I used to watch a lot of Law and Order - the original and all its iterations.  I like it because at almost any given time of day, you're bound to find an episode on some channel and you don't have to watch it from the beginning to be able to figure out what's going on.  The one thing I never understand about the show is that the people who are being interrogated by the police rarely seem to be bothered by the fact that the cops are questioning them about a crime.  They go about their business - washing dishes, picking up the house, eating snacks, and usually wrap it up by saying something like "I really must get back to work" and show the detectives to the door.  I've never been questioned by the police, but I can only assume that if they were to show up at my house today I'd drop everything and sit down in a state of semi-panic until they'd gathered all of the information necessary to aid their investigation.  In fact, I'd probably confess to things that weren't even related to the crime at hand.  Things that are so mediocre that they'd probably show themselves to the door before I could even think to get up and load the dishwasher.

When I watch episodes of CSI, all I can think about is what would happen if a forensics team were to show up at my house.  If they came on a Wednesday (the day our cleaning lady is here), they probably wouldn't find too much except for the remnants of that day's lunch on the floor by the kitchen countertop.  But any other day of the week, it would take several analysts days to lift all the fingerprints off of the hundreds of surfaces in our house.  They'd find countess hairs and fibers to examine.  They could try to find information off of my computer but my files are such a mess that it would take a serious expert to make sense of it.  Looking at my date book they'd find that I probably wrote down a few items on the first few days of January and nothing after that, leading them to believe that nothing has happened in the last ten months.

Now that I'm watching 24, I look around our house and try to figure out what kind of clues a person might be able to glean from the everyday objects around us.  Here's what they'd find:
1.  Half a dozen scraps of paper with the words "Love Theme to St. Elmo's Fire" scribbled in barely legible writing.  Handwriting experts would be brought in and they'd determine that the person who wrote it was probably illiterate.  They'd try to figure out the connection - is it to the movie?  an infatuation with Rob Lowe?  someone just stuck in the 80's?  Truth: I keep hearing that song while I'm in the car.  Thinking that I should download it from iTunes, I write it on whatever scrap of paper I can find in my purse while I'm driving.
2.  Twenty pairs of shoes in the entryway, blocking every door and making it impossible to open any of them without first kicking something out of the way.  They would determine that there were dozens of people living here.  But all of them must be lazy or not know how to tie shoes as all of them are slip ons or in a permanently triple-tied position.  Truth:  I don't know how the shoes multiply in our entryway, and yet every time we go to put on a pair there seems to be only one of each pair in sight.  Also, we are kind of lazy in the shoe department.  I hate tying my shoes.
3.  Baskets upon baskets of laundry in various states of completion.  The only conclusion they could draw is that the washing machine must be out of order, or no one on earth would let all those baskets accumulate.  Truth: Most of the laundry in baskets are actually clean and waiting to be folded.  I can't seem to watch 24 and fold clothes at the same time, so now everything is a big fat wrinkled mess and I'll probably have to rewash everything just to be able to keep the wrinkles from becoming permanent creases.
4.  If the 24 team came into my house after dark, they'd find light switches that seemingly don't work.  They'd wonder if the power had been cut or if someone dangerous had removed the light bulbs.  Truth: Lights seem to burn out here almost daily.  I can never remember where Marty keeps the light bulbs and I keep forgetting to ask him to replace them for me.  Pretty soon I'm going to have to issue headlamps to everyone in the family or just go to bed once the sun sets, pretending we're actually living in a Little House on the Prairie.

So I guess the lesson here is not that our house is filled with good clue potential, but really that I better put those two discs that arrived from Netflix aside and get things whipped into shape.  Too bad I won't be able to fold any clothes tonight, it's too dark in here to find my way to the laundry room.