Raising the Roof

Writers are by nature introverts, or so I’ve found. I’m no exception. Of course there are the obligatory Christmas and office parties, now occurring with alarming regularity, and dinners with other couples. I'm always up for lunch with a friend or pretty much any outing involving food or drink, especially food. Especially desserts, actually. The Internet expands around me – the tweets and friendings, the blogs and links and likes. Bridges.

But there are limits. Our leaky roof was replaced today, which involved a small army of men in heavy boots clomping around overhead and tossing stacks of tiles that rocked the ceiling. They yelled and nail-gunned and thudded. Lights flashed and flickered. Two gaping holes where skylights belonged left the house freezing and dappled with leaves and dirt, random roofing parts, and eventually faces peering down through the replacement glass. It was like a camping trip gone very wrong.  Oliver the cat flew under a desk, where he sat, clinging to the heater vent until they left, and when I’d had enough, I flew off too, to the closest coffee shop to read, reveling in the solitude and heat – and desserts.

The World As I Knew It - On Being Organized

Today is my husband’s birthday – a date he shares with Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas, which is interesting for me, but maybe a little depressing to actually have that birthday. Anyway, I stuck his present, a book (of course it was a book) out of the way so he wouldn’t stumble across it while I was gone for the weekend. I tucked it under a tiny stack of clothes on a chair, but things being what they are, the tiny stack turned into a huge pile and I couldn’t remember where I put the thing. Finally I found it out of sheer randomness and process of elimination, but the experience reminded me once again that I really have to become an organized person.

I have never actually been organized. I have tried from time to time. I set my watch ahead so I can trick myself into being prompt, which worked fairly well at first, but now I subconsciously calculate my added minutes and still manage to not be places on time. I have a Garmin with a calming voice to direct me to unfamiliar locations, and I am even a little obsessive about writing things in the day planner my daughter gave me. I don’t actually do most of the things I write optimistically on the designated lines, but the items are checked or, often, not checked or arrowed or half checked so I can keep track of my organizational strides or shortcomings.

My Sylvia Plath’s birthday husband once told me in a tirade that it wasn’t fair at all that despite his extreme precision and attention to detail and my totally half-assed, B-Type personality traits we both managed to accomplish things in more or less the same amount of time. Nonetheless, with deadlines to meet, tweets to tweet and all the other parts of life to deal with – the pile of clothes covering the birthday present, for one– I am working hard on becoming organized. Any thoughts are welcome!

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