Last week, the company I work for did a MAJOR email ‘upgrade’. Now, when you hear someone say ‘upgrade’, I’m sure, in your mind (because this is how it was in mine), you were giddy with excitement! No? Okay … me neither. 😉

However, I was told not to expect any major differences. Everything would be down for one day and on day two, I’d be good to go with just a couple migration steps that would be easy-peasy.

Okay … they may not have used those words exactly, but that’s how I read it. I wanted it to be seamless. I wanted to have no problems and believe the IT guys would have it all worked out.

So I returned to my laptop Tuesday morning and … well … Murphy’s Law hit *moi* (that’s me for those of you who only swear in French 😉 ). Yep. 365+ days of email … not showing up anywhere. (Talk about swearing in French at that point – I had to cover my cat’s ears!). But … after 4 long days, I had most everything returned to me and back in place.

Back in place? Isn’t email just ‘there’ … how is it ‘back in place’?

Let’s just say, when it comes to email, I’m pretty anal retentive about my organization. I file … everything. Like my life is organized … I don’t have a messy desk, and I don’t have messy emails.

In fact … right now I have exactly 4 emails in my work inbox and 11 in my Aimee Laine email box. If it’s in my inbox it means I have to DO something with it. It works as my todo list.

And for 4 straight days my life ‘got flipped, turned upside down’ as the Fresh Prince sang so long ago. (Though no one plucked me from my messy house and dropped me in Beverly Hills to live with someone else and have a butler and … oops … I think I got sidetracked.

Um … so where did these 4 days land me? Like a pregnant, nesting Mom-to-be … I had the organizing bug.

By Saturday, I had moved furniture in my house. I threw away my mish-mash of fake Tupperware in favor of a brand new set with (*egad*) with matching tops! (Can you imagine??) I cleaned out my utensils drawer and my junk drawer (you know, the drawer that’s SUPPOSED to be messy?

By Tuesday, I’d convinced my husband I needed to move my ‘office’ from our bedroom into his office. (Yes, that meant we’d have to share space.) That required a full clean out of his office and the removal of a LOT of his ‘stuff’ so that by Thursday, we had a dozen extra bags of recyclables out at the street.

That led (see the domino effect?) to the need to redo my blog a little bit.

You see, I started blogging in 2005 when I started my photography business. I shared … well … photographs. Yup. That’s pretty much it. Fast forward to 2009 and I started writing and started blogging about nothing but writing. But who only wants to read about that? Not even me!

In another place I was blogging about my kids and the antics they put me through but the only readers were Grandma and Grandpa because I never made it public.

Now, with a published book, a full-time job, a part-time job, a teenage boy in high school, twin 7 y.o. girls, a husband who I share an office with and a solid black cat who cannot be in a room by herself, I realized something…

I have SO much potential blog post fodder! Shoot, someone (and I have to apologize that I don’t even know WHO) gave me the “Versatile Blogger” award in 2010(!) and I’m not sure I even blogged about it! Boooooooo on me.

See? There’s no way I can limit sharing my craziness just to my other crazy family members. Sure … they’ll get most of what goes on because they know me and my party of 5. But one of the biggest things I love about blogs is that I can read about people that I like. I love hearing that my life is even 1% similar to theirs. That their struggles, their foibles, their laughable moments are normal just like mine.

So that’s where I am today. Having a lot of fun in life and wanting to share what I’ve learned and experienced with you. If you laugh … wonderful! If you commiserate … thank you. If you smile … I’ll smile with you.

Welcome to the ‘new’ Aimee Laine blog. I hope you enjoy.

Had any epiphanies lately? Share in the comments!

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Coming December 1, 2011!