I used to pride myself on being a fairly organized individual. (Okay, let us all pause for a moment to give my mother time to stop laughing.) Seriously though, I might have had things in piles, but they were organized piles, and I could always find exactly what I needed within just a moment or two of needing it. I still love the concept of purchasing random plastic tubs, bins, buckets, or drawers to throw a bit more organization into my life. What I apparently keep forgetting is that it's not just me anymore.
When Pig and I first got together, we managed fairly well to maintain my level of organization. By this, I mean that I kept my stuff in an order I understood, I organized anything that we both had to use, and Pig kept throwing his stuff all together in a manner that would probably spawn its own type of chaos theory. I love the man dearly, but I have absolutely no idea how he ever manages to find anything.
Three days shy of our first wedding anniversary, we brought into this world the first of three kidlets who all inherited their father's organizational genes. From those first few, sleep-deprived, post-partum depressed days, I was doomed. Organization as I knew and loved it went the way of the dodo bird.
When Horse was old enough, I had this crazy thought that I could teach her how to keep her arts and crafts supplies neat. I was pregnant with Rooster and really not up to the task of maintaining neatness all by myself anymore. Horse was therefore assigned the cabinet under our television as a safe place to store her crayons, markers, glue, scissors, and the like. I installed a magnetic lock so that when the soon-to-be born Rooster was old enough to try and steal Horse's things, they would be protected. Little did I know that I was actually protecting a newly formed black hole.
Every year, both at back-to-school sales and Christmas, Horse is given a new pencil sharpener. She hasn't been able to find or use one yet. She owns approximately one hundred pencils, of which she can locate half of one chewed stub. Scissors are commonly lost, and are only able to be found by a kidlet young enough to not understand the damage they can do to someone's hair. Markers mysteriously lose their caps and dry out, crayons magically break into tiny pieces, and stickers hurl themselves at the underneath of the shelving in an attempt to not get sucked down by the swirling vortex that must exist as soon as that cabinet door is closed. Coloring books have disappeared only to surface months later when Horse is actually looking for a glue stick. Bottles of glue have the white stuff inside them disappear into nothingness, leaving behind a row of empty bottles that peer out at us forlornly. Anything that is placed into that cabinet is forever altered or disappears in a manner that would impress even the Bermuda Triangle.
As we draw to the close of yet another school year, I harbor the same frantic hope that I do every year. Will this be the year that the chaos under our television will be tamed? Will Horse actually be able to keep things from disappearing? And is it really necessary to go out and buy yet another pencil sharpener with just six school days left? I am sure that her first task of the summer will be to organize that mess in the hopes that all of her supplies will resurface.
Ultimately, my hope is that our house will sell, we will buy another one, and the very act of moving to a different location will close the astral rift that clearly must exist under our television set. I vaguely wonder whether our own personal Bermuda Triangle is something we need to disclose to potential buyers. In the meantime, I'm going to hold off on giving Rooster or Pig Jr. their own special space to store arts and crafts supplies. One black hole in our house is enough for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment