I read somewhere that if you want to be happy, take five minutes every day and fix something that bugs the shit out of you. I may be paraphrasing.

This week has been insanely busy. The little angel had a science fair project due Monday, a variety show performance on Tuesday, last night was dedicated to constructing a box for the class Valentine's Day party and nineteen homemade valentines and tonight she has riding lessons. My parents are coming to stay with us for the weekend, and they will be here tomorrow. Also, this week I had a huge work deadline.

I'll admit it. I'm stressed out when I get this busy. I don't like chaos. I like my life to be a summer afternoon in a hammock. Don't we all? I am, though, maybe even worse with chaos than your average bear.

So this week, I've also taken it upon myself to fix some little annoyances, though some of them took more than five minutes to fix:

1) I organized Hoggincraft, the craft room that the little angel and I share. She has a church table covered in glitter and other crafty things on one half, and I have a wooden desk and a sewing machine on the other. We share the craft room with eleventy billion craft supplies, a filing cabinet, a dehumidifier, a large stuffed horse, two tubs of loom supplies for the hand loom my daughter inherited from her late grandfather, gift wrap supplies, a doll bassinet that now functions as a piggy bank drying station, a few lamps and at least 30 pieces of inspirational art made by my daughter. Sometimes she goes in there with her friends unsupervised, and then later I stumble down there before I've had coffee to find something and kick over the large glass bottle of beads she left on the floor. And then maybe I leave it there. And then maybe later that day, I realize I haven't seen the cat in a while and it turns out he's been locked in Hoggincraft for eight hours and took a shit in the beads he apparently thought were kitty litter in the perfect darkness of a windowless basement room. This may have happened on Monday. Obviously, I cleaned up the cat poop when I found it. But knowing Hoggincraft looked like a nuclear wasteland weighed on me until last night when I abandoned the overzealous Valentine's Day box and homemade valentine project to right the wrongs in Hoggincraft. When I stepped back to survey my organized and vacuumed surroundings, I realized my heart felt light. Seriously.

2) One of the lightbulbs in the pendants that hang over the breakfast bar burned out last week. It has driven me mad since then. I bought a damn lightbulb today.

3) My mouse was acting up. Changed the batteries. Used the last AA batteries. I bought more damn batteries so the next time this happens I don't take my own name in vain.

4) The printer's almost out of ink. Every time I go to print I hold my breath the same way I sometimes do when I check my checking account balance. Today I bought ink. HELL YES I DID.

5) My company sent me a new laptop. (Yay!) I needed to send the old one back, but instead it's been sitting amidst a huge pile of cardboard boxes and packing materials in the middle of my library where I spend all day. Today I took the old laptop to UPS and recycled all the rest of the things.

6) My present for Steph's daughter was 99% done. All I had to do was write her name on the little chalkboard paint plaque with a piece of chalk. We have tons of chalk in the garage and in the playroom. All I had to do was walk to find the chalk, write her name on the gift, and put the chalk back. I fucking wrote that name on that chalkboard paint like a boss and put the chalk back.

7) I washed the disgusting bathmats.

8) I figured out how to hook up the VOIP phone my company sent me. Today I listened to a conference call without twisting my neck in half on an iPhone when my husband was working from home and I didn't want to disturb him. My neck thanks my company, and I thank myself for figuring out how to hook up the phone to a data line.

9) I found my slippers. I've missed my slippers.

10) I put the reusable grocery bags back in my trunk.

I am still missing the workout room key and my iPhone armband. I have been looking for these two items for several weeks. Their absence remains a minor annoyance, but look at all those minor annoyances cleared since last weekend! Made dealing with the overwhelm this week just that much easier.

It's the little things, y'all.

Next week, back to writing. I have only done Rita Time once since I posted about it. I must get better. My parents will be here this weekend, but I'm starting again next Tuesday night. I am admitting this to the Internet so I will actually do it.

PS: It appears THE OBVIOUS GAME is stuck at 99 cents on Amazon Kindle until my publisher changes it back to $2.99. I'm going to email her tomorrow. So, just sayin'.