nursery preparation causes heart attack

annie and i are very different people, in fact we may be the embodiment of the saying that opposites attract. she is an extrovert, i am an introvert. she loves the mall, i love thrift stores. she eats artichokes, i do not. like paula abdul so wisely surmised before her idol days, annie takes one step forward, i take two steps back.

when we remember that we are on the same team, and let our strengths balance the other's weakness, we are a very deadly combo, kinda like tango and cash. when we fail to work together, however, fighting against each other instead of partnering together, one of us is likely to kill the other, or at least shoot looks that could kill.

perhaps the most consistent example of the polar natures in our house is our method of organization. i am a huge believer in the motto: a place for everything and everything in its place. i am constantly putting things away, organizing things into piles, and generally making the world a better place to live. i am not crazy enough to alphabetize our canned goods, but in all honesty i am at least a little bit anal.

annie, on the other hand, is much more free formed in her organization. she will come to a meticulously organized house and just start dropping things everywhere: a purse here, sunglasses there, backstreet boys cd here, tony danza fan club letter there. most days, if it were up to me, i would not even call what she does organization, save the fact that she can locate any item i ask her for, provided i haven't moved it in one of my cleaning sprees. she is the yin to my yang, the light to my dark, the beauty to my beast.

i was recently reading through a real simple magazine and i came across a brilliant quote i have since put up in our living room: "it's not the tragedies in life that kill us, it is the messes." if there were ever a time i would die from mess, it would probably be right now. you see, we are trying to clean up the guest bedroom to prepare the way for our son, going through box upon box of stuff that has largely remained untouched since we moved in over a year and a half ago. several things have struck me in the course of this process:

1. in approximately four months there is going to be another person in our house. a person that is half annie, half me. how cool and weird.
2. it is incredible to me how much stuff we have here in the states. enough to fill a whole house and then some. i hope i remember how stressful this process is next time i consider buying more stuff.
   
3. the cleansing process is very cathartic, yet very stressful. what energizes me is like swimming in a sweat suit for annie. i want to get it all in one day so it can be done, she wants to space it out over a couple weeks so that she can pace herself. this is the part that just might kill me.
   

i can only handle disorder for so long before i snap. i told annie the other day that she is going to be the death of me. she is going to come home one day to find me sprawled out on a pile of loosely related receipts and old lip gloss tubes, dead from a massive coronary. with my dying breath i will find the strength to scrawl out one last message: see, i told you so.

despite the chaos, the process is fun at times, finding old letters and pictures, laughing about things that have been held onto for far too long, and wondering why we even bought most of this stuff in the first place. the sense of anticipation for our son grows, as we hang his tiny clothes in his closet, put his little lounge chair in the corner, and stuff his socks that look like shoes into a plastic bin. i just hope we can find a place to put him when the time comes.