Writings

Last night as I was wrapping up a transaction on ebay (more vintage Star Wars figures), Kristie burst into the room with an idea for her wedding vows. The idea was fresh in her head, so she wanted to get it down right away. Like me she gets her best ideas in the shower - a former professor of hers from UND said we get our best ideas in the shower because "it's a cleansing of the aura" - and she was ready to start typing in her robe and with her a towel tied around her head.

She said that she knew how she wanted to end the vows, she just needed to pick through some of the letters and cards she had written me to get some ideas for the beginning and middle of the vows. However, when she went to look for the letters and cards in my top drawer, she couldn't find them. Well, this derailed her plan and got me worried where I had put all of them.

So we began searching. Kristie is very anal about organization. This summer we reorganized the office and bought new file folders and labeled them for all of our needs. She has her "Kurt Folder" with all of my letters, poems, and cards neatly filed alphabetically in her drawer. But since I'm more random-abstract, I had my "Kristie Envelop," which was a large envelop that contained everything I received from her, safely stored in the back of my sock drawer. Or that was what I thought. I had no fear that I threw it - I'm a fanatic hoarder, especially of writing. The problem was locating it. I searched through the drawer in our office Kristie assigned to me and all of the folders she had labeled for me. No luck. Then I searched through all of the my dresser drawers. Then I searched through all of her dresser drawers. Then I began to look in books - I thought I might have placed the letter inside one of my favorite books. But that search was fruitless too.

Finally, I found the envelop, which had been misplaced, in a folder in my office drawer entitled "Interesting tidbits." Kristie gave me grief on that. But I'm sure I meant to place it in my "Important" folder, but missed. This would all have been avoided had she let me keep it stored in my sock drawer instead of trying to organize me.

But what shocked me in the quest for the envelop was how much Kristie and I have written each other. We have dozens of cards, even more letters, poems, lists, memos, and post-its. It made for an interesting evening of reading and reflection.