We’ve been busy the last few weeks working on our spring cleaning project, which admittedly is taking longer than we originally planned because I have the attention span of a fly and I kind of lost interest in it. We will get it done, though, and in the meantime we’ve been working on a few side projects that were part of the larger picture, and I’m excited to share the details of those soon.

In the meantime, Instagram was finally made available for Android, so after 6 months without it I’m Instagramming everything again. Here’s what we’ve been up to lately (click the photo for a larger image):

1. Waiting for Dad at the college
2. Late afternoon sun showers
3. Salad in a jar – best lunch ever
4. Seeing Titanic in 3D (don’t judge; free passes = free date night)
5. Staying in bed late on a Saturday morning
6. Visiting with my boss’ dog
7. DIY spice rack
8. Hoping for dinner
9. Friday night ballgame

1. Explore house church
2. Blog at least twice a week every week
3. Organize the house (declutter!)
4. Keep house tidy for at one full year
5. Take photos every week
6. Create a blog layout from scratch
7. Find a menu planning system that works for me

I am a minimalist at heart and I thrive on order and routine, but for most of my life I’ve been unable to actually create an environment in my living space that reflects this. Incidentally, about a month ago I found out WHY I’ve been unable to do this, and I’ll be blogging about that soon. In the meantime, I came up with this idea to declutter and organize the house. I thought The Accountant would hate me when I proposed it because it’s quite involved and involves multiple steps, but to my surprise he was on board, so we got started on Friday. Here’s how it’s going to work:

We’ve purchased 4 big plastic bins and lined them up in the living room. They are labelled “Office/Techology,” “Bathroom/Toiletries,” “General Storage” and “Misc.”

We’re going to go through one room at a time, and sort through literally everything we own. Every item (other than clothes and shoes, which we’ll go through separately) will either be put into one of the bins or tossed out.

Once every room has been sorted, we’ll go through the items in the bins and purge again (the idea here is to be ruthless about what we keep and what we throw out).

When that’s done, we will go through each bin and organize like items with like items. Then we’ll take a look at what we have, and the storage space we have in our house, and determine the best place for each category of stuff.

Here’s why we’re doing it this way:

1. We have things all over the house in random places. We need to get them all into one spot to actually see what we have.

2. We need to actually think about where we use items. Right now, all of my camera equipment is supposed to be kept upstairs in our office. But I use my laptop in the living room, so anytime I need that stuff to upload photos, I bring it downstairs. And I’m scatterbrained, so then I leave it downstairs. Why not just store it downstairs?

3. I thought about organizing one room at a time. The problem with that is then I end up with bags full of stuff to go into different rooms, and then I get bored, shove the bags into a closet and walk away. I don’t want to do that this time.

We actually have quite a bit of storage space in this house, only it doesn’t FEEL like it because we’re not using the space thoughtfully.

I’m going to photograph the process and blog about it as we go, so you can see not only the insane amount of useless crap we have in this house, but how we go about organizing it all. We bought the bins on Friday and I sorted through our bedroom yesterday. I already have a big garbage bag full of stuff to toss. Not surprisingly, the bin that has the most stuff in it so far is the “Bathroom/Toiletries” bin, so I clearly have some more purging to do there! We also have a kitchen project planned that I’ll tell you about too.

This weekend is a 4-day weekend for us, so our ambitious goal is to have all the sorting done by Friday, so we can take all the garbage to the dump on Saturday. Then Sunday and Monday we’ll work at sorting the remaining stuff and then comes the most fun part – finding new homes for it all. And then – finally! – I will take and post some photos of our house, which are long overdue, since April 29th will mark one year since we moved in!

Can’t wait to reveal our newly organized home to you in the next week or so!

I dreamed that my dad was still alive, and my parents were getting a divorce. They were living in Montreal, and so was my brother, but I was in Ontario, so when they called me to tell me the news, I flew home to visit. I wasn’t upset about the divorce – my entire childhood I wondered why my parents stayed together.

My dad picked me up from the airport, and greeted me with the same big hug he always did when I flew home to visit from school. On the way home, we talked about the split.

“Rob is really upset about it,” he told me, saying my brother was having a really hard time. “He keeps asking why we’re doing this, and how we could do this to him.”

“He’s a grown man,” I answered. “He’ll just have to get over it.”

We drove past the house my dad had just bought but hadn’t moved into yet. He and my mom were still both living in the house I grew up in until it was time for him to move into the new one. I liked the look of the new house, and told him so.

“Is it hard still living together?” I asked.

“Not anymore. We’re both just looking toward the next step now, I think.”

I was quiet for a minute as we drove on, and then I looked over at him.

“Dad, honestly, I can’t believe you stayed with her this long.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Neither can I, really.”

I can’t tell you what a comfort it is that my dad is appearing in my dreams more these days. I love it. Being able to talk to him, and touch him, even just in my subconscious, is like a little gift.

The funny thing is that this dream was actually really true to life. There were so many times when I was growing up that my dad told me he sometimes didn’t know why he stayed with my mom. That he couldn’t understand why she acted the way she did about my brother, and that he didn’t respect her for it but that he had basically given up after a while because there was no reasoning with her. If my parents had split up anytime during my life, I would not have been sad at all; I’d have been relieved.

Don’t get me wrong – I still hope, like I said in my last dream post, that my parents find each other again when they’re both gone. There was obviously SOMETHING that kept them together for 30+ years, despite everything that happened.

But I woke up laughing and shaking my head at this dream for just how realistic it was, and I said a quick prayer of thanks to God for bringing my dad to me in my dreams, and for raising my spirits like that. It was good to see my dad again.

This will be my last post for a little while. ATK is going offline for a bit. Not at all because I’m giving up on blogging; in fact right now I could probably use the outlet more than ever.

But right now we have some family stuff going on and I think it’s best if my life isn’t plastered all over the internet. I’ll be back when things are a little calmer and when it’s not so imperative that we maintain a little more privacy than normal.

See you on the other side!

What you can’t see in this photo is that the bumper was basically hanging off the car, and the tire was completely turned 90 degrees (I guess they pushed them back when they towed the car). The back axle was also broken.

Even though two friends told me this looked like a total loss, I didn’t believe it until I heard it from the insurance adjuster. My worry had been that if they repaired it, how could they know what effect that kind of damage would have on the safety and integrity of the rest of the car… but I also don’t know much about cars and thought that might be a silly worry. When the adjuster called, that’s exactly what she said.

This has certainly not been the week I was hoping for. I really didn’t want to be car shopping and making a decision about whether to purchase or lease. I didn’t want the hassle of a rental car, the incredible pain and discomfort The Accountant and I are both feeling, the headache (both figurative and literal) of figuring out everything that goes along with this kind of situation.

I woke up this morning, my 27th birthday, and cried for half an hour before I got out of bed. I had searing pain up the back of my neck and head, I was exhausted, and my resistance was just plain worn down. It’s only been five days since the accident and it feels like it’s been fifty. This has been one of the longest weeks of my life. We pick up the insurance cheque and a new car tomorrow and I hope things can calm down a bit then, at least in one aspect of this.

In the other, we still have the injuries to deal with. I spent half the day today rubbing the back of my head and wishing I was lying down instead of staring miserably at my computer screen being largely unproductiive. My new office mate heard me on the phone with The Accountant, cancelling my own birthday dinner due to exhaustion and discomfort, and then left the office, only to return a few minutes later holding a lemon-cranberry muffin with two candles in it and surrounded by a group of people singing Happy Birthday to me. I nearly cried.

I saw the osteopath today and when I told him the story of what had happened, he laughed ruefully and shook his head. “You are the last person I would have wanted to see get into a car accident. Your neck just goes ‘click’ and locks up,” he said, linking his fingers and making the sound of bones cracking to illustrate what my neck does. He worked on me for an hour, starting at my toes where I pressed my feet into the floorboards of the car as I braced for impact, all the way up to my head. We have some work to do yet and I’ll be seeing him weekly for a while, but at least I have a little bit of hope that things will get better and that we’ve gotten the ball rolling.

We still have to deal with the injury adjusters and see what kind of coverage we can get for the treatment we both need. What a saga this has been and continues to be.

Like I said in my last post, The Accountant and I had gone to see The Vow. We drove home, and as we got to the corner of our street, we had to stop to wait for traffic so we could turn left off of the main road. There is no traffic light; we were just waiting for the way to be clear.

Just as the last car passed and we were about to start moving again, I glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw a red car BARRELING towards us. I’m 99% sure I saw the driver, a woman, holding a cell phone. In that instant, I knew she would hit us. She was going much too fast and I knew she hadn’t seen us.

I think I gasped, which alarmed The Accountant, but I didn’t have time to warn him about what was going to happen.

At the last second, she swerved, but it was too late.

BAM.

Our car had been stationary, and the impact shot us forward about 10 feet into the intersection.

In the five seconds after the accident, as we sat there in the road, I remember thinking the following things:

- This car is going to be undriveable
- My mom is in Cuba, so we can’t call her
- Her car is an hour away at my aunt’s house, so it’s not like we can swing by her house to get it
- This is going to be a logistical nightmare
- We need to call 911
- My neck is going to be RUINED once again

And then as the shock of what had happened set in, I burst into tears and began sobbing pretty hysterically.

I somehow remembered to put my flashers on, and then as we sat there, some guys who had seen what happened came over to see if we were okay. We got out of the car and moved to the sidewalk. I was shaking from head to toe, crying my eyes out. The girl who hit us had pulled over a little ways up the street, and we saw her on her cell phone, so we figured she was calling the police. One of the guys who saw the accident said he had to leave, but wanted to give us his name and number in case we needed another witness. I pulled my phone out to type in his name and number, and as we did that, the girl came across the street to us.

She asked if we were okay, apologized profusely, said it was all her fault (uh yeah, we know). I asked if she had called 911, and she said, “no, I was calling my husband.” Which kind of annoyed me – yes, of course you’re going to call your husband if you’re in a car accident; if The Accountant hadn’t been there I’d have called him too. But it’s police first, THEN husband! Our cars are stuck in the middle of the road, we can’t deal with this on our own, it’s not rocket science.

So I called 911 myself, and as I spoke to the responder, a fire truck rolled up. I told the responder that, and she said, “… how? We didn’t dispatch them.” I was thinking, I have no freaking idea, lady, I’m just telling you they’re here! She said she would dispatch the police and paramedics, and we hung up as the fire fighters approached.

They asked if we were okay, and we said yes. They asked if I was sure, since I was still crying, and I said that I was shaken up and that I already had a neck injury so I was worried about what was going to happen. We did ask them how they even knew to come, and they said that someone had seen the accident and stopped at the fire department a block up and told them.

I was FREEZING and wanted to get my gloves from the car, but of course the fire fighters wouldn’t let me go out into the road to look for them. Instead, a kind fire fighter gave me his own gloves to wear.

Within minutes, I began having shooting pains from my neck up into the base of my head, which is typically where I feel the pain from my injury. One of the fire fighters checked my spine and said that since I was up and walking, they could wait for the paramedics to arrive to assess me.

At some point during all of this, we learned that the girl who hit us was 5 weeks pregnant, and had left her shift at work early because she was cramping.

About ten minutes after the accident happened, an ambulance showed up. A paramedic started to come over to us and the fire fighter who had been standing with us the whole time told us they were coming to check us. I wanted them to check the other girl first, because of her baby, but I guess neck injuries trump pregnancies because they told me another ambulance would come for her, and then the paramedic directed me across the road to the ambulance. He told us to sit inside for a minute, and then I think he went to get the story from the fire fighters.

I was still crying (believe me, this is a recurring theme throughout this ordeal – I cried for about 5 hours straight). The medic came back, asked about my neck, and also checked my spine. I had a lot of pain in my upper spine, and when he pressed on the base of my spine just above my tailbone, I cried out in pain.

“Okay, so we’re going to put you on a back board,” he said, and my heart sank. “We’ll get you in a brace as well, and get you to the hospital.”

To be continued.

I laughed to myself at one point, thinking that a good way to get rid of one’s husband, should one want to, would be to just claim to forget who he is.

On the way home, we were rear-ended. Hard.

No one went through the windshield, we are both generally okay, and I still remember who The Accountant is, but I joked with him later at the hospital that I could have claimed I had no idea who he was.

I am sore from head to toe and the kind ER doctor who treated me says it will be worse tomorrow and worse still on Monday. That’s whiplash for you. Nothing I can do but rest, take muscle relaxants and see my osteopath.

It was scary and my car may be totaled.

And the only thought going through my mind?

After five years of repeated and persistent neck injuries, and only recently finding lasting pain relief, because of one woman driving way too fast and using her cell phone, I am right back to square one.

And that is the main reason I cried for five hours straight this afternoon.