Brain-teaser
Here’s what I am doing right now. I am typing with one finger of my left hand. I am right-handed. My right hand, and arm, and leg and foot are vibrating, in a way that is both useless and annoying.
I am so absorbed in managing this that the dog has to remind me to feed her. She gives a throat-clearing sort of woof from the other side of the office door. She’s right, she always is, it’s her suppertime.
I zombie-walk down to the kitchen. I realize the flat of 24 cans of dog food is still in the trunk, in the garage. I put dry kibble in a bowl, figuring it will have to do for now. I clump outside and set the bowl down as a freezing mist starts to fall. “Just a minute,” I say to the dog.
I bring the bowl back inside, and put it in the oven so the cats won’t get into it, then head outside to get a single can of dogfood out of the trunk. A single can I can manage. Brilliant.
By manage, I mean a sort of spazzy comedy of pulling a ring to get the lid off, setting the lid in the sink as a sop to the cats, forking out half a can of “country stew with gravy”, yeah right, but the dog enjoys it, truly. I have to use my right hand for the fork, I don’t know why, but it’s a delicate operation, unlike English composition.
Mix it up, more or less, fork in the sink where the designated cat is waiting for it, snap lid on can, eventually, put can in fridge, then back out to the waiting dog who receives the confection, I like to think, gratefully.
My life is a brain-teaser. Like those nerdy puzzles of wolves and sheep and bags of oats that have to be ferried across some made-up river. The answer always takes like six trips, back and forth, setting things down and picking them up, in a sequence that’s as maddening as it is boring.
The dog barks to come back in. Now her thick coat will be wet and we will dance around the living room with a bath towel, solving another brain-teaser.
I am so absorbed in managing this that the dog has to remind me to feed her. She gives a throat-clearing sort of woof from the other side of the office door. She’s right, she always is, it’s her suppertime.
I zombie-walk down to the kitchen. I realize the flat of 24 cans of dog food is still in the trunk, in the garage. I put dry kibble in a bowl, figuring it will have to do for now. I clump outside and set the bowl down as a freezing mist starts to fall. “Just a minute,” I say to the dog.
I bring the bowl back inside, and put it in the oven so the cats won’t get into it, then head outside to get a single can of dogfood out of the trunk. A single can I can manage. Brilliant.
By manage, I mean a sort of spazzy comedy of pulling a ring to get the lid off, setting the lid in the sink as a sop to the cats, forking out half a can of “country stew with gravy”, yeah right, but the dog enjoys it, truly. I have to use my right hand for the fork, I don’t know why, but it’s a delicate operation, unlike English composition.
Mix it up, more or less, fork in the sink where the designated cat is waiting for it, snap lid on can, eventually, put can in fridge, then back out to the waiting dog who receives the confection, I like to think, gratefully.
My life is a brain-teaser. Like those nerdy puzzles of wolves and sheep and bags of oats that have to be ferried across some made-up river. The answer always takes like six trips, back and forth, setting things down and picking them up, in a sequence that’s as maddening as it is boring.
The dog barks to come back in. Now her thick coat will be wet and we will dance around the living room with a bath towel, solving another brain-teaser.
posted by SteelR at 3:34 PM
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