The Feng Shui Witch

                                                               

"The Feng Shui Witch"

Most of you probably know about "feng shui". It's the ancient Chinese Philosophy about being in synch with your environment. A devotee will seek to bring harmony to the home and the career and anything else that matters. With regard to the home the pairing of things that go well together; natural elements like wood, or stone, or water, or sand. Or, to add spice to life, you pair exact opposites, the Ying Yang. 

Feng shui also demands that clear and definable pathways be available in the home....clutter free traffic lanes for both safety and ease of transit...but also peace of mind. 

Okay, now that I've explained it please don't think I'm getting ready to offer a boring listing of specifics. Nope....I'm here this morning to tell you about "the feng shui witch" who just happens to be my wife. Now I wrote earlier about what a finicky housekeeper my wife is. While I am more than happy with a smudge on the refrigerator, some dog hair hiding in the corner of the room, a half inch of dust on my Congressional Medal of Honor hanging on the wall (just kidding about the Congressional; it's just an old bowling trophy), I do insist on clear traffic lanes as I traverse the house. 

Sadly, my wife is hell bent on putting obstacles in my path. She'll pull out a plastic tray of those Korean romance movies she loves so dearly, pop her movie selection into the DVD player, then walk away, leaving the DVD tray directly in my path back to the back patio. If I am treading cautiously, and can avoid tumbling over those movies, I'll likely find a garden fork, claws up, resting comfortably square on the back step mat, ready to plunge its claws into the bottom of my tender feet. If I wanted to use fire up the barbecue I'd first have to remove a pair of pruning sheers resting on the top arch of the barbecue, then remove a small pot of cilantro she's left on the side burner. I have to be careful anywhere in the yard. I might turn the corner to take out the recyclables and trip over the garden cart she's left squarely in the middle of the sidewalk, having been sitting there since last week's weeding session. 

43 years of this people! When we're both in the kitchen it is not uncommon for my wife to move about, opening kitchen cabinets, and leaving half a dozen cabinet doors fully open. I have bent down to get something from a kitchen drawer and raised up and cracked my head on an open kitchen cabinet door....hundreds of times! I almost got an extra disability compensation from the VA when the doc saw all the scars on the top of my now bald head! ...war wounds from the kitchen! I used to angrily march down a row of open cabinet doors and angrily slam them shut, hoping to make a point with my wife. All I made was a domestic spat so I finally gave up on that tactic. 

And today, more than 40 years later the "feng shui witch" still leaves those kitchen cabinet doors open. And I, no longer fit for battle, simply follow along behind her and close them quietly and sigh in surrender. When my kids were little I thought my wife was conspiring with them to drive me mad. I would come home and find lovely sharp edged toys just waiting for me to step on with my stocking feet. One year the home became so accident prone I called in Mickey from Mutual of New York and upped my life insurance payout! Dick Van Dyke has nothing on me; I've tripped on ottomans and toys and garden forks and toilet plungers and just about anything else the mind can conceive of. Frankly, I'm lucky to be alive. 

Okay, that's my bitch session for this morning. If my wife wants to get on here and bitch about my idiosyncrasies she's free to do so; now that I've long since given up leaving my underwear on the bathroom floor, or leave the toilet seat up, there's little she could say that might embarrass me.