Footle and Grok

I have a lot of things I need to do, but all I want to do is declutter and pack. I love decluttering, and I have a good excuse now that I am packing the house up. I watch a lot of decluttering videos as I work or listen to decluttering books to stay inspired to get rid of more. 

I’m writing my blog right now, and I’d rather declutter my card-making bin. I got new envelopes, and I need to clean out my bin so they will fit (the one in-one-out rule.) 

So I’m going to go do that.

Perhaps you have a project that you like doing and needs to get done but other important things are getting int the way. I give you permision to take the day off. Have fun doing what you want to do. There will be time to write blog posts and do other chores later.

Happy World Chocolate Day!

When I first saw this holiday, I was confused. I thought Chocolate Day was in October. Well, National Chocolate Day is October 28, which makes sense since it is near Halloween. However, today is World Chocolate Day.

When it comes to eating chocolate, Americans are amateurs. Can you guess which country eats the most chocolate per capita? I’ve listed the top five from a 2018 article. Take a guess first, and then look below.

• 5th place – Sweden (14.6 pounds)
• 4th place – United Kingdom (16.8 pounds)
• 3rd place – Ireland (17.4 pounds)
• 2nd place – Germany (17.8 pounds)
• 1st place – Switzerland (19.4 pounds)

Wow. In contrast, the United States only consumes 9.4 pounds of chocolate per capita. That amount doesn’t even put us in the top ten.

I’m surprised Holland isn’t on this list. They love to eat chocolate for any meal. When I was visiting my in-laws in Holland, I put chocolate sprinkles on my toast every morning. It was so good.

Since I’m reducing added sugars in my diet to less than 15 grams a day, I’m not eating chocolate. But I have definitely over-indulged in the past. I love chocolate in just about any form. Do you have a favorite chocolate treat? Let me know in the comments. I’d have a hard time picking just one, but I’d say Moose Tracks ice cream is my favorite. Rich chocolate ice cream with chunks of chocolate brownie in it is divine.

In honor of this holiday, I earn a point on my walking challenge for going for a walk today. Since Katie (the creator of this challenge) has a blog called Runs for Cookies, this makes perfect sense. Plus, I can walk off a few calories to counteract the Moose Tracks ice cream that I’ll splurge on today. Yum!

I watch a lot of science YouTube videos. PBS’s It’s Okay to be Smart is one of my favorites. Joe Hanson is really punny and I love science combined with humor. Science should never be boring.

The video I’m sharing today is definitely not boring. It is about butts. If this makes you say “ewww” and turn up your nose, I suggest you view this video before passing judgement. Butts and poop are gross topics but few things are more connected to our daily life, so shouldn’t we know what is going on? Plus, not all animals are like us and that is even more interesting.

If you don’t see this video link, click on the post title and watch it on my website. It will probably be the most punny and fascinating thirteen minutes of your day. (And you’ll learn that not everyone poops. Who knew!!!)

July is a month of change for Hubby and me. Lots of dragons to slay, lots of goals to achieve, and lots of fear to ditch. Moving is both an adventure and a scary transformation, and I’m ready to get ‘er done. 

I hope you slay your own dragons this July (or make friends with them if they are nice dragons), and don’t let fear stop you from enjoying your own adventures. Let’s all have an amazing month!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Unlike during the year-who-shall-not-be-mentioned, we can celebrate our nation’s birthday with a tasty barbeque and a parade this year. All I ask is that everyone be safe when grilling outside and using fireworks. No one wants to be fighting fires on July 5th.

Have fun while reveling in red, white, and blue.

Since January, I have been watching various declutter and minimalism gurus on YouTube. I started with about twenty different people but have reduced that to four that I now follow. One of them is Cas with ClutterBug. She breaks people into four different types of organizational styles and is one of the few professional organizers who understands that not all messy people are the same.

She has a show on HGTV called Hot Mess House. I love watching HGTV, but I never do because I don’t have cable or satellite, and I don’t pay for Discovery+. Hot Mess House just started its second season, and I was sorry I would miss it.

We visited my in-laws because Hubby’s sister and nephew were also visiting. My in-laws have cable, and I was curious to see if Hot Mess House was on that night. It was!!! So while the rest of the family watch a Netflix show, I enjoyed an hour of home organization.

If you get HGTV, I highly recommend Hot Mess House. I’m not just saying this because I like HGTV shows. Most of the shows I see are fun to watch, but I could never apply the expensive ideas in my life. Cas’s show is different. She helps messy everyday people organize their life in a way tailored to their organizational style.

In the episode I saw, one of the women was a butterfly. That means she likes her stuff out where she can see it and sorted into big categories. My hubby is also a butterfly, and I saw several inexpensive ideas that would work perfectly for him.

I wish I could watch every episode. Perhaps someday I’ll stream Discovery+, and then you’ll never hear from me again because I’ll be binge-watching more shows than I can count, including Hot Mess House.

If you’re looking for organizational and decluttering inspiration, I recommend CutterBug on YouTube and Hot Mess House on HGTV. Hooray for real-world ideas.

YouTube has created a new video style to compete with TikTok and Instagram. It’s called YouTube Shorts. These are vertical videos that are less than one minute in length. I watched a bunch of how-to videos about Shorts and decided it would be fun to try.

I had a hard time picking a topic that’s both short and informative and put off trying this new format for a while. But I wanted to change my videos in July, so it was the perfect time to go short.

It felt really weird recording one minute of content. It felt even weirder since it took no time to edit one minute of content. But I loved the results. Weird.

I plan to do a Short every Friday* for the foreseeable future, and the first one dropped this morning. I have ten scripted, and because they are so short, I can record several at once. I hope you’ll take a look and see what you think. I appreciate all your comments.

*I am changing my write-in videos too. Instead of doing two ten-minute write-ins on Tuesday and Friday, I will do a longer one on Tuesday. It will consist of two 25-minute sessions with a five-minute break in between. Sundays will still be dedicated to the craft of writing.

Summer is in full swing. It’s supposed to be a happy and carefree time. Apparently, poets don’t think so. Almost all the poems I found about July were sad and really long. So I decided to change my search from “July” to “Summer.” Still depressing.

Why don’t poets write happy summer poems? If I had to guess, I’d say that they were hot and many famous poets lived before the invention of air conditioning.

I did finally find a poem I’d like to share. It’s not happy, but it is short, and I like it. I hope your summer days are happier and cooler.

The Fly

William Blake – 1757-1827

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

Happy Meteor Day.

Do you know the difference between an asteroid and a meteor? When does a meteoroid become a meteorite?

In honor of Meteor Day, I thought I would share some common space words (as defined by NASA) that are often used interchangeably but actually have distinct meanings. This will help the next time you see a shooting star or meteor shower with your friends and family.

• Asteroid: A relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun.
• Comet:  A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight, forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a tail of dust and/or gas.
• Meteoroid: A small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.
• Meteor: The light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star.
• Meteorite: A meteoroid that survives its passage through the Earth’s atmosphere and lands upon the Earth’s surface.

For many people, the last few days have been unbearably hot. Hopefully, that will change today.

I’ve tried to not talk about the heat, using the theory that if I don’t think about it, it isn’t real. This is similar to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “a creature so mind-bogglingly stupid that it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Therefore, the best defense against a Bugblatter Beast is to wrap a towel around your head.”

Thinking like this doesn’t always help, so I also like to think about cold things. There are fewer things colder in the history of the planet than Snowball Earth.

Snowball Earth happened more than once during the Proterozoic Eon. These global ice ages occurred 2220 Ma (million years ago),  710 Ma, and 640 Ma. After the end of the last one, life as we know it evolved and expanded into the diversity we see today.

A global ice age is not great for a planet, although after the weekend I’ve had, I could use some ice. How cold was the planet during a Snowball Earth?  The mean temperature could have been -74°F. Because the planet was mostly ice, the sun’s radiation was reflected back to space and did not warm the planet.

There are many theories about what caused Snowball Earth. One popular one is that as the landmasses joined together as one supercontinent at the equator, the tropical environment caused more weathering that reduced greenhouse gases. This caused ice to form on the polar oceans, and the cooled atmosphere increased the size of the ice sheets, eventually reaching the supercontinent. Once half the planet was covered in ice, a tipping point happened, and a Snowball Earth was born.

Lucky for the planet and its inhabitants, plate tectonics continued even with a covering of ice. Eventually, the supercontinent cracked apart, and volcanoes erupted lava and gasses. This increased the amount of sun absorbed by the planet, and the ice melted.

This cycle of heating and cooling happened at least three times during early Earth. One reason why we have a steady, livable temperature today is that the land is scattered around the earth and not bound together as a supercontinent. However, another supercontinent will happen, and depending on many factors, another snowball Earth could be in the far future.

Until then I hope the weathermen are right and cooler weather is here.