If anyone ever tells you I am organized, you must know that they are a liar. That does not mean that I don't love organization. Or that I don't try. Or that I have not purchased innumerable organizational tools in the hope of finding the magic bullet that will kill forever the clutter-vampires that stagger around in my wake, making life incredibly (and unnecessarily) complicated.
Take this week. I have company coming toward the end of this month. I had a writing workshop that I was hosting for a friend last Sunday. I have a group of teachers coming for dinner on the 11th, and my own writing group meeting elsewhere on the 10th. In between, I have the usual detritus of my life: my mom's Tuesday doctor's appointment, my second painful visit to the dentist, the preliminaries to collecting, printing and publishing the church's Advent devotional, my daughter's birthday..that sort of everyday stuff that goes on like the post office through rain and snow and dark of night.
Anyway. Anyone with an iota of sense would establish a to-do list, preferably arranged in sequential order, to deal with the stuff that needed to be done for each event. Instead, I decided to re-do the patio and pull out the fall decorations. Reasonable people would hire a front-end loader to attack the guest bedroom so that our guests would not have to sleep on the floor in the hall. Instead, I emptied the closet of boxes and sorted through the paper and photos and craft supplies I unearthed--donating half to a teacher I know and the non-teacherly other half to Salvation Army. I also took myself to lunch a couple days out of last week. I baked cranberry scones. And yet another plum cake. I boxed up some summer clothes. (They are sitting on the floor in my bedroom.) I bought two wrought iron obelisks at the nursery, and brought them home, only to discover they were too big for their intended pots, that flank the front porch. So I dragged the too-small pots over to the wall of the patio and dragged two other (slightly larger) pots from the patio to the porch. (I DID check that the obelisks would fit these before I did the transfer.) I was reminded of the days when I used to stack literally a ton of hay bales in the barn when Sarah had her horse. Moving heavy objects is not my forte either.
What I have not done is planned what we will do with our friends while they are here. I have not planned a menu for the meals we will serve them. I'm not sure I even have pillows for the 2nd guest bedroom--or that I will be able to shift enough clutter to enable us to open the Murphy bed there. I don't have any but the sketchiest plans for the teacher meal: soup, maybe? Salad and bread? Maybe a dessert--ah, I feel another plum cake coming on... My house is in its customary state of chaos, although I have a nice wreath on the door, that I put together this week. My entry-way is decorated with colorful autumn flowers and gourds and snazzy black cats--but I don't think any of these will be entertaining enough to make my guests overlook the lack of food or bedding. Nor will the pots-with-obelisks at the porch distract them from my failure as tour guide.
When you come right down to it, it will all get done. It will look good. It will look as if I put some thought and effort into my preparations. People will think I am organized. Like the proverbial duck, I will float calmly on the surface of my life--and will be paddling like hell underneath. Maybe I need to focus on the minutia in order to solve the macro-issues. Maybe I just need the last minute as motivation for getting things done. Then again, maybe I'm just a little nuts.
