The little things have been piling up. You know what I’m talking about. Those things around the house and in life that cause a small bit of annoyance, yet never seem to get taken care of by the magical fairies. We’ll I’ve fired my magical fairies. Quite honestly, they never showed up for work, so don’t feel bad for them.

Now, let me preface the following by telling you this has been a wonderful, but extremely busy year so far. Last fall I added graduate school to my already slammed schedule, which made my 10 hour days seven days a week, turn into 14-hour days, and even 19-hours the last few weeks. Honestly, if I didn’t love school so much, I would never go back. I do, so I will, but I know not to load myself up quite so much in the future.

Speaking of the future, I need to get back on topic. While I was so busy, those annoying things began to pile up. The laundry, my desk, the conference table in my office, the 5000 emails (these aren’t junk mails unfortunately) on one of my accounts, the stacks of TBR books in bags all over the office, even though I read almost exclusively on my Kindle now and the tax records that are spread out all over my office. You get the picture. I’d ask other people in my house to help out with some of “the little things” but those people are men, and evidently only capable of a certain amount of responsibility.

I’ll give you an example. About a year ago our built-in microwave (We have the worst luck with microwaves) just stopped working one day. It was exactly five days past the warranty. My husband and I were both traveling that week, so I suggested he hook up the small one in a box in the garage that one of my son’s won a while back. It was barely big enough to boil a cup of water. Of course when I got back home, I found one online and showed it to my husband. He being one who has no trust of buying anything online, said he would go and check it out at the store, and let me know. Five months later I was in L.A. doing my day job stuff, and I get a call telling me the small microwave blew up. Sigh. So I call the Hub and I threaten him. “Get a new microwave before I get home, or else.” I’ll leave the “or else” to your imagination. Of course, even though I was gone for two weeks, he waited until the day I was coming home to go look. The one he wanted had to be ordered so there was no microwave when I came home. He discovered I was quite serious about the “or else.”

The little things just don’t bother my husband and my kids. As long as they have a access to food, a bed and cable, they’re pretty much happy. So if I’m bothered by the “little things” I have to take care of them myself.

I turned in a new Blaze, She Who Dares, Wins, on Wednesday.That also happened to be the last day of school (No that wasn’t a stressful week at all.) As soon as I hit send for the book, I began tackling things on my list. The first was to clean the kitchen to my standards. My husband and kids think cleaning the counters means wiping them down, but they never put anything away. They just sort of shove it to wall. The second thing on my list was to clean up those emails. The third was to read some manuscripts of people who won a critique from me in a contest. Each day since the end of school and turning in the book, I’ve tackled at least one of the things on my list.

I feel better about life right now. Every time I complete one of those things on the list, I have such a feeling of accomplishment. My day begins a little brighter, when I come downstairs and bits of my life have been cleaned up.

This weekend I’m tackling two of those things that aren’t so little, my conference table, and the piles of DVD’s I get from network and cable shows. I know when I’m done I’ll feel so much better. In fact, it feels so good, I want to do more and more.

So how about you, do you have a list of little things? Share them here and then we can all cheer each other on.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 4:59 am and is filed under Candace Havens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.