Definition: The removal of a muffin

Today I had to make an important decision. (I know, right--who let me?) I get one precious hour of jailbreak for lunch every day, and today I had two options to occupy this time: 1) Read the 647-page stimulus bill, which Lawyer Boy had already read, outlined, and emailed to me for perusal, helping me to stay informed and knowledgeable about the procedures and policies that impact my life as a tax-paying American, OR 2) Blog about names I call my cat.

Frankly, my concern in picking up the stimulation* policy was that it would be so riveting, every word gripping my imagination and pulling me through page after page till the dramatic conclusion, that I wouldn’t be able to put down the congressional Harry Potter 7 until I was done six hours later.

And thus we find ourselves here, where logic took a left turn away from reality and crashed into a swamp of dysfunction. Ladies and gentlemen, the halls of Congress!

Ahem. Onward!

I have a socially awkward habit of nicknaming everyone, almost as soon as I meet them, from the babies of people I don’t know, all the way up to my boss. After enough sideways stares and tight-lipped cautious chuckles, I learned to keep these gems to myself, except with those who know and love me, including Lawyer Boy, my family, and the pope. My favorite victim is the cat, Mango, who not only doesn’t stare at me carefully, trying to memorize my features to reproduce on a police sketch later, but who seems to love me regardless of what comes out of my mouth. Here, for your disapproval, is a short list of names I most frequently call the cat:

Mangocat
Man-o
Mongoloid
Mango Lloyd Webber
Mango Q.
Q-Bear
Mangostein
Mancat
CatMan
TallMan
SmallMan
CatFriend
Best CatFriend
Kittenduck
Duckie
Duckily-doo
Ducksworth
TankyPants McChunkyButt
Kittles
Kittles McSkittles
Muffin Man
Muffinpants
Muffinopolis
Muffles
Puffles
Fluffles
Fluffington Puffles

Additionally, my mom calls Mango “Mongolio” and my dad calls him “Magnito,” so good news! This disorder appears to be genetic. Scientists can eventually eradicate it from our DNA, just like Down’s syndrome and that gene that makes some people grody close-talkers.

Lawyer Boy, by comparison, has just one nickname for the cat: Skab, an acyonym for Shitty-Kitty-Ass-Bag.

I don’t have as many royal titles for the dogs as I do for Mango Q., but it’s only because we haven’t had them as long. I’m sure that in time, I’ll have damaged their psyches as well. For now I usually stick to derivations of the ever-endearing “Muffin,” but the other day Lawyer Boy caught me calling one of the dogs “Muffinectomy” and finally put his foot down on the madness. Apparently it was all fun and games with “Doggley O’Drools,” but “Muffinectomy” defined the line between sweetly ridiculous and frighteningly maniacal.

I’d be interested to know if other people blanket their pets with a deluge of dumb like I do. If you can give me one that beats out “Muffinectomy,” I’ll share it with everyone.

I still have some time left, so I could go read about The Stimulation, but I’m going to save that one for Saturday afternoon and a cup of cocoa.

*You totally know they call it that in secret meetings.

A Note to the Wicked Stepmother

Dear Mother Nature,

Grace here. Coffee? Tea? Appletini? Please, have a seat. We need to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting regarding your first-quarter performance. First off, it's winter, which means we're stuck inside, chowing Chunky Soup like it's actually people food, and trying to force the cat to play heating pad on our Skinsicle toes. Second, I believe they make effective medications for your particular breed of schizophrenia, and Wal-Mart has both $4 prescriptions AND Milano cookies, so go get you some bottled sanity and happiness and quit this "four seasons in one month" business. Sixty-five degrees is not appropriate for January. Put your pants back on.

Third, didn't anyone ever teach you that it's mean to toy with the emotions of small children? I imagine this was a lesson they tried to instill in you around about Grade 3, along with "Build The Perfect Storm in 1,2,3" and "Religion and Philosophy: A Study of Al Gore." I just can't take your tricks any more, you meteorological minx. This morning you made my hopes soar like those ratty birds that keep crapping on my car, and then YOU MADE ME GO TO WORK.

As I was finishing up my exhaustive morning preparatory routine of putting on clothes that almost match, I heard the fizz of sleefrow (a delicious sleet-freezing-rain-snow cocktail also available shaken with Bacardi) falling on my windowsill, and my heart began to sing the praises of inclement weather. Surely, I thought, this will continue for hours, accumulate into a street-hazard Slurpee, and let me pretend that for my own safety, I must stay home and stalk people I lost track of from high school on Facebook. I glided into the office, glowingly confident that we would close within minutes, and fully prepared to check the news sites for the latest orphans of Brangelina until that magical moment.

Then, what did you do? You snuggled us close and warmed up to a balmy thirty-three degrees, just enough to thaw my hopes and dreams and make me stay at the office and read the Brangelina chronicles all awful day. We ended up with the Michelob Ultra of inclement weather, when I had really been craving a Guinness (and accompanying widget).

So Mom Earth, consider yourself on notice. If you’re gonna play, then bring your A game…or I’ll stop recycling.

Thanks for puppies,

Grace

P.S.: The Equator makes your ass look fat.

There's No Cure For Ridiculous

Today I had the distinct pleasure of visiting my family practitioner's office. If this office advertised, they would really be best served by using the slogan "Total Care: From Pap Smears to Papaw's Goiter." I wasn't actually there for an exam, but to have a pricey little chat with my PCP about my completely irrational and nonsensical fear that my heart is constantly about to burst, and/or that my stomach is going to explode and shoot acid at my heart.

That, right there, I really wish I could say I made up for the sake of posting something funny. The second part of that fear, about my stomach sniping off my heart, has now caused no fewer than four doctors to bite their lips in a feeble attempt not to laugh at a patient. So feeble.

Because checking in at the doctor's office requires a full NSA background check and subsequent fingerprint scan, I was left to marinate in the cauldron of communicable disease that is the waiting room for almost an hour, surrounded by sticky, sweaty mouth-breathers oozing this season's cold. In between slathering my hands with sanitizer that smelled like Pez, and snorting the sanitizer that smelled like Pez, I observed my fellow inmates. There was the woman ten feet away, swathed entirely in black velour, clutching something that looked like a baby booty, staring at it intently, and flicking her fingers at it rhythmically. For the first few minutes, I thought she was crocheting the end of the sock; then suddenly, I realized that she was meticulously picking off one of her fingernails, bit by freakish bit. The Black (Velour) Widow looked up from her handicraft and stared me down, the sock dangling menacingly off her tusk of a hangnail. I moved on.

Next to me was a little boy, sitting across from his mother. He was of the enchanting age at which kids are old enough to hold a coherent conversation, but not yet old enough for anyone who hasn't had a lobotomy to want to converse with them. After five minutes of shrill banter that the mother finally recognized was torture commensurate with watching "The View" for everyone around them, she switched the kid into sign language. I don't speak sign language (and really, who does?) but I can read words when they're spelled out, and for a few minutes, the mom spelled nothing but s-t-o-p i-t and c-a-l-m d-o-w-n. Then, she switched to harder fourth-grade words, and the kid began spelling the letters out l-o-u-d-l-y and o-b-n-o-x-i-o-u-s-l-y as she signed them, ruining the stealth aspect of the whole game and flicking the nerves of the other captives. I desperately wanted to sign over w-e c-a-n- h-e-a-r y-o-u, but I was terrified I would get the kid's attention, and give him the impression that I wanted to converse with him. In either language.

An hour and forty-five forms later, I was finally called back. (I'm pretty sure I filled out one of the forms wrong: I either designated my husband as authorized to pick up meds for me, or I designated myself as my own husband.) Then I had another half-hour to veg on a crunchy paper-topped exam table and think of ways to freak out the good doctor.

I could be completely nude when he walked in, which would be a double surprise, since I wasn't there to be examined or sketched by art students. I could remain fully clothed, but pull the stirrups out of the rodeo table, lay down, and put my feet in the stirrups. From this position I would greet him, carry out our entire conversation, and give thoughtful feedback. My favorite idea was, at the end of our encounter, to ask, "can I have a pap smear?" in the same tone as a little kid would ask "can I have a lollipop?". I really liked this one for the unpredictable possibilities it held.

In the end, I had to rule them all out. Option 1 was off the table because it was cold, and I don't like being naked. Option 2 bit the dust because I was worried that my three-inch heels would get caught in the stirrups and I'd die trying to dismount my steed. Option 3 failed because one of the unpredictable possibilities inherent to it was the chance that the doctor would say yes, and that was a chance I was just not willing to take. Not for you, beloved readers, and not for anyone else.

Oh, and also nixing all my carnival ideas? The fact that I grew up with this doctor's kids, a block from his house, and I'm pretty sure he still golfs with my dad.

All that just to learn that my heart's fine, and that another upstanding member of the medical community knows I'm crazy.

Friday Night Recap

The weekend arriveth! Halleluiah! This must be a reward for going to church on Sunday, and not at all a result of the passage of the man-made phenomenon called time. Whatevz...dawg.

A few notes:

1. When you're married, you do exciting things like shop for a china cabinet on Friday nights because it would totally be no fun to go to bars and meet cool people and sing along to 80s songs that you like a lot, but kind of don't know the words to. And you go to the unfinished furniture store, and you get foot-stompy like a six-year-old because, really, if they want you to pay as much for it as real painted-already furniture...shouldn't they paint it for you? Especially if they've seen your painting skills which resemble Peter Pan painting with his toes.
2. Also you burn two whole pans of home fries in the oven, and your husband points out that dinner was good, but maybe next time you could try not setting it on fire.
3. Mango has been the Shrieking Anus of the evening and has NOT STOPPED MEOWING since we came home. Apparently food and endless love aren't enough to satisfy him. Bitch wants diamonds.
   
4. Speaking of the Shrieking Anus, turn on Fox and watch "Don't Forget The Lyrics" if you hate your eardrums and want to watch a tone-deaf white chick publicly proclaim that she never wants a date again. Lifelong sworn celibacy is the only thing you could possibly win from participating in this show.
   
5. Lawyer Boy and I shared a lovely bottle of Cab Sauv tonight, which explains numbers 1-4.

Adios, amigos. Happy weekend!

Grace, stop drinking.

Snaps To You Awards: The Butterfly Gift Fairy

Snaps to you, my best friend Shelley's mom, for consistently finding the most carnie-style and bizarre gifts for any and all gifting holidays (and some not, like St. Patty's Day). I've known Shelley for almost eight years now, and a garage sale at Michael Jackson's pad couldn't hold a candle to some of the gift-wrapped weirdness that's popped up in her lucky stocking. The thing about Shelley's mom is that, twenty-six years into (s)mothering Shelley, she's still not fully on board with the fact that she and Shelley are two extremely different people. Here is an illustrative chart:

Shelley's Mom's Likes:

• Butterflies
• Dainty flowers, dainty doilies, and other dainteries
• Kittens and all manner of cuddly things
• Pleated-front pants
  
• Things that kind of do nothing except sit around and collect dust and have flowers on them

Shelley's Likes:

• Running marathons
• Being in the army
• Being sporty and badass
• Not being dainty
• Cake and wine

I would have constructed a Venn diagram to make my point, but the only thing to go in the middle would have been "ovaries," so I felt like it would be a waste of my MS Paint skills.

Sometimes the gifts Shelley's mom gets her are clear attempts to get her things she thinks Shelley could use, and as an example of this, I offer The Year of the Glitterpants. Shelley's mom (who, for simplicity and no other discernible reason, will henceforth be known as Mrs. Batwing) was trying to get her, I think, fun party clothes for college, resulting in the tragic acquisition of a pair of skin-tight jeans entirely bedazzled in silver glitter. Like, so outrageously bedazzled that said pants snowed glitter 24/7. These would have been great for a fun college party, if Shelley had attended college at the Playboy Mansion, and was also RuPaul. Back they went.

Shelley's birthday is two days after Baby Jesus', so Mrs. Batwing really has to hustle and flow to bring the magic twice in one week. And oh, this year, how the magic was broughten. For Christmas, Mrs. Batwing got Shelley a tiny plate, covered in all sorts of dainty, precious baby flowers, big enough to hold a single Oreo. Shelley had no idea what it could be other than a portion-control diet plate. Apparently (and this is only hearsay) it's a plate whose sole purpose in life, its entire reason for being, is to hold a wet teabag. I have henceforth called it The Teabagger, and have not stopped laughing ever since.

For Shelley's birthday, Mrs. Batwing dug deep into the bowels of her creativity and really yanked out a winner. She took a picture of Shelley with which she is inexplicably obsessed, and did nefarious things with it. Exhibit A, the mug shot:

Shelley is completely mortified by this picture. So of course, for the sake of weaving my intricate web of storytelling, I'm sharing it with the whole wide Internet. LYLAS, chica!

Anyway, Mrs. Batwing had this Mona Lisa made into real USPS stamps, for spreading the humiliation far and wide, and in case that wasn't enough dignity damage for one holiday, she also had it emblazoned on every page of a notepad for Shelley. Outside of the envelope, for postal worker viewing pleasure: Army Shelley! Inside the envelope, visible only to the lucky recipient: Army Shelley! For a small finder's fee, I'll give Shelley your address, and you, my friend, can constitute the only time these rare objets d'art see the light of day (and thank G0d).

Capping off the festive oddities in a totally unexpected way, Shelley's mom also gave her a silver Tiffany's necklace. It really brings out the sparkle in the glitterpants, and that nice silver button on the green beret.

Walker, Texas Ranger, DDS

There is nothing unusual, remarkable, or unique about my hatred of going to the dentist. I would actually be a freakish anomaly if I enjoyed going to the dentist, and even more so if I loved it so much that every time I went, I took candy (sugar-free, natch) for my fave hygienists.

Maybe if all the hygienists at the HQ of my preferred DDS weren’t Chuck Norris, I could even have a fave to begin with. When Chuck said, “I’ll see you in hell,” he was specifically referring to those beige faux-leather chairs.

Complicating the scenario like Leo DiCaprio on "Growing Pains" is the fact that I have extremely sensitive teeth, and all Chuck Norris has to do is flash any one of the dental death-picks at me to send me through the roof. Chuck Norris also has poor listening and empathy skills, so when I say in my tiniest child-bride voice, “Please be gentle with me,” he yells back “Suck it, pansy, and take it like a soldier!!” And just like any good episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” there is blood. There is ALWAYS blood, and you can bet your full-series boxed DVD set that it’s not Chuck Norris’.

I’m currently on the dentist’s cancellation/hit list, because I totally blacked out my December appointment. At the very moment when I was scripted to lie back, be still, and meet my destiny on the faux leather, I was working away in my office, merrily unaware of the horrific death I had skirted. The phone rang, and it was Chuck. “Grace, hi. Where are you?”

“I’m…at my…office?” I stammered, baffled as to why they cared. I pushed through my confusion and figured I’d save them the next question. “I’m wearing a pink cashmere sweater and pearl—”

“Grace, you’re supposed to be here right now.” His iron grip closed around my throat through the phone line. I saw God.

“I a—OH I AM!! Oh, shoot. I’m so sorry! I completely forgot!” I am more senile than my eighty-year-old grandmother. (I’m also taller, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Chuck Norris breathed a sigh reminiscent of the winds of Hurricane Katrina and I could hear the click-click of angry typing. “I’m putting you on the cancellation list. We’ll call you when we have an opening.” The line went dead, just like my soul.

So now I’m on their hit list, subject to the daily Russian Roulette of their schedule. They called me yesterday, and I lied and said I had a meeting and couldn’t be there. Again, the sigh that swept away NOLA, but I had to lie. It was a life-saving lie, because it gives me time to formulate another lie: The fantasy that I floss every day. I mean, I DO floss every day, but only in the two weeks leading up to each appointment. Just enough time for my gums to get used to the unaccustomed abuse and stop puffing up like a Peep in the microwave. I want to floss, but not enough to stay up to do it every night when I’m already exhausted. The only person I know who really likes to floss is my dad, but he also loves bagpipes and canned herring, so we’re removing his opinion from this selective poll.

I’ve begun flossing in earnest awaiting Chuck’s inevitable summons to the death chamber. If I can get in at least a week of good flossage, then the fact that I failed to floss for the last 26 phases of the moon usually goes undetected. It would probably go over better if when Chuck says, “So, have we been flossing every night, weak baby kitten?” I didn’t stare at the wall and focus on the abyss of infinity, before quickly replying, “Yup, every single night, ever, so help me God, I pledge allegiance, amen.” I’m not sure which penalty is stiffer: The punishment for not flossing every night, or the punishment for lying to Chuck Norris. I do not want to find out.

Word to the wise: I’ve learned that, in the event that a dentist appointment sneaks up on you, and maybe it’s the night before and you haven’t flossed since Bush 41, DO NOT floss the night before. Your gums will go all Peeps on you, and they’ll see through your feeble tricks. Wait and floss right before you go. Your gums will be clean, and won’t have time to figure out what the hell you just did to them. WINZ!!!

Snaps To You Awards: The Frat-alicious Network

First off, snaps to you, procrastination, for being so addictively delicious that I'm continually tanked off your lazy goodness. The Snaps To You Award will be issued every Friday...or as close to every Friday as my slow ass can get with it and rub two brain cells together till I make a fire.

And now, the real star of the show! Snaps to you, DIY Network, for blatantly ignoring the obvious Freudian connotations, and televising, for my viewing pleasure, a nightly segment called "Nailed At Nine." I can't quite remember, but I'm 99% positive that I attended a frat party by this same name in college. Therefore, I can only assume that "Nailed At Nine" involves matching t-shirts, Solo cups full of warm crappy beer, and roofies.

This is a fitting and appropriate addition to the DIY Network, which already bandies about the words "screw," "stud," and "male-female adapter" frequently enough to make me giggle like the eleven-year-old boy that I kinda still am, but with cuter shoes and the ability to frost a cake.

DIY Network: I'd totally be willing to do a 60-second tribute commercial to "Nailed At Nine," heralding their receipt of the S2U Award. It would do wonders for their viewership, AND I'd send you cupcakes. Well, roofiecakes. It's only fair.

Will Work For Fun

Generally speaking, and generally disregarding the days when I try to strangle myself with redaction tape, I enjoy my job. I work by myself, I get free herbal tea, and I have my very own office, complete with a real working door that opens and closes at my whim.

It should be noted that I would perform much less savory jobs, including “examiner of whale bladder function,” “Yankee Candle wax taste-tester,” and “personal assistant to Paris Hilton,” as long as I was guaranteed my own office.

Most of the people at my office are smiley, bland, and dazed enough to keep me on the functional side of spazzed out, but when the more aggressively ridiculous cubicle clowns ding my nerves one too many times, I can just close my aforementioned door and work in peace, prepare important legal documents, and bring forth a new creative masterpiece. Behold, legal work product!

I'm so glad that instead of troubling myself to learn Power Point (The Devil) or Excel (The Devil When Power Point Is Unavailable), I dedicated myself entirely to the mastery of MS Paint. Just the other day, proving that my employer had hired me for a reason other than to provide a continuous supply of cupcakes and pointy shoes, my skills finally paid off: The firm had put together a team to run a 10k this spring, and was taking suggestions for a design for a t-shirt we could all wear.

Alright fine, maybe they weren't actively soliciting suggestions. Maybe I just saw an opportunity to flex my creative muscles and bring joy to those around me. Whatever. I had a great idea for a t-shirt design, so I submitted it to the powers that be:

It was denied in favor of "Running From The Law." Clearly the committee needs to learn some MS Paint.

*While I did add the words to that picture, I did not create the picture itself. It came from the funniest blog ever written.

The First Weekly (Ever) Snaps To You Awards!

Snaps to you, Pakistan, for finally jumping on the bandwagon and issuing typewritten passports—as opposed to the handwritten, handicraft-style passports that were still issued out the back of a rickshaw as of 2008. We're so proud. Also, thanks for papadums.

If Turkey could please take note, and stop issuing passports with vital information spread over seven pages in eight colors like a bizarre children’s picture book, I’d appreciate it.

Secondary snaps to Pakistan, also, for winning the inaugural (both of 2009 and ever) Snaps to You Award, as designated by me. I’ll issue this award every Friday in celebration of things that make my life easier or generally delight me, that I feel you, my loyal/four readers, could benefit from knowing. I will not include people, places, or things that are already heralded worldwide, such as Dame Judy Dench, the iphone, and orgasms.

If you’d like to submit yourself or someone you’d like to publicly embarrass for the Snaps to You Award, I am open to bribes. I love jewelry, homemade muffins, and suitable-for-framing lolcat prints. Please be warned, though, that should you happen to submit your request the week that Helena Bonham Carter finally chooses to shower, you will automatically lose. Bribes are non-refundable, void where prohibited, nonredeemable for cash, and should be issued in small, unmarked bills/lolcats.

Should you be chosen as weekly recipient of the S2U Award, you will gain immediate fame, glory, international acclaim, and my permission to link to the prestigious award on your resume. Actually, my abject begging and pleading to link to me on your resume.

Please?

Stay-Puft Sinuses

Demonstrating that 2009 desperately wanted to come in with a bang and show me how awesome it’s going to be to live out the next 358 days, I have been smacked down with a cold in the first week of the New Year. I’m pretty pissed about this, and not just because it involves the inevitable debate between “suffer at work, thereby saving vacation days for something more fun than blowing the entire Amazon River and its fauna out my nose,” and “throb on the couch at home, blowing the entire Amazon River and its fauna out my nose, watching TV and wondering when TLC and HGTV will partner so that those fashionistas on ‘What Not To Wear’ can work their spangly magic on Suzanne Whang and Karen McAloon, who have not been told that no one wants their house decorated by someone wearing hammer pants or aloha prints.”

I’m pissed about this because I get every single cold that comes my way, where by “comes my way” I mean “is smeared on me by the secretary who deploys a mass offensive against humanity in the bathroom, doesn’t wash her hands, and then pretends nothing happened.” I can’t protect myself from having the rhinovirus practically air-gunned into my nostrils, but I feel like I do an above-par job of making sure my inner army is trained and ready to fend off invaders. Or at least making sure they’re not drunk all the time. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables (case in point: the pineapple incident), I choke down a multivitamin that tastes like Flipper's groin, and when I don't come home feeling like the workday sat on my head and farted, I manage to clock in some exercise.

My fruits and vegetables are many and varied, and sometimes I even wash them. I try to make them organic, except organic produce consistently and violently angers me. Here's why. When words are put in front of product names at grocery stores, it's all for one reason: To say "I am more tasty!" Fresh spinach. Crisp pickles. Hot bread. Get my drift? They are eager little children of adjectives screaming PICK ME I TASTE NICER!!! So when I see ORGANIC splashed across displays of arugula and apples, smugly crowning a price tag rivaled only by the GDP, I assume "organic" means "tastier," dig a little deeper, and cough up a lung to pay for the organic goodness.

Then I get home, and instead of tasting like rainbows and sunshine like I had assumed it would, the organic produce tastes like mediocre supermarket disappointment. And I want my lung back.

So I do what I can to keep myself healthy, and Mucus, Fatigue, and Achey still come to visit. Mid-way through a conversation with one of my bosses today, she realized how sick I was, and said, "Oh God, everyone's a petri dish right now." I almostalmostalmost replied, "And I made tender love to your keyboard before you got in this morning," but I didn't, of course, because I have no balls and also I like having health insurance.

Battlestar Galactica: Now In Polish!

In the course of stumbling through the drug-hazy coma that I’m calling my workday, I just had to type into a form that someone is from a place called “Subcarpathian Voivodeship.” Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland. I swear I’m not making that up. In reality, I wish I COULD make up something that funny. It sounds like the sequel to Battlestar Galactica. “Battlestar Galactica: Subcarpathian Voivodeship”!!! Thus, I put a note on the form assuring the reviewing attorney that I had not made that up; that it is in fact, a real place with its own culture, traditions, spirited folk music, and maybe legalized weed.

If I’m the only one who finds Subcarpathian Voivodeship hilarious, it’s because I have a cold and am hopped up on enough Alka-Seltzer cold to kill an elephant, or at least make him hallucinate Pixar movies for a few hours. Here, as a winning example of my current mental state, is the entire body of an email I just sent to my mom:

"HAPPEH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your present from us is cool. What are we having for dinner tonight? I have a cold."

I’m gonna be so much fun at dinner tonight. "Happy Birthday, Mom! Sorry I sneezed on your cake and made rhinovirus the party favor."

Flakey McFlakenstein Reporting For Duty

Yesterday, my first day back at work after my ten-day sanity hiatus/Christmas vacay, will go down in history as one of the longest days of my life. The only thing that can possibly compete with it for most interminable duration is the entire televised run of “Little House on the Prairie,” only with fewer bonnets and more profanity.

Before we proceed, let’s just for a minute picture Pa Ingalls dropping the F-bomb.

I know, right?

While on sanity hiatus, I had gotten a new cell phone. It’s a vast improvement over my old one in that it takes video, has a QWERTY keyboard, and actually makes and receives calls. In hoping that someone would call me so I could relax to the soothing sounds of my new rainforest-creatures ringtone, I had kept my new child on my desk all day. No one called except an apparently misguided yet psychic computer at the drug store, to inform me that a bottle of a drug I no longer take was waiting for me. Our conversation was deep and meaningful, but all too brief to offset the mind-numbitude of the rest of the day.

By the time I called it a draw at 5:30, my little brain was beyond fried. I hurriedly grabbed my coat and purse, and vacated the premises with my friend Gray (of Christmas Party Pâté Challenge fame). I had locked my doors, buckled my seatbelt, and effectively safeguarded myself against any remaining vestiges of the workday, when I realized I had left my precious, shiny new child on my desk. By itself. IN THE DARK!

I froze. I choked back panic. I struggled to breathe—but that was most likely a side effect from the fact that I was breathing into a plastic bag to try to alleviate the panic. Manic thoughts raced through my head faster than hippies fleeing a bath. What if someone stole it? What if someone tried to call me and I wasn’t there to be soothed by the rainforest creatures?

Happily, I came up with a solution by the time I was driving out of the parking deck. It was actually NOT to walk back and get the phone. Please. It was a two-block walk in cold rain, and I knew that Lawyer Boy and the cat were eagerly awaiting my arrival. Also my cute, cute pointy shoes felt like aliens were sitting down to a cheerful family dinner of my toes. I decided I would call Dan, one of the attorneys I work for, who was the only person I could think of who would still be chained to his desk at that hour, and I would ask him to put the phone in my desk drawer for protection. I knew he would do this for me, but not before he had plastered a post-it note that said, “this is NOT cute” over the phone’s front screen, a digital picture of the cat in a cardboard box. Whatever. I could deal with him hating on my cat in return for the safekeeping of my shiny baby. I had a plan! Hurray! Long live my mad skillz!

So I reached over and fumbled in my purse, looking for my phone, so I could call Dan…to ask him to put my phone in the drawer. It took me a good 10 seconds to realize the only way I was making that call was if my wallet spontaneously picked up a signal.