It has finally arrived!
The Parent’s Guide to Uncluttering Your Home, scheduled to be released this April. will be available through Atlantic Publishing and Amazon. Please click on this link, so that I can retain a small commission.
Thanks so much for your support. It means more than you will ever know.
April 15, 2011 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Toastmaster’s International Speech Competition. Division C.
By
Janet Morris Grimes
Spring Cleaning with kids can be fun, for all of you
With the arrival of spring comes the desire for all things fresh and new. After suffering through a long and stifling winter, trapped indoors with those you love and cherish, the thought of sending them outside until further notice, while you dive into the task of spring cleaning is a natural reaction. But don’t be too quick to tackle this daunting task alone.
Keeping your children out of the process may seem easier at first, but by doing so, you might also be missing an opportunity to teach them some ‘downsizing’ skills of their own while also tapping into their natural gifts of generosity.
Here are a few tips to make Spring Cleaning an activity that can be treasured, rather than dreaded, for your entire family.
1) Adopt a Charity for your family. Before bringing in new toys, bicycles or sporting equipment, ask your children to choose items from their old “stash” to be given to children who do not have these items.
2) Have a ‘try on’ day to see what can still be used from last summer’s clothes. Bag everything that no longer fits that day and donate it to the same charity. Deliver these items to that charity together, so your kids can see the results of their gifts.
3) Children are naturally territorial, so assign them a territory they are responsible for both inside and outside the home. Make it a series of short, quick tasks that can be done before they are released to the outdoors. Allow the older children to take down the curtains, so they can be laundered. Another can strip the beds. Another can gather the trash and take it to the curb.
4) For outdoors, make it a race to see who can pick up the greatest number of sticks, rocks, trash, that has gathered in the yard over the winter.
5) Let the older children wash the car, watering the yard, and the younger children from time to time in the process.
Reward your family with a trip to the ice cream shop or another outdoor activity, such as a cookout. By making it fun for everyone, including yourself, Spring Cleaning can be an annual event that your family looks forward to each year, as they welcome the freshness of spring.
Janet Morris Grimes is the author of the book, The Parent’s Guide to Uncluttering Your Home, scheduled to be released on April 30, f 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXAJ0D-6GpM
Feb 15
It’s bitterly cold here in Michigan, the kind of cold that makes your toenails ache the second you walk out the door. I think the wind chill today was -15. At moments likes this, the hope of Spring seems next to impossible. It would be easy to think that life will stay like this for the rest of our lives. Ugh!
But seasons change, thankfully, and it takes one to appreciate the other.
I’ve always thought of Winter as a time for digging in deeper, getting real, staying home and getting ready to go out into the world, when the time is right.
I believe that is exactly what is happening with my writing. People ask me often, “How’s it going?” and my first response is usually “Slow.” I mean, some days I’m not sure if it is going anywhere at all. But still, I write. I finish one project and move on to another, none of which have been released into the world. I have yet to find an agent or publisher for my own stuff, but the ideas keep coming and my visions grow deeper and stronger, even during the cold spells when it seems like nothing is happening. Somehow, I still feel as if I’m on the right track, even if that track runs much slower than I would like.
My biggest goal for this year, outside of the above mentioned ‘finding and agent and publisher,’ is to launch my career as a motivational and inspirational speaker. Writing and speaking go hand in hand, and in order to find that publisher, I must prove my ability to reach my own audience.
I took a big step toward this goal last night. I competed in my first ever Speech Competition with Toastmasters. It went better than I expected, and I believe I was helped greatly by a couple of others going over on time limits, I won first place. This speech is something I envisioned giving over a year ago, and to finally deliver it and it be so well-received reinforced my desire to speak. In no way am I perfect, and I still have much to learn, but one step seems to lead to another.
In other news, the Spring is filling up with what looks like “Author Events,” and for this beginning author, I find that very exciting.
March 10 – Area Toastmaster Speech Competition
March 18 – Speak at A Day of Renewal Women’s Conference
April 2 – Present my book at a Local Author Fair at the Plymouth Library
The other day, I heard the birds singing outside my window. The sun shone brightly, blinding me with the reflection off the foot of snow that still taunts us from last week. But seasons change, and even the birds know there will be warmer days ahead.
I plan to be ready, when the time is right.
Thanks so much for joining me on this journey.
Janet
It is finished. Distorted Dreams is finished. 50,303 words. 190 pages, double spaced.
Or at least as finished as it needed to be to cross the finish line. There are a few holes in my plot, with stronger writing at the end than at the beginning. I will go back and fix those later. Those who have done this before say to wait at least six weeks, to take a break and detach myself from my own story, just to see if I still like it in a few weeks. It in no way resembles what I started with a month ago. which, of course, is the entire point of it all.
I feel like I’ve been in one of those crazy videos that shows the running of the bulls. It makes little sense to the outside world, but once you’ve been a participant, and survived, you were amazed to be a part of all the craziness.
I got started a week late, toying with different ideas in my head, a dangerous place to stay for long. I spent five days in Tennessee, where little writing ever gets done, although I do end up with some great material to pull from at a later date. We had some special guests in for Thanksgiving, so I was thrilled to sacrifice a few more days of writing for that purpose.
But the story continued on, like a drumbeat, a cadence that beckoned me each morning in a new direction. With fiction, the possibilities are endless, the story becomes the master of its own domain, taking even the author captive in the process. There is no way to stop midstream. You have to follow the flow of the river until the it all settles at the end of the rapids. And in my attempt to follow the flow of the story, I ignored a few things along the way, things clamoring for my attention along the riverbank. So, I thought I would create a list, an apology of sorts, to all that I neglected during this past month.
1.) Walking Bodacious. (Bless his chunky little heart.)
2.) Exercise. (While we are at it, why don’t we just go ahead and bless my chunky little heart as well.)
3.) Grocery shopping. Overrated, in my opinion.
4.) Housework. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Whatever.
5.) Checking the mailbox. This involves trips outside in the cold. If I were going step that far away from my computer, I might as well walk the dog.
6.) Taking out the trash. See number 5.
7.) Calling friends or family. Sorry, but the truth is that if I spoke to you this month at all, you most likely ended up as a character in my novel. Be thankful if you did not hear from me, and congratulations if you did.
8.) Christmas decorating. I realize this is a problem, as I stare at my ornament-less tree, but you can barely notice in a dark room.
9.) Search for Christmas Tree ornaments in storage. See number 8.
10.) Read other people’s books. It just seemed like I would be cheating on my own story, in a weird kind of way.
The point is, I’m a winner. Or a chubbier-than-thou participant, at the very least. I crossed the finish line, a much better writer than when I started a month ago. The outside world can unpause itself now as I seek to rejoin the ranks of the living, and the thinking, and the normal.
I guess I’ll start with number 1, as the dog waits for me by the door. He clearly is not a big fan of National Novel Writing Month.
Well, technically, he’s bigger than he used to be.
Nov 23
It’s time, I’m afraid to admit, for me to become a woman.
I am 43 years old, and have yet to cook my own Thanksgiving Dinner. That is, until this year.
The holidays of my childhood consisted of piling with the slew of adorable grandchildren (her words, not mine) onto a mattress in the floor of my grandmother’s house, while we waited as she sang hymns for hours from the kitchen, making sure that everyone’s favorite dish found a place on her Thanksgiving table. She made it seem easy, a joyful process, as if cooking was the next, natural step that came from loving your family. She rarely used recipes, making it quite difficult to duplicate any of her edible treasures.
Once I married and had a family of my own, our time was split between the perfection that I found at Granny’s house and a beautiful blend of equally talented ladies as my husband’s aunts put together a feast matching my grandmother’s, but even larger in size. I simply did not believe it was possible. Following lunch, which somehow stretched into dinner with all the afternoon nibbling going on, the young ones gathered outside for the annual football game. The older ones slipped into a brief, turkey-induced coma while NFL games continued on without them in the background.
But times change, and this year will be markedly different. My family’s tradition sadly passed along with my grandmother just eight years ago. And, while my husband’s aunts are still demonstrating their brilliance down in Tennessee, we will not be joining them this year. Blame the economy, I suppose, since my husband was transferred to Michigan two years ago. Gas prices play a role as well. We had to choose between Thanksgiving and Christmas, as the budget only allows for one trip home this time of year.
And for the first time, our family of five won’t be together. It hurts, and doesn’t seem right. My son, Andrew, still down in TN, claims that he is going to the mission, informing them that he has no family. just to make me feel guilty. My daughter, Crystal, also still in TN, says we say good-bye way too often these days, and that Thanksgiving is ruined because of us. And my 16-year-old, along with us for this Michigan adventure, just looked at me in disbelief when I told her I would be cooking Thanksgiving Dinner this year.
She knows me well.
I don’t really see a turkey in our immediate future. I’m simply not ready for such a long-term commitment. We always gathered at the ham end of the table anyway, so I can handle that. Some deviled eggs, my Granny’s chocolate cake, some fruit salad that no one will eat but me, and a casserole or two, and we can make this work. And as I promised my daughter, we can somehow make it fun.
What I love about Thanksgiving is that it cannot be commercialized. We don’t hurry down to get our picture taken with an over sized turkey or someone in a pilgrim suit. The sales ads try to get us to leave the warmth that is our family and friends behind, mocking us if we choose to miss out on the trampling to the latest stockpiles of “as seen on tv” goodies. This is an urge I always resist. To me, it’s a holiday that creates a four day weekend so we can slow down, calculate our countless reasons to be thankful and spend time with family. To me, Thanksgiving is a time to treasure our togetherness, even if it will be just the three of us this year.
One thing I know for sure–the next time we are all able to be together will be even more special. Which gives me more reason to be thankful.
And, as I sit here making out my grocery list, I think I’m beginning to grasp this idea that cooking for those that you love is the next, natural step to loving them. Once you get it right, that is.
I’m well on my way to becoming a woman now, and my Granny would be so proud.
Happy Thanksgiving to each of you. Treasure your togetherness, and if you happen to run into my son at the local soup kitchen, don’t believe a word he says about me.
Nov 11
Mom, Jeanna and Me. Daddy took this picture, probably his last one.
Daddy
I often wonder how it went, that last week of his life.
The accident was on a Tuesday morning, November 14, just outside of Memphis, TN. Daddy was the passenger, taking his seatbelt off for a moment to get some books out of the back seat. The brakes failed. He went through the windshield, hitting his head on a tractor trailor parked on the side of the road.
Mom tells me he never woke up. His head shaved and swollen, his broken jaw wired shut, making him unrecognizable. Jerry, the friend he was supposed to meet for lunch that day, sat for hours by his bedside as soon as he heard the news. Mom called family to come take care of Jeanna and me, saying that she understood he would be in the hospital for a very long time.
My grandmother once said she knew they were in trouble when they moved the family to a private waiting room the following day. Her ‘mother instinct’ kicked in before the doctors delivered the news of failing kidneys.
November 15, 1967
Cause of death: Severe Cerebral Contusion.
After trying to piece this together for the past 43 years, I know this part of the story well.
But it leaves a million unanswered questions.
What did he do for his 27th birthday, just a couple of weeks earlier?
What did he preach about for his sermon that Sunday morning?
What was he wearing?
Was I awake when he left that morning?
Did Jeanna get to hug him good-bye?
What were his plans for that weekend?
What did he last say to Mom?
And who called to let her know?
As a young girl, I hated the fact that I had no memories of my Daddy. The truth is that to this day, I would still give anything to have known him, to remember his voice, his touch, and the look in his eyes.
But I realized something through the years of this process known as grief; maybe, by having no memories of my own, God was somehow protecting me from the pain.
Because I was a baby, I didn’t have to receive the phone call that changed everything. I didn’t suffer through a painful funeral, visit the crash sight, or see my Daddy so broken that he was unrecognizable.
Having no memories might just be a blessing. Because of this, I was free to be an innocent child. A child, who, for as long as I can remember, had only one goal; the goal of getting to Heaven. That’s where Jesus lives. Where God lives. Where my Daddy lives.
Today, and this week, especially, I have no choice but to think of Daddy in a way that rips my heart open.
It’s what stops me in my tracks the second I hear of someone else’s loss. It’s what draws me to all the other mommies and babies who lose their daddies. It’s what drives me to treasure my family and make each day count for something. It holds me accountable for the life that I’ve been given.
And for all of my unanswered questions, I believe I finally found an answer to my greatest one; the question that kept me awake at night for most of my life.
Dear God, Why couldn’t he have lived?
As it turns out, the answer is on right in front of me, on his death certificate.
“Severe Cerebral Contusion.”
I fully believe now that God rescued my Daddy on that early Wednesday morning back in 1967.
He saved him by bringing him home, because that was the only way to completely heal him.
And by doing this, God somehow protected him from the pain. He did the same for me.
Because this is what healing is all about.
This is a poem I wrote for 7 of our lost class members. We had our 25th reunion last month, so we wanted to especially honor them.
Just a Few Days Ago
by
Janet Morris Grimes
September, 2010
Just a few days ago,
They walked down our halls
Side by side with us, sharing our smiles
Eye to eye during the best of times.
Just a few days ago,
Our dreams were limitless
A million different choices
Just waiting for us to claim them.
Just a few days ago,
We would conquer the world
Together, yet apart
Stronger, because of each other.
Just a few days ago,
We wondered, we wandered
Each forging our own path to an adulthood,
so different than we expected.
Just a few days ago,
Their journey ended, far too soon
Leaving behind a legacy
of friends, laughter, and recaptured memories.
Just a few days ago,
We said good-bye again.
This time, through tears
Painfully aware of our own fragility.
Just a few days ago,
the world stopped turning
long enough for us to feel their touch once again,
if only for a moment.
Our tomorrows will be different
Because of them, our AHS Class of ’85 friends,
To honor them, we ponder Heaven,
where we can walk their halls once again.
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