You Want to Put that Where?

Yesterday Tiffany actually had one-quarter of a weekend because she finished up her first chemistry class. One month down, three to go (don't worry, the blog will continue... under the same name too, even when she moves on to biomechanics or physics or American history or whatever's next...I mean, this is really a study of couple-dom and couple-dom is all about chemistry, right?).

Anyway. Guess what Tiffany wanted to do with that time off... organize. That's right. Nothing makes Tiffany happier than rolling up her sleeves and moving sh*t around. Well, almost nothing. I have to say, it was fun. We actually hung some pictures on the walls, which, in Tiffany's mind, means we now live in the apartment we've been occupying for five months. And we hung some Turkish lamps that my mom bought us and put little tea candles inside them. They look really pretty.

After a few minutes, though, the apartment began to look like we were moving out, which is sometimes what happens when an over-excited organizer bites off more than she can chew. We emptied out one closet and half of another, and then filled them back up with the same stuff, switched.

"You know, some things are actually okay where they are," I suggested as I reached for a box she was handing me from off a shelf.

"Huh?" she said.

"Never mind."

It was her day, after all.

"I was thinking I'd put your filing cabinets up here," she said. "When you need to get in them, you can use a stool."

"Filing cabinets" is a euphemism for the plastic Tupperware bins we bought when the filing cabinet we were sharing became too small for all the paper we're accumulating as we get older and more complicated.

"Up there?" I said. "But I file stuff in there! They need to be easier to reach, like they were on the floor in the corner."

"How often do you file stuff?" she asked.

"Twice a month!"

She burst out laughing.

"So, twice a month, climb up on a stool and file," she said.

"Okay," I said.

After a while, I left her to her bliss and went to work on notes I'd been meaning to put in the mail to people (Yes, I still mail actual mail.)

But every so often, she'd call out to me with a question from the corner of one of the closets and I'd respond without any expectation that she'd do anything other than exactly what she wanted to do.* Which is fine. Her day and all.

"I'm about to throw this Christmas wrapping paper away," she said, holding up the "Ho Ho Ho" paper we'd used three years in a row. The red and green paper barely made it around the cardboard tube anymore and hung in tattered rectangles from where I'd cut around presents.

"But we use that!" I cried.

She waited.

"Once a year," I finished.

*Tiffany's organizational skills, as I've noted on this blog before, are superb. Our apartment is much improved.