Limbo

Recently I got an email from Lee that said, among other wise things,“You're right in the middle of the 'why can't we just get on with it' zone.  The old place is ripped apart and all you really want to do is get moved into the new place.  Instead, you're stuck in the old one until after the holidays.” 

He has moved a lot in his life and he knows whereof he speaks.

As I told him, that hits the nail right on the head. It is a sort of limbo, the house is a mess and there is not much that can be done about it. Even trying to clean up is impossible, because boxes and bins and wrapped paintings are stacked on the floor and leaning against walls. It is very much a neither-here-nor-there situation.

Now I know that this is in flat contradiction to that quote from Chuang Tzu that I posted about it being everywhere. What can I tell you? My mood changes.

And even next Tuesday when we begin moving, things will remain limbo-ish for a couple of weeks. We will have things in Madison and things here on Berry Road, as we wait for the holiday trip to be over and we are able to move the cats and have the movers take the heavier bits on December 28. In the meantime, I am sure we will constantly discover that whatever it is that we are looking for at one place will be safely stored in the other place, an hour's drive away. 

Theologically, the limbo-of-the-innocents was not a place of punishment, nor was it a way-station (like purgatory) on the way to heaven. It was a place of so-called unending natural happiness and beatitude, as good as it could get for those who did not possess the saving grace of God. Our situation is not natural happiness or beatitude, but at least it is only temporary.

It is perhaps more like what was called the limbo-of-the-fathers-and-mothers, where the just who had lived prior to Christ waited until he arrived to conquer death and lead them from limbo to heaven. This is also known as the Harrowing of Hell, a popular theme for religious art at one time. Note the usual confusion between limbo and hell and ... well, just the usual confusion. These things lend themselves to a lot of that.

Don't ask me to justify either of those theological concepts, both of which have been rather quietly discarded in recent years.

As for all the rest, "Ho, ho, ho hum."

More Michael madness

I have mentioned before my tendency to be a wee bit compulsive. I thought of this yesterday as I was putting away clothes after washing and drying them.

We use plastic hangers for shirts and things, wood for pants. No wire hangers, of course. (Do they still make wire hangers or did Joan Crawford frighten the industry into bankrupcy?) Anyway, the plastic ones come in assorted colors. 

Back when Tom used to iron our shirts -- that's a story for another day -- , he would hang his shirts on white hangers and mine on colored hangers to make it simple to sort quickly.

This is not compulsive so much as it is orderly and efficient. Or so he claimed.

Over the years, however, when I wound up doing my own ironing -- I was already doing the rest of my laundry -- , I got in the habit of matching the color of the shirt to the color of the hanger. When I hung up shirts that did not have to be ironed, I did the same thing. Red shirt, red hanger. Blue shirt, blue hanger. Yellow shirt ... well, you get the idea.

I never went so far as to hang all the blue stuff together, all the red stuff and so on. Although I admit that I did hang knit shirts separately from woven, long sleeves separate from short sleeves, sweatshirts separate from shirts -- but that's just the right way to do it. But matching the colors became enough of a deal that I would get a little uneasy when I did not have a brown hanger for that one rust brown long sleeve tee. Or a purple that was too blue and not red enough to match the shirt.

No, I did not go out and buy more hangers. (I am more compulsively cheap than anything else.) Though I was tempted. Perhaps I could have put that on my Christmas list: five golden hangers, four orange hangers, three rose hangers, two brown hangers and a wooden hanger on a coat tree.

As I say, not a personality disorder, just a charming idiosyncrasy.

Right?

Write your own television guide description of a holiday movie!

Pick one from Group A, one from Group B and one from Group C to make a one-line synopsis:

Group A

Candace Cameron Bure plays an aggressive business woman who

Eric Mabius stars as a shy guy who

Group B

Saves Christmas from a mean old rich white man

Finds romance with a charming baker

Helps a poor family who have lost the Christmas spirit

Finds a magical ornament under a tree in a department store

Group C

While visiting his/her hometown to shut down a toy factory

While lost in a snowstorm trying to get to New York to buy expensive gifts

With the help of a little boy and his dog

With the help of a mysterious old man in red