HOW MUCH CLUTTER SHOULD A PERSON STAND?

For years I have been chucking papers in boxes next to the computer. Things like stories that had been work shopped and need to be fixed. Copies of church talks I'd run off and fully intended to read--I fully intended to study them, actually--and have great life-changing epiphanies. There were even grocery ads in there. Recipes. Post-it notes. Photos. Pictures I wanted to watercolor--an especially nice one of Michael's. All kinds of stuff was there. You name it, it was probably there.

Three weeks ago Phil took all these boxes upstairs and said, "Here!" His unspoken message was, "Get rid of this junk or I will be insane along with you." Two insane people are too much for one house so I started. and then I restarted. Then I became overwhelmed and I ran away. Then I came back because I am fond of sleeping on a bed instead of the lawn swings. And then I got down to business. And now the living room looks like this. That doesn't look too bad unless you live here. Even when I have only one working eye--you'd think I could only see half of it--but no, even a one eyed person can tell this is really bad. I am still overwhelmed.

The mess wasn't bad enough so...I decided to do something about pee-pee doggies odor. I scattered three cups of baking soda on the floors. Three cups in the family room and three cups in the living room. Have you ever scattered three cups of baking soda in a room? It goes everywhere. Every surface is covered, even though I was careful. If people had shoes out--coughElizabethandmecough--their shoes got covered. It looks like no one has dusted in three years and I make a point of dusting every year or so, honest I do.

So, tonight I made the youngest shoe-offender vacuum and now I am ignoring the piles in the living room and I am going to check things with the black light and use some kind of miracle liquid that guarantees to work on stains and odors. There are no stains, because years ago we picked a carpet color that looks like dirt. Or maybe it looked like something else way back when and now it looks like dirt. But...there are odors. And I intend to sleuth them out.

And I should clean up this clutter too but I just can't do it yet. It shows me that people love me and brought me cards and goodies on my birthday. Some even sang to me. I think this is nice clutter.

I have only two thank-you notes written.

Humm...maybe I should write thank you notes and leave the black light business until later. What do you think? Cleaning or thank you notes?

THE SPAGHETTI WAR

Elizabeth and Jason were here for lasagna tonight. She and Phil reminisced about the pasta dinners of years gone by.

"Remember the spaghetti war?" one of them said. Then they went on to revel in the glories of a bunch of family members disobeying--the father of the group the biggest disobeyer of them all.

I think I remember how it started. Dinner was over. We were sitting at the table talking and one of the kids was playing in the leftover spaghetti with a fork. I never could figure out how much spaghetti to cook--still can't--and so there was half a serving bowl left. One of the kids asked how you tell if spaghetti noodles were cooked long enough.

"Well, supposedly, if you throw a strand of spaghetti on the ceiling, and it sticks, it's done."

Oh, oh, I thought. I hope no one picks up on that.

It was too late. Strands of spaghetti whanged toward the ceiling like lava steams, escaping from violently erupting volcanoes.

"All right, all right," I said. "Enough of that. Calm down."

Phil looked at me and I could see all his intelligence leaking out his ears. A primeval man hunkered down, his gnarly hand posed over the bowl holding the pasta. Two hoary fingers reached in, plucked a strand of spaghetti and before my very eyes the beast flung a noodle in my direction. I ducked and tried once again.

"All right, now...."

That's as far as I got. Spaghetti flew in my direction from the hunkered beast's offspring. Whap. Whap. Whap-whap-whap.

I fled. A lone woman with common sense and dignity. I looked around the corner to see total anarchy reigning. A Dad with spaghetti hanging from his ears. Children with spaghetti in their hair. Spaghetti hanging from the light fixture. Spaghetti on the paintings, on the wall, on the clock. Spaghetti everywhere. Laughter, insane laughter filled the air.

"There she is," someone said. Spaghetti whinged in my direction from all directions. Whap, whap, whap. I fled to the bathroom to pick spaghetti off my face. I sat on the step, out of sight and out of range. Occasionally I'd offer advice:

"Okay, play time is over."

I was answered with nothing but maniacal laughter.

"You are going to have to clean all that up!"

"We will," they all chorused, including Phil.

The war went on for a long, long time. When the bowl was empty they plucked used pasta off each other and threw it again. When the used pasta started to disintegrate they rolled it into pasta balls and threw those. They only quit because everyone was too tired to throw another strand. I poked my head around the door again. They somehow revived and magically found more spaghetti and it all came whining my way. I ducked back out of sight.

Finally the Neanderthal haze cleared from Phil's eyes and he became a dad.

"Okay, kids. Let's clean up."

"Aaw, Dad."

"No, I mean it. Let's clean up. Put all the pasta in the bowl."

When about half of the mess was cleaned up the beast clutched the bowl to his chest. "Suckers," he said. He grabbed a handful of ragged pasta and threw it in every direction.

Screams of delight sounded in the kitchen, drowning out the groans of the sensible person sitting on the steps.

"They are insane," I said to myself. "It comes from Phil's side. It will take generations to breed the insanity out."

When they finally called it quits the kitchen looked like a mad elf had decorated for Christmas. And to give everyone credit, they did clean up. Kind of. We plucked petrified spaghetti off various parts of the kitchen for what seemed like years.

Which, one day was the catalyst for the, "Let's see what else will stick to the ceiling" science project that my GROWN UP BOYS participated in, but that's a story for another day.