Sedimentary Stuff

My husband is looking for something at the moment; this is not unusual. He currently can’t find it, however, and that’s not unusual, either. This time, though, it is NOT my fault. It seems like I spend a great deal of my time tidying up, almost as much time as he spends looking for things. I wonder if there is any correlation? It’s a known fact that I hate clutter; I’m forever moving things to their ‘proper’ locations. Since Dana has a different sense of order than I, (the gene for which our kids have unfortunately inherited), that usually means I am organizing most of his stuff (theirs, too) … and there’s the rub; it gets me into trouble every time. For what it’s worth by the way, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks … and in this case, I am the old dog. He’s finally trained me (did it only take 40 years?) to leave his stuff alone. It’s off limits now; I don’t touch it. How is this working? Well, it’s a compromise, like many things marital. I don’t let anything of his into my little log cabin in the woods … and that way it stays organized and neat as a pin 24/7. He puts his stuff all over the Lodge, and I try to turn a blind eye. This is not a problem in most of our private spaces; we’ve worked it out. Where it does cause friction, though, is in the office and at the front desk. I’m a stickler for clean surfaces and good first impressions; Dana’s a master of ‘paper piles’, ‘stuff’ and ‘sticky notes’. We are the ‘proof of the pudding’ that opposites attract. Yesterday, out of sheer desperation, I came up with a patent-able idea, proving once again that necessity is the mother of invention. The table in the outer office (behind the front desk) unfortunately has 792 square inches of horizontal surface; and apparently it just begs for donations. Yesterday, being the beginning of our official lodging season, we were BUSY; in fact, we were straight out. All 32 rooms were rented, families were everywhere, the phone was ringing off the hook, and being a tad ‘rusty’ after the slowness of mud season, there was a bit of a learning curve for me to get back into the swing of things again. The 792 square inches of accumulations were definitely a distraction; (my blind eye had waaaaay too much vision). ‘Don’t touch his stuff, don’t touch his stuff’ became my mantra; ‘Get it out of here, Get it OUT’ argued the voice in my head. Clearly we were on the verge of war. My brilliant peacekeeping solution to the problem was too simple for words. All I did was find a pretty tablecloth! I folded it neatly and draped it over all the “stuff”. Voila! (Where’s George Carlin when you need him? ‘Just love his “Stuff” routine!). Anyway, without moving or touching a single item, everything was instantly covered … out of sight, out of mind. Overnight, however, the table, like a magnet, attracted MORE stuff, and this morning the surface of the tablecloth was covered yet again, now it was TWO layers thick! But no problem; ANOTHER cloth did the trick as well as the first. ‘The Sky’s the Limit’ might just be as far as I can go with this technique! The next time my old fossil is looking for something, it will almost be as exciting as an archaeological dig. In fact, with such layers of ‘sedimentary’ stuff, it will actually be possible to “carbon date” some of the artifacts!