I'll bare my soul, but don't lay a hand on my stuff!

I took the required biology classes in high school and college. (And passed--whew!) I've attended the marriage relations class at church. I've even studied an anatomy book or two in my time. (Who knew the spleen was so interesting?) Those sources--informative though they were--only skimmed the surface of the true difference between men and women. Because the truth is not merely that we are physically different, or that men have the incredible ability to have nothing going on in their crania for hours at a time. (Which baffles me. I mean, Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." So most men are imaginary, apparently. That would explain my dating record in college.) The real difference, my friends, lies in our dissimilar acceptance of junk piles.

Admit it, women--you have one. It's the stuff on the convenient horizontal surface which gets shuffled, stashed, sorted, and shifted, but which never quite goes away. Unless the in-laws,the Relief Society president , or other such worthies are visiting, of course. The items may change, but the pile remains. Permanently. Indelibly. Ineradicably. A monument to life's endless tasks and the stuff that accompanies them.

But, see, that's the key to how women are different from men. Women--and I'm basing this rant on the fact that I am, in fact, a woman, as are my sisters, mother, and quite a few of my friends, and we all act similarly--have ONE pile (large and unwieldy though it may be). Men--my husband, father, brother, husbands of friends, this is a scientific sampling!--have multiple mini-piles, just as permanent and ineradicable, in lots of places throughout, and sometimes outside, the residence. There's the mail pile, which becomes the papers-to-sort-through pile. There's the bottom-of-the-stairs-to-take-upstairs-when-I'm-going-that-way pile. There's its mirror-image twin at the top of the stairs. There may be others, depending on available flat horizontal surfaces and wifely tolerance. The items in the piles may vary by season or work load, but the piles remain. They are a fact of life no one told you about in those entertaining lectures during P.E.

Still, I write here not to snark, but to confess. It's good for the soul, if not beneficial for the blog.

My pile is on the dining room table. That's the flat surface which hasn't been used within its intended purpose for over a year now because of life and its intersection with flimsy excuses. It's a convenient spot: right off the kitchen, large-ish, easily accessible. And the fact that it can be seen by anyone who enters the front door is a real bonus. I'd like to think it gives my home the appearance of a place where Important, Interesting Things get done. Or maybe it just makes me look like a slob. Potato, potahto.

In the spirit of soul-cleansing confession, I will now reveal for all the world--or at least the minuscule portion which will actually read this--what is on the table of dread and doom:

• a Christmas cactus, because I wanted the table to look pretty. The obvious contradiction in reality is not lost on me.
• two solar ovens constructed for and used by the Young Women during their pre-camp certification. They will go downstairs just as soon as I get rid of the ginormous birdcage down there. Anybody want a birdcage?
• a small pile of discharge papers from my recent visit to the hospital. Should I shred them? Save them for tax purposes? Add them to my personal history? It's a dilemma.
• a cardboard box of things I keep thinking would be interesting to use in our homeschooling next year. The receptacle changes, but this is one feature of the table which will always be with me.
• blue and white star-spangled ribbon to be used at camp, and which will probably be taken upstairs to join the rest of the camp supplies today, fingers crossed.
• an orange folder with some unused YW info. Or it may be empty. I haven't looked at it in a few weeks. It has achieved a certain junk pile maturity which gives it almost total immunity. I'm thinking of redecorating the room around it next time. Sort of really shabby chic.
• a copy of the Church News which my counselor gave me because it had articles dealing with YW stuff. I need to stash it in my horrifically overly-large YW-stuff binder, which is residing in my huge black bag of doom on a chair next to the laden table.
• Tracking sheets from YW meeting yesterday, so I know how the YW are doing with their Book of Mormon reading, and which will be discarded as soon as I enter them into the computer, which I will do when I'm done writing this. Probably.
• some containers purchased with the intent that they would be used for my gardening lesson at Enrichment meeting last Thursday, but which never found fulfilment because I was stuck in the hospital instead.

That's it. For the moment. I'd better get it cleaned off, because I'm going to DI today, and I'm sure I'll find something that will need time on the table. Think of it not as messiness, but as an exercise in stuff-rotation.