“Hey, can you get me my mom’s cheesecake recipe? Everything I have is all in boxes. I know it takes four blocks of cream cheese, but I forgot the rest.”
Small panic. Her mom’s cheesecake recipe. Her mother died a couple of years ago. She was young. Some freak thing happened, like an undiagnosed heart problem or something. Unexpected.
I have to find the recipe. I must. It’s not about the recipe, it’s now about Tori’s connection to her mother. Only I don’t know what I did with it. I write stuff down all the time. Cocktail napkins, backs of receipts (a favorite), notebooks a plenty. My brain is scanning. Where did I write that recipe. Was it a notebook? Or in my organizer? I know it was in a book of some kind... Tori asks me to find it and call her back.
I was just home from work. I had stopped by the store for groceries, and I was putting them away. Last nights dishes needed to be washed. I was starving and wanted to start dinner. I needed to wash some sheets and take out the garbage.
I look for the recipe instead. I pull out my underbed storage bins, brimming with old notebooks. I start leafing thru them. I’m flipping pages looking for words like ‘cream cheese. Sour cream. Pineapple. Old grocery lists throw me off.
I used to be a total slob. When I was a child, my mother often threatened, “no one will marry you because you’re so messy!” (that never scared me. my answer was always, “I’m not getting married.”)
Thanks to Oprah, I was introduced to a book about getting orgainized. And to my amazement, I was able to make changes. Baby steps, slowly getting my baby toes wet in the organizational field. Not overnight. Between my organizing, and my boyfriend Tanf’s neatness, my place always looks neat and organized, and the other day the unthinkable happened. I was showing my friend some colors I wanted in my living room. I pulled some paint color samples out of my organizer. She said,
“You’re so organized.”
I was astounded. Really.
I tried to explain that I wasn’t, but she just stared at me.
I don’t feel organized. I am still a slob at heart. I still like flinging stuff on the floor and leaving it there. If I didn’t have a tight assed neat freak boyfriend, my place would not be as clean as it is.
I couldn’t find the cheesecake recipe. I found a boullabaise recipe behind a grocery list. I found a recipe that a chef from a Mexican restaurant gave me for tuna. I gave up. I decide to scan the internet, do a Google search, and tell Tori that I was sorry, I couldn’t find the recipe, but here’s one that’s close…”
I could hear my brainblabber:
“Too bad you aren’t more organized. If you were organized, you’d have the recipe. You’d have put them somewhere that made sense. Like with other recipes. Might as well start now. Take that boullabaise recipe and stick it in that drawer with your cookbooks. Cookbooks. That’s where you should keep your recipes. With the cookbooks.”
Dejected, I went to the kitchen with my scribbled recipes. I opened the drawer, and thought about sticking them inside a cookbook, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to find them. I don’t have many written recipes. Not enough to put in a binder. I decide to put them in the back of the drawer, so they don’t get lost between cookbooks. They’d also have a separate space.
I pull the drawer open farther. I look. In the back, a piece of paper. There’s the cheesecake recipe, in the most logical place. Deep down, I know it was me who put it there.
I’m still not used to being organized.
Obviously.
Here’s a disorganization story that began before I started dating Tanf, I was cleaning my small, one room studio apartment. I wanted to get organized. I thought I needed to make more space, so I could put my messy stuff on the floor or on my desk away. There was a small cabinet that I never went into. It had been so long, I didn’t even know what was in it. I said to myself,
“I will throw away what is in that cabinet, and I will have that extra space to use.” I said to myself,
“I don’t remember what’s in it. That means it’s not important to me. I don’t care if I open that cabinet up and it has something of extreme sentimental value. I will curb my packrat tendencies, and I will throw it away anyway. If I don’t remember what’s in there, I won’t miss it if it’s gone…”
So I opened the mystery cabinet.
Inside:
All my cleaning products.
That’s the real me.
---------------
I just inherited a sofabed. The bed in it is queen sized. I don’t have sheets to fit. Tanf and I share a full sized bed.
A full sized bed shared by two people is less room per person than a crib. A standard crib is wider than half of a full bed. Tanf’s mom told us that.
I thought sheets on the sofabed would be good if we had guests over, or maybe even for Tanf and me, since our full size is too small for us.
I’m walking towards a discount store hoping to find cheap, cute sheets. I am in a good mood due to anticipatory shopping. I pass a guy holding a sign advertising a pizza place. I know he’s got a hard job to do, standing in hot sun all day. He’s older, and I know old people get paid less than young people as street corner sign holders. I don’t want to pass him and ignore him, as if he were less than human because he has to hold a street sign. So as I pass him, I give him a slight acknowlegement. Not a full smile, but a gracious nod. Split second, as I’m on my way.
The guy then starts meowing at me. “Meooooow…meoooow…” and he doesn’t stop. I hear it going on behind me until the sound of it fades as I walk out of earshot.
See, people who complain that people aren’t nice (take Tanf, for example, whose philosophy is, “People SUCK.”) don’t realize that it’s not that people aren’t nice. I was nice. But guess what? I got burned. I’m not going to acknowlege the next old sign holder I see. Even if I think they’ve stood there ignored for hours. I don’t want to risk someone meowing at me. I don’t want to set off a crazy. Which is what I did. That acknowlegement set off the crazyman.
It’s not that people aren’t nice. There are lots of us who are, or want to be, but just can’t. It ain’t safe.
posted by Tampons and Ramen @ 12:34 AM
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