One more secret revealed
My mother said af ter my cat-confessional column last week that now I have no secrets. Au contraire. I have confessed in this column to many things — cussing occasionally, not cooking a lick, being a shopaholic and, the worst, my husband says, owning a Michael Bolton CD.
I’ve shared some of my family secrets, too, much to their chagrin. My brother has forgiven me for talking about his back hair (which he no longer has, thanks to the miracle of lasers).
Still, I don’t know that I’ve shared the extent of my disorganization problem. It has begun to really get on my nerves after all these years, and I am determined to turn this around before I die.
I really think people are born one way or the other — organized or messy — just like they’re either right- or left-handed. It’s hard for clean-desk people to comprehend us can’t-see-the-top-of-the-desk people. Newspaper reporters and editors are famous for paper-covered desks, stacks teetering on the edges. We’ve seen those cute little signs, “A messy desk is the sign of a creative mind.”
We often work on half a dozen stories at a time, and we have press releases, reporter’s notebooks, file folders, documents, business cards and Post-it notes everywhere. Not to mention coffee mugs (I count six on my desk at this moment, including one that says, “Everyone annoys me. That’s all.”) and an odd assemblage of mementos, thankyou notes, cartoons, magnets, photographs and random items that express our personalities. You might have noticed — most reporters are not shy.
It has gotten to the point, however, that I’m embarrassed if someone comes in the office to see me. Not only is the top of my desk covered — and I’m not talking neat stacks — it has spilled over to the floor. Perusing the floor, I see my 2013 Daytimer pages with all the notes and phone numbers scribbled I wrote each day, old newspapers that I kept for some reason that I’ve forgotten, a rack of file folders in my attempt to get organized, a box of old reporter’s notebooks, which I occasionally dig through to find information that’s helpful, an old computer keyboard, a heater that I use daily, two plastic forks, and a box in the corner that I’m afraid to open because something might crawl out.
There. Do you think less of me now? The thing is, my house is not like this. I’m not going to give tours of my closet, but my husband and I keep our home fairly clean and neat. It’s like I have two personalities.
For Christmas last year, I asked my family for money to hire a professional organizer to help me get a handle on my desk at work. I’d seen an advertisement for the woman’s business in a magazine; then I lost the magazine.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled
CONWAY — A street west of Hendrix College is being rebuilt, which involves replacing some of the older sewer lines in the city, a Conway Corp. engineer said.
Brett McDaniel, water systems senior engineer, said “the sewer system was already in place long before Conway Corp. ever took over.” He said the oldest sewer in Conway is in that area and that it existed before the utility company did.
Conway City Engineer Finley Vinson said sewer lines underneath a road are “common, unfortunately, for older streets.” He said the road is being rebuilt because it was in poor condition.
“It’s an old concrete street, and it was overlaid with asphalt, and the concrete beneath was breaking and crumbling,” he said. The city’s cost for the project is about $200,000, he said. “Any utilities that were in the way would have to be relocated at the utility company’s expense.”
Jeff Matthews, Conway Corp. public relations coordinator, said the cost of reconstructing the sewer lines is “not to exceed $50,000.”
“The sewer line located along the Washington Avenue corridor impacted by the street department construction activity had too little depth after the roadbed was lowered,” Matthews said. “It is being reconstructed in the original location with appropriate pipe material for this situation and project. Alternate locations were reviewed and considered during the planning process, and the most feasible alternative with the least economic and environmental impact was selected.”
Matthews said Tuesday that it is estimated the sewer-line reconstruction “may continue for approximately one more week, depending on the weather.”
Vinson said he wasn’t sure when the road project would be completed because it is dependent on the sewer lines being reconstructed.
“We originally thought we would have been done by the end of the month,” Vinson said.
He said another significant project underway in the city is replacing a bridge on Wescon Lane “that caved in years ago, and there was no money to fix it at the time.”
“We’re rebuilding the box culvert to reopen the road — we’re rebuilding the road, as well,” Vinson said.
He said the project suffered a setback earlier this month. “They had the forms set up to start the concrete work for the box culvert, but the big storm … blew all the forms out, so we had to start over. That set us back a week.”
Vinson said the project is estimated to cost $100,000, and the completion date is dependent on the weather.
“It kind of needs to dry up,” he said.