The Buddhist Patriarch Bodhidharma(Daruma) seated in meditation. Painted by Hashimaho Gaho, 1834-1908. Japanese, Kano School. Ink and slight color on paper. 43 5/8 x 20 inches.
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington 25, D.C.
I have. Fairly frequently, in fact, I've regretted arising to meet the day.
Take, for example, today.
Let us begin with the gigantic, purple big toe on my left foot. Yesterday, while I was trying to prepare an early supper, before the Bat and I went off to our monthly Doll Club meeting (yes, I still collect dollies. You should see some of them), I watched as a package of frozen pork chops slid off the top shelf of the refrigerator-freezer, landing -- on its edge -- on the knuckle of my left big toe, Crunch! right on the point where proximal phalanx meets first metatarsal, with all the force of a six-pound slab of ice dropping unobstructed from 1.5 meters up. Nothing was broken, but my girly shoes don't fit, and a cat pouncing on toes 'neath covers is no longer cute and funny....
So, there I am, gimping around the house this morning, and, while attending to the beasties, I dropped the litter-box lid on... you guessed it... the sore foot. If cats could learn to repeat the words they hear, I don't think I'd be cited as the "good mommy" the neighbors think I am.
I soaked the foot in a cool bath for a few minutes before showering.
Getting dressed wasn't too bad. I put socks on before I slid my feet down the legs of my good jeans (I'm dressing in a civilized fashion because I have a memorial gathering* to attend this evening at 5, and I don't want to have to keep changing clothes just because I'm pyjamaheddin and respectful of customs of the locals). Everything after that was unexceptional -- except that I don't usually wear these shoes, since they're slightly large, and usually require winter-weight socks, but today they're okay with the thin cotton ones.
So, I'm dressed and trying to figure out how to slip out the door without TiGrr making a successful break for the door, when the Bat calls -- she mis-heard me cite the time of the memorial tonight, and thought it was mid-morning, so she wanted to know if I was going to make it over in time....
Upshot of this distraction was that I had to make haste to stuff my pockets in the ritual fashion -- keys, wallet, phone, lip goo, wrist watch with broken band, pen, reading glasses. I got out to the car (without TiGrr's escaping) only to discover that my keys were not in their appropriate pocket. I checked the other side -- sometimes I've put it in the jeans pocket with the lip goo and watch.
No dice.
I dug in the bottom of my Ugly Bag (aka the purse from aytch -ee- double-toothpicks).
Not there.
Went back inside. TiGrr got out. I caught him and brought him back in, gaining three new deep scratches along the way.
Looked for the keys. Hey, they share a ring with a glow-in-the-dark plastic frog-sans-toes. How hard can it be to find a big, ungainly thing like that? But they're nowhere near where I place them each evening (and I always put them in the same spot, to avoid moments just like this morning's).
I walked over to the folks' house, hrrrmmmpfff into my favorite chair, and take off my shoes. I called the hostess of last night's meeting, asking if, perhaps, I may have lost them in the nice, big comfy chair I'd been using. Esther, the hostess, checked, and, no, there were no keys attached to a toeless glow-in-the-dark plastic frog. I thanked her, hung up, and grumbled to myself about cats stealing keys and burying them under the gigantic bed, where I can't reach without serious assistance.
After a while, I made my way up here to the computer, where I tried to take my mind off my woes by answering e-mail, editing my weekly column, and otherwise losing myself in cyberia.
More than three hours later, I am in the kitchen, standing at a fair distance from the freezer and contemplating preparing a largely inedible lunch for myself involving no pork chops, when my backside begins to itch. I scratch, and my pocket scratches back.
Poking out from my thick tri-fold wallet, stuffed incautiously into the back pocket of my jeans, are my keys.
Dang, but those toeless glow-in-the-dark plastic frogs can do some neat pocket-hopping tricks!
I'm thinking of staying in bed tomorrow, until things improve. But knowing my luck, that will happen sometime around AD 2037. So, bad idea though it may be, I'll probably get up and get cracking, anyway.
*If you are in the general vicinity of Monmouth, IL, this evening around 5, please join me, the Bat, and our friends and colleagues, for a gathering at the Buchanan Center for the Arts, to honor the memory of Mike DiFuccia.
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