Cliches and Seam Rippers

I read a sentence the other day that completely justified my lifestyle. Having been disorganized for most of my life, I took delight in it:

"Organized people are just too lazy to look for things."

Not that I need justification. I am an adult. I have outgrown the need for other people's approval. (Until, of course, a visitor needs to use my bathroom and I find myself trying to explain my disorganized piles of organization.)

I recently bought a pewter-colored turtleneck sweater. It is soft and cozy and it matches my gray hair perfectly. But, when I put it on, the tag at the back irritated my neck. Really irritated my neck! It was sewn on with monofilament (clear, almost invisible) thread that scratched my neck even when I didn't move. After several hours of irritation (read patient, not lazy...), and waiting for, I don't know, my body heat to soften the plastic thread, I decided it was time to cut out the tag.

I recently moved. Yes, this is March and my official move-in was November, but these things take time. ANYWAY, I still have a box of Goodwill donations and a few other unpacked boxes stacked in a dark corner of my bedroom. In one of those boxes is a sewing kit left to me by my industrious, seamstress mother, from whom I did not inherit her crafty, textile gene. I offer as proof: I once stapled the hem of my son's too-long tuxedo pants for a choir performance and hot-glued another son's Dracula cape at Halloween. In a nutshell - I do not sew.

I sat for a moment, looking at the neatly stacked, unpacked boxes, wishing I had thought to label them when I moved (Hindsight is 20/20), and trying to guess which one held that rarely-used sewing kit that I know holds a little instrument meant for cutting threads and ripping out seams. Oh, yeah, it's called a seam ripper.

I moved to the other side of my bed (where the lamp is) and thought for a moment. There on the nightstand, reflecting the light, was my makeshift letter opener - a steak knife. Inspiration struck! In a most inventive spasm of ingenuity, I retrieved from my desk an inkless Rapidograph pen. This type of pen has a very fine, almost needle-like point. I put the tip of the steak knife carefully under one of the stitches and cut it and then used the pen point to pick out the rest of them all around the label. It worked! I was very proud. More proud, even, than if I had dug through all those boxes and found that silly seam ripper.

They say that "Necessity is the mother of invention", I say, "Hey, whatever works with the least amount of effort." Same thing.

But, considering the phrase I mentioned in the beginning, "Organized people are just too lazy to look for things", it begs the question: If I'm disorganized AND too lazy to look for things, what does that make me?

Well...I prefer to think of myself as creative, innovative, and an 'outside-the-box' kind of thinker!
(Yeah, well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

A New Beginning

Inspiration from my new friend, Pam, has led me to believe that I am capable of blogging. Thank heaven it is nothing like jogging, or I'd have a heart attack! I am glad isn't like logging - I don't think they make flannel shirts in my size. And I am really grateful it is nothing like clogging, or there would be unexplained seismic activity in my neighborhood!

What I hope to do here is to share some of my writing and get some feedback. Most of the things I write are about myself or my family and they are based in reality. If you are an adult over, say 30, and/or a parent, hopefully you will be able to relate to these essays and find them mildly amusing. (I made the mistake of reading a couple of them to a 25-year-old friend, and, though she was polite about it, she merely smiled and said, "That's interesting." I need to understand my demographic a little better, I guess.)

So, here goes... I hope you enjoy what I have to say...

REALITY CHECK

I always wanted to be a mother. I have tried to be a good mother.
With all three of my sons I tried to nurture in them a sense of wonder and a feeling of magic in the world around them.
I thought I was succeeding.

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My youngest son, Jared, age four, lay on my bed, his cheeks flushed with fever, his body covered with chicken pox, his lips wrapped around a freezer pop. I had struggled for three days to find ways to distract him from scratching. I had run out of ideas.

I climbed on the bed beside him and turned on the television. The Disney Channel! There was always something good showing there - something I might be able to share with him to divert his attention from his itchy, warm, little body.

Oh! "Sleeping Beauty"! The live action movie with real actors, not a cartoon with silly looking characters and anthropomorphic animals. This would be great! A story of fairies and wonder and destiny!

We watched together as the good fairies bestowed gifts on Beauty and then, as the bad, angry fairy told her parents that Beauty would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die.

We were relieved as the good fairies changed the bad fairy's curse from a death sentence to a deep sleep over the entire kingdom for one hundred years.

We heard the king order his subjects to check every room of the castle and the entire kingdom and destroy all the spinning wheels so he could protect his daughter from this fate.

Servants scurried from room to room searching for and shattering any spinning wheel they found. One such servant stepped into an empty room and looked around. Not seeing anything, he closed the door and left.

The camera slowly panned across the room. There, behind a folding screen, was a spinning wheel! The servant hadn't seen it and now Beauty might prick her finger and sleep for a hundred years!

I leaned over to Jared and said, in an awed stage whisper, "Oh, no! He didn't see that spinning wheel!"

Jared leaned over to me, eyes still on the television, and said, in the same awed whisper, "So, only the cameraman knows it's there?"

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Some children are just too based in reality to watch The Disney Channel with their mothers.