Thanks Samantha.

yep

How to clean your home in just 45 minutes a day

     I know we all have different standards. I am no Martha Stewart. A recent move has reminded me of just how grotesque the average American family can be. Add in a couple of pets, the dust from a fondness of fresh air from open windows, and living in the Mojave Desert and you have some serious nastiness going on. Yep. So, I thought you might be interested in some cleaning tips. Not that I am an expert by any means. These are just some tips I have gleaned over the years. I have broken it down into daily chores to keep you from being overwhelmed.
     Sunday:  This is your day of rest. Don't do anything.
     Monday: Dust everything. Even your children. Go outside and spray your window screens to eliminate dust (make sure you close the windows first. Trust me here.) Use a broom to remove any cob webs. Always start at the top and go down. Sweep. Vacuum. Mop. Wax. OK, on second thought, maybe this is more like a couple of hours worth of chores... But I refuse to change the title of this post because who would read it after that?
    Tuesday:  Deep clean Kitchen and bathrooms. Always start with the cleanest part and get to the dirtiest part last. Counters, sinks, toilets. Sanitize the counters, use disinfectant on all door knobs and telephones and keyboards. Wash all towels and dish rags. If you have a dishwasher, keep your scrubbers and sponges in there and when they go through the cycle they will be clean for the next day, plus you don't have to look at them.
     Wednesday: Wash your children. This shouldn't be too bad because you dusted them on Monday. If the weather permits, have them wash the car and then hose them and the car off all at once. They will think it is great fun. Wash your pets. Spay and neuter pets as needed.  Shampoo your carpets.Wash the upholstery. Power wash the outside of your home.
     Thursday:  Organize your pantry. Always put your most recent purchases at the back of the cupboard and the oldest at the front so your food does not expire. Refinish the cupboards or paint them. make sure you strip them properly first.
     Friday: Tend your garden, weed it, start new seedlings, harvest, and can. Bake bread from scratch using your homegrown wheat. Paint the interior of your home. Paint adds a freshness that nothing else can compare to.
     Saturday: Begin a patchwork quilt using scraps from the clothes you sew by hand. Maintain your Windmill and solar panels. Finish your patchwork quilt. Slaughter the hog and use it for tonight's dinner with a smoke pit. Make your own BBQ sauce and can what you will not use tonight.
     Everyday but Sunday (We went over this already, remember?) wash dishes, do a load of laundry, put things away, make your bed upon rising, and plan tomorrows meals.
     There you have it folks. Easy enough. Simply stick to this plan, and in a couple of weeks, after diligently following it, your home will be in tip-top-Martha-worthy-shape. Feel free to share this with others. I know it will be of great help.
     Till next time,
     More-Mary-than-Martha-an-occasional-dust-bunny-never-hurt-anybody,
     Miss Jodi

I'm still here

Hey y'all. I am alive and well, just super busy. Not the back of the hand to the forehead dramatic flourish type of busy, but legitimately busy. In the past two months, we almost lost our daughter to asthma, she was hospitalized and has recovered, (thank you God!!!) said daughter graduated from High school (thank you God!) and all that is involved with that took place, said daughter was in a play, relatives from Texas came for the graduation party, we bought a house, (thank you God!!!) and are in the process of moving during a heat wave (in my opinion) in the California desert, I went with my bestie to Vegas to see the Michael Jackson One Cirque de Soleil  show,  came back, and have been working, and writing a play. So yeah, like I said. BUSY. But blessed. Thank you God!!!
Miss Jodi

How to be Poh

     Since becoming Face Book friends with college age adults, it has come quite obvious to me, that they do not understand the concept of being Poh. Poh to them is simply a shiny button to wear upon becoming a college student, instead of by living well below your means and out of necessity. I see comments like, "I'm so sick of being broke!" next to pictures of them in their new car. Selfies with a Starbucks drink in hand (Venti no less) accompanying  a complaint about the cost of tuition this semester, while a photo of a shoe box with brand new Toms sits next to them. Might I make the most humble of suggestions to those of you who may be guilty of one or more or all of the above atrocities? Being "Poh" means that you walk to your destination or ride the public bus instead of rolling up in a  new car. Being "Poh" means flavoring your tap water with a ten cent packet of Kool aid, or a mint leaf plucked from your herb garden. Being "Poh" means you wear a pair of flip flops you purchased with the change you found between the cushions of your thread bare sofa combined with the quarter you found on the floor of the public restroom. You eat peanut butter and saltine crackers or ramen noodles for dinner, NOT steak from the local roadhouse restaurant, not even a burger from Mc Donalds... It means that when you wear a hole in your clothing, you patch it up, NOT go shopping, but if you do, it is at the Salvation Army, NOT the mall with a credit card. You don't text or post selfies, because your phone is on a wall and requires coins. Your pedicure comes from the kitchen scissors and an emery board, not a beauty shop. Your hair gets cut with those same scissors, not by a beautician, and those very same, well used, rusty, and possibly dull scissors, cut coupons to make the most of what you DO have. Can you sense the bitterness in my words? Can you imagine my eyes rolling in disgust? Now I am not going to tell you that I walked 3 miles up hill each direction in the snow to get to school, but I am going to tell you that I have gone through some very difficult times in my life, so I know a thing or two about food stamps and Regan cheese, and having to make do. So if you would like to be offensive, then go ahead and call yourself Poh when you are not, because I see a huge contradiction in what you say and how you live. You do not deserve a new car when you are 18. You are not entitled to a smart phone. You don't require new clothes. And for your information, Poh people usually don't complain about being broke, there is no point to it. If you are, you just are. It exhausts me to see people who are so well off financially, complaining about their perceived lack, when the reality is, they are a group of people who lack gratitude. Count your blessings, spend some time with the poverty stricken people in your community, be a blessing to others, give, and most importantly, thank God for what you have. And for goodness sake, stop your whining.
     Until next time,
     Miss Jodi

Thanks Linda Love Atwater for this perfect picture!!!!

Aging? Get over it

     I went to Target today. Yes, the modern day equivalent of happy hour. 56 minutes of uninterrupted bliss while looking at luxurious bedding with ridiculous thread count, scented candles and picture frames that don't exactly match, but coordinate just enough to make it look as if you happen to have frames by someone named Nate Berkus laying around that go with everything you own. I purchased a Venti-Light (yeah right, like that makes a difference) Caramel Frappaccino, and casually strolled the isles, my fingers lightly touching the downy soft lap throws (I live in the desert and only have need for a downy soft lap throw approximately 2 days out of an entire year, however this does not stop me from looking and touching them), and imagining myself taking  an afternoon nap on a bed made up entirely of Rachel Ashwells Shabby Chic line of "Casual, Vintage-inspired" bedding. I passed through the Summer themed Dollar isle of irresistibly packaged note cards, cheap plastic sand pails, and brightly colored, brittle frisbee's that crack the minute they become airborne. I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed every minute of it, I truly did. Hey, I only spent $5. and 72 cents so it's not like I hurt anything, and it's not like I went to Molly's Tavern and put back a 6 pack of tall boys. When I finished my shopping (FYI, 2 bottles of "Iceland-cherry" flavored Gatorade and an extra large bottle of generic Pepto-Bismol for the dog which may or may not have Parvo, and the goat who has diarrhea, CAN YOU BLAME ME FOR WANTING TO ESCAPE REALITY? I mean a vomiting dog AND a goat with the soupy-poopies? Could it possibly get any worse than that?) I left the store and went out to my car, or should I say, where I usually park my car? It was not there. I had parked it in a different spot out of the sheer excitement of being at Target BY MYSELF. Big mistake. I spent the next 20 minutes wandering around aimlessly while furiously clicking the car alarm remote, which of course only works when I am directly in front of the car. By the time I had circled the entire parking lot for the fifth time, the dear shopping cart attendant had mercy on me and casually asked me what color and type my car was. Notice that he didn't ask me if I had forgotten where I had parked? It was glaringly obvious that I had indeed forgotten, and he spared me the humiliation. He then proceeded to find my car for me in less than a minute. (Be careful to entertain strangers, for you may have entertained an angel unaware) I realize that I am no longer a spring chicken. I may not even be a summer chicken...(somewhere between  a Fall Chicken and a Winter chicken if you must know)Don't try to kid yourself. I don't care how much wrinkle cream you slather on, or what shade of Lady Clairol you use, if you are not dead, you are aging. Things are going to sag. Your memory won't stay the same. You will forget where you parked the car. It's gonna happen. Soon after this humiliating experience , the thought occurred to me that I could share with you some tips that have helped me during my "Moments," and maybe, just maybe I could keep them from happening to you. I am going to do my best to remember them for you:
    1)  When you are  going to the store, always park in the same area. ALWAYS. If you happen to have a horrible sense of direction, and have a cell phone with a decent camera on it, you could even take a series of pictures as you go into the store and look at them when you are returning.
    2)  Designate an area next to your front door for your keys. Use a pretty basket or a dish. As soon as you unlock your door, put the keys where they belong.
     3) Keep a pad of paper and a pencil next to your bed, by the phone, and next to the spot where you watch TV, and even next to the throne, and write everything as you think of it. Don't try to trust your memory.
     4) Metamucil is your friend.
     And lastly:
     5) When your goat has diarrhea, give it Pepto-Bismal. It helps. (OK, maybe this has nothing to do with aging, but it is most certainly helpful information.
     So there you go folks, from my brain to yours,
     Miss Jodi

Starbucks Junkie

     I  can guarantee that Starbucks will deny this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they put a smidgen of crack in their Frappacinnos. In all honesty, they should just change the name to Crack-achinnos. It all starts out innocently. First, you see your friends sipping on that green straw and you think to your self, "Self, those people are fools too spend a five spot on a cup of coffee. I can brew an entire pot  for twenty nine cents. I would NEVER, spend that kind of money on coffee." Then, your friend invites you to Starbucks for a visit over a cup of coffee, and you smugly think to yourself that you will go and order the cheapest cup they have. After all, it can't hurt anything right? Then you go, and you buy your little cup of plain house coffee with your name written in black sharpie on the side, and you sit there smugly as your friend chugs down their frappacinno faster than a college kid at a frat party. You judge. Go ahead, admit it. And then the barrista, well trained to identify a first timer, spots you. He offers you a sample of a frappaccino. You accept. After all, it's free. You sip. You close your eyes in delight and the cool, icy, coffee flavored drink runs across your tongue and you swirl it around in your mouth awakened to a pleasure you didn't know existed. After you leave, your mind returns to the taste and texture...ice pureed to a perfectly smooth consistency. Who knew such bliss was just around the corner, or that this could even be done with coffee? So close all this time. Time wasted. The next day, you give in. But you try to justify it by getting the smallest size, the "Regular." The only problem is, no matter how slowly you try to drink it, no matter how hard you focus on enjoying it and making it last, it is gone too soon. And so, a few days later, you go back. This time you order a "Grande." This time it will last. Only, it doesn't. And you are left with an empty cup and a little sip at the bottom of the cup that you can't suck through the straw so it is wasted because you can't stick your tongue that far down the cup (which you know because you actually try). So you go back a few days later and order a Venti. After all, it's only .50 more, and THIS time surely you will find satisfaction! But you don't. You cannot. And now, you are hooked. Now, you find yourself in shame, taking those empty plastic cups with green straws out of the car and throwing them into your neighbors trash can so your spouse doesn't realize the level of your addiction. You get pleasure and humiliation at the same time when the barrista (with a particular twinkle of satisfaction in their eye) calls you by name and begins your drink before you even order. Some days you fantasize about ordering TWO Venti's....or three. Before you know it, you qualify for a Gold card which entices you all the more with an offer of a FREE drink on your birthday and refills on drip coffee, AS IF that were enough. But it never is. You search your mind for reasons to to go. You make up excuses...You have joined the ranks...you my friend, are a Starbucks junkie.
     Non so proud Starbucks-Gold-card-member since 2007,
     Miss Jodi