What a coincidence- I may have read about myself in a book

So I'm sitting/laying, donating plasma, chilling out, pumping away and reading my book. (Body Clutter By Marla Cilley- FlyLady & Leanne Ely- The Dinner Diva) I get to a certain paragraph and I about jumped up and ran over to show my husband who was just across from me. You can't quite do that though with a huge needle in your arm, hooked up to a machine. So I (im)patiently waited for someone to walk by so I could ask for help. J____ walked by and I asked if she'd do me a favor and show the book to my husband. I showed her which paragraph to have him read. D_____ got curious and headed over to see what it was all about. He read along with my husband not knowing what was going on. John (my husband) and I are chatting back and forth saying, "That might have been us. Oh my gosh it is quite possible."

What I had read very well happened to us. D_____ laughed, "Yeah right." Me and hubby said seriously that exact situation happened to us down to every detail. Hubby proceeds to tell him- "Google it. Google my name and it will come up with pictures." I tell him, "John and our son was on the front page of the LA times as well as other newspapers and people told us they saw us on the news as well"  So then D______ starts teasing us about he's not as cool as us because he's not on Google, etc.

Here is what I read:

"On the news recently I saw a couple of ships returning to port after being out to sea for over nine months. One sailor was searching for his wife. When he finally found her, he could not believe the transformation she had undergone. She had decluttered her body!"

Now it could very well have been a coincidence. Sure it could have been someone else but that happened to us. My husband was on deployment in 2002-2003 (USS Shiloh) and between September 2002 and April 2003 I had lost 42 pounds. As they docked in port he looked and looked and could not find me because he did not recognize me! What an amazing feeling when he did finally realize it was me and he picked me up and we smiled at each other.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sailor-john-reeder-hugs-his-wife-jill-as-he-returns-with-news-photo/1951987

And someone caught it on camera. I didn't even know this picture existed until someone had found another photo of us a few years back and we started searching for others.


There were reporters and cameras all around us and we did speak to a reporter or two.

This picture was also on the front page of the LA times to our surprise.

Unfortunately this is the only picture we've found that included our daughter, hidden by the balloon. Look at how my son is holding on to his dad. Yep, tears are streaming about now. That's John's mom proud as can be in the background.

Photos and stories ended up everywhere and we still probably haven't seen or read them all yet. The part of the story that really makes me think it could have been us was that the ship was out for 9 months. Until that point, deployments were only 6 months, but it was the beginning of the war and they were extended. At the time it was a record breaking deployment for the time out to sea.

Maybe what I read was about us, maybe not. Either way it was really cool to read and brought back some awesome memories! Yes I should show some before and after pictures, but I don't have them on my laptop, and I want to get this published and I'm tired. So remind me and I will add them. K?

Won't you be my organizing buddy? (A confession) Long- but maybe you can relate?

Ok so I admit, I sometimes live in CHAOS. (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome as described by FLYLADY) Well most the time really. I don't mean to, I don't know when or why excactly. When I was growing up I always had my room cleaned and organized. Then I had a baby and a husband and things started slowly getting out of control. Maybe because I was still young. It was a lot to take on at once. I was a wife and a mom within 6 months of each other. We lived in an apartment with my uncle and aunt for a bit and then moved in with my mom and dad for the first year of our marriage. So I only had our room to clean and the baby's and help keep the rest of the house clean. (not hard because my mom kept a tidy house)

When John was first in the Navy, it was the first time we were truly on our own. Just the 3 J's... Jill John and Jeremy in Mayport, Florida. We had a little 2 bedroom apartment. It wasn't completely horrendous, but there was a good amount of clutter. There seemed to always be dishes in the sink, but I really wasn't lazy about doing the dishes. I guess I just wasn't a fan of putting them away when they were done. The kitchen table pretty much always had stuff on it. STUFF, papers mainly.  I don't remember eating on that table very often.

I enjoyed doing the laundry, but sometimes Jeremy was taking a nap and I wasn't able to put away the clothes.  Yeah I know... nice excuse. It was just one of those things. I guess for the most part there were other things I'd rather do? I mean I was a newlywed, wanted to spend all my time with my husband and we were far from "home". During the day I was busy with Jeremy and when John came home from the ship, I wanted to spend every minute with him.

Anyway, we moved A LOT and in each new residence I had different "issues". I don't know how to explain it.  When we were in San Diego in our lovely apartments that were supposed to be condemmed, I wanted to find a better way to do things. I didn't want to live in CHAOS, I wanted a clean house with everything in it's place. Living in a house that is 100% clean would make me feel like a Queen in a castle.

 I searched on the internet and came accross FLYLADY's website.  I started babystepping and it felt pretty darn good. I was happier and not as stressed if people came over. I hadn't perfected my cleaning and organizing skills yet though. That was around 2000-2001. My husband went on a few deployments and I moved "home" with my parents again and then we ended up buying our 1st home. My mom moved in with me and things were good. She has always kept her house neat and tidy. I wish it had rubbed off on me. Together we did pretty good. I kept up with things a lot more when she was around. I had 2 kids at the time and they didn't have too many toys. I could help them clean their rooms fairly easily.

Then we moved to San Diego again. This time in pretty nice military housing. Well somewhere along the way, I dropped the ball. I guess I stopped following the routines. I got frustrated and couldn't keep up with anything again. I'd want the whole darn kitchen  (or living room, etc.) to be clean, and it was an all day or 2 task. With each move we seemed to accumulate more STUFF. And yet, I didn't always know where to put all this stuff. We even got rid of lot's of things before each move.

I guess going from an apartment to a house, it can be easy to want to fill it up with stuff. And then we went from a house to a bigger house. Now I'm in that bigger house with 3 kids. My husband's out of the Navy, so of course I want to spend time with him.. catching up on all the time we spent apart.  It's not as easy to help the kids clean their rooms anymore. They want to keep everything, but they don't put their things away very well. Even if I find places for their things, they can't seem to get their items back in the right places. We all get frustrated trying to tackle the mess. Their messes end up pouring out into the hall at times.

I'm good to do a little at a time and not get frustrated or burnt out.. but there's still plenty left to be done.  I freak out if we are going to have a party and do my best to make the majority of the house presentable.

I try my best to at least have my front room clean. at all times. I am proud to say I've been VERY good at keeping that up lately. However, if someone were to walk through the rest of my house, I'd be fairly embarrassed. My new office is the cleanest room in the house right now and I hope I can keep it clean!

Let me assure you that I make sure to clean the bathrooms once a week, the kitchen, etc. It's mainly clutter. My table is usually cleaned off, we eat with clean dishes and we all have clean clothes to wear. I guess that's the minimum of sorts.

This morning, I was going to go back to bed for a bit at 6:45 AM, but I decided to read for a bit. The book I grabbed was "Sink Reflections" By Marla Cilley- AKA FLYLADY. I think I stumbled upon the book at a garage sale about 2-3 years ago. I had never really read it. But it called to me this morning. I only read the first few pages of the 1st chapter, but it got me back into the swing of things. My sink is clean and shiny and not full of dishes! I've gotten many other areas clean throughout the day.  (15 minutes at a time) Tomorrow I will wake up happy and less stressed and I won't mind if someone stops by. What's even better is that my children are home with me all day and I am teaching them GREAT habits that will make them happy later in life and they won't have to live in CHAOS.

Can anyone relate? Does anyone want to be my organizing buddy? I am ready for this change in my life and look forward to the future. Does anyone want to come along for the ride?