I like to start the new calendar year with my life in order. I like to, but it has never happened yet. However, this year, with the indefatigable help of my good friend, Vicki, I did a two day cleaning frenzy of my church office. Yes, folks, the skyscraper piles of dust, the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the disordered bookcases and desk top are now, momentarily at least, a thing of the past.
This morning, after a leisurely breakfast and getting myself geared up to go out to the garden on this gorgeous day and do some preparation for the early spring vegetable plantings, I thought, “perhaps I should give the cabinet where I keep the plastic containers a quick re-ordering.”
Right. Fantasies abound on this last day but one of 2011.
Containers with no lids, lids with no matching containers–soon my kitchen floor was covered with such things. It was time for radical action: Any item that could not me matched, container and lid, was headed out the door. Soon, a bag was full.
Where do they all go? All those unmatched pieces reminded me of the hours I spent when my three sons were young trying to match their socks. I’d watch the pile of unmatched socks, gathered from week to week, growing larger until periodically I’d give up and cut them up for cleaning rags.
And where do all my pens go? I buy nice ones that write smoothly, generously offering ink to paper, but the only ones I can ever find are those awful throw-away ones that drag reluctantly across a piece of paper, as if hoarding their ink supply against a future famine.
Will this mystery ever be solved?
It is a nice day of small complaints. The sunshine calls. I’m heading out the door.
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