The problem with parties is not so much that, for the first time in several months, you must find, then extricate, the red bowl from the back of the corner cupboard in the laundry;
the problem is not that said red bowl reminds you of all that you no longer are and becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back which becomes a flood of two pm tears;
indeed, as the night goes on and your glass is not only half-full, but re-fullable, this reminder becomes one of the joys of parties;
and the problem is not even that the red bowl must be washed after sitting overnight with a particularly sticky dip stuck to it.
No.
The problem with parties is, that once found, extricated, cried over, used, laughed over, washed and dried, the red bowl must be put away. In the back of the corner cupboard in the laundry.
It could be worse. The red bowl could be left out, meaning to be put away, and then have a slow filling of paper clips, rubber bands, little-plastic-bread-clips, opened mail, things-gleaned-from-school-shorts, and various mystery items until you look at it one day and it’s become part of the kitchen’s functionality and no longer a thing of beauty.
and not to forget the lids of textas, hooks and screws
Aah, you need my eldest (autistic) son to come over and do you some typologies. His sister took photos for a photographic assignment for uni two years ago:
lines of hairties, screws, old flowerpots, red rubber bands, Decor plastic labels for containers, ties from the bread, clips from the bread, gluesticks, white and green garden chairs by colour, a special line along the front of the computer monitor of the stapler and the holepunch, a pigeon pair by association of sticky tape and masking tape, a pile of all the red notebooks in the house, the newspapers all sorted by paper size and laid the same way on the floor, carefully stacked pegs by colour in the peg basket, which all fall down if the basket swings on the line and have to be done again.
He makes me look real messy, he does. And if he ever leaves, I bet I find one of his lines one day and have a good cry over it too.
(she didn’t photograph all of those, BTW. And first her teacher was puzzled – the brief was to do one typology. But she was delighted when M. explained that, effectively, her brother had created the typologies in advance.)
I loved this post.
me too, Helen.