A Beautiful Combination

I worked in the Fly Shop today, and I had one main goal; to organize our office.  This is was a daunting task.  Our office contains the cumulative clutter of almost ten years, and although it is occasionally "cleaned out" there is never really time for much of a deep clean, and inevitably the clutter just gets deeper.  I was determined to actually make a difference today, and dug in with a gusto.  It was tough to keep my momentum in between customers coming in, but by mid day I had actually started to make a real dent in the black hole that is our office.

I was in full tilt cleaning mode, and had two trash bags filled already.  There were catalogs, receipts, and notes from years back, definitely stuff that did not need to be piled up on our shelves.  I was pulling random things down from the top of a shelf when two dusty pieces of paper fluttered to the ground.  I sneezed, then bent down to see what they were.  After wiping the very thick layer of dirt off the mystery paper, their origin suddenly dawned on me.  They were our tickets into the Colosseum in Rome, from our visit to Italy nearly six years ago.

The tickets froze me on the spot.  I have no idea where they came from, or how they ended up on top of a shelf filled with fly fishing catalogs and paraphernalia, but they caused a wave of memories to wash over me.  The clutter filling our office was evidence of the ability that my husband and I have to work and play together, simultaneously.  We have built a business and a life, side by side.  Standing in the middle of a ridiculously cluttered and dusty office may have been a strange place for this realization to take place, but it did, nonetheless.  I felt lucky and loved, and it was a beautiful combination.