I've had further evidence this weekend that meaningful change might actually be possible. My husband and I took a turn spending the weekend with his extremely disabled Down syndrome sister, who has been alone since his mother died in February. Her siblings are working toward finding a suitable group home for her, but many things have to be accomplished first, so in the meantime we've been trading off caring for her.

A couple of important things I discovered:

1. My life is EASY.

2. A good night's sleep takes care of a whole lot of pain. Conversely, running on too little sleep makes every tiny annoyance seem so much worse.

3. Six straight hours of "So You Think You Can Dance," as interested as you may be in the outcome, is too many.

But the idea related to change was perhaps the simplest, yet biggest, ephiphany. I learned it because I had to fix dinner in a strange kitchen. Then, because it wasn't my kitchen and I wasn't go to be staying there, I had to be sure everything was cleaned up and put away. There's no dishwasher in that house, no hiding away of the mess, but even if there had been, I would have felt responsible to be sure no one else had to work harder because of my having been there.

So, I fixed the dinner. Then, when we were finished eating, we cleaned it up. Right then. Washed the dishes, dried and put away the big ones, wiped everything down, brought the kitchen basically back to square one.

Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this, but this is not something I've ever been good at. We get our dishes into the dishwasher at my house right after dinner about half the time (if we haven't had to gulp and go, which is often the case). Pots, pans, and other non-dishwasher-worthy items tend to pile up - along with the mail, the items everyone deems "current" (books, homework, magazines), and certain nonperishable food items like bananas that just have no other home. Before I know it, my kitchen is a disaster, and the thought of cooking in that mess goes out the door and so do we, to eat out AGAIN.

My plan is to see if Meaningful Change is likelier to happen if I commit myself to it in a public forum like this. So I'm setting a goal to get that kitchen back to square one this week and keep it there through the whole month of June. Cross your fingers for me, because I've got lots more meaningful changes waiting in the wings!