mind blowing. outlook altering.

It's taken me days to get around to this post. One: because our internet keeps crapping out. Two: because I don't know where or how to begin.

Apparently, my OCD tendencies are worse than I thought. I'm not blind, I know I'm a little crazy. I just didn't realize how crazy. Apparently. I really, honest-to-goodness thought I was doing humanity this tremendous favor by exposing the truth behind the great internet organization monster. I guess not. M said it best when I was telling him how horrified I was by my idea gone awry. He said, "Yeah, if you'd shown me those pictures ahead of time, I would have told you it wasn't going to work." Or something along those lines. Of course, he then proceeded to tell me all the things in the photos that he knew that I saw as a mess from Hell. The man knows me well. Then he reminded me, while those photos were, in fact, photos of my mess, they would be most people's organized.

So. New tactic.

I still truly, honestly believe in my heart of hearts that the internet just plies us with unrealistic expectations. Someday soon I will take staged photos of my kitchen and meticulously point out the areas that I changed because it might not be obvious to anyone but me. And my husband.

What I've realized is that there's also a perspective aspect to this monster. I found the Ouiser porn link to be unrealistic. Perhaps you find my pictures to be unrealistic. Maybe you find the kitchens on Hoarders unrealistic. The point is that with so much media showing us gazillions of photographs of what we should be doing, we're inundated with images that tell us what we're doing isn't enough. And I believe that you can always do more. You can always improve, but I think the images on the internet and in Martha Stewart don't inspire us, they intimidate us. They give us a "keeping up with the Joneses'" complex.

Does that even make sense? Am I speaking in Greek?

Also, unrelated to the internet, this little experiment has forced me to really, really embrace my crazy. I already had, but I spent a couple of days this week feeling guilty and sad and embarrassed about it, mostly because I really didn't realize the level of it. Now that I have, I've decided that I really, really don't care if I seem crazy. It's who I am, and being hyper aware of my mess and wanting to be organized makes me happy. Really happy, so I'm just going to embrace it with open arms. And I'm going to talk about it to make people laugh, because, frankly, most people already do laugh at me for my crazy. It's like my party trick.

There you have it. Now, my toilet has been soaking in vinegar while I wrote this post, and I need to get it properly scrubbed before the children wake up and my time is consumed with helping T chase his favorite toy around the family room and helping S decorate her gingerbread house.

Have a fabulous weekend, my peeps.