Organizing

When I'm having a rough time, it's essential that I keep busy. Whether that is shopping with no intention of buying, baking, or cleaning, it helps to keep my mind off of whatever that thing is. This weekend it was organizing. I'm pretty sure most of you have heard of Marie Kondo's book 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.' I received it for my birthday, and started reading it recently. While I'm not exactly following her method, just reading about cleaning and organizing has made me quite gung ho in that endeavor. I've gone through clothes, papers, and miscellaneous things. Books are up next.

Another thing I was doing was organizing photos on my computer, and silly me forgot to share with you one last set of photos from our beach vacation a few weeks ago. One evening, after dinner, while others who are more athletically inclined were doing athletic things, my sister Rachel, A-train and I started looking for seashells. There weren't many large ones to be had, but if you crouched down low there were quite a good number of tiny shells.

We collected until our hands were full and went back up to the house. The next morning, while everyone was at the beach, I took a few minutes to play and sort and snap some photos.

My criteria for selection was that they be spiraled.

Rachel liked those that were so very seashelly.

A-train went straight for the shards, feeling each one to see if it was smooth enough to add to the collection. His little voice rang out on the beach "Feel how smooth this one is!!!" A sub-category for him was interesting striations (a.k.a. "these cool lines").

There were also a lot that had little holes drilled into them. I am on the dark side of my thirties, and I just realized that those holes are where birds peck into them to suck out the insides (right? Is that right? I have no idea--it just hit me and it sounds good).

We even had to take these sharp little suckers, because someone liked the "weird shapes."

I thought some looked like ruffled potato chips.

And some were in the 'miscellaneous' category that just looked interesting. I'm don't know what that one on the lower right is. It might be a piece of petrified wood (or bird droppings, if you're one of my nephews).

Rachel took these home as she had plans to make something out of these to help A-train remember his vacation (as I think he had more fun than all of us).

With all of my recent clearing and sorting, I feel like all of my things have gone from this--

--to this.

Ok, kids. I have to go saddle up for trivia night. I'm hoping my brain is clear enough to make those facts fly to the front of my brain and out of the tip of my pen with alarming accuracy.