Messages By: onthefarm

How commendable that you are able to have such self-discipline! To have all those areas under control at once is often quite an unachievable goal for most of us. There's nothing wrong with you unless you develop a haughty attitude about being able to do something others can't easily do. Be proud of your achievement in cleanliness, and move on to goals in other areas...perhaps since your house is so neat and clean perpetually you could offer to hostess more parties and events and take some of the stress of the people who haven't got it together as well as you do....or perhaps you can branch out into making crafts, sewing, reading, gardening....so that your nifty clean house isn't the only definition of you there is. I've found that I CAN keep a spotless house---if that's all I do! But once I start including people and activities and creativity in my life, the spotless house gets covered in the clutter of relationships, enjoyment, and activity. I had an aunt whose house was pixy perfect. No one ever visited her for fear of leaving a fingerprint. My mom's house had 4o or 50 cousins all over it every weekend, and mom spent all week doing damage control getting ready for the next invasion....and guess which of their aunts my coulsins who are now in their 60's an 70's still adore and remember with warmth and love? Mom's house was never dirty or nasty... it was clean enough to be enjoyable and not so clean as to be off-limits! Maybe you need to set a new goal of making your clean house alive with people and making memories!

..and I really don't want to leave. I'd like a little less negativity, that's all. My hubby is NOT handy at anything, but son is, so son often fixes a shelf or a door, etc. Husband does the grocery shopping with me in tow (I'm pretty useless), hubby and I much prefer eating out to eating in so as he puts it, "I'm a big boy now, I can feed myself!" when asked if he wants me to cook a night meal. My dining room sports speakers and a toolbox and 5 pairs of shoes, my dining table has a beading craft activity left out for my neighbors two little girls who like to come over to play, it's not unusual for my friends to come on back to my bedroom and lie on my unmade bed with me to talk because hubby is watching sci-fi again, and son washed all the towels we own and piled them on the couch with, "You're home sick today, maybe you can find time to fold them." Ours isn't the typical mom as the CEO house, maybe it's more like 3 adult roommates...and the house isn't ever really really clean unless I've planned a BIG EVENT...which usually involves a couple of my friends or family pitching in to the cleaning process!!!...but my friends know which cabinet holds the tea glasses, and they help themselves to the snacks in the pantry, and we can lounge on the floor or couch or bed and enjoy one another. When it passes cluttered and starts entering the filthy zone, I'm usually the one it bothers first, so I'm usually the one to attack it. I hire the yard done, because we all hate that chore...How clean is it? depends on the day....How controlling are we?....depends on our moods....after all, life changes (so why shouldn't our house and our surroundings. Most families have a "dream idea" of how it could be if it was "perfect"---but we wouldn't like living there if it was!

Principals can be the worst of workplace bullies because often no one knows what they are doing other than the people they are doing it to--who have to go through a grievance committee and follow the chain of command and otherwise put themselves way out there to voice any disention....then end up being black-balled and not able to get a job teaching anywhere. My building principal is new and not sure of himself, so he makes his way easier by trying to shut down every older, more experienced person on the staff. He writes us up for crazy things like "negative attitude" when we question some new thing he wants to do, and turns the newer staff members against us by telling them that we have old-fashioned, stagnant ideas. The superintendent isn't about to NOT defend his principal, the other teachers aren't going to risk their jobs to stand behind you, and the school board's only input will come from the superintendent...so basically you're screwed. If you're old, you earn too much for any other district to want to hire you, so you're pretty much stuck where you are for as long as you can stand being treated like a useless, brainless, hasbeen. I've been in the education business nearly 4 times as long as this principal has been, and all of my years were in elementary--while only this past year as principal has he been in an elementary school. He doesn't understand the psychology of the elementary school child, the curriculum necessities and demands. He wants to run it like a secondary school---and anything said to the contrary about how it might have a negative effect on the students--is worthy of a massive put-down and the old teacher is lableled as "having taught too many years from her laminated lesson plans"...ARGHGHGHGH! I wish there was a way that older teachers could be respected and that new principals would have to have served in the classroom for at least a few years at the level the principal is overseeing. OK I vented. Feel better. But why is it that we allow our older, more knowledgeable, more experienced people so little respect in favor of a young one who just finished 3 years undergrad and 2 years graduate school and served 2 years as a SR high coach? THis happens over and over and over....and it was just not ever right....and now it's happening to me, too!