Who are you??

There are people in the world who have it all together.   You can recognize them by their matching socks, manicured nails, and groomed hair.    I am not one of these people.    I am more a  person of the let the loose ends drag variety.   I have lots of loose ends.   If you are wondering which type person you are, see if you identify with any of my quirks.

PURSES:   I’ve had a variety of purses over the years.  I’ve tried tiny purses in the hope that I’d be forced to be organized by having only the essential in my purse.     But who is to say that a box of crayons and a photo of my daughter at Halloween aren’t important?   Small purses usually end up bulging, the zippers break from the strain.   I’ve tried huge purses figuring I’d be one of those  classy people who have Bandaids and pens just when someone needs them.   When someone asks for something  from my purse it’s really more of a treasure hunt.  I’m more likely to find a spare part to my computer than my driver’s license.    I’ve lost several debit cards, replaced them, and then found them in the bottom of my purse.    

MAKEUP:   I do in fact own makeup.  I just don’t bother most of the time.  When I do the full thing that most women do every day, people notice, I think they are in shock.   I haven’t quite got the wear the makeup all day and come home with no smudges thing down.    Mascara is likely to be found off my eyelashes.  

CAR:   I really like my car.   Very fun, zippy, nice heated seats.   It also has leftover french fries smashed in the carpet and typically four different coffee (decaf only) cups.  Its fun to try to figure out where to put your newest drink.     I try to drink every drop of my coffee so next time I can put the mug on the floor without having coffee join the french fries.  

MAILBOX:  I frequently forget to check the mail.   My husband is in charge of all the cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry and the majority of the child care.   You’d think I could successfully handle my one job and check the mail every day.   I think its good for the mailman.   He has a fun game every day wondering where to put excess mail.   Its like Tetris.    This was less of a problem at the old house where we had a full size mail box.   Now, we are in one of those tiny neighborhood boxes. 

SOCKS:    Did I mention I really like socks.   I like striped socks and long socks and short socks.  I like good technical socks for running.  I like fuzzy socks for Saturdays.  When Bobbi came to do a photo shoot for the blog, I figured we should show off some socks.   She failed to mention I had a hole.  I naturally didn’t notice.   Sigh.  

To be really honest, I don’t completely understand the have it all together crowd. I wonder if they are hiding something like holes in their socks.  Probably not.   

So who are you?

Clean Closets

I don’t mind cleaning.  In fact, when I’m mad, srubbing floors is a great tension reliever.   I have a theory that when our house gets too messy that my husband picks a fight so I’ll get motivated to scrub.

However, I don’t like cleaning out closets.   I think if something goes into a closet it should stay there.   I am also vaguely distrustful of people who get too close to my closets.   Some very loving people have offered to help me clean my sewing room closet.  I don’t want help.  Some very loving people in my past have actually coerced me into cleaning my closets.   I didn’t like it.   I don’t enjoy having to explain exactly why I have gum wrappers or mismatched socks at the bottom of my closet.   I don’t know how they got there.   I just accept them as facts in my life and adjust my life around the gum wrappers.  This works out pretty well if you are talking about closets.   Its ideal if you are trying to get along with someone else’s quirks.   It does not help one little bit when I have something I should be facing that I’d rather ignore.

One summer I got home from kids camp and discovered that I had an intruder in my bedroom who had thrown out belongings I was storing in my closet.   Now I couldn’t then actually come up with a single item that was gone but there had to be legions missing because the doors shut.

My sister tells a story about cleaning out a closet in Niger, Africa.   She was working in a school there that had a supply closet that only had one thing being stored.   Well.   More accurately it had millions of one thing.  Termites.   Nasty little buggers.  Made the whole closet useless.

I think people sometimes wish that God would deal with them in the summer camp method.   Make me better without requiring any effort on my part.

Today I wore a dress to work that no one had ever seen.  It wasn’t actually new.   It just had been hiding behind gum wrappers.  The trick now is going to be keeping the sweaters neatly folded and watching vigilantly that no stray socks sneak onto the floor.  I wonder what my life would be like if I was as diligent about keeping track of gossip or bitterness or whatever else tends to stack up.  I wonder what it will take to motivate me to scrub.