As my long-time readers know, we live on the North Shore of Massachusetts, just up the hill from a gorgeous public beach. We also live on a “neck”, or a peninsula, so we are surrounded on 3 sides by salt marsh or ocean, only connected to the “mainland” by a strip of road called a causeway. Any time that the tides are high and it rains, there is the possibility of the causeway being covered by water, which means we are either stuck at home or stuck away from home. We have a lot of “greenspace” near our house, so we end up with a fair number of wild animals, which seem to each carry their own fun problems.

Today’s a dreary, damp, rainy day, and those days tend to bring out dark thoughts. I was just made aware that a coyote attacked a dog in a neighboring town! Eeep! We are always on the alert for coyotes and foxes, as there are quite a few around the area. Yuki will be on enforced “indoor cat” mode - sometimes on pretty days we let her out for a bit. Maybe not during coyote mating season!

Meanwhile, let’s talk about other animal safety. Avoid wild animals. Keep your pets under your control at all times - you really don’t want your dog in isolation because of a rabies scare from an unknown wild critter!

As a family that has more than its fair share of Lyme disease, please vaccinate your dogs against Lyme! And then also use a flea & tick killer for them. We think at least one of us got Lyme from a tick which dropped off the dog and onto a bed or chair. Not Good.

As a family, we have made the decision that in our neighborhood, in our situation, the risk of cancer from DEET is less of a worry than the risk of Lyme from not using DEET on the humans in the house. Every family should make that decision for themselves, but think hard and research it from both perspectives. Ticks can be anywhere. I’ve found them on kids after they ran in the field next to the library. Since ticks are active from 40F on up, it’s time to keep an eye out.

As a less serious tip, make sure you have a cooler that closes when you go to the beach! Sea gulls are thieves. They will steal any and every piece of food they come across. So pack your beach snacks in a tote bag that zips shut or a picnic basket with a lid! My darling girls have been in tears more than once when a sea gull snagged their bag of Salt & Vinegar potato chips. It may be comical watching a sea gull fly away with a full bag of chips, but then you just lost $3 worth of chips, and you’re nowhere near a store.

Anyone have any other animal warnings? We’ve also dealt with raccoons and skunks, but those weren’t as much of a big deal. Be wary of random animals, but enjoy the nice weather that is allegedly coming soon!

Happy birthday to me! I’m 37 today. Wow.

We carted off two loads of crap to the dump (or, we loaded the van twice, B and BG drove and dumped). Our spring and fall cleaning sprees are almost complete!

The cupcakes and cake are cooling, and we’re off to a cousin’s birthday party in a little bit.

Today is a great day for counting blessings. I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends and family.

Best quote for today so far: from LG, “When I’m a grownup I want to be just like you, Mommy! Except for the brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and pain.” heh

Oh, how I wish I had my archives from the Big Flood and the Mold Removal! You know, the one that took many, many months, with all of us stuck in 1 bedroom and exposed walls everywhere. This was all because of the after-effects of the Mother’s Day flood of 2006., it was so much fun! You can all revisit the exciting experience in a flickr set. Ugh.

Our new excitement comes from the hole in the floor. This goes from the upstairs living room to the downstairs living room. It means we don’t need an intercom, but that’s the only positive thing I can say. Oh, that and I wasn’t seriously injured when I fell through.

The landlord’s brother came by last week - once alone and once with the carpenter, and we arranged to have him and the carpenter here this morning at 9am. It was about 3:30 when the landlord’s brother finally came by with the wood. Now the wood is in the upstairs living room, and we have a basket covering the hole. the older girls posed with the wood.

If you look at the hole, you can see that they were closing up a vent hole from where a wood stove vented to the lower level. They didn’t do a great job of “fixing” it. Allegedly they will do a better job this time. We are on Day 8 since I fell. The carpenter is now scheduled for Thursday 9am. We’re going to be keeping close track of this repair job. It will not take the 13 months the last “repair” did.

Anyone up for taking bets on what time they’ll show up on Thursday?

Crazy Hip Blog Mamas has teamed up with Better Today to give away gift certificates to (drool) The Container Store for organizational and home decorating tips! Do you know that when we lived in Austin, I had to drive past a Container Store on the way to and from my husband’s work? I ended up banned from entering one. Now I just compulsively read their emails and their catalogs…I may not be the most organized person in the world, and I may not have an incredible knack for home decorating, but hey, I know how to utilize resources, and we did a giant re-organization in August. So here are my 10 tips for an organized home:

1. Buy a label maker! No, seriously. The more things you label, the easier it is to put everything back where it belongs. I lurve mine - the Brother - PT-80 Thermal Label Printer. I went a little crazy with it, but ah well.
2. Invest in a lot of storage bins If all the toys have a place to live, there will be fewer on the floor to impale you was you walk through barefoot. Of course, you need to label all the tubs and drawers so that everyone knows where things go.
3. Vacate the children When you want to seriously re-organize your house, ship the kids somewhere encourage them to enjoy an overnight with grandparents or a close family friend. If they are gone for a couple days, they won’t know what hit them when they come back!
4. Ask for help: Do you have organized friends? Ones who live for label makers and storage bins? Beg them to help you. My wonderful friend Sue (of Graceful Kate) was happy to help out, and even brought some bins and a label maker to aid the cause.
5. Get a grip: I’ve always been taught that you need to only donate clean clothes, and that you must always separate recycling from trash. If you’re doing a big clean out, don’t worry about it. You want to get the unneeded stuff out of the house more than anything else. Be obsessive for the rest of your life.
6. You don’t need everything you have! I’m not saying you should live a spartan lifestyle. But you don’t need all the clutter you have. I even managed to twitch give away some books. As my husband is cleaning out his office (it’s becoming BG’s bedroom), he is making hard choices over what obsolete computer equipment he truly needs. (I’m enjoying this after he gave me a hard time about my books. I don’t have too many books! We just have too few shelves…)
7. Define the space: Is it a living room, or a play room? Is it a family room or an office? For one thing, if you use consistent names for rooms, the kids know where to find things. Additionally, though, if a room is a play-room, it should be the room with the most toy organization. If your dining room is also the art room, that’s where the art supplies should live. It makes your life easier.
8. Decide what is most important For me, the most important thing about reorganizing was that it needed to be “maintainable”. I’ve been struggling with chronic pain and other problems for over 2 years. When we reorganized this summer, it needed to be done in a way that could be cleaned up without too much effort.
9. A little work now means less work later As you put items up for storage, think about how you put them away. The china you were given at your wedding doesn’t need to be as easily accessible as the bin of hats and mittens, for example. If your third child is in 3T, you may want to keep the bin of 4T clothes close by. Since the bins are all labeled now (see #1), you will be able to find everything without hunting blindly. But the less work involved in searching the better!
10. Maximize space We like the drawers that stack, bookshelves, file cabinets, multicolored bins on shelves, wire mesh cubes, and really anything that can store things vertically. If you have a nice large house with a lot of space, this may be less of an issue. But for us, it’s big. The same space can fit 1 bin of Legos OR a set of drawers with 1 bin of Legos, 1 of Dora people, 1 of Polly Pockets, and 1 of Matchbox cars. PLUS there’s space on top for a handy carrier for marbles, or a box of blocks, or another set of drawers.

As proof that it can be done, here’s a room that is too small for its use, with too many toys for 3 children to ever use, but still organized and labeled enough that it works pretty darn well (pics taken this summer when we did the reorganization). Once everything really does have a place to go, clean-up is a lot easier. I’ve been told that all my life, but I was still amazed when i saw it for myself!

My girls were thrilled at how much play space they had once the rooms were well organized. We need to do a cleaning this weekend, updating the storage for presents received at Christmas, but having the setup in place helps everyone feel less overwhelmed.

If you’re naturally organized, I’d love to hear your tips. I’m definitely organizationally challenged, but I’m working to overcome it! Check out the other posts at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas for more tips!