Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?

I'm a veteran reader of weight-loss books. If you could get thin by reading, I would have no problems. One of my recent favorites is Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? by Peter Walsh. The premise of the book is that many of the clients that Peter Walsh, a professional organizer, works with have problems keeping many areas of their lives under control -- weight is just one of them. A cluttered home and a cluttered body are evidences of a cluttered mind, and Walsh's premise is that if you get your mind straight, both your home and your body will follow.

Great premise. And I was seriously demonstrating the obverse yesterday and today. After my husband left for a week-long business trip, I started working on an assignment for work that needed to be completed yesterday. I hadn't started it because we had had a very busy weekend (birthday party to be attended by chickadee #1, graduation party for my fabulous nephew later the same day, birthday party for my husband (who turned 40!) on Sunday, dinner out with the family, then home so hubby could pack.) And I wanted to finish this assignment bright and early because my babysitter was coming at 12:30 so I could go swimming. I had to run out to the post office with the chickadees to pick up a registered certified nastygram from MOMS Club International (an organization with which I am no longer affiliated, so I refuse to link to them or to use the "circle R" they keep telling members they must use at every mention of the sacred name. No, I'm not bitter.) At any rate, when I arrived home, chickadee #2 was acting like the 2 year old she is and insisting that I give her my keys. I kept them away from her and continued working. When the babysitter arrived two hours later, I grabbed my keys.... No, wait -- my keys were not in their spot. I started looking. Couldn't find them. Couldn't find them. COULDN'T FIND THEM!!!

The babysitter stayed with the chickadees and I was able to finish my report, so at first, I chalked up the key disappearence to my higher power telling me that I should stay home and do my work. Later, though, my higher power and I had some serious disagreements because I STILL COULDN'T FIND MY KEYS. Car keys, house keys, access cards for the pool, teeny flashlight. A huge bundle.

We tore the house apart (and I live in a very small house). No keys. Desperation set in. I pictured being stuck in the house until Friday, when my husband returned with the extra set of keys. We had no groceries. We needed other things. The children need excursions to keep me sane. We all went to sleep last night with a very unhappy mommy and children who added helpful things like "I saw your keys in the bag of crayons." and "I hide them under the table."

Anyway, we woke up this morning and started looking again. I decided that the best thing to do would be a grid search, like they have on nifty police procedurals like Law and Order: SVU. I wrote up a list of all possible places to look, room by room -- as in, Living Room: couch, under, beside, behind. Shelves in LR --1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ... Dining room, corner table, on, beside, behind, inside... and then went through the places that had not already been searched bit by bit. Luckily, I started in the kitchen. And I found my keys, in a teacup in "Corner Cabinet, Shelf 2." I wish I'd followed my desire last night to have a nice soothing cup of tea.

A friend of mine told me last month (when I misplaced my pool access cards for three days and prayed fervently to St. Anthony for aid) that St. Anthony obviously wanted me to find not only the access cards but also something else, and I needed to figure out what that was. I thought to myself, and maybe even said, "Yeah, he wants me to find my sanity." Well, I guess the lesson was not learned, so the patron saint of the lost needed to give me a refresher. Lesson learned, dear St. Anthony. The first thing I did this morning was to order a remote control key finder from e-bay.