Desk-perate Housewife

In the course of public school teaching, one must accept the inevitable: switching rooms during the week of testing. One year, I was assigned the job of "bathroom-reliever," the person who travels from room to room providing a 15-minute break to the teacher proctoring the test. I entered a math teacher's room and attempted to watch students and work on finalizing grades while sitting at the teacher's desk.

I say "attempt" because it's hard to do anything when one is so horrified at the sight that greets them. This teacher's large desk was piled high, end to end, with papers, in no discernible order. I estimate that the piles reached an approximate height of at least one foot; I would have measured the stacks with a ruler, but that would assume I could find one amidst all the chaos, math classroom notwithstanding.

To this day, I recall the nightmare that this teacher called a desk and remember how glad I was to leave the room and never return. I think I went back to my own room to begin an organizing frenzy, but those captive students who remained behind must have failed the test just from looking up and seeing that desk every few seconds.

Those who know me well know that I am a certified Neat Freak. I am the Queen of Organization, the Desk Diva, the Arbiter of Order.

Lately, however, my desk area has been more of an orifice for paper than an office. I enjoy creating neat piles of paper that are organized by purpose, but these piles reveal a grotesque lack of order. As I type this, my forearms are supported by two commingled piles that in turn overlap with another pile that make it difficult to answer the phone.

While the state of my desk nowhere approaches the desk of the teacher I relieved long ago, it is causing lasting emotional damage as the random stacks slowly increase. I am sure it also bothers my poor beleaguered husband as he moves piles around to reach the computer, never thinking that his job description as husband included "miner."

Obviously, it is my own fault for letting it get this far, and there is only one way to tackle this Mt. Everest: one thing at a time, or babysteps as FlyLady would say, with a reward at the end. Turn on the iPod, move the sleeping puppy away from snuggling up to the desk, and get the job done so we can EARN that 4:30 matinee to go see Pirates 3.