is anyone out there???

I'm just saying...

I'm a nag. I know, it's not like I'm bragging or anything. I'm just trying to face the facts. And if my husband says that saying something more than once is nagging, well that makes me a nag.

But is that really such a bad thing? Why does that always have to carry such a negative connotation? I like to remind people of things. It's what I'm good at.

For example: every day for the past 10 years I've told my kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher. And today as I was unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher I found someone had added a dirty breakfast dish this morning. How can I be annoyed to find dirty dishes mixed in with the clean when my family is only doing what I have trained them to do? I can't, but it does show that nagging is effective. And it doesn't really matter that I couldn't find the dirty spoon so I went ahead and put all the silverware away anyway. If I couldn't tell it was dirty, chances are my children won't notice either.

Okay so back to nagging. I'm trying to be less of a nag. I will never be able to give up my nag status, but I'm trying to improve. However, I've found that telling someone to do something in a nice, round-about, "less nagging" way doesn't usually work.

For example: sometimes the drum set is left upstairs in the living room. Which I might add right now, is NOT where it belongs. So trying to do better I say, "Gee, I sure am getting tired of looking at the drum set in the living room." What I'm really saying is TAKE THAT DRUM SET DOWNSTAIRS NOW! But since I didn't actually say that, what happened? My son merely rearranged the drum set. Not exactly what I was going for.

So it all comes back to this. I'm a nag. It's what I'm good at. If you don't like it, too bad. Or just do it the first time I ask and we'll all be happy.