So much for my ‘pencil’ box
I fight a constant battle with myself to keep my home office neat. “Why do I keep all those pencils?” I asked myself as I looked at the cluttered desk. They were crammed in a little basket, so I decided to clean it out. It was a good start toward tidying my computer desk. It often looks like a hurricane blew over and dropped things it picked up along the way.
As I began sorting everything in what I called my pencil basket, I discovered a lot more stuff in there. It was not exclusively a pencil basket. It was a depository for numerous other things. Most, but not all, were things I didn’t know what to do with. I first noticed a plastic 12-inch ruler protruding in the midst of the pencils. Next to it was another with two inches snipped off. Hidden behind it were two more. One was 7 inches long and another measured 6 inches. I slipped a rubber band around them.
Next, I lifted a 3-3/4-inch-by-2-inch magnifying glass with a 3-inch handle out of the basket. (That was one thing I wasn’t surprised to find, since I use it often.) A brush with 18 bunches of rather stiff bristles fell against my hand. I haven’t a clue as to where it came from or what its purpose is. Beside it was a 6-inch sewing gauge. It disappeared from my sewing basket months ago.
Scattered among the above-listed items were 13 bookmarks: nine paper, three plastic, and one leather. Now why can’t I remember where a bookmark is when I need one? I sometimes wind up grabbing a tissue from a box at my bedside to mark the page of a book I’m reading.
The more I plundered the basket, the more surprising things turned up. I found two out-of-date driver’s licenses — one belonged to me, the other to my husband. I also found a 2008 Bible-A-Month Club membership card; a 2008 Habitat for Humanity HopeBuilder card; a “God Bless America” car strip from the Help Hospitalized Veterans organization; an American Bible Society magnetized card with a Bible verse; a letter opener; a scrap of paper with a Smithville, Tenn., address scribbled in my handwriting; an out of shape paper clip I’d used to punch out some paper stuck in my paper shredder; a dried up flip chart marker; a small emery board; a permanent marker; a small artist’s brush; a fistful of various-sized rubber bands accumulated and somehow misplaced when I edited a newsletter for several years; a china marker; one safety pin and three pennies.
When I had removed all that, two permanent markers and a bunch of ballpoint pens rolled around in the once-tightly packed basket. I tried each of them and discarded the dried-out ones. I bound the 15 that passed inspection with a rubber band. Only three CD markers, green, blue, and black, remained.
Well, is my desk neater? Not really. But my so-called pencil box is.
IRT to leave Florala project
Today is the last day “on the job” for members of the U.S. Air Force Reserve’s Innovative Readiness Team (IRT),... read more