Tuesday, April 5: Waking up to snow has altered my day. I was going to work outside, but the idea of donning a jacket has caused a re-think.

After some fairly sophisticated stalling, I realize that today is the day - the big day - the day I have been avoiding for the past several months - years, really.Today is the day I dive into the room we have called the "dark room" from the time when Mark was a teenager and set up his first photo-developing equipment there. Since then, it has reverted into a general storage area, where everything that didn't belong somewhere else ended up.

When Mark set up the dark room, we installed several rows of those zig-zag metal strip and particle board shelves, creating a false sense that this place was now equipped to handle anything.

Which it has.

The past few months, however, have been the room's undoing. A few weeks ago while scrounging about, I piled several spare picture frames in the middle of the floor to get at what I needed and later found there was no way to put them back.

Since then, the room has been virtually impassable. Entering is like stepping into a mine field. Retrieving extra chairs for Sunday dinner, for example, which are stacked against the right wall, has been a risk of life and limb.

So I have realized that this day was coming. Now that I have my mind set, it won't be so bad. Sitting here and writing this lamentation is my last great stall. Once stated in print, there is no way I can back down without public humiliation.

I can see it now. I am standing in line at Fred Meyer when from behind I hear someone say, "Hey, mister. Did ya get that room cleaned out?" The constant stress would be horrific. I have to go through with it.

Some people, I am convinced, are cursed with a penchant for stacking. I am one of those.

Stacking is a very familiar feeling:

I am standing in a room with something in my hand. My mind is telling me, "Now where should I put this so it will be easy to get to?" Realizing that there is no pre-assigned place, I go into panic. My eyes scan the room. Generally, there is a flat surface near at hand. Typically, such sites are not safe to be around, as they have been used before and threaten to topple at any time. Carefully balancing the latest offering, I tell myself: "I'll get to this later."

As I have learned, later never comes and I am forced into days like today.

But all is not bad news.

Part of the good news might be that we people who tend toward this sad affliction are very active people. Part of why we do what we do is that there are other fish to fry.

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Also, when days like today come along, all kinds of buried treasure is prone to surface. Items of once urgent import, when brought to light, are found to be not so urgent anymore. Other long-forgotten items, which still make sense in an ongoing agenda, are treated like jewels.

How many times, in the hubbub of reconstruction, have I issued the immortal cry, "Oh, there's where I put that__________! (Insert name of item.)

At such moments, gentle titillations of excitement, totally unknown to organized people, fill the soul, and subtle celebrations of the mind turn this dreaded day of reckoning into a day of reunion. What joy!

But wait a minute . . . writing this has taken so long that I won't have time to start now. Darn it all.

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