Junk Drawers and One Dumb Toss

Today I was finishing up a work project and this involved me, at one point, hunting around for an index card to write down some notes. In the process I found myself going through the two most long-lasting junk drawers I've ever had.

Is it some kind of sign that for the first time in, literally, years, I didn't pick through the top, and then in an effort to avoid knowing what's really IN there, give up, close the drawer and move on? Nope, I found myself strangely unafraid of the drawer today.

We only have one other junk drawer in the whole house. It's a long narrow one – maybe five inches. It has a depth of about three inches. In short, it can only take so much before it won't close. Nevertheless, it's enough to meet our needs as the house's "fat pants" (plagiarized directly from Jill there).

I don't need these two drawers. They were my office's fat pants back in MINNESOTA. Yep. There's about 50 cough drops scattered around the bottom of the drawer. They're only, what, three years old? They weren't new the last winter we were in Minnesota. They may be older than the twins. There's elastic left over from a sewing project, a snap-press, snaps, velcro, needes, thread, post-it notes, dead markers, broken pencils, safety pins, binder clips, etc etc.

The bottom drawer actually has some useful things in it. It has the thread for one of my incomplete needlepoint projects and its directions. Huh.

I had a Mr. Incredible moment at this point. :::picks up the bag, eyeballs the unfinished neelepoint canvas leaning nearby:::

"Yeah, I got time!"

Shyah.

About this time I found an index card. I wrote on it "clean out junk drawers" and the other two thoughts I was struggling to hold in what's left of my short-term memory (chronic sleep deprivation during the twins' first year caused, I think, some irreparable damage). Then I went back to work.

But you know, maybe when I get one of the sweaters done I could do some counted cross-stitch? If I got started now, I might get one of the twins' Christmas stockings done . . .

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In other news, Max had a BAD day. Was playing nicely with a friend until he suddenly lost his mind and after losing a gamecube game tossed the controller at his friend. They were only a few feet apart -- so not only did it hit the friend in the face, but it knocked off a good chunk of the kid's tooth.

What do you do?

I walked the boy home. Told him about the bond on my front teeth (me and the cement side of a swimming pool had a bad meeting), reassured him that it wasn't too bad in terms of dental experiences. He was trying to decided if this qualified as "exciting" or "potential for getting in trouble." (Obviously, we hadn't exposed the nerve with this chip -- sliced off the bottom 2mm of the tooth is what we did.) I hadn't met this child's mother before, so I'm walking over there chewing my lip.

So we met. She was bummed, but not furious. No dental insurance. I said of course we'd pay. (Internally I said, "Thank you for understanding that it was an accident.") The whole thing felt awful. She was actually really understanding. Max felt two inches tall, and that was with shoes. I let him for a good hour. I told him I didn't know what to do about a punishment. (I don't know where we're going to get the money to pay for the tooth, either.) He said he wouldn't play gamecube till the end of the year. Alright. That's a start.

I added that he was grounded AND he'd have to earn part of the money to repair his friend's tooth.

After he'd sat in his misery for awhile I told him he'd made a really stupid choice, but I still loved him and I knew that he'd learn from this and make better choices in the future. He cried in his odd Max way. We moved on.

Now, I need to make a LONG list of chores. Good thing we have three huge oaks in the backyard. That'll give us leaf (and acorn) raking for at least a month.