Archive for the ‘Life Tools’ Category

I woke up this morning thinking about Olivier Theyskens, the Belgian fashion wunderkind.

(Actually, he’s getting up there in years, so he’s not quite so kind-y. But he’s so damn talented that he’s eternally wunder-y.)

It’s not so much that I was thinking about Olivier’s work – although it’s amazing, and I’m thrilled he’s now helming Theory, one of my all-time favorite brands.

Rather, I’m obsessed with something former Barneys honcho Julie Gilhart mentioned about him in that gi-normous piece in the Times that ran back in August.

“He knows how to manage his mind,” said Julie, who has known Olivier since he was a Wee Lad of 19 and has major insight into what makes him keep on truckin in the insanely fickle fashion biz.

It’s kind of crazy that one line in a verrry long profile, published 10 weeks ago, would stick with me like that, right?

Well, it would be nutso if I hadn’t already given mind-management an enormous amount of, well, mental space. I devoted an entire chapter of my Momover book to it, and I pretty much consider the successful execution of mind-management to be nothing short of the key to happiness. Really and truly.

Though it takes a tremendous amount of discipline, it basically boils down to our inner dialogue, and the way we chit-chat with ourselves all day long. And don’t even try to tell me you don’t chit-chat with yourself all day long, because I will NOT believe you.

It’s like those adorable Maybelline commercials, with Christy Turlington and her little foundation “eraser,” telling us to bounce our self-defeating inner chatter.

Personally, I have my Dark Dana days and my Light Dana days. Dark Dana is grumbly and growly, and doesn’t do a boffo job of managing her mind. Light Dana just gets on with it, finding little pockets of fun and joy, even when, just five seconds ago, she was completely ballistic and batshit-crazy about something work- or otherwise-related.

So how to have more Light than Dark days? By stopping yourself dead in your tracks whenever your mind starts to head down the rabbit hole. I think we all have a lot more control over our inner dialogues than we’d like to admit, or own.

Unless you’re one of those naturally perky types (and if you are, we hate you…kidding), it’s hard but incredibly worth it to try to manage your mind. You know what helps? Meditation.

In fact, meditation helps with just about everything. Om.

Mid-career (whoa, how business-y does that sound? mid-career), I took a breather from magazines and went to work for the biggest, baddest beauty company in the world.

Such a serious place. Incredibly buttoned down. After years of professionally flitting around Gotham all day, going to this, that and the other beauty event, to breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, I had to sit in my chair in my beautiful office and f-o-c-u-s.

Yes, I got to go to Paris a lot. But then I’d be sitting in my glamorous Paris boss’s beautiful office, f-o-c-u-s-i-n-g.

Though I worked really hard at my magazine job, there was tons of leeway with how I produced my pages every month. If I wanted to flit about all week and then come into work on a Sunday and write and edit like a crazed banshee, I could do that.

But the big, bad beauty company wasn’t down with loosey-goosey work habits like that. So I literally had to train myself to produce in a completely different way.

And I did.

Mostly with the help of one of my all-time fave productivity books: Eat That Frog.

The big “takeaway” from Eat That Frog is this: We all know which task we have to do on a given day that’s most important – and, typically – most terrifying.

And because we’re terrified at the amount of hard work and effort said Most Important Task will take, we often do everything else but our Most Important Task. We read email, organize files, gossip with our co-workers about the hottie in cubicle 9.

The author calls our Most Important Tasks “frogs.” And his reco is to eat your frog first thing in the morning, before doing anything else.

He also advocates working quickly. That, he says, is the killer combo. Not just mere excellence. But excellence and speed.

I have now arrived at the point in this blog post in which I will apply this frog-eating theorem to my current professional sitch.

I’ve committed to working full-time, four days a week, from home. The fifth day, theoretically, is for other projects, like another website I’m dying to develop.

But because I’ve been inefficient, time-wise, my four days has been dribbling into five. Which means my other projects have been dribbling into the weekend.

Weekend work-dribbling isn’t good.

Weekend work-dribbling is the exact opposite of good.

So I thought long and hard about what I was and wasn’t doing, and here’s what my detective work revealed:

The Wee Lass has fallen in love with early drop-off, because it means an extra half-hour of giggling with her gal pals before school starts. So I’m kissing her goodbye by 8 in the morning.

But then I’d head up the street to the newsstand to nab the New York Post and whatever else caught my eye – mostly shelter mags lately, especially Arch Digest, j’adoring Arch Digest. Then I would come back home, crack open my reading and drink tons of half-caf.

And then start my work.

But finally it dawned on me that I wasn’t maximizing my peak productivity hours. I am a straight-up morning person. I wake up super-duper early and my mind is on fire. Consequently, I’m useless later in the day. And my DVR queue is filled to the rafters with shows that start after 9 pm.

So this week, every day, I’ve been coming right back to the house after early drop-off and heading straight upstairs to my office, fruit in hand.

And along with my chunks of pineapple and cantaloupe, I’ve been eating my biggest, scariest Frog of the Day. After that, I eat the smaller frogs. One after the other.

Now, quite happily, because I buckled down, today is completely mine to do with whatever I please. All this week’s frogs have been eaten. TGIF.

Okay, so staging the first and only Momover giveaway – in conjunction with my Mama Guru slash fitness goddess LaReine Chabut – five seconds before A) Labor Day and B) Really Horrible Tropical Storm Irene probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had in my life.

But my decision to make it a “show us your fitness stuff” contest rather than a straight-up giveaway was actually borderline genius. Because then I got to pick a winner and share her post-babies getting back in shape tale with all of you.

So here’s my girlie. I swear I didn’t pick her because her name is exactly like mine.

Rather, lovely Daina is the mama of the moment because of her spirit and her commitment to making her health and wellness a top priority.

And as you’ll soon read, that’s what it took: A pledge to herself that despite everything else that’s going on in her crazy-busy life, she would still carve out the time to exercise and eat right.

So let’s hop right into our happy little Q & A. It’s so inspiring you’ll be zipping up that tracksuit:

MOMOVER LADY: How have you re-jiggered your schedule to fit in your workouts? Are you being more time-efficient at work? Or have you hired a cleaning lady or asked your husband to make dinner a few nights a week? Something had to go, right?

DAINA: My greatest barrier to working out was (is) a lack of time. I juggle a full-time job, which requires me to travel at least once a week, two children (ages 1 and 3), a dog, a household and myriad other duties and obligations. My a-ha! moment was a realization that time would never magically appear. I had to make time. If working out was something I wanted to do, I had to push aside, re-priortize, pay a babysitter or do whatever I needed to make that commitment.

As for specifics, I committed to twice-a-week TRX class that starts about 30 minutes after my daughter’s bedtime. On those nights, I put on my workout clothes, get the kids fed and bathed a little earlier, and my husband puts our son to bed so I can rush to class. Is it a rush rush rush evening? Yes, but I get to my workout.

On one or two other days, I block my workout time (plus some time for travel to and fro) in my work calendar, usually around lunch time. I hustle off to the gym for a condensed (45-minute) workout.

I also picked a gym that offers inexpensive childcare, though I haven’t used it yet.

MOMOVER LADY: What’s been the greatest benefit so far? More energy? Sleeping better? Less stressed? Or is it purely superficial, like an inch off the old thighs?

DAINA: I’m happier after I work out. Much happier. I don’t know if it’s the “me” time or the fact that I’m getting stronger or just the post-workout endorphins, but the happiness glow lasts for quite a bit. Last week I missed two workouts because of travel and houseguests, and I was feeling grumpy and anxious. On Friday, when I finally sweated it out, I felt great.

MOMOVER LADY: TRX sounds scary. Like P90X kinda scary.

DAINA: It’s a Navy Seals type of workout. It’s great. A killer workout. But I’ve also been been trying to get my head around adding some more cardio. I used to love running, but that hasn’t been as appealing after having two almost-10 lb babies and nursing for two years.

MOMOVER LADY: On the food front, what’s been the biggest hurdle? Are there “trigger” foods you just can’t stop eating? Like me and my godforsaken Kettle chips?

DAINA: Ah food. Here’s the rub: food is what really matters. Eating clean and lean changes your body. I *know* this, but for me, what I eat is the hardest thing to change. I think it’s because exercise is fun (see post-workout high), but limiting food is about, well, limitation. Limitation isn’t fun.

For me, the first step has been realizing that what I put in my mouth matters. Every. Single. Bite. I love my ice cream, wine and Nutella, but where I really fall down is the little bite here, the little bite there, the handful of almonds, my kids’ leftover mac & cheese, etc.

My goal for next week is to start a food diary. Not because it will show me some patterns (although it probably will), but to force myself to be HONEST about those bits, bites and handfuls that add up over the course of the day.

MOMOVER LADY: Bingo. In my book, I have an entire chapter on the importance of keeping a food diary or journal. Seeing it in print is the real deal. But what about cooking? Do you cook for yourself? And if so, how has your food preparation changed since you started being more aware of calories and fat and such?

DAINA: This is the one area where I’ve always been good. I love to cook, and I cook for my family almost every day. My habits haven’t changed that much since I’ve always been a pretty healthy, whole-food kind of chef.

Also, as an aside to your post about “cheating” by using store-bought ingredients for lasagna, that’s not cheating! It’s smart, and there are celebrity chefs devoted to semi-homemade food.

I’m not a huge Sandra Lee fan, but check out A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags and Boxes by Nancy Silverton. She’s an amazing chef and baker, and this cookbook is all about using ready-made sauces, soups, pastas, beans, rotisserie chicken, etc. Everything I’ve made from that book is delicious, and makes me look like a gourmet cook. Seriously.

MOMOVER LADY: OMG, I’m Amazoning that tonight. You’re like a walking, talking tips machine! But I have one last question before you sail back into Daina-Ville: How has your outlook on life changed since you started taking better care of yourself?

DAINA: Taking care of myself = happier mama.

MOMOVER LADY: Well I feel happier just having met you, even if it’s only digitally. You are really, really inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story. Yay!

Because of my new digital gig (yay! I likey!), dearest Hubby just asked me to pull together all my financial docus for the year, so he can have a little pow-wow with the accountant about whether I should Inc myself.

Instantly, this perfectly innocuous request sent me into a panic.

Why? Because I’m financial paperwork-challenged. While I’m pretty good at making dough – 2011, thank the lordy, has been très excellente so far – I am a disaster at keeping it all organized.

I mean, for reals.

My only saving grace (and you’ll discover shortly that it’s not really a saving grace at all) is that I’m kind of a paper-hoarder. That means I hold onto everything. And since I only recently acquired more filing cabinets (built-in to my yummy new desk), most of this year’s pay stubs, deposit slips, etc., have been shoved into a few giant shopping bags.

How lame is that? If Suze Orman were next to me right now, she’d slap me silly. I have her great, great, great book Women & Money and I can assure you that she’s not down with shopping bag financial document filing systems.

Another big paper problem in Momover Central: The bazillions of tiny scraps scribbled with email addresses, websites, brilliant ideas for taking over the world. They’re residing in the giant shopping bags too.

I’ve mentioned that I took a fab home-office organizing e-course with Sue Rasmussen this past summer, oui? Well according to Awesome Sue, I have plenty of company in Tiny Scraps-ville. And I quote: “Most creative entrepreneurs have pieces of paper in many different places in their office (and their home!).” Whew.

And Sue’s reco is to take all those bazillions of tiny scraps and dump them into one big basket or bin. And then sort, sort, sort and chuck, chuck, chuck.

So right now, even though it’s Saturday morning and there are at least 10 other things I’d rather be doing (knitting, flipping my closet over from summer to fall, reading the new Vogue), I’ve gathered up all my stray bits and bobs and put them in a festive wicker InBox. And the plan is to take all the little nuggets of info and transfer them to one big master notebook.

Sure, I could input them in the computer. And I probably should. But I sort of like writing. I’m old school. Old school and extremely paperwork pack-ratty.

I just ran into the handsome hubby of my neighbor in our lobby, and it reminded me of this insane exchange I had with her at her tot’s birthday party this past summer.

First, let me preface this blog post by saying that, on the first few encounters, I had such high hopes for this neighbor lady (let’s just call her Neighbor Lady, in case she’s reading).

Neighbor Lady is very, very smart. Neighbor Lady is very, very accomplished. But Neighbor Lady is also extremely status-conscious. Thus, Neighbor Lady has displayed a shocking tendency to get completely up in my grill about my newfound desire to sort of cool it on the career front and hang out with my kid more.

That’s why last winter and spring, when I was camped-out at InStyle, pitching in on those special beauty issues I told you about, Neighbor Lady was proud of me. Finally, at long last, Momover Lady was worthy of Neighbor Lady’s esteem.

Ha! And then I took July and August off. And then I became obsessed with knitting and other little artsy craftsy fare, like weaving the world’s best potholders. Oh, and then the nail in coffin: I spent entire weeks organizing little nooks and crannies of our home while the Wee Lass was at day camp.

Despite the fact that I hadn’t been that happy and relaxed in eons, in Neighbor Lady’s eyes, my worthiness stock plummeted.

So she had to zap me. Of course she had to zap me.

I hadn’t seen for her a bit when we all showed up at her tot’s birthday bash. But she came rushing over.

“Oh my god! You look so good! You’ve lost sooooo much weight! How much did you lose? It must be like 25 pounds!”

Twenty. Five. Pounds????? I’m 5’1, bro! WTH???

Momover Lady: “It’s really just a few pounds. I’ve been doing P90X. And running.”

Neighbor Lady: “C’mon! It’s like 25 pounds! I can see it in your face,” she said, grabbing my mug. “Your face is so thin.”

Immediately, paranoia set in. Was I that fat before? What do I actually look like to other people? My face is thin??? That can’t be good if Neighbor Lady is saying my face is thin. I need those fillers. Maybe I should just get over my fear of needles and get those damn fillers already. I’ll call Dr. Brandt and reschedule.

Good times, right?

How about a simple, “You look great.” Or, “Have you been working out?”

Compliments should be short and sweet. And genuine. And on that note, xoxo.

You know how some peeps are real roll-with-the-times types, embracing an endless stream of new fads, trends, gadgets and gew-gaws?

I’m not one of  ‘em.

I mean, I do like to learn. And even though I’m finally – thank the frigging universe – a very happy mama camper, I’m still on a never-ending quest to tweak and improve myself. That’s why they call it Momover, folks.

But in digging out my office, and deciding what gets to continue living on my bookshelves and in the drawers of my beauteous new “Antique White” desk, I’ve been struck by the fact that the stuff I love and want to learn more about hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot since I was in high school.

Here’s the tidy list of topics I semi-hoard books and info about:

1. Dutch genre painting: I’m obsessed with the 16th-century works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and have many gorge coffee table books of his lively, colorful and psychotically detailed paintings.

2. Français: In my office cabinet (and there’s more in storage), I have workbooks, dictionaries, CDs and DVDs by Berlitz, Rosetta Stone and Living Language. The Rosetta Stone was très spendy, nabbed at one of those handy dandy airport kiosks when a flight got delayed. I think it’s high time I finally used it. But then again, I find the Living Language materials so much more Luddite-y and compelling…

3. Fashion: I’ve been on a tear lately, snapping up advice books right and left. But the ones in heavy rotation right now are Style Evolution by Kendall Farr, That Extra Half an Inch by Victoria Beckham and I Heart Your Style by Amanda Brooks. Love.

4. Crunchiness | Grooviness | Spirituality: In addition to an alarming number of tomes by the Dalai Lama (a byproduct of my Richard Gere fixation, me thinks), I have soooo much great stuff on meditation, crystals, rituals, etc. But you really have no idea how happy I am that I unearthed my precious Angel Cards. They’d gone missing for a while, just long enough for me to forget how fun they are. There are lots of ways to use them, but I like the daily approach. You just think about something you’d like to accomplish that day, or a problem or hurdle you need to get around or over, and then pick a card from the shuffled deck. Each of them has a quality that you should focus on to help you work your magic.

Right now, it’s 7 a.m. and I have a very full day in front of me. I’ve just shuffled the deck and the card I’ve chosen is…

PLAY

Whoa. That’s wack. I’m starting a new job today.

Here’s what the Angel Cards book says about PLAY: “Maximize every moment of aliveness. Experience pleasurable involvement in all your activities and enjoy what you are doing. Have fun!”

Bingo. This is support from the universe telling me exactly what I’d already been thinking: That after a glorious summer off, I need to bring that spirit of happiness, lightness and balance into my work. I can do an amazing job and keep the stress under wraps. And still have lots of Q time for Hubby and the Wee Lass.

That’s kind of the challenge for all of us mamas, right? B-A-L-A-N-C-E.

I use to have an office-mate who frequently begged me to light up. “Pleeeeeeze,” she’d plead, “you look soooooo cool when you smoke.” Hmmmm. Perhaps she had ulterior motives? Like maybe she wanted me to cough and wheeze and keel over in my cubicle so she could put on her big girl undies and do my job?

Nah. I think she genuinely meant it. But the problem was, and I think maybe still is, I agreed with her. I’d say that it’s my dirty little secret, except I’ve blogged about it before: If someone is young and beautiful, or old and beautiful, I usually think they look about 1000 times hotter if they have a ciggy dangling from their mouth.

Don’t agree? Google “Paul Newman smoking” and then get back to me.

I was never addicted to cigarettes; I smoked literally 1 to 2 per week for years. Well, maybe I was little more smoke-y during the time-frame I toiled for a massive French beauty company, and went to Europe a lot for my job. (Paris is basically cloaked in a giant Gitane cloud.) And also right after 9/11, when I was convinced there were terrorists hiding in the potted plants along Park Avenue.

My point is that I didn’t roll out of bed every morning and fire up a Marlboro Light. There was no physical craving. Rather, they were my little Friday night treat or my mid-freakout calm-down crutch. And I haven’t had one in years.

I just find it really bizarre-o that I can be trucking along in my smoke-free life and – shazzam! – I’ll be hit with the urge. Usually, it’s triggered by a paparazzi image of some glam creature puffing away. Which is why, duh, those are rarer and rarer these days. Most celebs have been shamed into not smoking in public, and I think that’s probably for the best.

I’m really happy that kids today don’t get bombarded with lots of intentional media images of smoking. Even when it sort of fits what’s going on in a show or movie. For example, I just read that the upcoming television series Pan Am will not show any of the groovy stewardess ladies lighting up. Despite the fact that it’s set in the Seventies, when everybody smoked.

For sure, all that government intervention seems to be working. Admittedly, my in-house focus group is pretty small, but the one tiny people-person I’m in frequent contact with doesn’t find ciggies cool at all.

“People who smoke will get dead,” says the Wee Lass, who just wandered into my office and asked about this picture of Kate on my computer monitor. “That’s why I’m never going to smoke.”

On Friday, when she and I were on a Mommy + Me field trip to Victorian Gardens, we came out of the subway just a few blocks away from Central Park South. And in the hustle and bustle, I spotted an older guy with one of those tiny apron thingies around his neck – the kind that covers an artificial voice box that is usually a tell-tale sign of emphysema, the disease my own mother died of.

Talk about a reality check. Every time this guy wanted to chat with the others in his group, he had to press on that box. He seemed cheerful enough, but that has to be a bummer, right? Pressing on a box on your throat and sounding like ET whenever you want to chime in on the conversation?

Not to mention the fact that he probably won’t be with us much longer.

I know, I know – I’m making assumptions; people get voice boxes removed – and emphysema – from other causes besides smoking. But it’s pretty rare. Mostly what happens is that people who smoke eventually get tons and tons of horrible physical problems. And then they get dead.

Once upon a pre-baby time, when I was a hot + happening swingle, I snuck into the DMV, memorized the first few lines of the eye chart, left the building, circled the block, came back and passed the vision test with flying colors. Was I blind as a bat? No. But there’s no way in hell I could have read those suckers without glasses, which I refused to wear.

Back at the magazine I was toiling for, my art director pal Kirby laughed his ass about that. And later that year, he made me a special card that read:

E I O U H A P P Y X R

N P B I R T H D A Y W

S E V D A N A T F Q M

It was all very chuckle-worthy, and not the least bit dangerous. Because as I’ve blogged on several occasions, I’m afraid to drive and virtually never get behind the wheel of a car. But there’s no sense in letting a hard-earned license lapse, ya know?

Anyway, flashforward 15 years or so, and I’m still faking it. But now, as of this morning, I’ve decided to put on my big-girl undies and just grow up already.

The backstory: Like the clueless individual I can sometimes be, I didn’t get my first full-tilt, no-stones-unturned vision test until I was 45. Yup. Forty-freaking-five.

Soooo…lo and behold, when I finally got around to it, my doc determined that I have an enlarged optic nerve, which can sometimes be an indication that glaucoma is lying in wait. Perhaps I’d had the enlarged optic nerve all my life, he said. But how could he know that, he tsked tsked, when I’d waited until I was forty-freaking-five to get my first proper eye exam????

The net-net is that he’s watching me like a hawk, and has me in his office constantly, monitoring the sitch. And he always has me take a visual field test, which is used to gauge one’s peripheral vision.

It’s a little “ahoy, matey,” because you have to cover one eye with a patch, while the other eye stares straight into a tiny pin-prick of red light. Every time you see a bit of white light on the sides, top or bottom of the red pin-prick, you’re supposed to click this little gizmo in your hand.

In order for the test to work well – to properly assess whether your peripheral vision is going to hell in a handbasket – you have to keep your eye on that rosy beam of light at all times.

Do I do that? Nooooooo. My eye is darting all over the place – up, down, back and forth like a tennis ball at the U.S. Open.

In my defense, I get really really really nervous before that test. Why? Because I figure that if I flunk, I’ll get the news that glaucoma is around the corner. And since I’m a world-class health wimp, and completely and utterly freak out when I think there’s something wrong with me, that isn’t a diagnosis I want to hear.

But here’s the rub: the earlier you catch glaucoma, the better the outcome.

And I’m happy to report that this morning, I 90 % didn’t cheat on my visual field test. I decided it was better to just suck it up and know. To face my fear and do it anyway, just like that classic self-help tome urges us fraidy kittens to do.

Next up: Driving lessons.

About six weeks ago, while I was furiously packing for Road Trip 2011 and had the entire contents of my walk-in closet strewn all over my adjacent home office, the Wee Lass wandered in to “help” me.

And of course immediately, that “help” morphed into her putting her grubby little mitts all over everything I was trying to jam into my matchy-matchy set of Sonia Kashuk lightweight luggage. (Which performed fabulously, btw…)

“What’s this?” she asked, holding up a wrapped tampon and eyeballing it. “A finger trap?”

“It’s a long story,” I replied, politely prying it from her five-year-old fingers. “Literally. It’s like never-ending.”

But of course we all know that the Tale of the Tampon is, in fact, not never-ending. It ends alright, taking a massive chunk of our sanity, our sense of well-being – and according to one bubble-headed Real Housewife - our beauty right along with it.

Okay mamas: Raise your manicured paw if you watched in horror, as I did, while Ramona Singer told the entire freaking universe that she was having her period on the RHONY reunion show last week.

For those of you who have better things to do with your time than watch RHONY (and I’m not one of you, because even though Beverly Hills pretty much ruined me for all the other franchises, I’ve still seen this entire season), allow me to catch you up:

1. Ramona is 54.

2. Ramona thinks the secret to her surprisingly youthful 54-year-old skin is the fact that she still gets her period.

3. Ramona’s lovely 16-year-old daughter Avery also thinks that the secret to Ramona’s surprisingly youthful 54-year-old skin is the fact that Mommy still gets her period.

4. Ramona, who is 54, recently thought she was preggers because the aforementioned period, which she gets “like clockwork,” was late.

5. Ramona is 54. I already said that? My bad. Just wanted to be clear on that fact.

The whole thing was so, so, sooooooooo sad. Why? Because shortly, like tomorrow, Ramona’s alleged fountain of youth – the so-called secret to her defiantly wrinkle-free skin – is gonna shuffle off to Buffalo. And then what? She instantly turns into a wizened old hag? Talk about setting yourself up.

If this is the latest weapon in the “I’m prettier than you are” wars, count me out. Well maybe not just yet. After all, I’m 48 and I still get my period. Nyah nyah!

I’ve never paid much never-mind to the idea that beauty products “expire” the same way foods in our fridge and pantry do. Let’s put it this way: I once used a custom-blended powder blush for seven years. Sure, I’d misplace it for months at a clip. But I’d always re-find it, and then just dab it right back on again with nary a care in the world.

With the exception of liquid foundation and mascara, which do in fact need to be tossed-out on a regular basis, many beauty products can last a super long time – especially if you haven’t even cracked ‘em open yet. And that accounts for probably 90 percent of the contents of my Beauty Armoire. It’s just stuff that I figure I’ll get to eventually.

But most of the time, “eventually” never quite morphs into “now.”

Perhaps because I can feel work tugging at my skirt hem (translation: potential clients are reaching out to me, and I may just actually have to stop summering and commit to new projects pretty soon), I’m feeling a sense of urgency. I just want to throw out everything I own and start with a clean slate.

You know what’s really helpful when you need to go on a massive purging spree, but can’t begin to part with all your (allegedly) precious possessions? Watching an episode of Hoarders.

Oh my lordy. Recently, I listened to the endless rationales issuing forth from some poor lady who couldn’t bear the idea that all her started-and-abandoned crafts projects would be better off in the 50 dumpsters parked outside her home on the big day of reckoning. “Oh, I’m gonna make a coat for my dog with those carpet remnants,” she’d say to the hapless A&E crew assigned to liberate her from all her crapola. Or, “I really don’t think 40 boxes of buttons is too much.”

I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift: It was the sound of someone who just couldn’t let go.

Of course I had mixed emotions as I watched the show, particulalry since I recently did re-start crafts projects of my own that I’d abandoned. (My knitting, which I’m completely ga-ga about now…) But I’m talking three or so little yarn kits; not the 3 million projects Hoarder Lady had tucked into every nook and cranny of her about-to-be-condemned California home.

I don’t want to be the beauty-product equivalent of Hoarder Lady, even though I’m sure she’s like the nicest broad on the planet once you get to know her.

Nice is great. Crazy-organized and nice? Even better.