Digging through the messes

So now that we have more or less organized Greg's "office"--aka our bedroom--I'm all keen to reorganise my desk. My desk is this really wide combination of desk and massive square book case with 16 square shelves (4x4). The bookcase makes up one side of the desk so I can sit at the desk and reach into my little cubby-holes and pull out my laptop or my sewing machine or my notes--whatever I feel like working on. Very efficient.

For a long time I've been dying to have a proper sewing desk-- or just a desk that isn't covered with papers and books and computer software. Having a laptop instead of a desktop has actually made it possible for me to close up the computer and put it far from temptation so I can actually get some work done on my four million projects.

However, I discovered we have a serious paper infestation. My desk has been the house dumping ground since we moved in here. Home for scrap paper, burned cds and recorded cassettes with various kinds of Orthodox music that people just keep giving us for some reason, boxes of card stock, mail that isn't ours, boxes for software and hardware that belong to computers we no longer have, burned copies of Windows 97 (we own Macs now), pens that died years ago, mini screw drivers probably designed for putting together model cars or something, old cell phones, old cards we can't bring ourselves to throw out, and pretty much anything else kicking about that didn't have an obvious home.

I like the idea of double duty furniture--if it truly is efficiently double duty furniture. But quadruple, quintuple and whatever it is for six-fold (sounds like something dirty) is never efficient and that's what my desk has been from the second we set it up. Which means I never get anything done because it would be hazardous to my health to even try to dig out my sewing from the nest of God-knows-what that's taken up residence there.

It's a difficult, often dangerous, thing to go weeding through one's accumulated messes. Even after considering carefully how to organise things once you've got all the wheat separated from the chaff, you still have the daunting task of physically moving things out of the way and picking what qualifies as wheat. And you have no idea how stable the foundations are or if things will actually fit where you've planned to put them. For example, halfway through turning the wall shelf above my desk into the "media area" I discover that the brackets were screwed very tightly to the wall, the shelf, however was not screwed to the brackets. The whole shelf-- including all the massive piles and boxes of cds came crashing down on my head. If my computer wasn't shut it would have been broken. And luckily I hadn't put the cd player up there yet so all that was hurt was a few cd cases. But it could have been a very expensive disaster.

Yesterday I had a bad pregnant day combined with a bad marriage day. Greg and I have been really busy the last few weeks. We've had parties and visitors and every evening and weekend has been taken up with having friends just pop round to hang out, or some helpful service Greg has offered to people, or church, or Greg's music projects he's been working on for months now. Yesterday was no exception. After a week of feeling stuck at home all day without grownups and then stuck at home all evening while Greg was preoccupied with some obligation or other, I found that his weekend was committed to going out mountain biking with the youth group. ALL WEEKEND. He was exploring the trails with the leaders on Saturday until Vespers and biking all afternoon on Sunday. Which means I get to spend my weekend like I spent my week. Handling our toddler by myself and trying to keep the houseowrk under control. No day off for me.

His phone was off, it was dark. I was already fuming because I felt like a single mom or a housemaid all week and it was past six and I still didn't know when he'd be home for dinner. When I discovered he'd stopped to have hot chocolate with friends on the way home and hadn't even bothered to ring and inform me he'd be late I just flipped out.

A week's worth of frustration, annoyance, and lack of communication is a lot like a pile of accumulated junk on one's desk. The longer it sits there, the less you get done, the more things accumulate and become not only useless but slightly dangerous to start digging through. You never know when something might come sliding down on you and cause lot of damage. But then if you don't clean it out, you stop using the space altogether and (ahem) start thinking about OTHER places you might be able to do stuff--which seems to be a pattern developing around here. People looking for other places to get satisfaction out of their lives-- if you get me.

A friend, who recently has had some serious marriage problems, dropped by just when I was getting the phone call from the youth leader to explain where they were. He got the full brunt of my pregnant-lady irrational fury after I hung up the phone and asked, quite seriously, how Greg and I solve these problems. I really didn't know to be honest. Every marriage has its dumping ground that accumulates stuff you'll regret not finding a place for I guess. And you chuck things there out of habit-- even if you know, you've been told a million times, that your spouse hates it. Take the dryer-- I NEVER remember to clean the lint trap and it drives Greg nuts. So we have a wee argument and I say "Yeah, yeah, I'll do it" then after a couple of hits, I start missing again until next time he complains about the ball of lint.

Eventually you change your habits, or you develop a way of communicating about it that doesn't lead to a fight. For instance-- I get a ball of lint in the face now and then when I 've forgotten to clean it too many times. He's teasing me and bugging me and at the same time reinforcing the message that I need to bloody remember to clean the damn lint trap. We keep a sense of humor and move on.

We haven't yet developed a mode of communication for the "forgetting-to-inform-wifey-when -I'm- running-late" issue or the "I'm-too-busy-with-other-people-to-give-you-a-break" issue, so I just end up with smoke coming out of my nostrils when I've had enough. I blow up and he feels persecuted (naturally) so it ends in a big yelling match and the shelves some crashing down (not literally).

Luckily, it actually didn't end that way because I didn't have to tell him personally how mad I was. I told our friend the youth leader that I was mad and to pass on the bloody message. I don't think Greg actually understood what I was so pissed off about exactly, but he knew he was in trouble and that I needed to be placated because he turned up with flowers-- really pretty pink potted cyclamens, and he was instantly forgiven. We later had a wee chat about it but no one was feeling furious or persecuted so it worked out rather well.

What do you do when you don't have a handy (also married) youth leader to relay the message though? I dunno. But I think that one thing is sure: if you're married, you really need to be part of a community of other married couples that you can confide in, roll your eyes with, or occasionally reorganise the shelves with. They're less likely to come crashing down if you've got a few more pairs of hands to hold up the wobbly ends with. And sometimes you can swap ideas on communicating with those aliens we're married to.