We All Saw This Coming

How does one know when one has turned the corner from "loveably eccentric" to "a couple of french fries short of a happy meal"? Hell, I just might be short the burger, too.



See, I'm not surprised at all when I find myself talking to the radio, the news, the cats, my football team ("Good Grief--why don't you just walk up and HAND them the ball????")or even my knitting ("let GO, you bastard!" is heard frequently when I'm trying to crochet squares together and the hook catches a thread instead of the whole strand and...well, you know). I no longer think it's all that odd when I stand in my closet and muse out loud "Okay, so who wants to be worn today?" Yeah, I know. One man's whimsy is another man's nut job. But still, I figured I was okay because I had a relative long ago whose cheese slowly slipped off her cracker, as evidenced by her naked forays down the street at night to steal pea gravel from the neighbors driveway...one piece at a time (which makes sense, really--I mean, it's not like she had pockets to carry a whole BUNCH of pea gravel) and I still see that behavior as kind of out there. My standards of sanity may not be terrifically high, but I'm clear on what they are. Naked gravel theft: bad. Yep, still pretty much together.

Anyway, I may be forced to look to another standard of measure because today I caught myself talking.....to my HAIR. Yep. I was walking up the stairs at work and caught sight of myself in one of those weird hubcap-shaped mirrors that make everyone look like a swollen goldfish? And they put them in the corners so you can if you're about to run into another swollen goldfish? And I was well into the following monologue before I realized that yes, I was talking to my hair:

"No, no--we talked about this. I gave you the choice. I said you could flip up or curl under and you chose under. You may not go back on your choice now. I'm sorry if you're not happy with your choice, but it's too late to make another one now. And no, flipping up on one side only is neither cute nor whimsical. Particulary when it's the side on the left back of my head. Beside, remember yesterday? Remember you chose to be flipped up? And what did you do? You remember, I know you do. You curled under on one side only. I expect better from you than this, I really do."

I know, it's bad. I also offered today to make offerings to the computer gods for Dr. V--we agreed that it might take lettuce or carrots, since it was clearly a geriatric hamster with bad arthritis and a limp running the server, if speed was anything to go by, and threatened to introduce birth control to the laundry basket to stop the out-of-control reproduction that seems to be going on in there (it's a party all day in that basket, judging by the enormous number of offspring that keep turning up--there's just no way Mr. K and I have worn that many socks in the last three days). See? The elevator's going up but really only stopping on the half floors. It's a sad thing.



Oh, and I might have slipped a bit of a cog while speaking to the person at a mail-order company who was allegedly working in customer service, but I find that terminology to be a heinous act of deceptive advertising. By the time I called, I had placed an order (a month and a half ago), e-mailed about the order's whereabouts twice, called once, and then e-mailed again--all without response. Cogs were definitely in danger by the time I called again today. And, in my current state of "flexible sanity", it made perfect sense to me to ask calmly "Am I bothering you by trying to do annoying things like purchase merchandise from you?"

I will defend this last, though, because not only did I get a full apology, I got a discount on my next order once they determined that the missing one is never going to come because the manufacturer discontinued it and they never got around to sharing that teensy, tiny little detail with me...or, apparently, the 39 other people waiting for the same items. A better person than I would probably not find it funny to think of the company scrambling to right this situation.

For a happy thing, though, check out the delightful bounty that arrived today from Childe:


13 of 'em, if you're counting, and each more beautiful than the last. Childe, you're a rock star. She also threw in some money for postage which was totally unnecessary, but much appreciated. These squares will be warming some very fortunate folk.

I'm off to welcome home Mr. K. And to be thankful that the neighbors have a paved driveway. This seems like it might be a good thing.