One of the most mind-numbing aspects of keeping up with little people, whose energy and creativity seem limitless, most especially in comparison with my own, is the setting things to rights by insisting on believing that everything has its proper place, and should, ideally, stay there.
Far more minute - and thus more irritating and camel-back-straw-breaking than the endless repertoire of dishes, dusters, and laundry - is the unending courier duty of patrolling the hallways, counters, couches, tables, and tupperware drawers to ensure that used tissues, clean laundry, dirty laundry, foodstuffs, hairbrushes, papers, utensils, and the like didn't get misplaced by little hands. Jane and Ella are fond of picking things up and just following me around the house, distributing random items in their wake, quite apart from their intentional foraging expeditions, where they hide the magnets under the bathroom sink, because they are making popcorn. As if in space, objects drift casually through the house, coming to rest peacefully in the odd nook or cranny.
There seem to be two possible destinations for these unfixed objects: in full view, which is annoying to me because it gives the appearance of clutter and makes me feel, no matter how much time I spend running around putting things away, that my house is falling apart and I just put that away three times already this morning and what's the use of it all, or out of sight, which is only slightly more dire, because it may turn out to be something that we may require before we happen to discover its resting place. Asking Jane where she put the nasal aspirator is decidedly unproductive.
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4 comments:
Indeed and oh yes. Lately I've been through the just-leave-it-all-out phase, which works but eventually becomes intolerable, and am now going through a you-WILL-pick-up-that-mess-you-just-made phase, which is not much fun. I do hope they will eventually outgrow the joy of just putting stuff in random places.
I finally found my second bread pan in the back of the towel drawer.
I still haven't found the flashlight.
doesn't this make you appreciate your mother? because you know little girls are little girls are little girls and this behavior has been going on since Eve had her first little girl :)
geni
Amen! Just when Ben finally quit hiding things where I couldn't find them, Kyri took it up. She loves it even more than he did. Her sense of organization is very defined and yet completely unlike mine. Just like I never understood my mother's ideas of where things belonged.-rlr
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