Nothing like waking up at 2am or thereabouts (from a dream involving walking on strangely unslippery, very clear ice while surrounded by floating white feathers as if filming Legend) to track down a series of beeps occurring somewhere in the house.
The culprit turned out to be the microwave, which had decided its keypad was unhappy in some fashion. Lacking the desire to drag out my tablet and search the vast repository of online knowledge for a fix (and, it must be said, more than half convinced it was the chicken feathers’ fault) I considered going downstairs to the circuit breakers in order to turn off the whole shebang and quite possibly half the kitchen as well.
Fortunately, I was too tired for that nonsense and–lucky me!–vaguely remembered there was a cord and an outlet involved, further remembering said plug was hidden in the above-stove cabinet we refer to as “Pasta Holding–not Pasta Jail, completely different.”1 So I dragged over the stepstool, excavated the inhabitants of Pasta Holding, located said plug on the opposite side I had been convinced of it occupying, yanked it loose with a muttered curse, found that solved the problem for the nonce, and staggered back to bed.
Boxnoggin was naturally very interested in proceedings, but had to remain in my room since the cat roams upstairs all night2 and besides, I did not want to strap him into harness and run the risk of meeting a backyard trash panda. Once I crawled back between the sheets he was content merely to get his nose in my armpit and recommence interrupted snoring.
…but I couldn’t get back to sleep for a good few hours. I managed after a dose of the Nuclear Option For Insomnia3 My poor alarm clock–unaware of my wishes since I had not shared them–began its job at the usual time, at which point I admit I did swear rather unbecomingly and turned it off with perhaps a little more force than absolutely necessary.
I also promptly apologised to the appliance, turned over, got bonked on the nose by Boxnoggin’s nose (rudely removed from my armpit just a few moments earlier) and had longing thoughts of hitting myself with a cartoon mallet in order to get a few more hours of rest. Being too exhausted for such a maneuver, I dove back into a variety of dozing broken by another series of dreams, in which trapezes, dancing skeletons, flying baby hippos, bombs producing puffs of violently pink smoke, and Zayde Wolf’s El Capitan figured prominently.
The latter is, in fact, playing on repeat inside my head. I don’t even know.
Consequently while coffee was brewing this morning I clambered back on the stepstool again, plugged the goddamn microwave back in, and hit the ‘clock’ button. The appliance blinked, yawned, wanted to know what time it was, further inquired whether it was AM or PM, and went back to its usual pursuit of waiting for leftovers or popcorn. I suppose the true test will be if I use it for nuking gruel once this mug of caffeination is finished.
Before the coffee was ready I also had to get the pasta boxes and bags scattered all over the counter back into their cells. I will admit it’s rather haphazard up there now.
Anyway, the morning is somewhat back on track. Boxnoggin was content with a bit of a lie-in and has gone back for his early morning nap–the lucky little fuzzbucket–but very soon he’ll be jingling his collar and I cannot decide if I want to risk making gruel or should take whatever wins I’ve been granted since midnight and just munch a bit of cold cereal.
Guess I’ll draw out finishing my coffee for as long as possible. My blasted inbox appears to be enough of a mess to warrant at least another half-hour, and then I’ll have to face the problem of brekkie. It’s not the most exotic way I’ve ever greeted a Thursday, thank goodness, and in a little while I’ll be able to laugh at the absurdity.
Once the caffeine soaks in, that is. Might even need another dose before things really get started. Guess I’d better get to it.
- This is a 50% Off reference, for the curious. The kids love themselves an Abridged series or two.
- Any meeting between the Mad Tortie and Boxnoggin creates more chaos than even I can deal with; consequently they are kept rigidly separate.
- Which is, say it with me, another blog post.
