HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

25 May 2002

Dr. G moved a new file cabinet into the office this morning. Until now we had one file cabinet, which has two large drawers, each with two bins for files. It's about thigh-high and made of wood. With a medical practice just beginning, it was plenty large enough for files in the top drawers and miscellaneous sundries in the bottom drawer.

But the word is getting out and Dr. G's popularity is growing. It seems that half of our patients each day are new to the office, and so it's been getting pretty tight in the file drawer. In fact, I haven't been able to reach the back files without taking out a lot of the front files in a very long time.

Dr. G told me that he had a matching file cabinet at home and would bring it in. I've been bugging him about it for about a month now, and today was the day. He showed up with a trailer on the back of his car and the two of us unloaded the heavy desk and got it moved into the front office.

His original idea had been to put it at a 90 degree angle to the first, leaving enough space so that you could still open the drawers on the first. I vetoed that. I told him it needed to go as an extension of my desk, the back of the file cabinet up against the side of my desk, making an abbreviated "L." The addition of the new file cabinet would then not only double the drawer size for files (which should take care of us for at least another year), but it will effectively double the size of my desk.

More flat surface!!!

Anybody who has visited this house will tell you I have perfected the art of covering flat surfaces. Whereas there are those who decorate their flat surfaces with tasteful little knick knacks, I decorate my flat surfaces with stuff. Piles and piles and piles of stuff. Stuff on top of stuff. Sometimes it postively defies gravity.

There are those who have attempted to show me tricks for cleaning it all up, for clearing off the flat surfaces and leaving my home looking pristeen. However, when things are all put away in a certain "place," it's terrible. I haven't a clue where to look for that elusive something that you will need the second it's all put away. With "piles" to look through, I have some sort of a clue where to start. 9 times out of 10 that elusive "something" will end up being right in the pile where I thought it was--under the yogurt container, and the toast plate, and the catalogues and the Christmas cards, and the TV remote.

I always knew I would have made a good archeologist. Finding anything around here requires doing a scientific excavation.

I once labored under the delusion that organizing my life was possible.  I've managed to adjust to reality in my dottage.

Dr. G has never been to my house.

If he had been here, there's no way he would have proudly presented me with the new file cabinet and told me, happily, that now I would be able to keep the top of my desk neat.

It was a given that my desk would never be neat to begin with, but Dr. G's own ideosyncracies don't help either. In an attempt to keep his own desk neat, he doesn't believe in leaving things in an "out box." If he has something for me to do, he has to give it to me right now. That means that if I'm working on the checkbook and someone calls in to make an appointment, the appointment book goes on top of the check book, and then the file I'm working on for a new patient goes on top of that, the filing Dr. G has to give me right now goes on top of that, and on top of that is the lab form I have to fill out for the departing patient.

And so it goes.

He has this fantasy that now that I have twice as much desk space to work with, I can somehow organize all of those piles so that my desk (the first thing incoming patients see) will achieve some semblance of neatness.

Bwahahahaha. Amazing how delusional some people can be, isn't it?

Last night we went to the University to see a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. Tonight we're going to an outdoor theatre to see a high school production of Taming of the Shrew.

Have I mentioned that I hate Shakespeare?

Terrible thing for a theatre critic to admit, but I do not like Shakespeare, so this is definitely not a fun "reviewer" weekend for me. Dream was an interesting production, with enough distinctive things about it that I think I can pull off a review all right, without letting my ignorance show. Shrew will be easy to review because by the time you list all the kids in the show, so that their mothers can clip out the review for their scrapbook, you've pretty much used up all of your column inches.

(Do you get the idea that I don't really have the proper attitude about this job?)