The other night I was home straightening up. Trying to find places for things that haven’t had a place. Working away diligently. Combining my on-and-off affection for organization with this thing I have for creativity—filling a vintage Ball jar with buttons; concocting a storage space out of an old, aqua-lined file drawer; finally moving the pile of Christmas wrappings back into the attic.
I was making good progress.
By the way, it might have been a Friday night. And R-kids might have been off at their dad’s house, so I was home alone.
Is that depressing? Or refreshing? I can’t tell anymore. Anyway, before you answer, add this to the mix:
My momentum eventually fizzled. Not because I was done. Just because I, for some reason, decided that storing my rubber bands in the Ziploc bag they were in was too…average. Something was…missing.
So I started making a rubber-band ball.
And, like the game of WordWarp, I soon discovered: Once you start, you can’t stop.
That was the end of my organizing that night. If you could see a few specific parts of my house, you might feel more disappointed by that.
As for me, I’m trying to figure out… Was making the rubber-band ball the real thing? Or was it an annoying distraction that kept me from the real thing?
And where do rubber-band balls fit into the scheme of my life?
(For now, it’s fitting very nicely on my work bench, I must say.)
I can tell you what R-girl’s response was when she saw the ball: “You do all kinds of things that we didn’t know about. You snuggle with a teddy bear in bed (this is true, but only sometimes), you buy fun things, you make rubber band balls…”
Well, R-girl, I do have lots of hours when you’re not around.
I think the rubber-band ball might possibly be why my house is not all tidied up. Possibly I might be a little too easily distracted by things like organizing the junk drawer—so I never actually get to the disastrous kitchen.
Ah, well. At least this time I ended up with a bouncy ball of color to show for it all.
Here’s to whatever culprit you can blame your own mess on. And here’s to sometimes actually getting the mess clean anyway.
Oh. And here’s to being a total nerd on a Friday night, and finding a rubber-band ball relaxing. Once in a while.
by julie rybarczyk
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