Packrat-itis? Bug or Feature?

By Badphairy

I'm both a pack rat and a slob. I'm aware of this. It comes from two places in my psyche, the one that never wants to get up and find anything, because if I keep everything in heaps on my couch and bed, 50% of what I want will be within arm's reach no matter where I am.

The other I like to call “what if I'll find a use for that later.” It's a bear to tame, let me tell you.

I have this friend, Alia S., who is a craftsperson. You can tell by looking at her hands. She has big-knuckled capable hands that can doctor a sick cat or push needles through leather without a thimble. True story, actually. I was sewing a sporran and managed to put the three-sided business end of a leather needle through (yes, all the way) my left index finger. I was not so happy to attempt this again, once bandaged and appropriately anesthetized (beer).

Alia took up my project and rolled her eyes when I proffered the suede thimble whose pad I'd been using on my right thumb to push the needle through without likewise impaling it.

She sewed ¾ of the damn thing in the time it had taken me to sew the other ¼ not counting my Vlad the Seamstress moment.

Point of the story being, she rocks not only the house, but several houses to either side. She had given me, some seven years ago, a set of little glass vials wrapped in wire so as to facilitate their being hung on a wall. I'd moved the damn things probably five times and they currently resided in a heap at the bottom of a drawer.

They were “things I might find a use for, later.”

Having returned to the Evil empire for my yearly visit, I drove far above the speed limit (did I say that out loud) to see my friend Ann Onymous in her sunny, cheerful, gated borough of horror.

No, really. It's a freaking castle: spiraling tower staircase and all, behind a gate guarded by a “Bates Motel” sign and a vicious grizzly bear (of the carved, wooden variety).

Far more vicious are the llama, sheep, and well, that's about it as far as vicious goes, except for Ann. Strolling around a large owl and hawk-proof pen on Ann's property are several birds of the pea- persuasion.

Due to Ann's unfailing generosity, I smuggled home a double fistful of iridescent feathers, now fanning out of the little jars Alia made, and hung appealingly on the wall.

Seven years of toting those things around and I do eventually find a very good use for them.

So, I may be a pack rat, but is it a bug or a feature?