I should be a lot sorer than I am, considering I spent a few hours scuttling around like a retarded crab in the crawlspace on Saturday. Laura is in full-blown “nesting” mode, which is apparently normal for women who have little people growing inside them. Part of this nesting involves organizing linen closets, rearranging bedroom furniture and switching offices, and another part involves me crouching over like Quasimodo’s handsome cousin, moving crates and boxes back and forth in our crawlspace.

I’m going to estimate the vertical clearance in the crawlspace at about 3′ 6″, give or take a couple inches. My personal preferred vertical clearance is anything over 6′ 1″. This disparity between actual and preferred led to me colliding with beams and ducts, as well as breaking a lightbulb with my ass. I will say that it was worth it, for a couple of reasons.

First, the crawlspace is now divided into several distinct zones. The northeast corner (farthest from the door) has been declared Long-Term Storage, containing items (and collections of items) that we are not likely to access in the course of a given year, such as “Extra Juice Glasses,” “Photography Books” and “Laura’s Precious Memories (Fragile).”

Several large boxes of “Kris’ Crap” (or “Junk” or “Stuff”) now occupy the middle of the east wall. These contain comic books, collectible card games, Star Wars action figures and assorted role-playing paraphernalia. Under no circumstances should any of these boxes be opened by individuals not wearing a pocket protector.

In the center of the crawlspace, near the concrete block support column, is Laura’s craft stuff: several rolling storage crates filled with assorted paraphernalia that is suited to making either charming knick knacks or bondage gear, depending upon one’s particular proclivities.

Near the entrance, in the southwestern corner of the crawlspace, now resides the seasonal/holiday decoration. Autumn/Hallowe’en decorations have been hauled out into the light, while Winter/Christmas and Spring/Easter decorations silently wait within easy reach.

Now we can walk the living room, dining room and kitchen floors with a certain satisfaction, knowing that there is a well-organized world beneath our feet, and not just a smelly pile of dead hobos who learned the hard way that photo albums do not provide the nourishment necessary to sustain human life.

Oh, and it’s been a while since I waxed poetic about waste removal. I just want to say that we should really do something nice for our sanitation engineers, who make unsightly piles of refuse disappear with little to no restriction on what constitutes “trash.”

Silly hobos.