A Typical Morning

I woke up without my alarm for the second time this week. I figured that I'd sleep in a bit this week because I don't really have any reason to get up. I'm on vacay before my new jobs starts (a week from yesterday!) and, other than finally submitting my DC Bar application, I had little in the way of responsibilities. Still, I was out of bed before 8:30am. Not sure why. I was just very awake. I know that I had been dreaming, but I can't for the life of me remember what.

I made myself a bowl of cereal then hopped on the interwebs for my morning dose of news and snark. The Republicans debated last night. Apparently the audience applauded waterboarding. Super. I should probably be shocked, but I'm mostly not. Jerry Falwell is still dead. I'm still feeling guilty about being happy about it. Like a good Catholic, I was taught to not speak ill of the dead and I certainly found some of the stuff I found in message boards yesterday a little extreme, even if he was a hateful bigot. But someone (and I'd credit him/her if I remembered where I read it) paraphrased what Bette Davis said upon hearing of nemesis Joan Crawford's death: “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good." In the case of a person as unambiguously vile as Falwell, I'm loath to disagree. But I digress.

After realizing that America is still fucked and neither Wolfie nor Gonzo resigned, I went about folding some laundry. I did a ton of laundry yesterday in preparation for my trip to NJ (oh yeah, I'm going to be in NJ for the next few days). My plan is to have my apartment in as pristine a state as possible so that it'll be ready for me when I return from the Jerz and start work. I had just swiffed my floor when I decided that I'd love a coffee. Like most Washingtonians, I have a Starbucks exactly a block away. I threw on a pair of jeans and grabbed those things that are always with me when I leave my apartment: Wallet. Cell. iPod. Keys. Keys? Shit. Where were my keys?

I scoured my table but, because I actually cleaned it significantly yesterday, it didn't take long to figure out that they weren't there. Well, if not there, then where? Checked my desk. Dresser. My bookcase. Nothing. That's when I stopped, smiled to myself because I do this all the time, and checked my pockets.

Nope. No keys.

Had they fallen to the floor? Were they on my five inches of kitchen counter space? No. Did I toss them on the bed? Maybe set them down in the bathroom? No dice. I was getting a bit crazy at this point. What if I had dropped them outside? I can use the call box to get into my front door so, when stepping outside for a sec, I'll leave my door unlocked. No keys necessary. Then again, I don't like doing that late at night, so I always bring my keys. But what if I had dropped them somehow? I couldn't be 100% certain that my keys were in my apartment, so I didn't feel 100% great about leaving for an extended weekend knowing that my keys might be in the hands of nefarious peoples. (In case you're just tuning in, I'm a bit of a paranoid person.) I started panicking. I went outside and scanned my front porch. I checked to see if a neighbor had found them and put them on top of our mailboxes (our de facto lost and found). I returned to my aparment and started tearing it apart. I was moving stuff. Looked under the bed. Shook my garbage can to see if maybe I'd thrown them out. Nada. Looked behind the bed. Behind the dresser. Under the desk. Cleared off the table. Cleared off the desk. Went through my medicine cabinet. Under chair cushions. I looked in a pair of shoes that were under the table. Sweatshirt pockets. I started opening drawers. Drawers that I haven't opened in weeks.

No keys.

I was losing it. Where were my keys? I couldn't go to Jersey without knowing where my keys were! Where could they be?! Rechecked every place I'd already checked. Lifted up my bath mats. Looked on top of the fridge.

Pause. No. That's silly. They weren't IN the refrigerator.

I opened the refrigerator door. No keys. I looked in the butter tray. Nothing. Up. Down. Nothing. Then I pulled out the pizza box sitting on my top rack. There, in the back of my refrigerator, behind the pizza box from last night, were my keys.

Yeah.