"And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters" "Resolution and Independence", Henry Wordsworth "In sweet water there is a pleasure ungrudged by anyone." Ovid, 13 A.D. "If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Loran Eisley (Anthropologist), The Immense Journey, 1957 In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans. -- Kahlil Gibran The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees ~ to learn something by being nothing -- Mary Oliver, from "Entering the Kingdom" And if the earth has forgotten you Say to the still earth: I am flowing. To the rushing waters say: I am. --Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your headwith silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. - Langston Hughes, April Rain Song, 1902 - 1967 Everywhere water is a thing of beauty gleaming in the dewdrop, singing in the summer rain. - John Ballantine Gough I came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day. - Theodore Roethke, The Waking, 1948 When you hear the splash Of the water drops that fall Into the stone bowl You will feel that all the dust Of your mind is washed away. - Sen-No-Rikyu The sound of the water says what I think. - Chuang Tzu "I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain; What a wonderful feeling, I'm happy again." Arthur Freed This is fun. I love the idea. What do you think of these?

I am a DIL and live on a farm with three kids, 7 yo, 5 yo and 14 months. I used to work full time and tried to keep up all the house work. I was major league stressed and the kids felt it. You can't enjoy your kids when you are yelling at them to pick up or getting mad because they have made yet another mess! I don't have a really clean house. I keep up on the dishes, laundry, must sweep my large kitchen floor twice a day and vacuum when needed. My DH is NOT neat. He is like having a 4th child and I tell him this all the time. He can be neat when he wants and when he gets tired of something the way it is, will clean or organize. We have a challenge with the kids and their rooms. My 5 yo DS pulls everything out of his drawers when looking for clothes to wear. My 7 yo DD throws her clean/dirty clothes and everything else on the floor and then when told to clean up, shoves it under her bed! I did not have a mother who took care of my toys and clothes. I did, if I wanted them to be around. I do not want to run around keeping everything as it was, meaning keeping track of all their things. If they want it and like it, they should take care of it. We try to teach them about respect of their things. When they are somewhere else, they have respect for others things, just not their own. I have a large veggie garden, 50 rose bushes, 3 horses, chickens, 2 dogs and cats. I can not put all my effort (and do not want to, it does not make me happy) into keeping a spotless house. I don't like dusting. But I do all the yard work, scoop dog poop so the kids can play in a clean yard and take care of all the animals. Not to mention cooking, dishes, kids baths everynight, homework, reading bedtime stories, and then their needs to be time for me!(I have not been horseback riding in over 2 months) :( When we are having company over, like my Dad, who is anal about housework and does it himself, I clean like a mad woman. Although, I don't know why because he probably still thinks it is not clean enough. This is probably how your DIL feels. Life is too short and we all need to have some fun everyday. Don't stress over things that really aren't going to matter in the long run. I would rather have my kids be happy and playing than me running around yelling at them to clean up all the time. Just had to do some venting, this is a hot spot for me as well in my own house. Sorry it is so long.

I'm gonna hafta see that movie. For a long time, I prayed that I would somehow find myself "doing the right thing at the right time." After I started to pay attention more, I realized that I was NOT doing the right thing at the right time, and that I really didn't have any idea what the "right" thing might be. I was frustrated for years. I spent a lot of time avoiding the very activities (house cleaning) that might have solved my frustration problem. But I didn't know how to get started. I had given up. I would look around the house and say to myself, "Where do I even begin?" I kept struggling toward that ideal of "doing the right thing." For a while, I told myself that if I took care of the house, it would take care of me. Well, that fizzled. It wasn't the right way to frame my problem, apparently. Then a well\-meaning doctor told me that I had to spend an hour every day doing something fun. Well, how could I justify spending that much time on something fun, when there was so much work to do? I did start to spend more time sewing, but I couldn't avoid the fact that I was still surrounded by the mess. How could I spend time on anything else until I do something about this house? Guilt should not result from having fun. And so it went ... for years. I struggled with the mess, but never gave myself permission to declutter. Most of it was hubby's stuff. Than last year, I discovered FlyLady, and accepted her assignments and challenges, and started to declutter my home, with hubby's permission to toss the stuff he never used. My biggest breakthrough has been to declutter my list of "shoulds." Yes, I had to be content with doing just a few things every day. But I made sure they were the most effective activities for meeting my goals. I had developed a terrible mindset at my last job, where I made long lists of things that never got done, because new tasks kept coming in far faster then anyone (even a super\-human) would be able to complete those tasks. At the end of each day, I looked at my list and only saw what I had not accomplished. What I had completed didn't count. I was constantly told, "Don't let anything slip through the cracks!" I have had to work very hard to overcome that stupid idea. It never made any sense intellectually, yet that was exactly what was expected of me by my mis\-manager and my department. Under the stress of the company being bought and the changes that ensued, under the stress of being mowed down in the crosswalk on my way to work one morning, and having very little mobility & inexplicable pain, under the stress of believing that I had to keep working because hubby was still in school, I went into a war\-zone mentality. Survive any way possible. Even though my strategy was not the healthiest. Fortunately, all that is in my past. I am changing. It is getting easier to figure out a small number of important tasks that will help me accomplish my goals: a pleasant home, home cooked meals, a healthy body. (I'm still working to re\-establish the exercise habit.) I still pray that I will be doing "the right thing at the right time." Some days, I have had enough sleep, I'm not stressed out by the previous day, and my head is clear enough to select a few tasks that are the most important, instead of spending too much time on activities that distract me from the frustration, and do nothing to alleviate the cause of the frustration. I guess if I have any fantasy at all, it is to visualize what I will be doing once I get my routines built up. I will spend at least a little time each day exercising. I will spend a little time each day cleaning and putting things away. Each day, I will do things to care for myself, my hubby and our critters. For fun, I will spend some time cultivating the garden, or tending to houseplants in the winter. I will spend a little time each day sewing, whether clothing repairs, or charity quilts, or quilts for myself. I also visualize what I will look like. No longer wearing clothes that are run down, with holes. Wearing something that flatters me. Having done something to make my hair look cared-for. Maybe a bit of makeup. (All that has started to happen!) And perhaps I will be a bit thinner and stronger, because I'll be spending more time moving around doing all the cleaning, and doing the exercises that will help keep me strong. If I have a fantasy to motivate me, it is what my life will be like when most of my activities further my goals, instead of fighting them or simply occluding them.

Rococogurl, You know, you're right about the lights. That is one thing that we really do need to sort out in more than one room in the house. In this room, we have two uplight floor lamps: one has a GE Reveal and puts out a nice light but is quite low wattage, and the other is a halogen which puts out a good amount of light (enough to read with) but I don't really care for the spectrum. The incandescent can't take a higher wattage bulb and it has a really spot-light sort of uplight - old cheap lamps that really do need to be improved. HOWEVER, that was one of the reasons I really wanted to see the room in the natural light - to see if it is the bad light from our poor grade lamps or if the color itself is unlivable with. Sadly, I took off for England on Thursday so I was away over the weekend which is when I usually get to check out the natural light in my house. Got back Monday night and the room was still mauve-pink ;-) That said, today really was a red letter day. This morning was C-O-L-D in Boston - 10degrees at 7:something in the AM so I figured I'd hang back a bit longer before heading in to work thinking that the sun may warm things up a bit more. Well, the happy side effect of that was that I got to see the room in much brighter natural light than I ever have before. Ready for this? It is not a pink room in good natural light! In fact, it is a beautiful color! Oh, it is a white, don't get me wrong. BUT, I see pale blue predominate, and through that I see green splotches, I see a pale brown or yellow or something splotch, and yes I see my mauve. BUT, I can handle bits of all these other colors because that is not the predominant color in the room. The splotches of color - well, okay, not really: I really should say: "splotches of hints of color" are really something else. Half the time it seemed like I've wandered into the hallway or a spare bedroom where there really are splotches of paint all over the place. It was most descidedly a euphoric morning, I have to say. No pink room, a beautiful white-blue room with loads of random effects around the place. It sounds psychadelic or an LSD-induced, but it is not because the room is really a white room. BUT there is this very pale rainbow that you can see throughout the walls of this basically white-blue walled room. I loved what I saw this AM. So, if I can recreate this sort of lighting with a good set of lamps, I'll be happy. That said, that was probably part of my issue with the C2-Icefog. It was an okay color during the day - nothing I particularly loved because I basically was looking for a pale nearly-white room - but it was quite awful at night, probably thanks to my lights. So, I don't feel badly about changing it out, but I can say that probably shouldn't malign C2 for creating Icefog nearly as much as I have in the past ;-). That said, this color search was quite a ride! However, what I have learned after sampling paints from virtually every "good"/FS/6-8-10-16colorant brand known to man is that DK has wonderful whites. I'll probably still go to these guys and of course the trusted Benjamin Moore for any future paint adventures and hope for much less drama. And of course FPE for "other" stuff (I am still enamoured of my British Racing Green front door.) So to summarize this long post: (1) Rococogurl, you're right. I need better lamps in there that I can put the Full Spectrum and Reveal bulbs into. (2) I saw the room in good light (well, till 8:10 this am) and it was finally a beaut! I can cancel that subscription to Betty Ford's or whoever cures you of mental illnesses.