Anybody who knows me knows that I am a huge, shameless fan of Friends. I think there is an appropriate Friends moment to mirror pretty much any event in life. For today's particular story, think of the season 8 episode "The One With the Secret Closet."
For those of you who are unable to hear an episode title and immediately recall the major plot points, along with many smaller details (unlike myself - don't judge), I'll give you a quick recap. In this episode, the perennial neat freak Monica has a locked closet in her apartment. Her friend and husband Chandler has never been allowed to peek inside, and his curiosity gets the best of him. He spends the better part of the episode contemplating what atrocities could be hidden away, and trying to break in to find out. He eventually does, only to discover that . . . . the closet is a filthy, disorganized mess. Monica is appropriately ashamed of it, and Chandler "dun dun bada"-s the Sandford and Son theme song.
My mother, also named Monica, is also a total neat freak. Her house is immaculately organized and clean, and she is rightfully proud of it. Whenever the flotsam of daily life starts to accumulate on side tables or kitchen counters, the house goes into lockdown mode until it's all cleared away.
But my mother, like Monica Geller Bing, has a dirty secret - we call it the Craft Closet.
We Martin ladies are a crafty people. No joke, we have an entire large, shelf-lined, walk-in closet in our home dedicated to various crafting supplies. It also houses a few years' accumulation of random stuff with no other appropriate place to occupy. Today, upon realizing that we had literally no room to cram one more tiny item, I took on the Everestian task of cleaning it.
The crafting supplies and office supplies were easy enough to sift through (even if we did have enough pens, pencils, and highlighters to keep a moderately sized office building running for a couple of years). But past that, I discovered the most random assortment of tomfoolery in this one closet. None of it made any sense as a collection. There were a few random Christmas items that didn't fit into the Christmas Closet (yes, next to the Craft Closet is an entire closet dedicated to only Christmas paraphernalia, which, even though it was also recently cleaned out, still overflows). There were enough candles that nobody in my family ever needs to buy another candle as long as we all live, and will probably still have a few left over to bequeath to our descendants. Sewing notions, including several amputated blue jean legs for future patch work. Rolls of wallpaper left over from when the dining room was re-done fifteen or so years ago . . . and that was replaced when the dining room was re-done again last year. No less than 15 old cell phones, along with all of their respective wall and car chargers. A sandwich baggie full of little round magnets. A basketful of plastic Easter eggs. A tail from a Halloween cat costume. A tote bag full of other tote bags. Thermoses. I fear my mother would cut me if I went on.
But the worst of all - the most unholy collection of gift wrapping supplies ever accumulated outside of a department store.
I have no idea why we need so many gift bags, gift boxes, and tissue paper. It has been a long standing habit among us to save all of these things upon receiving a gift for future reuse - but none of us had any idea the collection had gotten so out of hand. I'm talking more than a hundred gift bags, and dozens of boxes. Bags inside of bags, boxes inside of boxes, and bags full of tissue paper. We could run a serious gift wrapping operation for some extra income. Or make a sizeable donation to Candy Spelling's notorious gift wrapping room.
I don't know whatever came of Monica Geller Bing's shameful closet mess. As for this Monica, it took me an entire day, and resulted in the filling of a couple of large garbage bags and a large donation pile, but she has a clean, organized hall closet - with a few empty shelves left over to house future collections of random crap.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: I meant to post this sooner, and I was going to be excited about tonight's episode of Top Chef, the show's 100th episode and it would feature the first time head judge Tom Colicchio would step into the kitchen and show off his skills. Now that the episode has aired, I take back my excitement. *Spoiler Alert* I can't believe that damned Jamie escaped elimination again! I wasn't that attached to Casey (I was way more pissed last week when Spike went home instead of Jamie), but Jamie definitely deserved it tonight, especially after her escapes in past weeks. Furthermore, where the hell is Bourdain??? Don't tell me he's going to be a full-time judge . . . but then never have him show up!!
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