Seek and you might not find

It's the morning of the first full day of quilting I have had for several weeks. I pick up the project I'm working on, grab the thread, reach for the scissors--where are they? Now I have lost scissors and other small necessary quilting tools enough to have spent some time trying to remedy this situation so I don't end up with an hour to spend working and then use ten or fifteen minutes of that precious time looking for something I need. I have made a little organizer for my sewing machine table that has reduced my frustration level quite a bit, but for this to work I have to remember to put things into their appropriate pockets. Being realistic about the way my life goes, I know the schedule--or lack thereof--gets full enough that things don't get put back in their places.  So I had planned for that eventuality by buying, with the help of Joanne's 50 percent off coupons, FOUR pairs of little orange (should be easily visible) Fiskars.

This way I could have one upstairs near my working wall, one downstairs in my sewing machine room, one in a travel kit of hand work I can do in the car, and one floating around in case any of the others don't show up where they are supposed to be. 

But on this morning none of the scissors were in their designated spots. I could not even find my little curved scissors that are wonderful for cutting both upper and lower threads on a machine sewn seam. Fifteen minutes later I finally spied a bit of orange peeking out from under a book on the coffee table and I settled down to work. But my early morning enthusiasm was a bit dampened by all the grumbling I had done and the increasing force with which I returned piles to their places as I searched. 

"People don't change," a friend had intoned last weekend as she described an acquaintance who had made yet another ill-considered choice. Don't we? Am I going to be still wasting time in my disorganized workspace in ten years? I was doing better and I could plead exceptional circumstances with the number of colliding responsibilities that I have been dealing with in the past weeks. But then there's that authority figure from the past saying that challenging times separate the men from the boys. (Why was it never the women from the girls?--Oops, wrong tangent)  And are we, as a species, condemned to continue to make the same stupid decisions that we have been making for centuries based on greed and selfishness and short-sightedness that hurt so many people and other living beings? I don't want to think so.  I hope not.. . .but possibly I will be able to come up with a more certain answer if I ever find those other three pairs of scissors.

And if you're still reading, thanks for the company while I ranted.