The Ugly Truth - Part 3

The sorta scary closet before...




















...and after.


















The official scary closet before...



















...and after, except for the vacuum cleaners.

MK out.

A Football Game

I'm taking a break from the organizing with a post about something else...By the way, check out the November Decrapification Challenge totals on the right. They are pretty impressive, even if I say so myself.

Thanks to a friend and business contact of The Husb's, we scored 4 great seats to the Cowboy's game yesterday. I haven't been to the new stadium yet; so, I was excited about going.


I put on my rhinestone jeans and I was ready to go.












Here's a shot of The Boss Hog Bowl, aka The Death Star, aka Cowboy Stadium. It's what a billion dollars looks like.

Sitting on the balcony of the Founders Club.














The Miller Lite Club at field level.











Another Miller Lite Club shot.













BJ Thomas sang the national anthem.

The thing I love best about watching football on television is the yellow line. I can count hash marks with the best of them, but I like being able to tell at a glance how far my team is from a first down. So, I'm sitting there watching the game bummed that there is no yellow line. Then, I looked up at the 60 yard long tee vee and there it was! The yellow line! I love me some yellow line.

MK out.

The Ugly Truth - Part 2

To be fair, The Kid's room has looked pretty bad, but not this bad.*














It hasn't looked this good in years.













MK out.




*Anything that we came across in clearing out the other rooms upstairs that didn't belong in them was put into The Kid's room.

The Ugly Truth - Part 1

Before: A chest of drawers being used as a catch all.



















After - The chest is ready to be utilized in a more efficient manner.


















Before - The desk area in disarray.



















After - More efficient use of space.





















MK out.

Movies - 11/16/2009

I know I owe y'all some pictures of the organizing frenzy, but I have to find the cord to upload the pictures to the computer first.

In the meantime, I'll tell you about a few movies I've seen recently. There aren't that many, as my focus is on decrapification right now.

Remember when I wrote about Grey Gardens, the documentary about Jackie Kennedy’s aunt and cousin (Big and Little Edie Beale) from the 1970s? Oh, I may not have reviewed that movie here, but these women ended up living in squalor in their dilapidated home in East Hampton. They were living with feral cats and raccoons. It was quite the interesting look at humanity. The documentary film makers told their story in Grey Gardens, and then with more footage in The Beales of Grey Gardens. Well…now there is Grey Gardens, the HBO movie, starring Jessica Lange as Big Edie and Drew Barrymore as Little Edie. Some references about their past in the documentary were researched and fleshed out to allow the writers to imagine events in the lives of these two women that give us all insight into how their unique situation came to be. It was really good. Lange and Barrymore did outstanding jobs in recreating the mother and daughter. It’s a must see, even if you have not seen the documentary, but try to see the documentary too.

The Class is a cute movie in French with English subtitles. It is a character driven film about the interactions of a French teacher and his students in a tough school. It was good.


Even if you are not a Michael Jackson fan per se, but you used to dance to “Billie Jean” or “Don’t Stop” at Tango, Confetti, Annabelle’s or a similar hot spot in the early 1980s, you should see This Is It. It is filled with the music to which you used to dance, and it gives you a little glimpse of MJ away from the limelight. If nothing else, the man was very, very talented. I liked it.

Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm Meany and Jim Broadbent star in The Damned United, based on true events about the Leeds United football team in the 1970s. Sheen plays the team’s new coach, Brian Clough – who has publically criticized the outgoing coach, Don Revie (Meany), and the way the team plays. Clough believes the champions didn’t deserve to win all those games, because they played dirty; so, he is going to change all that. Unfortunately, his methods don’t produce wins and much friction and conflict abounds. It was pretty good.

MK out.

The Big Reveal

Y'all know how much I hate clutter...I've been trying to decrapify my house for y.e.a.r.s - YEARS, I say!

I start to decrapify, make a bigger mess - because you have to sort of do that when you are, say, cleaning out a closet...everything has to come out before the stuff you will keep goes back in - and then say an inner "Yuck!" and the rest of the energy is spent making that area look nice again. It is emotionally d.r.a.i.n.i.n.g.

I used to be uber organized. I would clean out drawers and closets two or three times a year - donating the good stuff to the women's shelter and trashing the unusable stuff. Then, I went to PA school, and this cleaning phenomenon came to a halt.

I have tried doing stuff a little at a time, and I have gotten nowhere. I have tried tackling an entire room, but all I do is make that bigger mess and walk away. I have plenty of excuses why I don't want to devote precious time and energy to clear out ten years of accumulated clutter, but the bottom line is that it has gotten to be an overwhelming task and drastic measures must be taken.

I've watched those shows like Clean House and always wished for cleaning fairies like that to come to my house and help me clean it in one fell swoop (or at least after a few sessions). That would be heaven to me. That would be the best birthday present e.v.e.r!

So, by chance, I met Debbie of Organizing101. She's coming over today for our first session.

I'm so excited I could pop!

And for the record - I have a cleaning lady who comes once a week. We are talking c.l.u.t.t.e.r here, and overflowing closets and drawers...not dirt, although that's a little suspect around here, but that's a story for another time...

MK out.

Movies - 11/5/2009

Oscar season is upon us, and I cannot tell you if I have seen that many Oscar-worthy films. It should be more interesting this year, in that the Best Picture category will have ten nominees.


I have seen a few DVDs in the last week or so:

Lemon Tree is a really good movie about a Palestinian widow living on the West Bank. She has a lemon grove from which she eeks out a living. The Isreali defense minister moves in next door and decides that her lemon trees have to go, in the name of national security. Actually, his paranoid underlings think it would be easier to protect his behind without the lemon trees providing potential hiding places for his potential assassins. So, the widow takes the Defense Minister and the Isreali government to court. I really liked it.

Earth is a cute Disney documentary following three animal families - polar bears, elephants and humpback whales - in their struggle for survival on our planet. It was really we done and intersting to watch. James Earl Jones narrated the movie. Apparently, this dvd is a condensed version of the miniseries Planet Earth. Very good!!!

In Daisy Kenyon, Joan Crawford, Dana Andres and Henry Fonda are pitted in a love triangle between an enterprising commercial artist and her two men - one is married and one is not. It's a 1940s movie, but it is really good. They don't make 'em like they used to! I liked it.

Away We Go follows the journey of a couple about to have a baby. They travel to different locales, trying to find the best place to live as a family. It was a little quirky, but a whole lot of cute. I liked it.

I saw An Education in the theater. It is about a school girl, Jenny, who starts a relationship with an older man, David. He, with his friends Danny and Helen, wine and dine her and show her the "good" life. Emma Thompson, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan star in this cute movie based on the memoirs of Lynn Barber - a British journalist. The film is set in Englund in the early 1960s. It was very good.

Until next time...

MK out.

V...They're Coming

The original 1980s science fiction television series started out with a 200 minute mini series and a sequel about aliens known as Visitors, who came to Earth with an agenda. They offered to share their advanced technology in exchange for minerals and chemicals needed for their world. A photojournalist boards one of their ships and discovers that the Visitors are really reptiles disguised as humanoids who eat rodents and birds. He takes pictures of them secretly and plans to expose them to the world.

Can I tell you how riveted to the television I was, watching this show?

And guess what?...They remade it and the series starts tonight.

MK out.