If a train had a black box to record train wrecks, I am pretty sure that it would sound like any day at my house. That includes the screeching, sobbing, and desperate prayers. Every time some smart alec gets up in church and reads the "mine is a house of order" scripture I want to scream, "Mine would be too if I could create a universe by the power of my word!"

Don't mind me. I am just bitter. See, over the years I have bought approximately 7000 pairs of scissors and right now, I can't find a single pair.

I really need those stupid scissors. The scraps of time that I have not dedicated to losing scissors, I have invested in getting wondrously fat. The shelf bra in the tank top that I am wearing under my too low shirt is now cutting off my circulation. I cut the elastic or I die. It's just that simple. Still no scissors. Maybe, I'll have to change my shirt. That's the kind of snowball of lameness I enjoy every day.

I know women who can find their scissors. I dream of having their lives.

And this isn't just about scissors. This isn't a housekeeping story or a tribute to Flylady. This isn't a feminist screed about why I have to clean the house. This is me wondering how I careen endlessly through life with all the grace and presence of a hobbled drunken circus elephant.

Shouldn't I have some sort of plan? Shouldn't I have goals that sound more like things a chubby girl with limited free time might actually accomplish? Shouldn't I know what I want and have a plan to get there?

But the biggest question is of course, how to I get from here to where I am supposed to be? And when I am where I am supposed to be, what will that look like? Will I have my scissors? Will I not be fat enough to turn my clothes into a tourniquet? Or will I just not care?

No idea. And still no scissors.

So I pursue a house of order on my terms.  I may not know where the scissors are, but the collected works of Maupassant are shelved in the order of their writing.  I have never owned a roll of tape long enough to get to the end.  But I do know where Dorothy Sayers’s 1947 essay entitled “The Lost Tools of Learning” is.  

It isn’t that tape and scissors aren’t important.  I think it’s just that they are not beloved.  Maupassant is essential to the business of being me, and scissors are a luxury.  

And I am calling any day that ends without a 911 call an orderly success.  Of course, if I did call the ambulance, maybe I could borrow their scissors.