Yesterday I was explaining entropy to Sarcasm Girl. Started out with the Big Bang theory and went on from there, but finally told her: just think of our dining room table. No matter how much stuff I clear off of it, more appears. The table remains the dumping ground for everything in the house. Not just mail, but candy (after Spouse and YG have been out on a debauch), college catalogs, books, music moved from the piano to the table (for some reason Sarcasm Girl cannot play piano with the music on the rack), books, oddments of hardware, picture frames, bus passes, BART cards, hair brushes and innumerable scrunchies and hairbands, dog toys, newspapers, spare change… I find it, after a while, depressing; there are so many corners of the house in which this sort of clunky emphemera accumulates: stuff to be dealt with, or thrown out, or just put down until one can think of a better place for it. The girls’ rooms are full of it, as is the Spouse’s desk (and mine isn’t much better, but I hold fast to the excuse that after cleaning up after everyone else I don’t have the energy to tidy my own space). Read More »