5 minutes. one counter with magical magnetic properties.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

oh, you get to see the ugly now. My last few 5 minute posts have been in line with my goal to spring/deep clean my kitchen, but today’s post is about a DAILY struggle.

I have to believe that my kitchen counter is not the only one with magical magnetic properties. Magical in that it attracts all materials, not just metal.

We’ve got paper, plastic, wood, glass, medicine, vitamins, food items, cleaning supplies, a doorknob (don’t ask), even flat out GARBAGE. Maybe if I put the garbage can ON the counter…

But I digress.

I decided to find out if I could clear it in 5 minutes. If so, maybe it won’t seem like such a daunting task in the future. Maybe if I SEE that I can do it in 5 minutes, I’ll be more likely to do it every day.

Bwahahaha! (in our house, that would be referred to the Zack and Cody laugh. a statement, followed by a brief pause, and then a burst of mocking laughter.)

Did I make it within 5 minutes?

I’ll admit right now that this was challenging, simply due to the distance I had to travel to put some of this stuff where it actually goes. Which is probably WHY it got dumped on the counter in the first place.

Nobody wanted to go the distance.

I did cheat a little bit and put the items that were supposed to go upstairs ON the stairs to carry up the next time I go.

You watch, the next 5 minute post will start with a picture of my cluttered staircase.

What can YOU clean in 5 minutes?

And I just want to state right now, that I am confident that I can not clear my minivan of CARbage in 5 minutes.

UPDATE @ 2:34pm: Right now, there’s only one thing on my kitchen counter. A crock pot full of Cream Cheese Chicken

Find more ideas over at Works for Me Wednesday, hosted by Mary at Giving Up on Perfect.

Works for Me Wednesday posts prior to January 2015 are archived at We Are THAT Family

Works for Me Wednesday posts prior to February 2009 are archived at Rocks In My Dryer

5 minutes. 1 drawer. and a kapoosh.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

Still applying my long time practice of microactions to tackle deep cleaning my kitchen. Today, I had 5 minutes, so I completely emptied and cleaned out the knife drawer.

“BEFORE” photos:

If THAT photo doesn’t show how bad it really was, THIS one surely does:

I followed the same steps as yesterday’s 5 minute drawer cleanup: emptied the drawer, cleaned the bottom, scrubbed and dried the drawer organizers and put everything back. This time, I didn’t get rid of anything. It may have been dirty, but it’s stayed organized like this since we had the kitchen redone in November of 2000.

“AFTER” photo:

2000. I wonder if that’s when I last cleaned the bottom of this drawer. no . . . NO. I’ve definitely cleaned it since then. That’s my story and I’m stickin to it.

What can YOU clean in 5 minutes?

But that was only the knife DRAWER. My favorite knives live in my Kapoosh (Amazon link) And I know I clean THAT multiple times per year. because it’s fun. and easy. and it takes less than FIVE MINUTES to clean it.

how to be the best mom EVER! (for a few minutes anyway)

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

Her children rise up and call her blessed…
Proverbs 31:28

…because she threw frozen chicken wings in a crock pot, smothered them with a bottle of barbecue sauce and cooked them on high for four hours selflessly dedicated four hours to cooking perfect, fall off the bone tender chicken wings dripping in finger-licking good sauce.

Prep/Work time? 5 minutes
End result? sticky fingers and happy kids

I’m ALWAYS on the lookout for “dump it in the crock pot and walk away” recipes, so if you have one, LINK UP or post it in a comment!!!

Click on over to check out the recipes at Tempt My Tummy Tuesday hosted by Lisa at Blessed With Grace MY past Tempt My Tummy posts can be found HERE.

Need more? Head over to Tasty Tuesday hosted by Jen at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam MY previous Tasty Tuesday posts are HERE. Tasty Tuesday posts prior to April of 2009 can be found at Forever . . . Wherever

5 minutes. 1 drawer: would you like chocolate sprinkles with that?

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

As usual, I don’t have time to devote a full day (or 7) to concentrated spring cleaning, so I’m applying my long time practice of microactions to tackle deep cleaning my kitchen. Today, I had 5 minutes, so I completely emptied and cleaned out the flatware drawer. I forgot to include a clock in the picture to prove that it only took 5 minutes, so you’re just gonna have to trust me.

FIVE minutes.

Includes emptying out the drawer, cleaning the drawer bottom, scrubbing and drying the drawer organizers and reloading the drawer – leaving out the flatware we don’t really use anymore.

What can you clean in 5 minutes?

“AFTER” photo: (“BEFORE” photo below)

Me, to PinkGirl: “Hey, take a look at this silverware drawer. See anything different?”

PinkGirl, crinkling brow, silently stares at the drawer.

Me: “It’s totally clean.”

PinkGirl: “ohhhhhh.”

Me: “So. I have a question. Why was the bottom of this drawer full of chocolate sprinkles?

PinkGirl, grinning: “Funny story….”

ummm hmmm.

(I had already gotten some of the sprinkles out before I remembered to take the photo.)

“BEFORE” photo:

baking is not my forte.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

it’s a BOXED cake mix, for cryin out loud.

Attempt #1, which tasted like oil.

I was supposed to be baking a cake shaped like THIS for a children’s home:

My cake was so flat it would have looked like the bunny was roadkill. (sorry kids)

It was past midnight. I was leaning toward bailing on the bunny cake commitment.

Then FavoriteSon asked: Are you starting over?

Me: No. it’s too late to start over.

FavoriteSon, mocking me: “okay…but those kids can’t start over.”

fine.

So me and Betty Crocker, baking another cake at nearly one in the morning. The good news is that this cake didn’t taste like oil. It actually tasted like cake. Very dense cake, but cake. The bad news is that it was flat AGAIN. Like, pancake flat. Roadkill bunny flat.

So I switched gears and cut out the bunny cake shape in my Easter Bunny Cake blog post of 2009. The one that got over FIVE THOUSAND hits that day. My blog is getting insane traffic on this post and I had yet to make one of these cakes since my childhood.

I cut it out, iced it and PinkGirl decorated it this morning. Just so you can get a good understanding of the flatness of this cake, the mini-marshmallows littering the tray are taller than the cake.

and now there are sprinkles stuck to the bottom of my feet.

I suppose I should clean the kitchen floor, it appears cats don’t like sprinkles.

note to self: STOP IT.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.
2 Timothy 1:7

I have a love/hate relationship with a certain praise team song I lead. I actually love the song. I just hate the very first note of the first verse. Or maybe it just hates me. The latter seems unlikely, I know.

The last time I sang this song, the instruments played the intro, got right up to the first verse and …

I didn’t have it.

I looked at the worship leader at the moment I was supposed to sing and shook my head. He started the song and turned it over after the first line.

When I talked to him later he said, “you’re just over thinking it.”

I tend to do that.

Just an hour earlier, I had walked into the music room for the pre-service rehearsal and the worship leader and the drummer were both there. I listened to them play and after a few minutes I recognized the guitar intro to Mighty to Save. The drummer recognized it and fell in. I absentmindedly came in on the right note. Fell in is more like it. I didn’t even try. Wasn’t even thinking about it.

simple.

It hadn’t always been simple. When I first learned the lead to Mighty to Save, I bought the Laura Story version, with the piano intro. Then I came to rehearsal and we didn’t have a pianist. We did have two guitars that day. And unfortunately, they each had chord charts in two different keys. I was standing closest to the guy with the wrong chart. I came on on the wrong note, but it fit, until midway into the verse, then it was glaringly obvious I was off.

Let the season of doubt begin.

After that, I had no confidence that I could come in on the right note. How could I have started on the wrong note and not even realized it? What if I did it again? How do I recover the song if I come in on the wrong note during worship? The music director offered to play my note on the flute for me. It got to the point where I believed I couldn’t do it without her.

I hated that.

I was determined to break my need for this crutch. I bought the Hillsong version of the song, with the guitar intro. I completely stopped listening to the piano version, even going to the extreme of turning off the radio if it began playing.

FINALLY.

I was able to begin on the correct note without the flute playing it in the background. I led the song multiple times over the next few months without a problem.

So what was different about the last time I sang it?

the piano.

After I came in so effortlessly at the beginning of the pre-service rehearsal, we added keyboard to the intro and rehearsed it again after everyone else had gotten there.

I couldn’t find the note. Actually, I have no idea if I could or couldn’t find the note, because I didn’t try. I just said, “I don’t have it.”

Season Two. The doubt was back. I wimped out during the rehearsal, so you know what happened when it came time to start the song during worship, I froze up. Chickened out. wimped.

Will I ever be able to start this song on the right note if I hear a piano? I don’t know. But I won’t ever know if I don’t try.

So the wimping out for fear of getting it wrong? I’m going to STOP IT.

Wimping out for fear of getting it wrong . . .

I’m betting there’s a lot more I wimp on than that one little note.

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

need some “sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, spending too much time on the internet” medicine.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

PinkGirl did the writing on the sign in sheet at her school for me so I wouldn’t spread germs:
Date: 4/18
Time: 9:01 (school started at 8am)
Reason: “Mom is sick”
Disapproving look from temp worker at the front desk.
Me: “Be nice or I’ll hug you.” (to myself)

Doc: “When did this start?”
Me: Thursday night. Been living on Sudafed, Mucinex & leftover hydrocodone.”
Doc, laughing/shaking head: “You’re not supposed to tell me that.”
A few minutes later: “You need a shot. You’re wheezing.”
Today, I love that steroid shot more than coffee. not kidding.

Lord, thank you for my doctor. Thank you for that relationship. You sent me to him so long ago that I forget to appreciate that blessing. Thank you for all the free and affordable medicine – and for the steroid shot.

For the next few days, the acronym “LOL” will be replaced with “COL” because lately, the first doesn’t come without the second.

PinkGirl: Mom, what does “COL” mean?
Me: Coughing Out Loud, because when I laugh, I start coughing.
PinkGirl: “You should just say LOL.”
Me: “Yesterday you told me I was too OLD to use LOL.”
PinkGirl: “Well, old people can use it in private.”
Me: “How old does someone have to be before they should only use LOL in private?”
PinkGirl: “29.”

what the heck? I took some of the samples my doctor gave me for symptoms and within the hour I felt like a complete space cadet. The decongestant was phenylephrine. I usually take pseudoephedrine. I may be wrong & my symptoms were the cause of the lightheadedness, so I’m going to take the next dose – with supervision.

(I really, really needed a decongestant. The effects of the sauna wore off too fast and my neti pot wasn’t even working. Benadryl is an antihistamine containing diphenhydramine – which is also the main ingredient in TylenolPM, Nytol, Sominex…KNOCKS me out. TylenolPM dosage says take two, I can never handle more than half of ONE. I was taking Mucinex for the chest congestion.)

Lord, thank you for this day of rest. Please help me to get better so I can get back to “real” life.

I changed my mind. FirstHusband says I shouldn’t take any more phenylephrine. He said we had a phone conversation earlier today and I was really “out of it.” (I think I remember talking to him…)

Nobody called me today and asked me to volunteer for anything did they?

Lord, even in my tiredness and with all these nasty germs, please show me how I can serve you today.

PinkGirl: “MOM! The duck came SO close to me this time!”
Me: “Did you feed it?”
PinkGirl: “Yeh, cat food.”
Me: “wait. have you been throwing cat food in the back yard?”
PinkGirl: “yeh”
Me: “For how long?”
PinkGirl: “a week. maybe two.”
NOW I know what the raccoons are digging for and eating every night.

okay, I have a new game for the Easter Bunny Cake blog post of 2009.
Will it beat its own record?
The highest number of views it got in a single day was 3,709 on April 3, 2010, which was ONE day before Easter last year. Today it got 2,135 views.

eBay sent me a “Happy Anniversary” email today. Eleven years and they can’t spare a coupon code? At the very least they could have made it fun and included the item titles of the very first things I bought and sold.

Later…Obviously, I don’t watch TV when I’m sick. I hang out on the internet and search my email archive file for my very first eBay auction win: A Mr. Potato Head Voice Changing Recorder. eh. big whoop.

My daughter felt compelled to show me this video today:

Hey JC, JC won’t you smile at me die for me?

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

I have musical traditions.

Our family has to listen to Nat King Cole sing “the chestnut song” (The Christmas Song) while we decorate the Christmas tree.

Satchmo has to sing What A Wonderful World in my house on Thanksgiving. Multiple times.

and on Palm Sunday, I have to listen to Hosanna (“Hosanna, Heysanna”) from Jesus Christ Superstar. Has to be done.

I was introduced the Jesus Christ Superstar at 15, when my chorus teacher trusted me with my very first solo. It was “I Don’t Know How To Love Him. I wasn’t a Christian.

I had absolutely no idea what I was singing about.

Flash forward . . . a few years. It’s never been easier to listen to this song – now I get to WATCH it too. And this year, I noticed something I never caught when I listened to the audio recordings. If I ever noticed it while watching before, I flippantly attributed it to a video glitch, although seeing it now, I wonder how I ever made that mistake.

Watch the 10 seconds that begin around 2:29 minute mark.

sick pants.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

FirstHusband came home & I went to the top of the stairs to talk to him.

Me: “I’m up here.

(pause)

Doing nothing.

(pause)

Just started.”

FirstHusband: “What just started?”

Me: “Me. Doing nothing.”

FirstHusband: “Go for it.”

Me: “It’s not the same.”

FirstHusband, sympathetically: “Did you throw away your sick pants?”

Me: “no. (sigh) They’re just too giant. I have to hold them up when I walk.”

FirstHusband: “that’s a GOOD thing.”

Me: “I know. (pause) But these aren’t the same.”

FirstHusband: “I’m sorry.”

sigh.

I’m not the only one who has “sick pants” right?

(Mine are were plaid flannel. You know, that really, really soft flannel that comes from decades of use? But. They are XL. and I wear a medium now. and the elastic waistband is as old as the flannel. Warning: I’m not sure I’m done mourning them yet.)

I need to go into the sauna again and burn some germs. die germs. die.

tracking the drift.

Posted on by Julie Stiles Mills

“These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
Psalms 42:4-5

How does it happen? How do I consistently dedicate daily time with God – for months – YEARS – and then just . . . stop?

I don’t understand it.

But I do. The Bible is full of stories about people forgetting God. Elijah experienced discouragement. So did David. Story after story. My faith is no stronger than theirs.

It seems like it was a “single moment” kinda stop. I think. I’m not sure. Maybe it was gradual. I need clues. My prayer journal is my historical record. When did it happen? Working backwards, I see near daily journal entries for April, and for March 31st. The last entry before that? March 23. I didn’t write in my prayer journal for 7 days. That represents a week without dedicated time with God.

The March 31st entry begins with:

“Lord, I miss my time with you. It’s so easy to get distracted and allow my time and thoughts to be pre-occupied by what I believe to be the “demands” of the day.”

Please draw me back to you. Remind me till I see.“

Then I read the words that reveal I was smack in the middle of a spiritual desert on March 31st:

“Please bless me with an overwhelming awareness of your presence in my life, not in an abstract, general way, but in an intimate, detailed way. Help me to be aware – to STAY aware of you. Please don’t let me find myself going through the motions, doing what comes “next” without considering whether it should be done at all.

Please reach into my heart, past all the barriers and bring me back into intimate fellowship with you . . . Lord I miss the joy and peace I experience when I’m in close fellowship with you. I miss the recognition of you working in my life . . . Please encourage me today, please jolt me into a place of desperate desire for time with you, for the saturation of your Spirit in my every moment.“

The next day, April 1st, I took my first step back. I’m still finding my way, so I’m not ready to explore that part of my journey quite yet. I’m looking for a trigger. Wondering what I need to address before I can get completely clear of this desert. How did I get here?

Realistic or not, I’m also trying to avoid the next desert trip. I’m compelled to try and figure out what to do differently next time. Because I’m not so arrogant as to claim there won’t be a next time. I’ve still got one foot buried in the sand as it is.

What was I praying about in the days before I took a nose dive into a spiritual abyss? Or, as evidenced by the gaps in my prayer journal, what was I NOT praying about?

I have no idea if I’m going to be able to track back to a trigger. I’ve got some journal reading to do. I’m starting with March 23rd and working my way backwards.

Prayer in distress dredges the soul. It is a good thing to keep a note
of the things you prayed about when you were in distress. We remain ignorant
of ourselves because we do not keep a spiritual autobiography.

Oswald Chambers: The Best from All His Books
Oswald Chambers