Rockhampton

One of these days I'm going to have to visit Rockhampton, as opposed to stopping overnight as I pass through.

I mean, you've got to love a town with large public botanical gardens that include a free zoo and a Japanese garden.

Even if it doesn't have much else, that's a huge selling point as far as I'm concerned. I expect it has a few more things to offer, which I would discover if I just stayed for more than a handful of hours on my way between X and Y.

By the way, for those of you who are keeping track of such things, the Trevelodge "Motel" in Rockhampton is a) not a motel, and b) not worth the price. Plus, the restaurant takes forever to give people food.

We got in shortly after 7:30 and were fed by about 8:45. Having not eaten anything since about 1pm that afternoon, we were rather hungry and rather dismayed that it could take them so long to provide a piece of grilled fish and some pasta. Especially since the reason I chose that place was because it had a restaurant, so we could be sure of getting food shortly after we arrived...

Neat and Tidy

So, my mother has been 'tidying' things lately, and yesterday she took it upon herself to tidy my desk.

When I noticed, I pointed out to her that it wasn't the most appropriate thing she could have done, but she generally refuses to take on-board those sorts of messages.

This has been the central bane of my existence for a large part of my life (which makes me pretty darn lucky, when you think of it):

My mother
a) refuses to believe that the mess I create has any real meaning or order,
b) refuses to believe I could possibly have any objection to her 'tidying' it away,
c) refuses to admit she's moved anything and gets defensive if I ask her where something might be after she has 'tidied' it.

"I haven't thrown anything out!"
"I just want to know where it is."
"Why would you assume I have anything to do with it?"
"The cat isn't a viable suspect."

At least this time she happily admitted to tidying my desk: "I've just put everything back into one pile."

Ah, yes, that's okay then. The fact that I was in the middle of sorting those papers into three different piles is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, I suppose.

I've tried suggesting that one day I might rearrange her filing system to make it more aesthetically pleasing to me, but she doesn't see the analogy.

The central problem, I believe, is that she sees A Mess, while I see several messes that are touching at the edges. I know it's messy, but there is an order involved. I remember which mess contains the thing I'm looking for. I can be wrong, and it's actually in the mess that's two messes over, but I have a fighting chance of finding it. When it has been 'put away' by someone other than myself, I'm less capable of locating it.

I thought we were making progress with this, though. She seemed to have worked out that I tidy up my own mess(es) roughly every week or so, so she doesn't actually have to do it herself whenever she feels the urge. And, at the very least, she has restrained herself to 'public' spaces, like family rooms.

Now, suddenly, she tidies my desk.

Granted, the study was not a controlled mess. It was more of a controlled explosion. There were a number of moves involving furniture and items being shifted from room to room to room, and most of it ended up in the study without any real order. I have spent the last couple of months chipping away at the edges of that mess and having very little success in the "putting-things-somewhere-decent" stakes.

There's an element in which I was beginning to think it might be easier to burn down the house than tidy the study, so I'm not greatly upset that someone else made it look half decent...

But, still, she tidied my desk.

Normal people don't do that.