Sometimes in order to deal with various states of chaos the best thing to do is to turn part of your vision completely off.  Sort of like selective blinders.  I've always had a talent for this.  It explains how I was able to leave my backpack from fourth grade packed for ten years until my mom discovered it and made me unpack it.  Or how I am able to create tall, tall towers of objects on my dresser without it bothering me a bit.  The key to this is not only to selectively turn off the ability to see certain things, but to have absolutely no feeling about it.  For example, I can open my closet and it won't register at all that I can't see the floor or that the stacks of things on the floor meet the bottom of hanging clothes.  Not only don't I see it, I also feel nothing.  Not bad that it looks terrible, not embarrassed that I'm 33 and have a messy closet, not worrisome that Marty will look in and freak out.  Just nothing.

So when our Christmas tree fell over the day after we put it up, I promptly stopped seeing it.  It really only looked good that first night anyway, and even then it was iffy because I put it up with the kids and basically launched the lights toward the top not bothering to hide the wires.  After it fell over and we leaned it into the corner, to me it was pretty much a goner.  I started a pile of ornaments under the tree for those that fell off instead of hanging them back up.  I did water it - I mean, this isn't about neglect or laziness, it's about selective vision.

From that second day on, I turned a blind eye to the tree.  After awhile, this expanded to turning a blind eye to the whole living room then to all things Christmas.  So yesterday, knowing that Marty would be out of town for almost two weeks, I knew we had to get the tree out or we'd be facing major needle loss and potential fire hazard.  This meant that I had to open up my vision again.  Like raising the shade on the window of an airplane, it's blinding at first and sort of amazing when it connects in your mind where you are and what you're doing.  It took me a few hours to really start to see things again.  I didn't really want to, and my eyes fought the concept the whole time, but I knew if I didn't I would find a lone snowman propped up somewhere sometime in July. 

It was so busy today that I forgot to cognitively turn my vision back off again.  In fact, I didn't totally realize that I hadn't until after dinner.  That's when I spotted the thermos and coffee server on top of the refrigerator.  The half eaten and completely hardened baguette.  The jelly on the telephone.  Those things all registered a feeling of mild distaste, like "huh, I should really do something about that."  But then I saw a puddle of spit on the leather couch where Martin was testing then resting his collection of fake plastic teeth.  That's when I realized I could see it. 

I turned off my vision, tried to feel nothing about what I had just witnessed.  Fighting the urge to throw up, I went to the kitchen to grab a towel.  I passed the telephone that looked perfectly fine to me.  I walked past the refrigerator that looked neat and orderly.  I grabbed the towel, walked back into the family room and cleaned up the mess without queasiness.  Selective vision - the talent that serves me well in motherhood.