My mother-in-law is  coming to visit for a few days to see The Gates in
Central Park. She’ll be arriving at 5 a.m. in the morning (Jet Blue’s
red-eye from Oakland gets in bright and early.)

I spent much of the day thinking about ways to make the apartment appear less cluttered, less crowded than it really is. I rearranged the living room, and cleaned and cleared things away;  threw out as much as I could. My husband,  of course, picked through the garbage before it left the
apartment. But that’s to be expected.

Early evening, I asked him to clean his portion of the
living room: the part of the living room that has become his de-facto
photography studio and office. It is unbearably cluttered with computer
equipment, photography equipment, wires, boxes, magazines, manuals,
books, and other sundry detritus. The request made him very exasperated
and he told me that the real mess in the living room, the REAL MESS,
was mine. He then pointed to a small gaggle of things on the metal
table: a stapler, a pair of binoculars, some CD’s, this and that. It
was such an obvious diversionary tactic that I found myself
ENRAGED. So enraged, that I  could barely speak for the rest of the
evening.

This
is a battle we’ve been fighting for too many years. Our domestic
styles just don’t mesh – any professional could tell you that. He with his packrat tendencies and me with my desire for a home I can feel proud of. On the eve of a visit from my mother-in-law, I am at my most vulnerable.

My husband and I are not speaking. His mother arrives early. The apartment is,
for the most part, clean. His portion of the living room looks
like a tornado zone.

He just returned from a quick outing to the Met Food for coffee. He brought flowers (probably from the Apple on Garfield). I am studiously avoiding them; they sit wrapped on the dining room table. Oh, maybe I should just put them in some water…

Deep purple tulips. They’re really quite pretty.

Yours from Brooklyn,
OTBKB