Monday, October 1, 2012

Fighting Tooth and Mail

"Mark, did you bring in the mail today?"
"It's on the dining room table." I hear him call from the bedroom.
I take a look over at the dining room table, and it is obvious that we have a problem. Every day Mark leaves his mail on the table. I, being the more organized person, grab mine and take it to my office. I open it, sort it, throw out the junk, and I am then ready for the next day's mail. Not Mark. He leaves his on the table. Each day the mail comes into the house, and each day Mark throws it on the table. He doesn't open it, he doesn't throw out the junk mail, he doesn't seem to care. Last night I had to make a little valley between the piles of mail, circulars, and newspapers just so we could eat dinner. Looking at this mess reminded me of my grandparents. In their dining room, on their table, was an immense pile of documents and mail. You didn't dare touch any of it or they would go nuts. It seems that grandpa and grandma had a clever filing method, and they knew where everything on that table was. Move one thing and you screwed it all up. Looking at our table, and thinking about my grandparents reminded me of another thing. My grandfather used to keep his teeth on the dining room sideboard in a jar. No, not his false teeth, he didn't have false teeth. His real teeth. He kept each and every tooth that had ever fallen out of his head, in a jar on the sideboard. The fact that he chewed tobacco all his life meant that there were a lot of old, brown teeth in that jar. Knowing that Mark has some of the traits of my grandparents including the clutter and hoarding thing, kind of makes me afraid to look in those containers that Mark has up in the china cabinet.

7 comments:

  1. Is that a 10 pound sack o' potatoes on your dining room table in the back ground?

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  2. Oh Lord - we have a similar problem Of course I am the organized one. I just put everything in a basket and after 3 months, if AP hasn't asked for any of it, I throw it away. So far that's worked.

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  3. Kim, I've tried a version of that. Usually just after I throw something out, Mark comes looking for it.

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  4. What are you guys planning to do with 10 pounds of Pecans..make Pecan Pies?

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  5. Hope so and send them to all Alan's blog fans!! Yummy!!!

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  6. OMG! I remember Grammas table...It is a family trait! God help me!

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