Correction

Well, I am a big girl and I can admit when I've made a mistake. I've realized that I left a very important item off the joy rush list I made for Barb. Forget the stupid mountains, all right? They're probably full of deer ticks anyway. What should have been on the list instead, what give me a supreme feeling of joy and elation every single time I see them, are the items you see pictured to the left and to the right. (If I were mrs. g, I would draw some arrows here, but I don't know how yet.)



That's right, those are simple wooden bifold doors. And isn't it always the simplest things that give us the most happiness? A child's smile, say, or a sunny day, or closet doors that actually conceal the ungodly mess behind them....


You see, once upon a time about a year ago, we bought this nice townhouse. A townhouse that was fairly functional, with all its closet doors working the way they should. They opened, they closed, they didn't fall on anyone. It was a beautiful sight to see.

Being experienced home wreckers, we went to work fixing all that. Soon enough, not only did we have a torn up floor in the kitchen and variegated paint striping all over the living room walls, but we also had two (not one, but two) closet doors that could no longer hide the cluttered insides of our closets from prying eyes. The hall closet door gave up the ghost and fell out altogether, while the linen closet door's hinges broke so that it hung limply open, displaying my mismatched collection of towels, washcloths, and various toiletries for all to see.

We tried to adjust. If we were having guests, we would prop the door in front of the hall closet and pray no one tried to use it. One time I failed to secure the door properly and it fell on top of a friend's 6-year-old daughter. I hastened to her aid, but not before retrieving the door from her fallen body and jamming it back into place before anyone could see the motley collection of junk that fills the closet. I figured, hey, if she were already unconscious, an extra minute wouldn't hurt. But public humiliation lasts forever.

The linen closet, though not as much of an eyesore, presented its own particular challenges. The way it hung open, it half-blocked the doorway to one of the bedrooms; so we developed a sort of sidewise, crab-like movement to enter and exit that particular room. It got so that I sort of forgot that we hadn't always lived in this fashion, with sanitary pads falling out into the hallway and Swiffer mops dropping out and hitting me on the head as I walked by.

Things went on like this, until one special day my husband uttered the three little words that wives love to hear: "Call the handyman." Be still, my heart! I mean, is that romantic, or what? I was on the phone in a thrice (whatever the heck that means) and secured the handyman's promise to show up at our house before Larry could change his mind.

So now I rejoice inwardly every time I walk into the house and see our beautiful (though as yet unpainted) hall closet door doing its job of making our foyer look neat and clean. And whenever I go upstairs, my heart leaps up as I behold the clean (though as yet unpainted) wooden facade of my linen closet, keeping our toilet paper and towels and cleaning supplies safely hidden from public view.

It's the little things that mean the most in life, folks. Don't you forget it.