Odd Jobs

I must admit, I walked into this room with a purpose. Maybe I'd come to fetch something out of a drawer and become distracted by the myriad things that called out for attention. It's certainly a likely scenario.

But what had I been looking for? 

I know I'd come from the kitchen, where I had been emptying the dishwasher, and picked up a glass that belonged at the bar in the living room, so after I brought it there, I noticed the cat had thrown up on the couch slipcover, which I stripped off and shoved into the washing machine down the hall. Of course, the detergent box is empty, so I have to run out to the car where I had left the replacement because storage for that kind of thing is at a premium (I'm not a fan of stockpiling) so I keep the recent household chemistry haul in the trunk.

Had you walked into the house at the moment (past the woman with uncombed hair clawing through the boot of her car) you clearly would have seen an open washing machine, textiles spilling forth, with an item in need of recycling on the floor in front of it; a clean fancy tumbler sitting on a pile of coffee table books in the next room; an open dishwasher, half filled with clean dishes and the open cabinets where those dishes will temporarily reside; and a cat who would be hungry for second breakfast circling your feet.

The neighbor knocks, looking to borrow a thing I secretly hope won't be returned. It's just another thing that is taking up space.

I know I shouldn't be upset when she idly mentions missing having a house that looks lived in as her eyes trace the explosion of winter boots and gym bags and cardboard boxes waiting to be muscled into the recycling bin.

She's earnest. 

People make TikTok memes with adorable versions of open cabinets and abandoned tasks trying to convince us we are the victims of our disordered minds.

But I don't buy it. Evidence of a retching animal, be it sound or substance, should instinctively shuffle the order of domestic operations. It should not surprise when such an emetic eruption, even momentarily, throws the whole house into chaos.

The fractured attention we self-diagnose is just a label that might never have stuck without the modern necessity of increasing having to multitask how we multitask.

As the husband snickers to the camera about his wife's absent-mindedness, I wonder to myself "just how many butter knives has he left straddling the no man's land between the sink basin and the counter proper? He and his brethren will never see this utensil as abandoned or as a task undone because in his mind it is perfectly logical to decide on that second piece of toast ... a little later in Never.

Eventually, I will wrestle these things back into order. It won't be pretty, and I'll probably bash my head into an open cabinet door. It will be the final thing that needs to be buttoned up before I sit down.

But to be sure, the snowstorm that is life will blow through before I get up again.

It's the most logical thing in the world: Life keeps handing us odd jobs.