save it for later

My dog, Scout, was recently given a new bone by Colin. For some reason, Scout has decided that she needs to bury the bone in the backyard every day and retrieve it later in the evening...only to carry it around the house for a while before re-burying it. In and of itself, this is not a problem (except the other night when I found the bone "buried" under my pillow) - it's just curious. She has always been something of a digger, but it's generally random and without purpose. And she certainly has never bothered to fill any of the holes she gouged in the landscape before this past week. I laughed at her neurotic bone-hiding and told her - as if she could understand me - that she was being a little bit ridiculous.

Meanwhile, The Great House Cleanup of Late 2005 has now turned into The Great House Rearrangement of 2006. I'm trying to get myself and my surroundings as clean and organized as possible, moving furniture and throwing things away. I stood in the doorway of my closet staring at piles of clothes, trinkets, papers, hats, belts, shoes, posters, books, and an assortment of other junk, realizing with horrific irony that I am worse than my dog. These things, these objects, are my bones. My closets, cabinets and basement are the holes in the backyard, and I bury as much crap as possible in them...only to dig them out every few months or years just to make sure they're still there before stuffing them, slightly readjusted (read: "organized"), back into their hiding places. Unlike Scout, instead of holding on to one object that I cherish, hide, and rediscover, I have about 500.

I guess I shouldn't have given the dog such a hard time. You know - stones, glass houses, and all that.