An Annoying Habit My Husband Has

He sets stuff down. As in, not where things belong, but on any flat surface. The real problem is, he's 6'4", so what's at eye-level to him is above even the top of my head. And because he is also absent-minded, he will carry something from the only proper room for it to be in, through the entire house, to set it down somewhere that you would never, in a million years, suspect it could be.

So now the item in question is in the wrong room, up high, and he has absolutely no memory of carrying it there. In fact, the only way he'll even concede that he might possibly have been the culprit is upon finding, for example, the remote control...in the kitchen...on top of the refrigerator. Like a twisted game of Clue, he is then forced to admit that it couldn't have been me because I almost never go into the kitchen and I can't reach the top of the fridge. Case closed.

So, I think what I'm gonna hafta do is sew all his pockets shut. It's scary how much stuff he can stuff into them. It's gotta take a force of will that the average person can only imagine to squeeze a wallet, checkbook, cellphone, three pens, four highlighters, a pad of sticky notes, three candybar wrappers, five receipts, and an entire roll of paper towels into the pockets of one pair of trousers. And the remote control. Incredible.

Of course, if I'm honest I must admit that I'm not that much better: I stack things. If I can stack them in baskets or drawers, so much the better. In a recent frenzy of housecleaning I tidied our lone kitchen counter by putting all the bills and important-looking papers in the bill box, where my husband will be sure to stumble across them at least once this month, and everything else --- unimportant-looking papers, stuff to go in the gift box downstairs, receipts, coupons, dog treats, etc. --- was stacked in a basket. Everything had the appearance of tidy organization. Appearance, I say, not genuine organization.

As I found out the next morning as my husband frantically searched for the guidelines he needed to do his brief for his upcoming moot court. He looked everywhere: in his office, in the bedroom, where he last remembered reading it; in the living room with his books. All to no avail. I was pretty much just ignoring his increasingly desperate pleas for help --- not my paper, hadn't seen it, he should be more careful with his stuff, darn it. (I think you see where this is headed....) Yes, the missing document was eventually found, in the basket of unimportant-looking papers in the kitchen. Oops!

But, in all fairness, I do believe upon reflection that I moved it from the top of the china cabinet...in the spare bedroom...where Col. Mustard left it...when he was looking for his candlestick.