Being Unorganized, Scatterbrained, and Generally Crazy

"You're closet dirty," Conservative Boy told me the other day, when he got into my car and saw the abundance of snacks littering the front seat (for my drives to and from grad school) and the pile of receipts that have accumulated.

"No, I am not closet dirty," I said (although my closet is a mess too, come to think of it). "I'm just busy."

That really gets him going. He hates it when I say I'm busy. Probably because that's all I say lately.

And it's not just that he hates it when I say I'm busy. It's that he hates it that I'm busy. Because I haven't had time to do much cleaning, or picking up of dirty dishes, or anything of that sort lately. And guess who's picking up the slack? (She laughs evilly at this. He's doing a terrific job, and secretly she hopes he'll keep up with all the chores even when she's not busy. Ha. Yeah right.)

Prior to this semester, our house was pretty much always clean. The bed was made almost every morning before I started work. And I cooked almost every night. Now? NOW. Let's just say: none of the above. And the kitchen table I was so good about clearing off regularly so it wasn't covered in junk? It's now littered with books and notebooks and whatever else I need on hand for homework and class planning and grading. Which, come to think of it, is also the state of the floor of my office.

It's not really as bad as it sounds. It's not like the some of the houses you drive by, where the front yards are filled with junk and overgrown and just about the most terrible sights ever. It's just that I am having to ignore the part of my brain I inherited from My Mom that says: This must be clean! This must be tidy! And so Conservative Boy, who is actually pretty darn tidy himself, even though he prefers when someone else is doing the picking up, is taking over.

That's a beautiful thing to happen when you're busy.