Me: "Oh yeah, it's right over there on my desk. No. RIGHT THERE!" Nipper Knapp: "Sigh"

SO it's raining. I mean really raining. I know that in other places it does this all the time. But we are ill equipped to navigate this kind of poor weather. The roads, our homes, our children, and our bodies are incapable of handling the burden with much grace. Day two we were researching selling our house and moving to a more temperate climate, like say, oh I don't know San Diego.

SO yesterday I had to go out in the rain to buy diapers (potty training fairy where are you?) when the siren song of the Container Store called out to me. I circled the block twice trying to find a closer spot and then gave up, and braved the half block walk to the front door. Who's gotten soft? Not me...

Inside I wandered the aisles imagining my home, pristine, organized, spotless. An older woman with an employee name tag popped out from behind and end cap and asked if I needed help. I demurred, to which she said "Good, just go up every aisle and look around. They call that 'pre-shopping'. Then you can really see what you might want to buy". Uhm, thank you very much Grandma Moses, but I believe on my planet we call that "regular shopping".

I bought a box for all my wrapping paper, and this cool scout hamper that looks less dorm roomy than our current basket, and a little magnetic calendar for Jack and Brenda, so he can see what days are story time at the library, and what days he has music class, and what days he has to languish at home with his parents mooning over him.

But the cutest thing that I found, and I SWEAR it's going to change my life, are these cute little paper clips. I think I've posted a picture of my desk before. (but I'm too disorganized to know where) I subscribe to an ancient family method of paper piling. Piles and piles of paper surround me. On my desk, on the floor, in the drawers. I'm pretty sure I showed you all a picture of the big box of papers that has followed me from our first apartment, to the loft, and now here. This is a genetic affliction. I blame my DNA. I also blame, being a mom, the hours in the day, "and that lying son of a bitch Johnson"... I brought my clippies home and promptly cleaned up a GIANT stack of papers on the kitchen counter. I paid the bills, sorted the receipts, and put them all into smaller and smaller more manageable stacks to be filed or read or sent. Genius. By this time next year, I'm going to be President of something! I just know it.

They also make some that that say, shit, crap, merde, and caca, which I am going to order, because there are so many things on my desk that fall into these categories. For instance, "merde": all medical bills, the notice that told us our property has been re-assessed for 30% less it's previous value, and any correspondence from our dentist. I'm a letter saver. If you've hand written me a letter or a card in the last 20 years, chances are, I've got it. I've got all the letters my parents sent me at boarding school. Letters from my grandma that I got in college, all of them. So it would give me great pleasure to take all the letters and POEMS from my previous boyfriends and clip them together with a "caca" clippy. Life is filled with little moments of joy followed by exquisitely painful realizations that the person you're talking to is a moron. I've saved them all.