An Odd Breakfast

When it’s already 81 degrees at 6 a.m., you know it’s going to be a viciously hot day. Even keeping the house cool has been a challenge the past several days because that same temperature also has managed to be about the low at night. I keep checking the calendar to make sure it really is still June.

As the sun starts coming up each morning, my bedroom – in the easternmost corner of the house, starts catching the sun right away. As a result, it was even warmer than normal today. So it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t immediately notice the mother standing there.

“You forgot your package yesterday,” she says.

Package? What package? I didn’t recall bagging up anything up to take to work yesterday. Usually when it’s this hot, I won’t try to take yogurt or fruit or anything. When I walked out of my room the mother met me at the corner of the livingroom.

“Here,” she says, extending a balled up Wal-Mart bag to me. “You left it here on the edge of the table and I didn’t notice it until you’d gone.”

I do frequently bag up things to take to work and set them on the table. And, I do forget these little parcels on occasion. I just didn’t remember doing this in the past day or so. Still perplexed, I start to grab it from her when the bag presses against its contents and I can see through it: ONE GLASS SHADE. Uh, mom, this is not mine.

“Well, you left it here.”

When I start getting hungry enough to crunch on glass shades, I’ll let you know. (I think of an old bit Johnny Carson did a lifetime ago, parodying that Yul Gibbons guy who used to hawk that cereal, what was the name of it? Grape Nuts. That's it! Anyway, in the skit, Carson was eating a picnic table and saying the garage door was next.)

In the bag is the spare shade we bought when we bought two new ones for the lights above the sink to match the new bathroom ceiling fixture! (I just put those up on Sunday, hence the extra was still handy.)

But it’s not crazy around here or anything ….