Carry-on luggage

The Lands End catalog brought a treat yesterday: their new Carry-on luggage collection.
I especially like the FlightWise Carry-on Trip Tote, which opens at the top and might be the perfect replacement for M's diaper bag. I still use his diaper bag on flights because it opens at the top in the same way, but it is a little too heavy and small.

I also like the FlightWise Carry-on Softsided bag, which holds a lot but is cheaper and more malleable than a hard-sided small suitcase. It converts to a backpack, another key trait when you're traveling with a lot of gear.

Hopefully, within the next 6-8 months, some of these pieces will join our family...

Is there anything you love as carry-on luggage?

Flag Day for the 155th!

I love Flag Day! So far, we know about San Salvador (a dream post for me! I've heard it's wonderful for families!) and Dhaka (don't know too much about this post so I'm looking forward to learning!). I'm happy that V is for Vonhinken  got what they were hoping for - a DC post (and as Con candidate, I'm hoping she'll share a little bit about her job, which sounds so interesting!). And The World That We Live In got a really cool and beautiful country as their first post.

Another- Riga, Latvia!  (shout out to two former RPCVs from Africa!). Also heard that Niamey, Niger, was assigned to someone.

If you know of others who don't blog, please share! I love living vicariously! Congrats, everyone!

Back to regular life

I first want to thank everyone who reached out via my blog, email, and phone after I did not get the call. Your kindness is so appreciated.

I'm currently trying to figure out where to focus my mental and physical energy. I am operating under the assumption (which may turn out to be wrong, but for now, it's where I'm at) that I will make it into A100 in the spring, aka March or so. I've kind of been living month to month- waiting to get onto the register, working on Spanish and anticipating the test, and then, of course, hoping for the call in Sept and Oct. Now, I have a bigger chunk of time.

Some random thoughts:

• I tried getting back into yoga, and promptly tweaked my back. I feel so lame! I'll start a little more slowly when it heals. 
• I hope we will motivate to hold our yard sale in mid-Sept. I don't want to look at those "sell" boxes for the next year. We really need to do it before the weather turns cold.
• I really want to keep up the momentum on the house decluttering. Now it's time for the hard stuff: photos, desk stuff, yuck. 
• We have to decide whether we will go ahead and put the house on the market now, given the crummy outlook for home sales. If we don't get into the FS, I think we'd want to stay there, but I'm not positive.
• Fall is always busy and this year, we have a reunion with D's family in October to look forward to. We also have another visit with Mimi and Poppie (my dad/stepmom) in Oct. And then before we know it, it will be Halloween (huge holiday on our block!), Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday) and then Hanukkah (which comes early this year)! I am grateful for one more Halloween in New Rochelle, that is for sure. 

So maybe I have enough on my plate without dreaming up a new hobby.

That's all, folks!*

Finally received word that all Con offers are accepted and the class is full. I'm sad my 2 friends didn't get in. I feel pretty ok about it- on to the New Year.

* had to correct this- had my ancient tv reference wrong!

Isn't there another way?

I've been holding off on blogging until I could say I was either in or out.

I thought for sure we'd hear over the weekend or at the very latest, Monday night. I've been waiting patiently (or anxiously, take your pick) with two friends who have 5.6s and who must be next in line to get an offer. Frankly, if they get in, I'll be just as excited as if it were me! But we heard last night that it will be Wed or Thurs until we hear. I take that to mean that someone (or multiple someones) higher than a 5.6 got added to the register and received an offer, so we have to wait until he/she declines/accepts (if you are that someone and reading this, it would be so nice if you introduced yourself...).

I'm probably 4-5 away from an offer and know in my head that it's not going to happen, but I just can't close this chapter until Pat says it's over.

They really can't come up with a better way to do this?

P.S. In language news, Arabic has been nixed by the B husband. Bummer. I think it's a beautiful language. I'm thinking about Mandarin (his choice, but I am scared I don't have the chops to learn this hard language!), Turkish, and Hindi. But the reality is that I don't have time or energy right now. I think I'm going to focus on getting back into exercising, which will probably be good for both my mental health/obsession issue as well as my physical health. We'll see what happens as the year unfolds.

Don't mind me; I'm just over here waiting patiently....

I feel like I have little to say this week as I wait...and wait…and wait. I may be getting used to this waiting thing. Waiting for the Spanish test results was my hardest week wait. Sept offer time was nearly as tough, but I didn’t want it as bad.

October, I want. I might make it as one of the last offers extended early next week, but I might not. Still, I would say the wait is not killing me this time. Now I really am FS material, see? I'm an excellent waiter!

I'm grateful for the camaraderie of others waiting with me, especially Caroline, Chris, and Abbie. Looking forward to being colleagues someday.

If I don’t make October, I don't know if or when I’ll make it in. The next class is January, which is far away and therefore will be filled with the highest scorers. I would think the Feb class would be similar. So I’m thinking that if hiring remains the same, I might get into the March class at the earliest, or a later spring class. That’s IF hiring and testing remain the same.

I’m trying to think of the silver lining if I don’t make it (yes, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. But I like to prepare myself for disappointment, rather than get my hopes up). For one, we won’t have to kill ourselves to get the house ready. Second, like ADA recommends, I am going to seize the moment and do the things I’ve been wanting to do in NY. For example:

1) cross country skiing. I’ve been wanting to try this out for at least 3 years. I’ve been pregnant, nursing, or w/o a babysitter for all 3 winters, but I’m going to prioritize this one.

2) Visit the Adirondacks. This one is hard because it's about 6 hours away so we need more than a weekend. And with fall/winter approaching, it might not happen. But I'll try.

3) In the remaining summer weekends we have, get to the pool and beach!
4) Continue M's swim classes. We have a Y literally blocks from us that we have used rarely, until we signed him up for swim class a few months ago. We have really enjoyed the community of other parents who are ethnically diverse and very friendly. And we're excited that M is on the verge of really swimming.

Ok, this made me feel better. Back to waiting.

PS I will also probably retake the FSOT (written test) with my husband in October, and I'm contemplating learning Arabic. But hopefully, it won't come to this.

more progress

Although my heart wasn't in it at first, we devoted ourselves to the house this weekend and it shows, I think. I have 7 bags waiting for donation pickup. We organized the garage and actually made room for a car! But I don't have photos for you yet - there's so much in there waiting to be sold that it doesn't look that impressive. I went through all the kids clothes and most of mine.

I love this part- the removing all the extra stuff from my house.
It's the dealing with things that are harder to throw away that I won't enjoy.

Now that I know I have to wait another week, I am just going to keep at my decluttering plan and try to be patient. What else can I do?

1st round

1st round of offers went out today and did not head my way. I haven't checked recently, but think I was ranked about 24-28 before today. Apparently Pat will be on vacation next week and has said she won't get to all the offers, so a 2nd round is likely for next weekend or so. I'm hoping I don't get left behind again.

This is so draining. I have felt today like I wanted to tear out my hair. In the last week, there have been a ton of people added to the register above me, so the same is likely to happen this week. Which could mean that I miss an offer by just a person or two, again.

I just feel like the landscape is changing under us. Basically, if you are just starting out in this process and don't speak a language, I really recommend starting one now. Preferably a critical language.

more waiting

A lot of my post titles have the word 'waiting' in them. No surprise there. I'm waiting for calls to start going out and getting impatient, which of course, won't make them come any faster.

I hit a wall last night and couldn't do any more organizing. I was happy to play doctor with M, so I could lie on the couch and look sick. I believe I fell asleep while he was taking my blood pressure.

I'm giving myself a break for the rest of the week- if I have the energy, great, but if not, we'll just pick up on Saturday.

Fingers crossed.

can't stop can't stop

I'm like an organizing fool this week. I've broken up my to-do list into small tasks that can be started at 9/930pm and completed quickly. That way I get to make lots of X's in the DONE column which keeps my organizing high fed and happy!

Yes, I have a problem. I admit it.

This week's tasks:
- go through the downstairs toy and book boxes and identify stuff to sell and donate- DONE!
- set up a donation pickup - (want to get the first load out of the house and free up some space)- DONE!
- pare down my sheets, towels, pillows, and blankets- DONE!
- declutter the guest room- Wed
- start going through my dresser drawers- Thurs

These are tasks I enjoy, so it's easy to find the motivation. Later come the harder ones, like going through the file cabinet and desk drawers. That's work I dread- so much paper, so many piles, so many decisions about what to do with it, and still at the end, I'll be left with plenty of paper and more work (like scanning a lot of it).

But I know I just need to break it up into small jobs. One drawer at a time. The satisfaction derived from that one drawer leads me to do the next. I hope I don't run out of time.

Rumor has it that offers for the October 25 class will go out this week or next. I'm patiently waiting. And hoping.

Whew.

Well, I'd say the weekend was a big success. Thanks to my mom for wrangling the kids and providing meals! Of course we have lots more to do, but we made a big, big dent in the basement mess, I cleaned out two closets, and we started on the garage. And, we decided we will have a garage sale, after all. Or rather, our stuff decided for us. There is too much decent stuff that I want to at least try to sell.

I must say, the technique of preparing boxes with labels such as Store, Sell, Donate, and Move was tremendously helpful. Usually, I empty a box all over the room and then freak out at the mess and take hours to put it in the correct location. This time, when the box was emptied, every item was already where it needed to be. I prepared the boxes on Friday night so that we could jump right in on Saturday.

Now for the photographic proof:

And here's next weekend's project. Wanna come over?

fun weekend ahead (no, really, I mean that)

I'm finding that blogging (and thinking about blogging!) about my home organizing helps to keep me motivated, so if you do not have any interest in this topic, you may want to look elsewhere for the next month or five...

I haven't done much this week, other than wash some maternity clothes that had gotten wet and moldy (yuck) and some winter coats that have been sitting in a bag, waiting to be washed, for just a few mos.

But there's been a lot of thinking and planning going on.
1) Tonight I will stage the basement, labeling boxes as donate, trash, sell, store and move. Hopefully, that will mean that we can just dive in on Sat am.
2) I've been pondering my photo storage strategy. Let's be honest: who among us doesn't have a box or ten of old photos tucked away somewhere? I have a few boxes, plus old photo albums that don't match, and newish photo albums that also don't match. I really dislike photo albums, as they are so bulky, and it bothers me that they are all different.

Here's the plan, I think. Advice/input welcome:
a) The only photos I really care about and would be devastated if I lost are my Mexico wedding photos. My ones from Peace Corps Niger and Dominican Rep are close seconds. I think I am going to send these negatives to Scanmyphotos.com  to have them put on a CD.
b) I'm going to pull the photos out of my old albums and store them in photo-safe boxes. I probably won't have these scanned right now, but might do it someday. It's not cheap. But I'd like to get rid of the ugly, heavy albums.
c) I'm going through old photos randomly in envelopes and trashing a lot of those.
d) I'm making photo baby books for my kids.
e) I'm contemplating making a photo book of my wedding photos, so that I can actually look at it, rather than keep it hidden for fear of it being destroyed (which is what I do with the real album I made after the wedding).

I think I'm going to tackle the kids' closet this weekend, too, because this is a quick project I can do in an hour or two. I need a little gratification, as this photo project and the basement are not going to be done anytime soon.

I want to leave you with two great websites I've found very helpful:
Unclutterer
Organizing Junkie

Stay tuned, or run away!

keeping busy

Operation Home Organization is still high priority in the B household. My mom is coming up this weekend to occupy the kids. I have an appointment at a consignment shop that I made in March to sell some baby and maternity clothes and gear. Can't believe I am actually keeping this appointment. After that, I plan to tackle the basement.

I'm hoping that the B husband will take this time to explore boxes full of his stuff that he has not opened since we moved 3 years ago. Wish me luck in convincing him.

During the day, I have some free time and hope to finish the kids' photo baby books before we leave. I just know that once we join, I'll have other photo books to concentrate on (love the idea of a book per post) and the baby books will never get done. Photo books are so much more compact than photo albums and I foresee carrying a handful of them around from post to post. If they get lost/damaged, I can always order another one!

And I need to get moving on the kids' moving books. I plan to make each of them a construction paper book (low tech here) with photos discussing the move and what will happen to all their stuff. I still have my moving book from when I was about 5, and it was a source of much comfort during my childhood move (thanks, Mama).

Hoping to actually cross things off the list, soon.

more luggage fun

So in case there are other luggage/packing fanatics like me out there (hello? anyone?), I thought I'd give some quick feedback about the packing cubes I bought from ebags.com. I took them to MD last week in my LL Bean duffle bag and they were perfect. I used the large for pants/shorts/skirts and the medium for tops. They kept everything together neatly in one place, and I found it much easier to pack up and leave.

Ebags is fast becoming a favorite website. Like my most beloved site, Lands End, it constantly sends me promotion codes for free shipping and 20% off. Apparently they know a promotion sucker when they see one.

So when I received a 20% off coupon and saw that they are discontinuing two pretty colors that were not options the first time I purchased, well, I just had to buy some more.

More medium and large packing cubes will be arriving soon. Yes, I'm a luggage geek and I'm proud of it. But really, how could you resist these?

back to work

Really enjoyed my sort of staycation, but it was time to go back to work.

Making the transition easier was our wonderfully energetic and loving former daycare provider, Nena, who is taking care of the kids this week (our daycare is closed for 2 weeks).

I mean, I got up at 5:15am and almost didn't know what to do with myself! No lunches to make, fruit to cut up, schedules to stress about?! No worry about what time the kids wake up? No rushing through breakfast and keeping an eye on the clock? Our schedule is especially tight since I take the commuter train to NYC. If I miss the train, I'm 15 minutes late to work, which does not go over well.

I've never really wanted to hire a nanny, as I felt the social interaction of daycare was good for my kids, but the bottom line was that we could not afford it. We'd have to hire legally (which most people don't do), for more than 55 hours, so it would not be cheap. That doesn't even include preschool, driving expenses, and other classes.

But I must say, my stress level is a lot lower today. Some of that is post-vacation bliss, but a piece of that is Nena. We love her so. I guess if I wasn't hoping to move very soon, I'd have to think about hiring a nanny. Maybe I'll look into it for A100.

back home

Yesterday my husband took a 5 hour bus ride back down to MD so that he could return with us that night to NYC. What a sweetie. It is good to be home, but we had a wonderful time exploring fun spots in MD and spending time with family. Some highlights:
- lots of beach and pool time, of course. M is very close to putting his face in the water!
- very short hair cut for M, including his first shampoo. I was shocked he agreed to it.
- Build a Bear with Grammy. Omg, I have never been here before and it brought out the little 8 year old girl in me, bigtime.
- The Dolphin show at the Baltimore Aquarium, and after that, Dulce de leche cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory!
- The Germantown Adventure and Splash park- totally awesome fun.
- Girls night out for Mama with some hs friends. Yay. 
Thanks for a wonderful week, Grammy, Grandpa and Uncle J!! We love you!