First Frog* was a teeeny, tiny one..

The wall plant stand had a years’ accumulation of dust, dirt, and dead plants among the living. Removing everything, tossing the dead ones (“we don’t take da dead ones” was a line from a long-forgotten play), wiping the dusty leaves, soaking the dried-out-but-still-living plants, washing the shelves, and finally reassembling everything took a fair bit of time. But it was easy work, done with the TV on for distraction, so I felt guilty.

It wasn’t enough. Hardly qualified as a frog, you know? I mean, just because it took *for-EV-er* to get to it, it wasn’t one of the elephants in the room I was pretending wasn’t there.

So I vacuumed the room. Honestly, that *did* qualify as a frog.

Our puppies do not shed much. One doesn’t shed AT ALL, while the other only does a moderate shedding before summer. What they excel in is bringing the great outdoors inside on their paws and clinging to their muzzles and coats. They track in sand, leaves, grass clippings, and twigs in prodigious quantities. They killed our Roomba which tried valiantly to keep up. Miss a day or two and the accumulation is noticeable. Miss a week or more (we do) and the debris begins to swirl about our feet as we cross the room.

FlyLady says to just do the middle regularly and only once a month suck up the edges and under tables, sofas, etc. In our puppy kingdom, if (if? HA!) we miss the ‘regularly’ part, the vacuum bag can get filled beyond capacity in only a round or two. Of course, if we do the regular thing, we still fill up the bag with the same amount of dirt and debris in about the same amount of time, but it feels worse because we only ran the vacuum twice for pete’s sake!

This also took a lot longer than the plant stand (actually, the plant stand is a bakers shelf thing which I love for the house plants). I was sweaty and dirty at the end, but I could walk barefoot through the room without getting crud on my feet. The sofa was once again a place I could sit without having to brush off sand and dirt from the puppies before planting my tush.

Now, these were indeed worthwhile activities with tangible results. They were not, however, remotely related to the elephants in the room which were the really BIG frogs I need to eat (and soon!).

One has to start somewhere, I say. I can accomplish a great deal when I am avoiding doing something else!

*see previous post