this is how dorky i am

It's cold right now. Not snowing cold, of course, but California cold, which means I've been relatively bundled up. So I was bummed when I couldn't find my gloves before leaving this morning for my follow up visit with Dr. Wonka. (Where, by the way, I stole my first pen of the year... though I'm not even sure it's stealing since the drug reps probly want their pens out there in the world. Even so, I was all sly and used the pen to write a check and then "absent-mindedly" dropped it into my groovy new skurvy purse.)

Instead, after a brief search, I located and wore my back up gloves. (Which are actually much nicer, thus they are my back up. I have a tendency to save everything nice for some never-to-come later time. Usually this strategy backfires. Just ask Erik about the infamous moldy Tastykake. My grandmother had sent a box all the way from Philly. In the beginning I was all happy, on a nostalgic chocolate high - eating, sharing - like a normal person. Everything changed when my supply was reduced to one lonely kake. Erik foolishly contemplated eating it. Of course I wouldn't hear of it. Instead, I saved it for myself, for my future more-deserving self, and, as the title of the tale implies, I rediscovered it, moldy and quite inedible, weeks later...)

I ran a few errands on the way to Dr. Wonka's. One stop was Home Depot where I was exchanging a dimmer switch I had attempted to install. (The Home Depot guy swore it would be easy. "Easy, as in 'even a girl could do it', easy?" I asked. "Yes," he assured me. The hardest part would be picking out which one I wanted, he said. Well, I assumed he meant I would have a style conundrum. I am, in fact, often painfully indecisive. But I live in a rental which means the choice was easy. I picked the cheapest one. Well, as it turns out, there's more to a dimmer than just style. There are two different types of wiring one might encounter when digging around in walls and I had, of course, bought the wrong one. Indeed, the act of turning off the power, unscrewing the wall plate and connecting the wires did not seem overly complicated, but I wish Home Depot man had been a bit more specific with his cryptic warning. I would have totally spent the extra five bucks for the one that could accommodate either type of wiring. I love things that can do both. Both is always the right answer, I say.)

Home Depot, I know from experience, has a decent bathroom. (My mother and I, thanks to our shared genes of thin hair and overactive bladders, keep a mental map of all the best public restrooms within a 200 mile radius of our homes. In fact, on Christmas Eve I added a most delightful loo to my list. While driving through Big Sur, Erik and I stopped at a little roadhouse whose restroom had an actual (optional) potty seat built into the toilet lit. Although I don't have children, I was touched at the thoughtfulness of the management and the cleverness of the person who designed it.)

While washing up afterwards, I happened to glance at myself in the mirror. I noticed my cosy winter hat was more askew than it normally is. I am accustomed to finding it poofed up a bit in the back from my perpetual pony tail, but this lump was strangely peaked and forward. I took off my hat to investigate.

I had found the missing gloves.