AND I MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT HAVE …..

Despite appearances to the contrary, I am a very organized, neat person. And by “appearances to the contrary”, I mean the fact that my house is always a mess and I’m constantly griping about how I can never find my car keys, I forget people’s birthdays, I am never able to catch up on my e-mails, I have a to-do list a mile long, and I’m the type of person who spends ten minutes looking for sunglasses that are on top of my head. But if you can get past **that** sort of thing, I’m very organized. A place for everything; everything has a place; and all that jazz.

A few years ago, we bought an entertainment center with a very short, very deep cabinet under the tv which we use to store some of our tapes and dvds. We have a bigger cabinet for the rest, but the movies we’ve watched recently are usually under the tv. And of course by "we" I mean the kids, since it seems they are always the ones choosing which movie we're going to watch.

Over time, we wind up with a hodge podge of tapes and dvd’s, all flung willy-nilly into that cabinet space, none of them returned properly to their holders. Basically, it looks like a Blockbuster threw up in the cabinet. Every few months I’ll go through the cabinet and match up movies to cases, re-arrange, stack neatly, and swear that THIS time, the space will stay organized.

And a few weeks ago, I might or might not have thrown a complete temper tantrum when I couldn’t find the dvd case for Nanny McPhee, and while searching, realized what a disaster area this cabinet truly is, once again.

And I might or might not have griped about the mess, while transferring tapes from this cabinet here to the big cabinet there, putting away movies into their proper cases, knowing all the while that while it looks good now, it’s only a matter of time until it’s a mess again.

And I might or might not have made some sweeping pronouncement about how sick I am of this disaster area and how I’m going to take action right now!

And I might or might not have gone online and ordered a special media storage cabinet with doors on the front, convinced that the cabinet will help us stay organized, or at the very least, the doors will conceal the Blockbuster vomit.

And the cabinet might or might not have arrived very quickly. And I might or might not have been very excited.

And I might or might not have told Blaine that I planned to assemble the cabinet the next day while the kids were in school.

And Blaine might or might not have reminded me of the extremely crappy job I did assembling our last bookcase.

In fact, he might or might not have made some incredibly rude comment about how the blind kid with no arms in his seventh grade woodshop class was handier than me and could probably do a better job.

And I might or might not have been extremely insulted by his condescending, superior handy-man attitude and told him congratulations, he had just awarded himself a new can-do project, and that media cabinet would sit, unassembled, until HE put it together.

And the cabinet might or might not have sat in our entryway, in its original box, for over a week.



(In case you don't believe me that it sat here like a lump for an entire week, notice that the kids are using it as a platform for their toy cars.)

And I might or might not have made snide, rude comments under my breath about “Well, I guess Ty Pennington Jr is too busy to put my new cabinet together” every time I walked past it.

And I might or might not have gone away this past weekend with my girlfriends, and feeling a little guilty about the fact Blaine, recovering from radiation, would be alone with the kids for four solid days (did I mention that they were school holiday days, so he had the kids 24/7?) I might or might not have left a list of suggested fun (read: time-consuming!) activities, such as “Go to batting cages” or “Go to matinee” and the like, hoping to help him fill his days with them. Because I'm organized like that.

And apparently, Blaine might or might not have decided to take matters into his own hands, strapped little tool belts onto the kids, and put them to work assembling our new cabinet.

And it might or might not have looked pretty darn good when I got back home this evening.




And I might or might not have looked inside, counted 89 DVDs, 122 VHS tapes, and 44 home movies (more on this later) and wondered why it is we spend the vast majority of our TV time watching Hannah Montana reruns and none of the movies we’ve paid perfectly good money for. We have enough home entertainment to watch a different movie every day for almost three-quarters of a year, yet we spend all our spare time with Zach and Cody. What's *wrong* with this picture????




But it doesn’t even matter, because the anal, neat-freak part of me is happy.

At least until it looks like Blockbuster threw up in there again.