The Boxes Which Remain

Every year, as soon as the Christmas things are put away, and we have rung in the new year, I am seized with the desire to reorganize something. Back in Berkeley, where our stuff came into the house gradually over the course of the 45 years we lived there, found a place and and stayed there until it fell apart, or the kids went away or got married and we turned their bedrooms into something else, I tended to reorganize my recipes, or my address book, or my closet. Here, where everything came at once, and is much more visible in our open plan, light house than they were in a hundred plus year old, dark Craftsman, we have reorganized the living room furniture twice. Kitchen remodel and bathroom remodels involved reorganizing, and our television room is still a work in progress.

Today it was the shelves in my end of the office which I share with OilMan. Two years ago when we moved, they looked like here I have given up on OilMan's end and never touch anything there, except to remove old coffee cups and beer bottles. My theory is that when his desktop becomes so crowded with papers, charts, puffin figurines, thank you notes, jars of pencils, bulging manilla folders, Harmony Farm Supply catalogs, old golf balls and new plumbing fixtures, two computers, a printer,  dozens of sticky notes and miles of tangled cords, he will organize it. (No luck so far.)

When I finished my side, I took a picture of it. Since it was the only picture I took today, I decided to use it. It is, after all, how I spent my day, immersed in the memories that come from looking at pictures old and new, finished and unfinished paintings, a tea set I bought for my granddaughter and kept for myself, a certificate of achievement in gaelic pronunciation and whiskey tasting from a Scottish friend, a photograph called "Alan's Cows" sent to me by blipper Hare Brain, copies of blipper Peter May's books, an old calendar of her photos sent to me by blipper Lady Findhorn, a doll likeness of me made by my friend Jan, and Waldo the doll made by me, who featured in a week's worth of pictures in March of 2014. 

It was a rather nice way to spend the day.