Today it's The Traveling Tyrant

Let me start this by saying that 5 am is a ridiculously early time to get up. I know there are some amazing/crazy people who get up at this hour every day to workout and do all kinds of good stuff, but since the onset of Moody Tyrant and Tiny Tyrant, the little people that run my life, there is never enough sleep. However today I was up bright and early at 4:45 am to catch a 7 am plane to the wintry northern lands of Detroit.

Generally I love to travel. I love the break from my routine chaos, love the adult time where conversation doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of every superhero every made, their superpowers and who's nemesis is whose. However this has been a tricky trip from the beginning. I got late notice, booked a super expensive flight, only to realize that Mr. Dictator was also traveling. So starts the scramble for a sitter for my kids who is willing to pull a 36 hour shift.

Sitters are never in short supply but I always feel a bit Machiavellian booking anyone for an overnight. My kids are not solid sleepers, nope not one bit. Matter of fact, Tiny Tyrant who is definitely showing significant signs of being another High Sensitivity Child (HSC) woke up with a blood curdling scream at 10:05pm last night just as I was getting into bed and for the next hour rivaled Paris Hilton with her dramatics. She screamed, she flung herself around, she demanded food and beverage befitting her tyrant state and then flung every offering away as unacceptable. All of this while tears pour down her face, she breaks out in a face rash from the screaming and refuses to be held and comforted, but also refuses to be put down. (this results in a series of back bends out of my arms so that she can be both in my arms and as far away from me as possible at the same moment)

Let me just tell you that there is nothing that will break your heart more than a child whose emotions are so overpowering to them that they are lost at sea and can't even recognize Mom as a safe harbor. Both of my kids handle the ups and downs that life dishes out with screams, tears and extreme joy. Every moment is an up or down and our life is a runaway roller coaster. Learning to accept this as normal for us, learning to brush off the judgmental among us and learning to accept my kids for who they are instead of who I pictured they would be.

This post is a bit rambling but hopefully you'll forgive me since this was written by a sleep deprived, caffeinated traveler!

Obsessively Organized

Ok I admit it I'm not always the most organized person at home, but I'm always trying to be more organized. However I absolutely stay almost obsessively organized in a few key areas :). One is my email. I have folders for all the major categories of info I receive, and then there are folders for all the people I regularly receive email from. I usually try to file emails as I get them but the last few weeks have been crazier than usual and the emails have piled up. So once this gets posted I'm off to file about 1250 emails away. LOL I'm also fairly nutty about my pantry and have been known on occasion to label it with masking tape to make sure everything goes back in its place.

For those of you always trying to be more organized here are a few of my favorite things :):
*Holiday Ideas and Organization
*Organizing Tips for Home (some neat green ideas too)
*Get Organized Now
*Discover Organization has great tips for organizing kids stuff
*Home Organizing Ideas has great room by room tips

New Sites to Check Out

I love anything new. Especially things that are designed to make my life easier and/or more organized. Forget the fact that these things typically end up taking me a while to figure out, cause my schedule to be thrown out the door and de-rail my previously organized day. All that aside I really enjoy finding these tools and tricks to making life easier.

A few really neat websites have crossed my desk lately and I wanted to share them. First is Lazy Moms. This site is true to my heart and focuses on tips and tricks to get the daily grind of chores, cooking, cleaning, etc out of the way so you can have more time for the stuff you enjoy. I popped over to check out today's Ten Minute Tip and it was all about taking time to pamper yourself. Who doesn't want a reason to take a bubble bath and relax because the shortcuts they suggest give you the time to do it!

Another cool find this week was Good Food Near You. This site has a search feature to locate fast food and family style restaurants near you and it automatically suggests the best food choice at each one. I was fairly impressed, reading along, and then had to laugh at loud that the food suggestion for Mr. Gatti's in my zip code suggested that my best choice was to stick to mushrooms. Followed closely by tomatoes, celery and cucumbers. Obviously it requires some reading between the lines but overall the site and the application for blackberry seem to be quite useful. If nothing else it will make it easy to get a healthy choice (darn in :)) if my car happens to lead me into a fast food restaurant.

Check these out and let me know what you think! Leave a comment with any other sites that make your life easier or more organized!

Work work work

Image via Wikipedia

Telecommuting is more work than many office dwellers think. Not only are you doing the same workload you did before you left the office to work at home, but you are also doing the additional job of marketing yourself to the very company that hired you and continually promoting your capabilities to remind them why you should remain on the payroll.

Over the last three years there have been many times when work that would once have fallen to me by default has been passed on to a co-worker. Largely I think this is due to the "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon that tends to affect telecommuters. Interesting enough a fellow telecommuter posted this article yesterday, and if you work remotely it has some great advice.

You also have to continually deal with what I call the mini mishaps. The computer trouble, internet going out, nuts knocking on the front door, the gold fish spitting rocks at you through the tank...all fun stories I'm sure will surface soon!

Holidaze,.. Under Construction

As the 2007 Holidays come to a close I am beginning work on a 2008 guide to saving your sanity and keeping organized for the next Holiday season.  Most people find that they cant enjoy the six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years due to how chaotic it can be.  I met a number of ladies this year who were praying for Christmas to hurry up and be gone so their life could get back to normal. 

What these ladies needed was a way to spread out what they needed to do so they could enjoy the season and not feel crunched for time and money.  This guide is all about making your lists and checking them twice to make sure you don't walk around in aHolidaze.

Chapters

1. Introduction to the Pieces of the pie (cards, newsletters, shopping, budgets, wrapping, baking, decorating)
2. Random Tips and Tricks
3. Website resources
4. Cards/Family updates (letters, newsletter, poem)/thank you cards
5. Holiday Budget
6. Decorating, decorate early so you can enjoy it, keeps you in the holiday mood
7. Baking/Food preparation
8. Wrapping/assembling/stockings
9. Hosting a celebration
10. Making time for you