Trans/plant/portation

I love cargo pants. I love cargo pants almost as much as I love ye olde sweater vests, but trousers receive decidedly less attention from my friends and family. Maybe it’s because they’re in neutral tones, or situated too far from my face, the area where people look when we’re conversing. Peripheral vision only extends so far. In any case, I have several pairs of cargo pants, and I’ve owned at least one pair since Banana Republic sold its wares out of a hand-drawn catalog. I like them not because I have some strange affection for marsupial pouches, but because I don’t like having stuff in regular pants pockets; it’s more comfortable to keep my wallet in a bigger pocket that pressed against my hip or ass cheek.

Until yesterday, cargo pants had always been good to me. Until yesterday.

Left pocket stores my iPhone, right pocket my wallet. Lanyard goes around my neck with my office pass key, and my keys are either in my ignition or on a table nearby. I only put keys in my pocket if I’m out somewhere, walking, and even then, I’ll try to find a spot for them off my person if I can (read: baby stroller drink cup holder). But as my pants have aged the kangaroo pockets have gotten more pliable, and when sitting in my car, a couple of times I’ve felt my phone slip out and fall to the floor. I hadn’t identified it as a general problem, and that is on me. Because when I was running from the office to home on my way to an HIV testing fair, it slipped out, only this time it found the pavement in the parking lot rather than the floor of my Honda. I drove away and didn’t notice it missing until I crossed the threshold at home, giggling at Emile in his high chair. I patted my pockets once, twice. Wallet in my right hand. Where was the phone?

Now then, I presumed I’d left it on my desk at work. When I’d run out the door to the car, I had a stack of folders for taking down testing and specimen information, a fist full of HIV tests, a few pens, a paper sack filled with condoms, lube, and dental dams, and a banana. It was more than likely that in all of my flusteredness I simply forgot the little white iPhone. As I bundled up the baby and took his diaper bag from Susanne, I reminded myself to log on to the computer in the student center (where I’d be doing the testing), and email my case manager to ask if he could find my phone back at work. Nope, not here, he said. Read More…

These days I use chronic sleep deprivation as a tool. It’s my excuse when I can’t think of a particular word. It’s my justification for taking an early afternoon nap. It’s my benchmark for whether the latest set of nighttime hours aided or subtracted from my sleep deficit. It’s my metaphor for 2012, in which I measure achievement in between unintended bouts of sleep. At some point I may actually drool into my keyboard and short-circuit my laptop. Anything is possible.

But another effect of not granting rest to my brain is the effect it’s had on my frontal lobe. Perhaps my cerebellum is demanding that it operate at peak efficiency so I can like, breathe and blink and such, but my filter for shutting up has gone all wonky. I’m not lecturing passersby as I run errands, exactly, but my big booming laugh is taking more people by surprise.

Last week I left extra early before work because a significant number of my dendrites told me to get a mocha from the patisserie. Not the roastery, not the drive through espresso place on 9th Avenue, but the patisserie. Without enough alertness to remember that the shop wouldn’t be open at that hour, I maneuvered the car to downtown, then cursed at the Closed sign, which of course didn’t care, it being an inanimate sign and all. Idle at the light on Main Street, then press the accelerator. I figured since I was near the post office now I might as well pick up the mail for the office. About thirty feet past the stop sign I recognized that hey, those red octagons mean something important. What was it again? Read More…