To my recollection, I have never turned in an assignment late, or forgotten to complete something really important, or missed a credit-card or student loan payment. This is certainly to my credit. However, you really should not get the impression that I am this mega-organized superindividual who has got it all together. I'm not, and I really, really haven't.
For example: I started packing last night, because I don't like to leave things until the very last minute. The last-ish minutes are definitely fair game, but not, you know, the very, totally ultimate of moments. I have my standards! So I got myself all organized last night. After work today came the nagging question: had I packed my passport? I tended toward no. So out came all of the meticulously packed gifts, work documents to be mailed for the much-cheaper US rates and my five changes of underwear (as much as I might want to stay longer, this is only a five-underwear trip, *sigh*) and nope, no passport in sight.
Commence frantic search.
For your snickering pleasure, a list of things I have found in my secret stashes of "things I don't feel like putting away just now", re-encountered during my frantic (and ultimately successful) last-minute passport quest:
- A couple of spare toothbrushes, slightly used (hopefully by me)
- A book of German poetry
- A leather flask filled with *very* aromatic rosewater, a gift from a Bulgarian Orthodox priest friend of mine
- Several mateless socks
- My Leatherman micra, which I will most emphatically not be packing in my carry-on.
- The evil, evil sports bra that caused painful chafing and bleeding and all manner of nasty things during a long run and which I banished, but wasn't *quite* ready to throw out (it has now been unceremoniously dumped in the trash)
- That fitness club promotional offer I'd been meaning to cash in for months
- Assorted cutlery
- A monkey wrench
- A homemade box labeled "Happy Birth Day," containing a length of rope, 96 euro cents (all copper) and two transparent glycerine fish.
- 75 US dollars in a drawer and 20-something euros in the pockets of my winter jackets - I like to leave myself fun surprises for next season! (This was a profitable search!)
Scene
Jess: (pulls about a dozen pens out of various plastic bags) Look at all these pens!
Elizabeth (pragmatically): Jess, why don't you put them in the pen container?
Jess (brightly): OK! (looks over at it) ...but I'll have to take the thermometer out first.
Elizabeth (kindly): No offense, Jess, but I could never marry you.
Jess (sincerely): One of these day I'm going to organize.
Elizabeth: (not terribly sincerely) *scoffs*
2 comments:
"A homemade box labeled "Happy Birth Day," containing a length of rope, 96 euro cents (all copper) and two transparent glycerine fish."
Erm. Explain, please?
That's just how my mind works. :-) The box (with the fish in it) was a little birthday present from a German friend last year. (One fish is green and the other is yellow, and the yellow one quite creepily has another entire whole fish inside of it, all striped and glowy and happy. It's kinda odd.) Anyway, then at some point I was trying to consolidate my 1- and 2-cent euros pieces because somehow you end up not spending them, and I needed a receptacle, and the cute little origami box box was there... you get the picture. Same with the rope, I suppose, although its genesis remains hidden in the deep recesses of my memory somewhere.
Does that clear things up? :-)It appears that if I ever do seriously want to get myself all organized, I may have to employ a J to do it for me. .-)
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