Beginning With a Pile of Books Falling on My Head

...my day has been one big pile on. It feels like I woke up in clown world. I can almost hear the laugh track.

Merlin knocked the pile of books off the ledge he likes to sit and watch the neighbor's cat from. I knew when I put that pile there a month ago that it was probably a risky thing to do. But I got complacent when nothing happened and I kept stacking them there even though returned books had made room on the shelves and some in the stack went back and new ones arrived.

Even after the rude awakening by a shower of books, I still put them back up there. Until after dinner when I returned to the room and realized that was a stupendously silly thing to do and finally moved them to the empty space on the shelf left by the slew of books I had to return in the last week.

The pile on by inanimate objects did not stop with the books hitting my head and shoulders and elbow and wrist to yank me out of a one dream into a reality that continues to feel as capricious as a nightmare. As I began to gather up the books off the bed and floor, everywhere I reached something grabbed at me, poked at me tickled me, wrapped itself around my wrist, slapped my face. Things fell off perches they had happily sat on for months to slip and slide into out of reach crevices between the bed and the bookshelf. The mouse ran away across the mattress as I tried to move my netbook back onto the desk from the bed beside me where I'd left it as I closed the lid on the titles of a West Wing episode as I fell asleep.

Maybe the netbook was out for revenge as it did take the brunt of the book avalanche having been left where my head would have been if I'd not taken it to bed with me.

How many ways can earbuds attack? Wrap around your wrist, poke your face, hook onto the cover of a book to keep you from moving the netbook and DVD player in one smooth motion back to the desk but instead have to set it back down on the bed to free your hands to unhook the earbud. Meanwhile the mouse jumped off the bed onto the floor.

Finally, having gotten the books restacked and the netbook reestablished on the desk, I was about to start the next episode of West Wing but paused to take my BP meds first. And that's when the pill sorter slid off it's perch and through the narrow passage between the box that sits between bed and bookshelf and into the dark cobwebby cave under the bookshelf. My arm barely fits through that crack between the box and the bottom shelf and only if twisted until it looks dislocated from the perspective anyone watching my contortions. I'm going to have three or four bruises along the inside of my right arm between wrist and elbow. The spots still hurt hours and hours later.

In order to reach down into that cave to retrieve my meds, I had to move a pile of pillows and folded blankets. I admit I was a careless and not looking where I put them but is that any reason for them to jump on my back, pin my other arm to the mattress and bounce off my head?

And while I was thus engaged the mouse somersaulted off the desk landing a few inches from the cats dish.

There was more. Altercations with cords and cans and cutlery. Proceeding through the afternoon and through dinner and through the evening. But I'll just leave it there as I'm sure you're as bored as I am by the play by play.

Besides, I don't dare keep my hand off that mouse for long. I'm sure if I did, I would find it under the living room couch but not before spending hours or days searching.