I just can't believe it. Scratch that. Sure I can - it's been the way I function ever since I began working exclusively at home, in a fascinating thing called a Home Office. My desk and immediate surroundings (i.e., a bedroom separate from the rest of the house, measuring about 12' X 10') are, as my mother use to say with arms akimbo, hands wedged firmly above the hip bones, a HOLY MESS.

Today, this morning, with cold rain drizzling down and the temperature a weirdly uncomfortable 43, I can't agree more. Wow, but see, I fought with my mom endlessly, ceaselessly, with an energy I might muster if I were a character in the TV apocalypta-hit "Jericho". It was in my constitution to disagree with her. Written in my psyche's Constitution, with quill and ink. I was a word-Puma, ready to pounce on any/everything she uttered. But as she used to say, she was always right. And she'd be right today.

Here's the short of it: my wife and kids (Jessica (the legitimate "adult" in the house), 3 y/o boy Cooper (Mr. Stealth), and 5 y/o "I AM ARIEL!" girl Ava) are returning today from a trip to Grandma's, just a few hours away. I stayed home. I was supposed to relax (I've completely lost grip on the definition of "relax" these days - we'll get into that bit of disease later) and clean the house. Those were my tasks. And I cleaned. Yessireebob, I cleaned. Clean clean cleany clean. Then I sat down to "relax", which ipso-facto equates to a supernaturally fast and effective UN-cleaning of the house.

How does this happen? I mean really.

Take the kitchen: pizza dough butts strewn about overnight by our cat Izzy, plates with a variety of foodlings left on them - foods that produce a superglue effect on ceramic, leaving plates wildly difficult to clean - like Monterey Jack microwaved on to a bowl - empty plastic bags from pre-wrapped quickie meals, countless utensils used only once, sometimes to taste the Kim Chee or to stir the Peets coffee (Yuuu-mmm, coffee and Kim Chee. Now there's a Prilosec moment.), bits of dried pasta rattling about on the floor - you get the picture.

This cleaning and un-cleaning included my home office, the place where I spend most of my waking hours and that has a magnetic draw to it through all seasons and tides, whether I desire its Siren call or not. The place where I am writing this paean-y blog, and TO which I am writing it. The place where I run my quite professional business, a business that should stir images in the minds of my clients of tidy desktops (electronic included) and ultra-organized files, trade journals, documents of all manner, electronic gadgetry and at the most, slightly askew Post-Its stuck to the bottom of my monitor. And this image is SO far flung from the reality that it produces a mildly psychotic chortle, kind of a bovine lowing from deep within my belly. A laugh that wants to explode into one of those rare 20-minute-long laughs of high-pitched, unstoppable hysteria...but is somehow contained.

My To-Do from late last night...up watching a very bad, straight-to-DVD thriller I rented because never in a bazillion years would my wife agree to rent it, and which I should not have rented because I knew it would be very, very bad the moment I unlimbered my wallet to pay for the rental...starts with "Straighten office".

OK. "Straighten". Yeah, sure.

It's like telling someone to "straighten" the Fall leaves that have dropped from the trees. Impossible.

This is going to take an entirely fresh effort, as will the family room, the bathrooms and especially my daughter's room - a place I never did tackle on the first go-round because it looks like someone piled a dumpster full of kid's belongings, cracked open our roof and overturned the thing right into her room.

As I write this I see e-mails streaming in on my Google desktop off there on the right, but I am going to have to ignore them because I PROMISED Jessica will return to a lovely, neat and tidy hacienda where she can kick back and not have to drag herself into an immediate cleaning jag. And I promised myself that I would begin this week with a true professional's office: the random un-randomized, the strewn un-strewn about, the crumpled but untrashed put where it should have been in the first place, pens in the pen bin, USB cords wound and out of sight, binders on their shelves, briefcases in the closet instead of the precise middle of my office floor (I often ask myself why, why do I choose to step over items like this ten, twenty, fifty times rather than take a few seconds to return them to their proper storage space? Masochism? Laziness? An as-yet defined mental disorder that will appear one day in the psychologist's bible, the DSM-III? In any case it's bizzare behavior to say the least.)...then complete the task with a 15-second vacuuming.

What a delightful, work-friendly environment it shall be! How at ease I will feel having everything so swiftly at my fingertips! How effortlessly my hand will reach out to answer the chirping cell phone rather than upturning 2 dozen papers/folders/magazines to find it just before it completes its last chirp!

I stare at the words I have just written, knowing that in the mere act of writing them, however pleasant and cathartic an exercise, I have already torn a half-hour away from completing my imperative task, that of making this room and this house a MUSEUM to tidiness. Wake up! Get on with it! At least put some real pants on for godssake! Are you going to wear these fleece PJ bottoms for 24 hours straight?!

OK, I could write more, but I'm beginning to feel nervous, unsettled.

Pause.

The damage control has begun. I have just arm-swept countless random items into my already mega-randomized desk drawers (or in my mom's words, "junk piles"). I will have only a nano of an idea of what's there when I return from re-cleaning the rest of the house, but at least this man's home office will look like a professional works here...and since as a general rule image eclipses substance in nearly every corner of our society today, I will experience a warm rush of true accomplishment.

Look for reports of success or failure in upcoming episodes. At least weekly I intend to entertain you with this long-overdue confession to working in the epicenter of a living, breathing, self-adapting and uncannily intelligent MESS.

Please feel free to enjoy my pain.