A Toy Story

Sometimes I feel like someone's favorite toy. Like live entertainment. Or a cartoon.

This afternoon I was making my lunch. A sandwich and coffee. I started the coffee maker first thinking I could have my sandwich made and cleaned up after by the time it finished. But as I was putting away the cheese and mustard and bread, I noticed the lid atop the coffee maker was still standing up. I'd forgotten to close it. The heated water can't get up into the grounds when that lid is open but it sits there burbling and hissing same as when it's doing it thing.

So I had to stand around in the kitchen waiting for enough coffee to fill my cup to percolate through to the pot before I cold return to the room where I'd anticipated starting up a DVD to watch as I ate.

Upon return to the room I found safe(ish) places to set down the coffee mug and sandwich.--the latter on top of my closed netbook--while I got settled on the bed and got the DVD started. I reached for my glasses which I'd left on my netbook lid when I lay down this morning about 5. I had to reach over the sandwich which was blocking them from my view and I miscalculated their position and instead of picking them up I knocked them off and they tumbled behind the printer upon which my netbook set.

I had to get up off the bed to reach over the printer and fumble around on the back edge of my desk (aka TV tray table) but I couldn't find them with my fingers. Now I had to assume they had fallen off the back of my desk and into the closet and to get to them I would have to pull the bags and boxes out from under the desk. Bags holding crochet and sewing, boxes serving as desk drawers and craft misc storage.

I piled all this onto the bed and got on my hands and knees with a battery powered LED lamp and again fumbled around among miscellaneous objects identifying them by feel if I couldn't see them. It was hard to have both arm and head under the desk at once so I had to alternate between looking and reaching.

I was in this position when Ed came in to get ready for work. He told me to get out of the way and he would find them. So I got up on the bed and he looked under and behind my desk, moving more of the boxes out before declaring them not there and replacing the boxes. I suggested they might be under the printer than in the hollow space behind the paper tray.

I decided that I ought to move my net book off to make it easier for him to look there. To maybe lift the printer up. So I slid the netbook on its board with mouse and external DVD onto my lap. The sandwich going along for the ride.

My mistake was in reaching over to steady the printer as Ed tipped it up to looked. This unbalanced the board across my legs and netbook, papers, DVDs, headphones, mouse, and of course the sandwich, tumbled to the floor. The sandwich landing milimeters from Ed's feet.

So he had pick all of that up and put it back on my lap before he could continue looking for my glasses. He did finally find them under the printer. He handed them to me and then headed for the shower. I set about reassembling my netbook lapdesk and getting the DVD started before picking up the sandwich Ed had set on top of the printer to examine it. It had landed on one of the Netflix envelopes instead of directly on the floor so it escaped any obvious harm and I decided it was still edible.

But before I started the DVD and my lunch I decided I needed the fan turned up as all of that activity in a room that heats up near 80 when my in-laws have the heater at 73 in winter had me feeling about ready for a shower myself. So I set the lapdesk on the bed and started to get up but as I jostled my desk the box of often used books and desk misc tumbled off it onto the floor. Upside down. Spilling books, notebooks, pencils, camera, USB cord, ear buds, bookmarks, remote, LED lamp, library card, receipts, debit card, squeeze ball, and sunglasses onto the floor across my path to the fan and Ed's into the room.

I heard the shower on the other side of the wall go off as I knelt to start gathering it all up but I was still at it when he returned and once again had to help me find stuff that had slid out of view or into the shadows, behind or under something. I think we got it all. But I'm not sure I remember every last thing that was in that box. I'd been dropping things into it since the beginning of NaNo or even before Halloween.

So the stuff picked up, the fan turned on, Ed dressed and gone, I settled back on the bed and fired up the DVD, put on the headphones and picked up my sandwich off the printer. The top slice of bread was dry as toast.

Oh and my coffee was lukewarm.

I hope someone was having fun.