This morning I got out of bed and decided that clutter in our house is causing clutter in my brain. The main area that’s getting on my last nerve is our kitchen / breakfast room / playroom area. Everything piles up in there because that’s where we keep keys, mail, camera, my purse, etc. – and any empty basket or bowl seems to become a receptacle for coupons, receipts, stray batteries, cell phones and the like.

And, quite frankly, I have hit the wall in terms of being able to deal with it.

Until the next time it gets cluttered, at which point I’ll sigh deeply and start all over.

So while I’m working on de-cluttering and THROWING OUT TOYS (hello? preschool department at church? I believe it’s your lucky day!), I need your help with a couple of floor-cleaning issues.

1) What do y’all use to clean hardwood floors? People always tell me to just use vinegar and water, but the problem with that is I DESPISE THE SMELL OF VINEGAR, and so using that method doesn’t leave me with a happy, oh-my-house-is-so-clean feeling. It leaves me with a sad, oh-my-house-smells-like-sour-vinegar feeling. Which isn’t very much fun.

So if you have a more, um, pleasant-smelling suggestion, I’d love to hear it. I just feel like the floor (around the breakfast room table especially) is starting to look a little dull, but I certainly don’t want to mop with anything that’s going to hurt the wood.

2) Alex’s bathroom has a white tile floor. Not off-white. WHITE. Mopping with a little Clorox diluted with lots of water will definitely get it clean (though it leaves it looking a little dull), but then we have to leave the house because the fumes are so strong. And somehow that strikes me as a little bit, you know, dangerous. I’d love to know if you have any non-bleachy alternatives to really make those white tiles shine.

Finally.

While I’m on my cleaning soapbox (OH, THE PUNNINESS! IT’S PUNTASTIC!), I have a little cleaning tip of my own: if you have a chance, check out these all-natural products if you haven’t already. I absolutely adore the lavender disinfecting spray – it’s smells great, it’s not harsh, and it’s great for when you need to “tidy up” before company comes over. And my absolute favorite is the lavender room freshener (I believe my love affair with the scent of lavender has been well-documented, so I will not elaborate on its magical soothing properties) – it’s great stuff.

All righty. I’m going to get out the mop and wait for y’all to tell me what to do to my floors. Don’t EVEN suggest that I spray something on my floors and then get on my hands and knees to wipe up said spray, because the odds of that happening are approximately, oh, ZERO.

(I love for the house to be clean, of course, but I certainly wouldn’t want to go overboard.)

Thanks in advance, y’all!

For the last week or so, I’ve been doing a little preliminary planning for the New York trip I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (also known as “Martie Takes Manhattan”), and I think we have settled on a date. Martie’s going, as is Sister, my sister-in-law Janie, my aunt C., and hopefully my cousin Paige.

Oh, and me. I’m going. Which is probably a good thing since I’m the one who has roped in all the other merry travelers.

It might offer you a little insight into the state of Martha’s excitement to know that last week she pulled all of her suitcases out of her closet to examine them and decide if any were worthy of a trip to New York. She’s very concerned that she’s going to exceed the airline’s 50 pound weight limit on luggage, and rather than incur unwanted surcharges, she has decided that she needs a bigger, lighter bag.

And so, if you work at a Belk’s or Dillard’s department store in Mississippi or Alabama, I would just like to say this: CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED. Martha is on a luggage mission, and you’d better know she means business. She has waited over seven decades to travel to the Big Apple, and she will not purchase anything other than luggage PERFECTION.

At the lowest possible price, of course. And preferably with a coupon. On senior citizens’ discount day.

Martha and I have begged my mama to come along for the New York ride, but she’s just not interested. She said that she would probably enjoy herself for about twenty minutes and then be ready to come home and clean for awhile. You know, just to relax from the hustle and bustle of her twenty-minute NYC adventure. I guess she’ll keep the home fires burning for all of us while we’re gone.

So here is my biggest trip-planning dilemma, and I’m hopeful that some of you travel-savvy internets will have some ideas to help me solve it. There is a certain section of NYC where Sister, Paige, Janie and I have enjoyed staying in the past because it is convenient and lovely and quiet and good. And there are many, many hotels in this particular area, so room availability isn’t so much an issue.

But as best I can tell, room rates are up about 100% (if not more) since the last time I planned a trip to New York (which, granted, was about four years ago). I don’t know if we’ll be staying two or three to a room – it depends on our final number, I guess – but obviously we want the best possible price per night that we can get. Based on the rates I’ve seen this past week, once we get to NYC and settle in at our hotel, I’ll have to sit right there for the duration of our trip because I won’t have any money to do anything besides pay for my share of the room.

And that does not really sound like very much fun to me.

We certainly don’t have to stay anywhere fancy, but we do want to stay somewhere nice. I want for Martha and C. to feel like they are getting extra-special treatment on their inaugural trips to the Big Apple, so I want to plan really well and get the most possible bang for our travel bucks.

So, if any of y’all have any tips for getting great rates on hotel rooms, I would love to know them. I have thought about using Hotwire to make reservations though I’m a little wary since I’ve never booked a hotel room that way before. I know that lots of hotels run promotional deals, but it seems like nothing coincides with our travel dates. I’ve even thought about contacting a hotel chain and explaining that it’s my 70-something MIL’s first trip to New York in the hopes that they’ll give us a cut on the room rate (and hello? TENS OF PEOPLE will be reading about our trip on my blog – IT’S LIKE FREE PUBLICITY!), but then I remembered that WHEN THEY FINISH NOT CARING, THEY WILL THINK I’M INSANE.

Any ideas, y’all?

Alex apparently has decided to spend the rest of his childhood in Mississippi. Just a minute ago I answered the phone, and he was on the other end saying, “UM, MAMA? I want to stay here FIVE days. And Mama? I went to Martie’s house, and her house was crying.”

“Her house was CRYING?”

“Yes ma’am. It was raining outside, and her house started to CRY, Mama. It was crying in the room where we were playing.”

Martie has a leak in her roof, apparently. I imagine that she was none too happy since she had a new roof put on her house about four months ago.

And something tells me that a certain roof company will have a very dissatisfied – but lively – customer on their hands around 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.

Anyway, D. and I have been soaking up the silence for the last couple of days. I didn’t even turn on the television this morning, and it caught D. a little off-guard since I usually like to listen to my iPod and work on the computer with Food Network on in the background. While I sing.

But today, I just listened to the rain – a strange and unfamiliar sound right now in this part of the country.

Yesterday we decided to go to a matinee and then to throw all carbohydrate caution to the wind and stop somewhere for pizza. We went to see “Knocked Up” – which was hilarious if your idea of humor is to take one core expletive and modify it to fit all parts of speech (look! it’s an adjective! and here! it’s a noun! but here! it’s a verb! because apparently this is what qualifies as wit! and if we yell all the forms of the word in one scene, we’re even MORE witty!).

Even though there were some funny parts (Kristen Wiig, I adore you), we were disappointed. So we headed to Mellow Mushroom for pizza, and there we were not disappointed even a little bit. Delicious diet Coke, delicious pizza – totally relaxing.

In fact, we enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to do the exact same thing this afternoon. We went to see “Ocean’s 13” – which is fun and enjoyable and way better than “Ocean’s 12” – and then we headed to another pizza place to see how it compared to last night’s pizza place, because we are nothing if not predictable and consistent (plus, prior to yesterday I hadn’t eaten pizza in almost three months. I was waaaaay past due).

Tonight’s restaurant specializes in Chicago-style pizza, and OH MY LANDS IT WAS TASTY. I was only able to eat one piece (IT’S A SUMMERTIME MIRACLE!), so that should give you a pretty good indication of how filling it was. After all, I not only love to eat, I am good at it – some might even say talented.

D. ate two pieces of pizza but barely lived to tell the tale.

And I do not believe we will have pizza for supper again for a very long time.

But D. does want to see another movie tomorrow. I think he’s just so excited that I’m actually going to the picture show as opposed to staying home to watch an episode of “House Hunters” for the sixth time, and he feels like he needs to strike while the proverbial movie-watching iron is hot.

So, do y’all have any suggestions? Just please don’t suggest that “Pirates of the Caribbean” thing, because I am telling you – with my strange issues regarding textures and spores and whatnot, one look at that octopus-type creature would send me straight to the restroom. I could throw up just thinking about it.

Which reminds me.

See this?

This is a starfish I saw at an aquarium in California a couple of weeks ago. And I promise you that I had to force myself to stand there and look at it. I thought that if I stared at it long enough, if I took a picture of it and studied it and watched it move across the tank, I would be able to conquer my squeamishness in regard to suction-y, spore-y things.

But it didn’t work at all.

Because even now, just looking at the picture of that HORRIFIC SEA-DWELLING CREATURE THAT IS GOING TO LATCH ON TO ONE OF MY APPENDAGES AND LEAVE MILLIONS OF UNIFORMLY-SIZED INDENTIONS ON SAID APPENDAGE makes my heart race and my knees feel weak and this is exactly why I can’t possibly see that “Pirates” movie.

I am SO normal, aren’t I?