Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Scene from a New Apartment

Wednesday night. First "real" night in the apartment. Meaning, first day I got up in the morning, took Precocious Daughter to school, went to work, picked up PDaughter, went home*, made dinner, wrote a blog post.

*On moving day, I mentioned several times that I had to do or get or find certain things "at home." Each time, Drummer Boy gently reminded me that "at home" no longer meant "at the house." Tonight I'm sitting the living room of my apartment, typing away on the large ottoman that is our only piece of furniture. I'm at home.

Not thinking about selling the house (the next act happens tomorrow, good, bad, or ugh). Not drinking myself catatonic. Listening to the Siamese kitten meowing softly in another room, ever so slowly becoming accustomed to her strange new surroundings. She does like having a kitchen island, I think.

Thinking about tonight's blog post, I fire up the laptop. Pick up the mouse and flip it on its back to turn it on. No red light. I jiggle the switch a few times. No red light in either direction. Batteries are dead.

Oh well, I'll just go the drawer where the batteries are kept.... Were kept. At the house.

I'm not at the house. I'm at home. There's no battery drawer here.

Certainly I brought batteries with me, though. I remember very deliberately divvying up the contents of our junk drawer. Drawers. Don't judge. Making sure that he had a flashlight and I had a flashlight, he had some tape and I had some tape, he had the deck of cards with a queen missing and I had a set of shower curtain rings with one ring missing. Like that.

Apparently people to love to post pictures of their junk on the Internet.
Who knew?

I totally would have split up our stock of AA batteries. Wouldn't I? The goddamn world runs on AA batteries. TV remotes, vibrators...all the important stuff. At the house, we always kept a big old pack of them on hand. AA batteries, that is.

So I go to the plastic bin that holds my share of the junk drawer booty and start rummaging. Yep, there's the tape. There's a box of paper clips. There's a hot glue gun - thank God I saved that bad boy, seeing as I'm so crafty and all.

Is it wrong if I prefer the penguin on the left?

Ah, there they are. Good old...D-cell batteries.

Great Godfrey's hairy coconut, what the hell are those doing here?

I own nothing that takes D-cell batteries. Nothing. Certainly not my vibrator. And not my goddamn mouse.

I rummage some more. Nope. I have one, two, three D-cell batteries and zero batteries that are actually useful to me in any way.

If only we could harness the power of steam.

I could take the batteries out of another device that uses them and put them in the mouse, of course. Because I really hate using the little pad-button thingy on the laptop itself. I'm not good at it. It's like typing with my thumbs; I think it's a generational deficiency. That's my story, anyway.

It's not the end of the world, though. It's just the principle, strange and a little sad, of not being able to find something you've never even had to look very hard for. Just another side effect of being at home.

I smile a little to myself.

I can live with that.

7 comments:

  1. Your vibrator used AA batteries!?!? I'll trade you some batteries. :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your vibrator used AA batteries!?!? I'll trade you some batteries. :P

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations on your new home. And congratulations on doing a search for a picture of someone's junk and coming up with a picture of an actual junk drawer. The last time I searched for a picture of someone's junk the results were not pleasant, to put it mildly. On the bright side it brought that meeting to an early end.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Vibrator?!??

    "New battery, is that for me?
    That's something I could really use."

    - Motorhead, Vibrator

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just think of all the fun you'll have figuring out where the junk goes in this home. Congratulations!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Who is Godfrey and what makes him so great? And how did he come to own a hairy coconut?
    So many questions.

    ReplyDelete

You're thinking it, you may as well type it. The only comments you'll regret are the ones you don't leave. Also, replies to threads make puppies grow big and strong.