The burning question of the day is �where did I put my report cards?� I�m an organized person and I don�t procrastinate. Those report cards for my Hebrew class are due next week and I had them all filled out except for the attendance part because the semester does not end until next week�s class. Then I lost them. I�m sure they are somewhere on the dining room table, lost in the flotsam and jetsam of Mr. Philately�s stamp-related piles but I can find them�and it�s driving me crazy.

When I was little, I remember that I sometimes sat with friends and discussed what our houses would be like when we grew up. We discussed the size of rooms, the number of rooms, and the colors we would use to decorate them. I may have liked math in school but I knew how to be froo-froo with the best of them when the occasion arose. But my house looks nothing like the ones I pictured. What I failed to understand was that when you chose to live with other people, you give up control of your surroundings.

Perhaps my mother deceived me. I knew from a young age that when you did not have enough money your house didn�t always look as you would wish. Couches could look beat-up until you gathered enough money to re-upholster them. Heck, moving to the second house I lived in taught me that not every room had to have furniture right away. No, it�s not that she deceived me by teaching me to expect instant gratification. It�s just that I believed that, money aside, she had more control than she probably did.

I remember when my mother finally got the money together to get furniture (other than the piano) for the living room in our second house. She actually worked with a decorator to pick out the furniture. She was so excited. From my perspective, it seemed that my dad�s role was largely limited to being excited with her, at least to some extent, and telling her that her choices were lovely (and they were.)

Somehow, my life doesn�t work the same way. I can decorate in any color as long as it is an earth tone. Mr. Philately loves earth tones. Our bedroom carpet happens to be blue so our bedroom is blue but that�s only because the carpet we inherited from the previous owners was blue. I�ll let that carpet wear down to nothing before I replace it. It would be such a battle to replace it in blue. The man is very sweet but he also has an opinion on everything.

But the inability to control space goes beyond decorating. It slops over to clutter. Living with Mr. Philately involves living with piles�lots of them. I�ve been known to pile from time-to-time but I tend to keep things neater if a place looks neat in the first place. The dining room is not one of those places. The piles just grow. I�m ashamed to admit that, in the dining room, I tend to shrug and adopt the philosophy that I might as well join him, at least a bit�and now I�ll have to pay the price and re-write my report cards.

People marvel at the general neatness of my office. They usually are shocked if they catch a glimpse of my house. But my office reflects the real me, the me that gets to control my own space. If my office looks out of control, as it occasionally does, you can bet I�m feeling out of control.

But my house is another matter. It reflects others more than it reflects me. It has a leopard room (Kat), a tie-die room (Day-Hay), and a piled dining room (Mr. Philately). In other words, it�s not the house little girl me dreamed of, not at all. But then, whose house is it anyway?

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