There is a Spoon in the Sink

According to my wife, I am a neat freak who doesn't pay attention to details. I want things put away and hate clutter, yet I often miss spots on pots and pans, miss corners when I am cleaning, and my electric tooth brush has some a disturbing growth at its base. This paradox is a patriarchal. One of my clearest childhood memories involve my dad coming home from work. It was usually a scary experience, because something would inevitably piss him off. Just to give some context, my Dad was a professor, who had five kids, a chain smoking wife, two to three pets and a occasional litter of kitties all crammed into a duplex. We would usually be down in the basement watching TV when he came home. He would bring his bike through the basement door, then start to freak out about the chaos. Usually it was just a small thing like,"who left this fucking sock on the floor?" Our walls were stained with nicotine, animal hair was everywhere, our carpets were filthy, our laundry chute was stuffed three stories high, dirt was caked in our kitchen linoleum, yet my dad would freak about a fucking sock. My dad has passed this curse on to me.

After my parents got divorced, my dad's life became a lot happier and cleaner. The pets, dirt, and chaos were gone, and he seemed to be a lot more chilled, yet I was not free from his curse. When my Dad and step-mom went to South Korea, I was responsible for watching their sprawling suburban abode. I paid their bills, kept the place clean, and spent the six months attending then quitting graduate school. At some point, Nicky, my little sister, came back from her year abroad in France and started messing with my Chi. She would lay on the couch, watch Whose Line is It Anyway, and annoy me. At the time, I had transitioned from graduate school to helping mentally ill people find jobs, it was terrible work and I hated it. The only thing that made working tolerable was the fact that I was living free in a sweet house, but I was always like to find a negative and Nicky felt my wrath. One time a I came home, Nicky was sprawled out on the couch watching comedy and there in the sink was a single spoon. It was too much for me to take and following in my father's foot steps, I freaked about the "fucking spoon in the sink." It was a pretty pathetic, I think Nicky eventually put it in the dishwasher and we established the "don't talk to me for twenty minutes when I get back from work" rule. I still have episodes where the slightest bit of clutter bothers me, but I am getting better.

Thorry, I haven't written in awhile.