My microwave looked like one you might see at your job. You know, the one everybody uses but no one cleans. The insides were covered with grease and food particles. I keep a set of plate covers on top of the microwave, but apparently none of us use them.

I heated a bowl of water and baking soda in the microwave for four minutes. While the chamber was still hot from the steam, I sprayed in my favorite cleaner (Awesome!). It looks respectable again.

I forgot to time this, so I’m not sure how I did on time, but a minute or two extra was worth it.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Life is becoming more complicated by the minute. More often than not, life gets in the way of living life, if that makes sense at all. I have a full-time job, a part-time job, a family, and a long-ago abandoned list of hobbies. Sometimes I feel as if I’m running in circles. There are mornings that I’m lucky to leave the house with my hair combed.

I’ve got a list of things that I want to do, but I can’t get to them for one reason or another. Cleaning my oven, reorganizing my closet, finishing my daughter’s baby book. So I’ve decided to tackle these things, one project at a time, five minutes at a time.

Five minutes? I know, it might sound crazy, but sometimes five minutes is all I’ve got. Plus, I’m a little like a crocodile (or is it an alligator?). I have short bursts of focused energy, and if I put them to good use, I think I could get a lot done.

To keep me honest, I’m going to try to revive my blog and document my progress. I hope you’ll follow along.

Oh – I almost forgot – I gave myself a few rules.

1. Five minutes only. For the first few weeks, I’m going to time myself when I start a task, just to see how much I get done in the alloted time. I don’t want to write about how I cleaned my refrigerator in no time when it was really an hour and a half.

2. Multiple fives are allowed. I might try to do a couple of things a day, but I’ll limit each task to five minutes.

3. Five-minute blog. The writing should take five minutes too. The purpose of this is for me to get organized and feel like I have some time back – I can’t spend the whole night writing a blog. To help with that, I did invest $2.99 in BlogPress for my iPhone. I won’t be able to spend more than five minutes typing on that little keyboard.

So, wish me luck, and I’ll stay in touch.

Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy MLK Day! Happy Inauguration Day! It’s been a while, and if you know me, even a little bit, you shouldn’t be surprised. So let’s not spend too much time harping on how long it’s been since I last posted…

New year. New year’s resolutions. I used to be pretty skeptical about the whole thing, because like many, I would start off the year with the best of intentions and fall off before the end of the month. I realized a couple of years ago that I could set myself up for success by outlining a couple of reasonable goals. If the year could start over, I could start a few things over too. Like the year I decided to get up everyday at 6 a.m. I consider this a moderate success. Two years later, I still wake up at 6 a.m. Unfortunately, I doze off within seconds and often oversleep. At least it’s progress.

But 2009 snuck up on me. I lost track of time amidst the holiday madness. It was January 5 before I knew it, and I had made not a single resolution. Fortunately for me, a group of colleagues at the office vowed to get in shape. They committed to climbing the stairs (8 flights) twice a day. I had done this with them a while ago, and we all fell off the bandwagon. As I was sans resolutions, I figured this one was as good as any. This was sure to decrease my RealAge (Yes, I’m still on that kick), and my wedding date is rapidly approaching. As an added bonus, I have a support group that will help make sure I do the work.

So, it’s been three weeks now, and how am I doing? Here’s a recap.

Week 1 – Ouch! The first day up the stairs, I was heaving and praying for a paramedic by the 15th floor (we start on 12). By week’s end, I was so sore that I could barely walk. When I tried to go into the basement to do some laundry, my legs gave out and I ran into a chair at the bottom of the stairs.

Week 2 – Ouch! My legs didn’t hurt as bad when I did everyday walking, but they felt heavy as lead when I tried to lift them up the stairs. For some reason, we decided that we would use this time to train for the 42-flight stair marathon in 2010, so we increased the number of stairs to 10 flights. This was pure insanity. One lady was breathing so hard that I thought we really were going to need to call 911.

Week 3 – This #%#@ still hurts! The rest of the team was out of town for an event, and I had to climb the stairs by myself. Misery loves company, so it wasn’t easy going it alone. Plus, it was really cold last week, and the stairwells aren’t heated. Not to mention, the climb is still hard. My legs wobbled for another 30 minutes after each set.

Week 4 -#$%^&*()_!!!!!!!!!! This nonsense hurts as much today as it did 3 1/2 weeks ago. Today, I noticed that I could breath a little easier, but I was so tired that I couldn’t bend down to change shoes. Fashion note: White sneakers don’t look good with dark grey cropped pants and black tights.

I’ll try to keep you posted, especially if we do that marathon in 2010. Can you imagine what my RealAge would be by then?

Since Mike proposed, I have been in Brideville. Picking colors. Looking at flowers. Hunting for the perfect shoe. (Check ’em out above – Hot, I know!) And my mom has been at my side for the whole ride. Planning a wedding, I see, brings the mother-daughter dynamic right into the forefront. Because when are personalities more at odds than when standing amidst a sea of white tulle?

I wanted a simple dress. The big puffy styles with the six-foot trains are best left to women who are marrying royalty. Mike is a king, but only to Elyse and me. At the dress shop, Momma kept unearthing lacy contraptions with big skirts. I tried them on to please her.

“Oh, this is it!” she cried when she saw me in a lacy sheath with sequins detailing and a substantial train.

“It’s not me.”

“Are you sure?” She peered over her glasses. “Look at it again.”

I was sure. It took another 20 dresses before she begrudgingly admitted that the first dress I tried was more my speed. It was an ivory column with minimal detailing.

The salesperson came in with an armful of veils and tiaras. “I won’t be needing any of those.”

“Just try a few on.” The salesperson put on a veil and a tiara. “It’s not me.”

“You’re no fun!” Momma snatched off the veil and put on a different one. I frowned and slumped my shoulders. “I don’t like this one either.”

After Momma fussed for a month about my no-veil-no-tiara credo, my aunt helped her to see my point of view. “Remember how awful she used to look in Easter hats as a kid?”

Then there was the guest list. “75!” I announced. By the time my mother made her additions, the list count was up to 102. “I don’t see how you thought that you could have a wedding with just 75 people,” she said.

“Because that’s what I wanted.” My shoulders slumped again.

“Well, now you have 102. You will just have to deal with it.” I dealt with it by cutting 20 people from the guest list. My apologies go out to my co-workers. I’ll bring in pictures, I promise.

A few weeks later, Elyse and I were getting ready for church. It was chilly out, and I had a pink jacket for her to wear. She wasn’t interested.

“Come on Pumpkin, it was a gift.” Her braids hit her cheeks as she shook her head from side to side. “It’s Ralph Lauren!” I said this with a flourish, as if it would make a difference to a three-year-old. It didn’t.

I was finally able to bribe her with a bowl of grapes. Elyse took off the jacket as soon as we got into the car.

“You’re no fun!” I told her as I backed down the driveway.

So another mother-daughter relationship unfolds just as the one before it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I could not imagine planning my wedding without Momma. She would follow me from here to Mozambique to find the perfect shade of purple paper for my wedding invitation. And all the while, she keeps me grounded, from going over the edge and pulling my hair out over party favors. It’s not a job for the faint of heart.

And sometimes, we do agree. She does love the purple shoe.

“You and Mike have been together forever; you got a baby. Are ya’ll getting married?”

I’ve been dodging this question, and ones similar to it, for about three years now. Forever, in this case, began at a cook-out in 2002. My mother and Mike’s aunt are friends. He and I teamed up to play spades against a couple who kept dealing from the bottom of the deck. I had never been dealt a hand that bad before or since. We lost the game, but Mike won my phone number.

Our daughter will be four at the end of the year. With her birth, came a meshing of lives of which neither of us was quite prepared for. You learn a lot about your partner at 2 a.m. when the baby’s crying nonstop. Mike’s gentle, unselfish nature became even more apparent. He would offer to sit up with Elyse so that I could get some rest. The next morning, I usually would find him on the sofa with the baby sleeping on his chest.

But living together has not been all hearts and butterflies. Our quirks began to show almost immediately, and we have had to navigate them as we created our family. I work days. He works nights. I’m a neat freak. He’s a slob. I eat quasi-healthy food. He could live off Top Ramen noodles, homemade cookies, and anything covered in a cream sauce.

The quirks are still there, but we’ve found a way to respect those characteristics that make us who we are. The single-story house that we moved into right before Elyse was born now feels like a home we’ve made together, as long as I steer clear of the basement. The neat-freak/slob debate is still a hot-button issue there.

To be honest, I was starting to ask the “when” question myself. I figured that 2008 would be the year or bust. After all, it has been six years. A girl can only hold out for so long.

I came home on Monday feeling far far less than glamorous. I missed my hair appointment the weekend before, and I needed a relaxer. Bad. When I shampooed my hair. I didn’t remember that I was out of conditioner until my hair was soaking wet. I used some Blue Magic that I have for Elyse, and the reaction between that and my chemically-treated hair brought about an invasion of acne that I haven’t seen since high school.

Mike emerged from the basement, saying that he was on his way to work. I wondered just how junky the basement was this week. I went to our room to change. I could hear our daughter, ever-in-motion, running down the hall.

“Mommy! Daddy said marry me.”

“Daddy said what?” I looked down, and the first thing I noticed was how beautiful Elyse’s smile was. The second thing I noticed was that she was holding out a ring box.

“Seriously?” Mike entered the room smiling.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” He got down one one knee. “Will you marry me?”

We spent the next 15 minutes lying on the bed. Elyse was bouncing up and down while singing nursery rhymes. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to keep building our family.” The puffy hair, the pizza face, and the junky basement all faded away in this moment. And I felt like a princess.