Critical Mess

Let me preface this by saying I love my mom. I wouldn't trade for her. She is one in a million. But in all honesty, she and I have some basic ideological differences. For instance, take the Great Sifting Project to remove all the oft-reviled little white rocks from my front yard, a project that took several stages and about 7 years to complete. When I had finished a sifting session, I would move the sifter back to the back yard, and put my tools away , but I never filled in the hole that marked the point between sifted and unsifted. Having a hole in my front yard that was about 18 inches deep by a couple of square yards was not a matter of concern to me. In fact, it was essential to the ongoing project, since it allowed me to pick up exactly where I left off, which might have been months or even a year ago. But every time my mom came by, she would remark on that "unsightly hole." It nearly drove her crazy. "Why don't you fill in that hole?" was a question I expected from her every time she came by. You see, my mom is a "neatnick." She is a fanatic about putting things away when you're done with them -- I mean, completely away, so there's no trace. If I was working on something and had to stop in the middle of it, I'd just leave it out, knowing that I would come back to it later. It seems to me an illogical waste of time to put everything away, only to have to get it all back out again later and set it up again so I could finish it. But not her. If you weren't actually working on something at that time, she wanted it cleaned up and put away, so that no trace remained. She is way more upset about the "piles of crud" in my office than I am, and I think she has set foot in my office maybe 4 times in the last 8 years.

Needless to say, she does not understand the concept of "critical mess." For instance, in my "Liberry," almost every square inch of six bookshelves is jammed crammed with books. They are pieced in like parquetry, with books turned sideways to squeeze into the space above the books that are wedged upright onto every shelf. They've been that way for at least a year, and are slowly but surely getting "jammed-er" and "crammed-er" every time I go surfing through the books for sale on Amazon.com. Literally for years, I've been plotting how to maximize every inch of available space in the "Liberry" - both floor space and shelf space because I've just about reached the point where solid geometry and the laws of physics will simply shut me down. I have a couple extra shelves, but the bookcase they fit cannot possibly accommodate any more books. However, I have determined that if I re-order and reorganize my general fiction section, I could squeeze two more shelves into a smaller bookcase, but the extra shelves are too wide and too deep to fit the bookcase in question. Then, last week, I took the shelves into the kitchen, got my saw horses and cut them down with my jigsaw. (I did put up the saw horses and jig saw, because I was through with them and vacuumed the kitchen floor.) That's as far as I've gotten. At some point soon, however, the "Liberry" will reach critical mess (probably when I'm trying to find a particular book and can't), and my spirit will be moved to pull out all the books and put the shelves where they need to go, and re-sort and re-shelve the books accordingly. But until then, I have more important things to think about, like, what I want to do with the box that's been on my dining room table for the past two months -- keep it or throw it away . . . . And one of these days, I'll get tired of walking around the vacuum cleaner in the "Liberry" and either finish vacuuming the living room, or just put the vacuum away. . . .