I was going to post it or blog about it back then, but I wasn't ready. I don't know if I ever will be, even now, but here it is.

I've started this blog post at least three times and I've never finished it. I've thought to myself what could I possibly say that I haven't already said about my dad in numerous Facebook posts, Latina Lista Padre Care blogs, this blog and our YouTube Dicho a Day. Many of you have reached out to me and told me that you felt like you knew him.

The thing about losing a parent is that it's never easy, whether you're 26, 30, 48 or 60. And it's doesn't matter what age they are either. The can be 66 or 93 and it's still going to be hard and you still won't be ready.

 The reason I finally pulled myself together to continue writing this blog post is because five friends and loved ones have lost parents in the last month. First my 26 year old nephew lost his father to a brief battle with cancer. Then I had three co-workers lose their father and their mothers all in a row. Finally, a dear friend of mine from high school lost her father and I attended the funeral services yesterday.

All these losses have brought back so many memories about losing both my parents. I found that the wounds can still be uncovered,even 19 years later after losing my mother. I learned that I was still sensitive about her death when I know deep down that there is no reason to feel that way.

That's the thing about losing a loved one. You will sometimes question yourself. You will ask yourself if you could have done more. If you could have done things differently. But you shouldn't. Everything happens the way it's supposed to happen. You can not fight life.

I remember what my mother always said about funerals. What matters is if you saw that person when they were still alive.

Yes, I saw my parents when they were still alive. A lot. I lived with them until I was 28. I was with my mother from the hospital to her house and I slept in her bed with her the day before she passed away. My father lived with me the last four and a half years of his life.

I wasn't with either one of them at the moment that they took their last breath but I was with them. I was with them when they were alive and they both knew how much I loved them. That's all that matters.

Too Much Stuff Brings Me Joy

I'm clean with my body and how I dress. The kids are clean. I'm clean where I cook and eat, but that's pretty much it. I'm a mess and I know it and it's more about clutter than anything else. It's something I have to work on. Here lately it's been getting out of control more and more. I'm almost afraid someone is going to send over a TV crew and will force me to do a show about clutter. I'm afraid that as I'm getting older I'm going to become a Miss Havisham.

The top of my desk clean.

Two days ago you couldn't see the top of this desk. We just kept adding stuff to it to the point that you couldn't even see anything that was there. The only reason I left that gold bird cage in the corner is because my daughter seems to have some things in there, like her quill and ink. I took everything down and put it in a box that she will have to sort through when she comes back from her father's this weekend. 

Those things I left on top may seem weird but they are little things that mean something to me and I can display my daughter's art. I also have two art pieces by Lizbeth Ortiz there, the Bride of Frankenstein from a Post It show and her sacred heart in a shrine box. Later I added my big gold sacred heart and the nest we found outside on the ground.

Things that bring me joy

I went through the whole house doing this. I looked at areas and decided what needed to go. I cleaned out my work space corner in the dining room and that was a feat on its own. 

I've never watched this Marie Kondo woman everyone is talking about but I get the gist of what she says so I'm trying to follow her mantra, "Does this thing bring me joy?" The sad answer is that too much stuff brings me joy! What I do know is that there is such a thing as too too much. I get it. I know that as Americans we are all about excess and I'm no exception.

I posted on Facebook on Saturday that sometimes you have to do something radical to do anything at all. That's how I approached my cleaning that day. I had to be radical and I know that Marie Kondo would not approve on how I went about it. This is in no way advice on how to clean. This is just what I had to do to motivate myself and to make myself move.

I took that basic "Does this thing bring me joy?" concept and added my own twist. I asked myself, "What would you take with you if the house was burning down?" I know kind of the same thing but instead of keeping those things I left them and I removed everything that I didn't need any more or that I was kind of on the fence about, and I put them in boxes. This is the part where I realize I added an extra step for myself but I had to do it this way to do anything at all. I don't have the time to sit there and do the 4 container method: "give away," "throw away," "storage," and "put away." I just needed to work quickly to feel like I was getting anything accomplished.

I put the boxes in the garage and on another day, when I have enjoyed my clean house for a while, I will take on the project of cleaning out my garage. I have some boxes I need to go through slowly to look for paperwork. I couldn't risk losing some things.

Even doing it this way, I spent eight hours on Saturday working on just the kitchen, dining room, hall and part of the living room. There is still a whole hot mess going on in the living room that I need to address. I couldn't believe that working on just those three rooms took me that long. According to my optimistic calculations I thought that I could get through four rooms in eight hours, if I spent two hours in each room. Somehow it didn't work out that way.

Today I'm working on my bedroom, my biggest thorn in my side, the bathroom, and I need to finish the living room.

My goal is to have a clean house where I feel happy but it's also about having a cleaning lady to keep things from getting out of control again. I realize that for so many years as a working mom two people kept my life in order, my baby sitter and a cleaning lady (I had a few).  It has been years since I hired a cleaning lady, first because I couldn't afford it on one income and then my house was too out of control to let anyone see it. I am literally cleaning so I can have a cleaning lady again and bring order back to the universe. Wish me well. 

An Inspired Life

My best friend bought me this journal  by M.H. Clark (Author), Justin Edge (Illustrator) a while back and I thought it was a blank journal. It took a while before I realized that it has a writing prompt on every other page. The opposite page has an inspiring quote.

Published by Compendium, Inc.

This journal has been so extremely therapeutic! I've been writing in it for the past two weeks and it's really made me think about a lot of things. One of the things I've come to realize is that this blog can serve as an inspiring place. No, I don't have a PhD in Psychology, I'm not even certified in any way to give advice. I'm just a regular middle-aged woman struggling with challenges that  a lot of other people struggle with. I don't plan to give advice. I just hope that by reading my quotes, my stories, the sad and the funny, that people are inspired in some way.

Recently I had someone reach out to me on Facebook and she told me that I inspired her to start exercising and running because of my Peloton journey. That really made my day and my month!

I hope that I can continue to do that with my honest and real posts about everything from exercise, eating right, cleaning up my clutter and balancing it all with work, family and trying to write on a regular basis.

The Perfect Mother's Day Weekend Is Being Alone

Last year my Mother's Day weekend was not so great. On Saturday while at Walmart, putting my groceries in my car, I had a freak accident. I dropped a bottle of Topo Chico near my foot in the parking lot and it cut my ankle open. It sent me to the emergency room for seven stitches.

This year I'm not going to make that same mistake again. For one, I'm not going grocery shopping today. In fact, I've decided that this weekend I'm not going to do any of the things that I "should" do. I'm only going to do things I want to do.

It all started when talking to my co-worker Paula about what she was doing and she told me that she was getting together with her sisters. They do different things every year and I loved the idea. I decided that next year I'm going to stay at a hotel with a spa all weekend. I'm going to get a massage and a facial, I'm going to watch Netflix and I'm going to write.

I didn't always celebrate Mother's Day, but I've started my own tradition. Unlike many women and their divorce agreements that stipulate holidays when they get the kids, I don't have my kids on Mother's Day weekend. It kind of just happened a few years ago. The kids happened to be with Rey that weekend and I told him that the best Mother's Day gift was to be alone.

I have the kids most of the time, I'm the one who feeds them every day, whether I cook or buy food, and I'm the primary caretaker. There are a lot of weekends when they are supposed to be with their dad that they need me, for this or that.  Like two weeks ago it was Seth's birthday on Saturday and I took them to take M's graduation photos and photos of them together on Sunday. I know it's my choice to do those things but I do them because they have to be done and they are part of being a mother. In addition to doing mom things I work full-time and a lot. So a break, a weekend when I get to do just ME things is a gift!

When preparing to write this I Googled "I want to be alone for Mother's Day" and I came across titles like "All I Really Want for Mother's Day is to Be Left Alone with this Masala Chai," "All I Want for Mother's Day is to Ditch My Kids," "Dear Family, Before You Buy Me a Mother's Day Gift, Do This Instead," and "All I Want for Mother's Day is For My Wonderful Family To Leave Me Alone."

I almost died laughing. I love that women are finally feeling honest and open enough to admit what they are thinking and feeling. Yes, Mother's Day is a sweet day to remember our own mother and to remember that we love our children and that they made us mothers, but we don't need all the other bells and whistles. At least not with our kids.

I was sitting at work finishing up for the day on Friday and I decided on a whim to call the Massage Envy closest to me to see if they had an opening. They did so I took the 7 p.m. slot and headed over. I had some time to kill so I stopped in at this great wine bar and restaurant that I don't go to enough, called Plonk. I ordered a glass of wine and their amazing warm brie that comes with hazelnuts, honey and a lot of garlic, with bread on the side. Heaven.

After the wine and half of my brie I went to Massage Envy and had an amazing one hour relaxing massage. I usually like deep tissue massages but this woman had really firm and relaxing hands that had me teetering somewhere between asleep and awake. While I was getting massaged I started thinking about how if I did all the things that I had planned on doing this weekend, mainly cleaning my house, I was going to get sore all over again, basically throwing away the  money from the massage.

So today I woke up late, I had coffee, yogurt and I've posted pictures of me when I first saw my kids being born, my mom, went down memory lane, read and now I'm writing. If all goes well with this weather I'm going to go see two of my sisters this evening to take them some gifts. Time flies when you're just relaxing!

I usually have dinner with the kids on Sunday and then I get them back that evening. This year they are going to see Avengers End Game with their dad, his girlfriend and my best friend at 6:30. We will meet briefly for an early dinner before they go to the movie and then I won't see them again until late evening.

By then I will have to do the regular mom things I do on Sunday, grocery shopping and laundry. That's okay because by then I will have had all of this weekend to do the things I want to do. I'm grateful for that because I know that not all moms can do this. I'm aware of this first world privilege. So thank you to my ex-husband first of all, for giving me these two beautiful kids and second, thank you for giving me this Mother's Day off.