Stuff and Fluff

I usually try and avoid posting about my husband or family members or either of my friends. The idea is that I usually post in good spirits, but something I feel is funny or harmless, such as "We saw Anne-E today. She has hair. Then we got stuck in traffic and it was such a pain" will come back to haunt me. Anne-E will reply or call me. "What do you mean it was a pain? Don't you like coming to see me? The traffic wasn't THAT bad. And what do you mean I have hair? What's wrong with my hair?" So I usually just skip it, unless it's my Mom, because she HAS to love me.

So it's understandable if I don't usually post about arguments that Steve and I have. But today I am making an exception.

Joke gifts can be funny. Sometimes, in fact, they can be VERY funny. But more often than not it leaves the person on the receiving end with something they did not want, do not need, and probably has no use for. For example, during the Yankee Swap we did this year I got the booby gift, and ended up with a giant burlap tarp, a beer holder, and something resembling a giant cheesecloth for wrapping around deer once they have been killed. The gift was funny! But I have no idea what to do with the... um... deercloth.

Regardless, when a person gets a gift from a Yankee Swap, I feel that person should take the gift home with them. One of the gifts opened this year was a bag of coal, funny, but not useful. Not for us, anyway, living in this particular century and with oil heat. And we didn't even open it, someone else did! Yet here it is, on my kitchen counter.

"Do you mind if I throw this out?" I asked Steve this morning.

Steve looked at me. "Why would you do that?" he asked.

"Well... were you going to use it for something?"

"Is it BOTHERING you?" he asked. And of course I want to say "NO," because the way he asked the question made it sound that to say "YES, YES the bag of coal is bothering me!" is to be INSANE. And to tell the truth, the bag isn't bothering me. Yet. But I hate to leave things just sitting there. And Steve can just let things sit on the counter for years until one day, when we actually NEED a bag of coal, he goes out and buys one because the one sitting in front of us has become INVISIBLE.

In the house I grew up in, things sat on the counter for AGES, or until my mother threw everything into a bag because we were having a party. And fourteen, fifteen, a hundred times a day the household would be thrown into an uproar while everyone stopped to look for something. "Where is INSERT ITEM HERE!" My Homework. The Opera Tickets. The Banjo. The Keys. The Tax Return. Who knew? Everyone had seen it there at some point. For months. It had just been SITTING there. And then I guess someone moved it. Or it got buried in jam. And while I feel that putting things away right away would have fixed things, others would argue that if you'd just leave things where they ARE, then nothing will accidentally THROWN AWAY.

My point is, clutter gets to me. But I know it irritates Steve when I keep putting the lunch meat back in the fridge when he's trying to make a sandwich.