I recently hooked my mom up with Fly Lady (flylady.net). Fly Lady touts herself as "Your personal online coach to help you gain control of your house and home."

I've known of this website for years, but I'd only told my mom about it  two or three weeks ago. Years ago I read some of the suggestions on the website and between Fly Lady and a couple other resources, I was able to declutter my craft/computer room so it's a livable, workable space.

Occasionally, I have to declutter again when things get stacked up, but for the most part, it's a usable space for my family and occasional company, as it serves as a guestroom. But I hadn't looked at Fly Lady's website in years; I'm not the type to hang on to stuff and I always have an active Goodwill box working it's way out the door.

One day, I was researching how to make money from a blog, when one of the sites suggested networking with other bloggers. I remembered Fly Lady and wondered if she advertised other sites on her website. I don't remember how I got to this column that made me think of my mother, but the first line was "You can't organize clutter, you have to get rid of it." Hear, Hear! I'm really good at that.

I considered whether it was a message my mother was willing to hear; I had given her books over the years to help deal with her clutter problem, so I decided not to forward it to her figuring the information would get "filed" away and ignored. A few days later I was over at her house fixing some computer problems she was having. She was sitting next to me as I was giving her some instruction on some of the programs.

For some reason, I decided to show her the Fly Lady site. The glazed look I saw come into her eyes I interpreted as continued denial, so I just went about the rest of my task and left when I was finished.

The next day she called me and yelled at me, "How long have you known about this site? Why haven't you told me about it sooner?" I told her I'd known about it for many years, but hadn't actively used it myself.

My mom has embraced this site with joy. It has changed her life; she even puts on a pair of shoes with ties on them as the Fly Lady suggests. Now instead of clipping newspaper articles for me, she keeps sending me Fly Lady columns she's been reading.

Feeling rather superior in my fairly decluttered home, I've been tolerating the rampage. But yesterday my mom and I went out for breakfast and as I bemoaned my continued habit of procrastination and lack of progress in forwarding my writing career, my mom spouted Fly Lady psychology.

I began to give a slight heads up. Then this morning, an article my mom sent me made me sit up and take notice; just this part stopped me cold in my tracks:

Have you gotten in a rut? Not a bad rut; but let's say a comfortable rut. You know the same ole same ole! You go through your day without any thought about your passion. Passion: What is that anyway?

When procrastination gets in the way of your passion; it becomes an excuse to not follow your dreams.  We have all said it in some form or fashion, "I don't have time to go back to school and finish my degree". This "I don't have time" attitude gives us the excuse to not be or do what we were put on Earth to do with our lives. You are robbing yourself of you! Not to mention what you are robbing the world of: YOU!

There is more to that column, but it was enough to make me realize that I may not have physical clutter, but my brain is cluttered. Perhaps I can use a bit of Fly Lady in my life, so I signed up for her daily emails.

And as I told my mom, "You may not have been ready for the information back when I first knew about it. God guides us to things when we are ready."

Pot - Kettle - Black

God also knows we sometimes need to take the long way around before we get the message.

I didn't really start anything yesterday, but I did do several things out of the ordinary and I ended something.

First thing in the morning, I had to deal with a decision over an author's story for our church newsletter. It was a heartfelt conversion story, which was good, but at 4000 words, was too much.

I could have cut it down to bare bones, but I knew it would lose its heart for the author if I did it. I actually made a decision, as editor of the newsletter, without consulting everyone else who has something to do with it, to respectfully decline the piece for the newsletter.

Telling someone this sort of thing bothers me, because I have great respect for anyone willing to write from the heart as this man did. But I didn't want to ruin the piece by slashing it to pieces. The gist  of this tale is, I MADE A DECISION right away instead of stewing over it.

Then I had been craving a dish I've made several times in the past, which I love and my family has always disliked, except for my oldest who often has the same taste I do. It's called Summer Vegetable Baked Chicken, and I hadn't made it in a couple years because of the other two members of my family who don't like it.

In this day and age, Summer Vegetables can be purchased at any time. I spent a bit more money for the vegetables, but I didn't need much, so it didn't break the bank. And as we mom's know, when we crave something, we just have to take the steps to make it happen.

One of the reasons, besides my craving, that made me think I might be safe making it, was because my youngest, who never used to like anything, now likes most things and has purged her memory of the fact she never used to like anything (another blog for another day).

As for my husband, he should just feel lucky his wife cooks dinner most days and I think he can put up with some meal he's not fond of every once in awhile.

So I made it; they all loved it. Apparently  my youngest and husband purged the memory of it from their taste pallets and they liked it too. Good thing, because I really do like the dish and felt deprived with its absence in my life:

Summer Vegetable Baked Chicken
2 peppers (red, yellow or green)
1 small zuccini
1/2 med onion
1 cup salsa
1 cup cheese
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Slice vegetables, then in olive oil saute peppers, zuccini, and onions. Add salsa. Pour over chicken. Bake covered in a 350 degree oven for 1/2 hour. Uncover, bake another 30 minutes. Top with cheese.

I change it up a bit and also use yellow squash and add an additional zucchini so there are lots of veggies and a bit more salsa. I serve it with wild rice or brown rice. The juice it makes goes well with the rice.

But the biggest thing I did yesterday was not ask my kids if they had homework. Normally, I do something dramatic, like announce my intention not to ask if they had homework. But a friend of mine said, "Don't say anything." So I didn't.

After dinner, I got up and went about my business and my kids got up and started in on their homework. I didn't ask if they had any, I didn't ask if they were finished with it, I didn't ask how they were doing. They seemed to be fine with me not asking and, in fact, seemed to stay on task better without my asking.

Then at 6:30, I left for the church to see a one-man production of the Passion from the book of Luke. I don't like to go out at night, but I freed myself from the burden of my children's homework responsibility and felt I should leave the house and enjoy myself.

It was a great production I highly recommend if you ever have the opportunity to see it. To get the full schedule of the productions go to their website: stlukeproductions.com, they show them all over the state.

When I got home, I felt refreshed and reinvigorated for my Lenten journey. I have no idea what my kids did all night and I didn't ask. I felt much more relaxed than I have in a long time.

Now that was easy.

Why is it whenever we think of starting something new, like an exercise or diet program, we always want to wait until Monday?

What is wrong with starting something on Tuesday? What's wrong with Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday?

It's understandable why we couldn't start something on Friday; that's before the weekend and sustaining something on the weekend is difficult as it is, so to start something on Friday would be unfair. But Tuesday is a perfectly respectable day.

I guess it's human nature to want to start things at the beginning: Monday is the first working day of the week; the first day of a month gives us the whole month to give whatever we started a fair trial.

But if the first day of the month is on a Tuesday, do we wait until a month when the first day is on a Monday to start something new? The first day of next month is on a Friday, so don't wait for the first of March because your mind will play games with you, because the first day of April is indeed on a Monday.

But we don't have to wait that long; Tuesday is a perfectly respectable day.

Go start something.

I need to do last week over. It was my daughters' mid-winter break and it didn't turn out as I wanted. All my hopes and dreams were dashed.

Some things work out for the best, though. We had talked about going on a little trip last week while the girls were on vacation, but my oldest had a lot of homework and culminating project tasks to complete. So we dashed those plans and stayed home.

It turned out to be a good thing when my mother-in-law called and needed help, because I was available. Then after I got home, my youngest decided to rearrange her bedroom. This required taking her bed apart and taking everything out of the room as she was deciding if she wanted to dispense with the bunkbed.

She slept on the floor on her mattress one night trying to decide if she was willing to give up the floor space her bunkbed allowed underneath. We took out the bottom bunk a couple years ago and she created a hangout space.

After a night on the floor with less floor space, she decided she just needed to reorient her bunkbed and it had to be put back together. I really wanted her to get her room back into shape before the vacation was over so I could have my living room back. No such luck.

Then my oldest didn't get as far as I had hoped on her culminating project, but she is happy with it, so I should be too. I'm not the one graduating, I just need to let HER tasks be her tasks.

The key word here is MY; as in, MY hopes and dreams were dashed. My hopes and dreams were in no way my daughters' hopes and dreams.

So this morning, I felt so behind on my life I had to crawl back into bed after my daughters drove off and contemplate how I was going to tackle this day.

About 15 minutes later I had a game plan and it did not include going back to sleep. I showered, dressed, sorted laundry, made a shopping list, got something out of the freezer to thaw for dinner. I'm only going to one store today because I think that's all I can handle. Then I will come home and do more laundry and tackle the pile of mail on my desk, table and coffee table as I make my way through the obstacle course of debris my daughter has left in the living room and hallway.

I would really like to have a do-over of last week. It's a weird day in paradise.

I came home from my mother-in-law's Wednesday night. The moment I walked in the door, there was an audible sigh of relief emitting from my daughters.

As I observed the somewhat controlled chaos that was left after my time away, I was not disappointed: the laundry was almost done (the white pile was still left; hmmm? the one with dad's underwear...); there were unfolded clothes on my bed, but not much; my oldest had made progress on her school work; my youngest got stuck on a portion of her costume, so hadn't made progress, but was trying; dad had grilled burgers a few times and they ate the chili that was in the pantry so they didn't spend money eating out; the kitchen was in fair shape, so overall they did fine.

It really was what I expected, not necessarily what I wanted, but I have to learn to dial back my expectations from what I would have done to what they would do. Someday they will have a home of their own and a family of their own and memories of this week will come back them.

The thing that struck me the most was how any task currently in progress stopped cold the moment I walked in the door; they are teens, they wanted their mother back.

I had my MS treatment yesterday morning and was exhausted by the time I got home. I was still worried about my mother-in-law and emotionally spent from being worried and away from the house, so when I got home from my treatment I just fell apart. I shut myself in my room for a "time-out," watched Netflix, and ate chocolate. In between pity parties, I finished the laundry, helped my youngest and spurred on my oldest.

It wasn't until this morning, after I cleaned the kitchen, that I felt able to join the world again.

It was my turn to breathe an audible sigh of relief.

I've been with my mother-in-law for four days now and last night it occurred to me she has extended cable. I had forgotten. But as a person who has basic, basic cable, it's probably a good thing I didn't remember.

When I remembered last night, my normal sitcoms were spent. It was about 9:30 and I usually will surf a couple other major stations to see if there is another sitcom that interested me. There wasn't, then it occurred to me there was more cable channels available.

I loved TLC channel when we had extended basic back in the day; before they discovered we were hooked up erroneously and we weren't paying for extended cable (their mistake, not ours).

But I am not willing to pay another $50 a month for TV; not in these days of computer programming, Netflix and Hulu. I just can't justify it, but that meant I had to let go of TLC, my favorite being "What Not to Wear."

I even remember what channel it was. So I switched to it and there was a program about people who weighed over 600 pounds and had gastric bypass. They followed them for 7 years on their weight loss journey.

Let me just say that it's dangerous territory for me. The hours went quickly when at 11:30, I decided they were rerunning the first one I caught the end of and I should go to bed.

This little sojourn into extended cable last night made me reaffirm my decision not to spend the extra $50 on TV; not even if the sales guy tried to tell me I'd be living a fuller life if I had not only extended cable, but on demand and their premium package as well.

My life is full enough of reality.

I called my house 5 times at 10:45 this morning trying to rouse my kids. My oldest answered with wonder - like who would be ringing the phone over and over? Who indeed; their mother, trying to get them to get out of bed and spring into action and get something done this week while I'm gone.

It makes me crazy that as soon as I leave the house, everyone stops moving. Perhaps I am the only live character in a fictional play and when I leave the house the puppet strings drop. I'm sure my kids' view of their mid-winter break will be one of rest and relaxation, with staying up 'til all hours and sleeping well past noon.

After I roused them from bed, I called their dad at work and explained to him that if there weren't obvious tasks completed when I got home tomorrow evening, heads would roll. It won't be his head, he's working for a living, but my teenage daughters have a lot on the line right now.

There are graduation requirements to be completed, homework, and college applications to work on for my oldest. My youngest needs to get her anime convention costume completed this week. The convention is a month away and we still have running around to do to pick up random accessories.

Then there is the laundry; my understanding is that it has been sorted and left in my husband's and my bedroom. I specifically told my daughter to sort it in the hallway. She didn't so dad had to maneuver over piles of clothes all night.

When I was a kid, we lived out in the country and had lots of animals that needed to be tended to: chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats. The goats had to be milked, all of them fed and watered. We had wood heat so there was wood to chop and haul. We had to have our chores done before we even thought of relaxing. Of course, we didn't have computers to distract us and where we lived we only had three channels on the TV, so there wasn't as much to pull us away as my kids have.

But still? I feel I've failed as a mother and haven't instilled in my children a sense of responsibility to others in the household. Sure, it's their homework, their costumes, but they don't seem to understand it's my time when they need help or me to run them around.

Sigh. So when the mom's away, the children will... I guess we'll see when I get home tomorrow evening.

Do you hear those screams? That is my children's worst nightmare coming true.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Langley on Whidbey Island right now. I'm here to take care of my mother-in-law while she's recovering from a bad case of bronchitis.

I've "put her down for a nap" and thought I'd sneak away while she's resting to take a walk and grab an espresso. This town is a good walking town with lots of small hills. If figured if I extend the city block into nearby neighborhoods, I can justify the cookie I'm having with my cappuccino.

It's working for me at the moment, plus I have to walk back to my mother-in-law's house, so we don't need to do the math.

Back to the screams. As we listened to our answering machine Sunday afternoon and we realized I'd need to go help, I had to think about the weekly chores. We had just had a family housecleaning session Sunday morning, so we were good there. But there was the laundry.

I do laundry on Mondays and only Mondays. If anyone needs anything washed between Tuesday and Sunday, they can wash it themselves. It works for us and after hearing horror stories of other twenty-somethings who moved out of mom's house for the first time and rather than read the directions on the box of detergent put the whole thing in for one load, I vowed my daughters would know how to wash a load of laundry.

Indeed they do; not only do they know how to wash a load, they know how to sort the clothes in different piles, how they have to hang their shirts and jeans up to dry, how to use the dryer and how to fold clothes (putting them away is relative).

With a few instructions from me about which of my clothes they can dry in the dryer and which they need to hang up, I made it clear they did not have to complete the laundry in a day like I do, they could take a couple if necessary. Otherwise, they are on their own.

The thing is, my daughters have never had to do everybody's laundry. This means they will HAVE TO TOUCH OTHER PEOPLE'S UNDERWEAR.

I'm picturing their horror as they sort the laundry and try to figure out the path of least contact, not to mention how they will pick up the whole load and get it to the washer (tongs and one piece at a time?). Dare I say I'm enjoying the image of my daughters' worst nightmare come true?

Now do you hear those screams?

Yesterday I did not feel like writing. Nothing was coming to me and when my cat pulled the fast one on me I decided to write about her. But otherwise, I couldn't think of anything to write.

I decided I would scrapbook all day, so I went and jumped in the shower to get ready for my day.

Then the muse descended with several ideas.... really? In the shower? How inconvenient - I did not feel like writing yesterday.

So I ignored the muse as I finished my shower (really what else could I have done at that moment?), got dressed and headed back into the computer room.

Still the muse kept up her nagging. I finally sat down and wrote out the idea so I wouldn't forget it. But it wasn't enough for the muse... I really didn't feel like writing.

I ran from the computer room, which is also my craft room and ignored the muse. But consequently I got nothing done the whole day, no writing, no scrapbooking, no cleaning, nothing.

Stupid muse... I'm not a-mused!

The cat and I have been having a showdown all week. She has lost her daytime house privileges because she was caught on top of the stove twice the week before.

She knows she's not supposed to be on the counters, the stove, the table; and I know she knows because as soon as someone walks into the kitchen she scrambled off said horizontal kitchen surface and scurries away trying to make you think she just happened by.

She lives in the house, so I haven't kicked her out of the house, but she is only allowed in the back of the house. Yes, she must slum with the other animals. This means, in cat terms, she is not allowed in the living room where her favorite spot is under the hope chest in front of the heat vent.

I have to admit, it's pretty cozy down there and I feel bad for her loss. She will spend the whole day down there if I let her. The problem is, we gave her an inch she took a mile; or in this case, she became queen of the living room, the kitchen must be a free for all too.

So she and I have been having a fight. Every morning she goes outside, then when the kids leave for school she wants back in. It's not cold out, she just decides the weather isn't to her liking and she wants back in.

She'll get a bite to eat, then she'll want back out thinking perhaps the weather has changed. Then she'll want back in.

My part in this is not letting her back in until she's good and frantic, so she'll then go to the back of the house right away. Lately, though, she keeps bugging me - Meow, Meow, MEOOOOOW!

I let her in the living room/kitchen area to let her out and she starts walking through the house (the dogs are outside the family room door). I follow her until she makes a decision to either go outside or go back to the back of the house.

This annoys her. She stalks into the living room, around the coffee table with her head down and her ears back. Sometimes she attempts to make a run into the kitchen and I'm ready with my foot out to derail her, in which case she'll dash to the back of the house.

This morning, we did our morning let out. Then she went around to the back and meowed at the sliding glass door until I let her in. She went to the back of the house and I turned on the pellet stove and she curled up on the chair in front of the stove and fell asleep.

I sat and looked at my email accounts, determined nothing was late or behind and got up to get another cup of coffee. She wasn't in the chair when I went back in and I suddenly got a twist in my stomach: as I went into the kitchen, I left the door to the family room open for the few moments it took me to get another cup of coffee.

She's stealth; she could be anywhere. I start feeling a little frantic wondering if she snuck into the forbidden side of the house; I didn't see her, normally I'd catch a glimpse of her if she followed me through; my back was turned for a moment, it's happened before.

This is the time of day when we really have it out; where was she? She usually is stalking through the house trying not to notice I'm behind her. She's usually meowing at me to let her out, in, out, in; I'm usually trying to ignore her. She's up to something, I'm sure of it.

I started to feel like I was a prisoner in my house. I couldn't leave the house (okay, I'm still in my pajamas, I wasn't going anywhere), I couldn't shut the door to the family room because she often gets shut out of the back of the house when other family members aren't paying attention, I couldn't go settle in front of the computer and just see what happens because if she jumps on the counters and I don't know it, then I don't know if I should assume she jumped on them and sanitize them, which is more work for me.

I stood, literally, at the door to my answer not sure if I should go through. My eyes scanned the family room - she wasn't eating. Then for some reason my eyes dropped to the floor and there she was curled up in the dog's bed, breaking her annoying routine (although the dog will know she was sleeping in her bed and will probably refuse to sleep there until her bed is sanitized).

I'd say I'd won the battle since the cat is in the correct side of the house, not bugging me, sleeping away, but she wasn't the one frantically searching for me.

It was a fight to the finish, at least for the moment.