Off to the Rat’s House

I don’t know where it started, but one of my friends has always called anything associated with Disney “The Rat’s House.” Now, this friend used to work for Disney Pictures, so maybe the nickname is an inside code, or perhaps a commentary on how the employees were feeling about the place. Who knows? In any case, my husband picked up the nickname and anytime we’re off to the Magical Kingdom, he reminds us we’re going to visit the Rat’s House.

We’ve been to Disneyland lots of times now as a family. My husband and I even spent three days of our honeymoon there. So, this week, we’ve decided to go one better—we’re off to Orlando to visit the Giant Rat’s House. We’ve got seven days on the ground to park-hop between EPCOT, Disney-MGM, Animal Kingdom, Downtown Disney, and the Magic Kingdom.

I’ve been to Disney World twice before—long before EPCOT opened. This is a first time for my husband and the boys. Here’s to hoping they can find something new to experience that will keep them all happy. Lots of high-speed roller coasters for the older two, plenty of classic Disney for the other three, some culture for Dad—even though we’ve heard the Japan pavilion is closed for remodeling—and an occasional place for me to stop and breathe. A trip with my husband is sometimes called “The Forced March” rather than a vacation.

Before I leave, I wanted to write one more entry into the Summer Reading Thing, especially since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be here a few short days after I return.

It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh.



I LOVE the TLC program Clean Sweep. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a shame the network took it off their regular line-up. Even though I’ve seen each episode a dozen times, I still continue to watch it whenever they decide to run one, and organizer Peter Walsh is the reason why. When I listen to his fascinating Australian accent and his genteel way of approaching people who cling to their stuff, I am more motivated to clean house, de-clutter areas, and show respect toward those items that have meaning to me. One of my favorite ways to clean is to turn on Clean Sweep and watch the show while I de-junk a closet or sort through items shoved into a dresser drawer.

When TLC announced they weren’t doing any more episodes, I was so bummed, I thought, “How will I ever get anything done without Peter to guide me?” Someone at Free Press must have thought the same thing because they came to my rescue and published this book. Thank you Free Press, and thank you Peter Walsh. Now I can motivate myself to do a clean sweep of a room anytime I need to.

By the way, Peter Walsh’s other book—How to Organize Almost Everything—is a great reference tool also.

Summertime Blues

I know . . . summer is supposed to be the time of vacations and free time . . . well, at least that’s what I thought when I was a kid. Now that I’m an adult, I see that summer is just as busy for me as the school year. Didn’t I go into teaching so that I would have my summers off?

Well, I guess that just isn’t an option when you are a workaholic like me, who has a crazy husband and five sons to boot. I’m done with classes until the first week of August when I head back to Logan for a three day introduction to my graduate program workshop. Of course, Im already half-way done now with that program, and we just got word that my husband will be working in California those three days (and a lot more), so what am I going to do with my kids while we’re both gone? Such a bother, as Winnie the Pooh might say, but I’ll play Scarlett O’Hara today and say, “Fiddle-dee-dee. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

This week I’m trying desperately to finish a manuscript a publisher wants to see. Okay, I know it’s my fault for sending that e-mail query out the day before I left for Logan the first time, but how was I to ever guess I’d get a positive response in less than four minutes! I’m just too conditioned to those New York editors who take six months to tell me, “No.” Monday is my own drop-dead deadline for getting this nearly 600 page document into the mail.

Of course, that means I have to work like crazy between now and then because we are going to a family reunion in Beaver on Saturday and packing for a 10 day trip to Disney World Resorts. We leaved Tuesday, the day after my deadline, if I make it that long before collapsing!

Once the trip is over (if I’m not in jail for killing my husband or one of the kids—why is it teenagers can’t just stop the whining and be happy they are going to the Happiest Place on Earth????), I have a whole two weeks to enjoy my summer vacation, then I’m off and running, back to my graduate classes, getting ready to teach school (and those 7th graders I’ve never taught before), and still trying to finish the novel I’d hoped to have written by the end of June.

At least I spent an hour this afternoon watching my youngest play in his new pool. I guess that will have to count as my real summer vacation.

I did find the time to finish the second book from my Summer Reading Thing.

Ghost of a Chance by Kerry Blair

Samantha Shade, of the Nightshade Detective Agency, has been hired to find out what seems to be haunting the San Rafael Mission. But soon, Samantha is investigating a series of murders occurring within the parish. Several young men are found executed in the same gruesome manner—and each is discovered with a marigold between his lips. The clues all seem to lead to someone at the Mission. Who could be responsible? It’s Samantha’s job to find out, especially if she wants to live.

I love the book covers on this series, but unfortunately the books themselves have both been somewhat annoying. When I read a book, I want to be in the story with the main character, but not having them talk to me so often they draw me out of the intensity of the story, especially at a key time. At least this volume got rid of the crossword puzzle clues that ended every chapter in the first book (Mummy’s the Word). I think this author is really talented overall, but I have trouble staying hooked with the parts of the story that try to be “cutesy.” The joke just doesn’t translate onto paper for me. Because I thought book two was better than book one, I may give her one more chance when number three comes along.

Take A Meeting

We have become a world filled with meetings. There are meetings for planning, meetings for training, meetings to plan for meetings! No organization seems to be able to run anymore without heaping on meetings.

Take the church for instance. Elder Henry B. Eyring reminded us the November 1996 General Conference: “Prophets in our time have consolidated our meetings on Sunday to allow time for families to be together.” Yet this morning, three of my teenage sons are already at the church—four hours before our block starts—attending a training meeting. Once this meeting is done, they will be off doing fast offerings. Tonight there is a Stake Fireside kick-off to this week’s Youth Conference which takes them out of town for two days, after an evening of doing service projects in the neighborhood. Last night, one of the boys had a meeting to plan this morning’s meeting, and a phone call earlier today confirmed that all three of the boys have an extra meeting every Sunday this month except for Father’s Day, which is always our stake conference. So, would someone please remind me, when we are supposed to have extra family time on Sunday?

Church isn’t the only place we’ve become meeting-happy. I teach school and it seems that preparing lessons and spending quality time in my classroom isn’t enough, despite the fact that my students’ scores on the time-wasting tests are sky-high. Last year we started collaboration—which so far has meant that my former student teacher tries to tell our entire department what to do. Next year, the district has found this extra meeting to be so important that we have a late-start every Wednesday—more time away from teaching—so the teachers can meet to collaborate (lock-step might be a better description of the intention in my opinion). Isn’t is amazing that I’ve survived 28 years of successful teaching without this extra weekly meeting?

Then there are board meetings. I’m on several boards for education-related organizations. What used to be monthly on-line meetings for one board is once again swaying toward in-person meetings that require members to travel from the far reaches of the state for an hour of face-to-face. Another local board calls for a small group (3-5 people) to meet at a central location each month, despite the fact that a conference phone call or e-mail could handle all of the decisions in a matter of minutes.

Add to this the meetings we have to attend as parents (state-required SEOPs four times a year per child, for example), and the list of places we have to be can suddenly become overwhelming! Is it any wonder people skip out, don’t participate, or are always running late? Obviously, they are scheduled for too many meetings!

How I long for the good old days, when life seemed to go along smoothly and was not run by a day-planner scheduled full of excess meetings that some leader has deemed as vital to the success of their program.