My mornings have been starting later and later these days. I could come up with all sorts of reasons for this: staying up too late, lack of motivation to go to work, a really comfortable bed that has recently been enhanced by an electric blanket. But in reality, I quote the immortal words of The Housemartins to explain this phenomenon:
You can put it down to lack of patience
You can put it down to lack of sleep
But it’s in my head to stay in bed
Tucked under the sheets
And even after relenting to the umpteenth snooze alarm, I find myself distracted by all sorts of little things instead of actually getting ready for the day. This morning I decided to try on the two pairs of shoes that have been sitting by the front door, waiting to be returned, for the better part of the month. Yes, I had already tried them on twice since purchasing them, and both times deemed that both pairs should be returned. But, since I was actually planning on returning them today during my lunch, I decided I better be sure. I wouldn’t want to place too little thought into such an important decision.
I took the first pair out of the box, then realized that I shouldn’t try them on with bare feet, so I proceeded to my bedroom to retrieve a pair of socks. Nearly there, I was overcome by the piercing shriek of an alarm. I quickly surmised that this was not the smoke alarm for my apartment, but rather the building alarm. The volume of this alarm made Beethoven jump out of his grave and say “What’s the racket?!?” I stood in my room with a shoe in one hand and a pair of socks in the other, and realized that the question “If your house was on fire, what would you grab?” had some very real implications.
Mind you, I didn’t smell any smoke and certainly didn’t see any flames lapping at the window; but in a building the size and structure of mine, there’s simply no way of telling what’s going on around the corner. And who knows how many of my neighbors smoke in bed and leave rooms full of lit candles unattended for hours?
How did I answer this age-old conundrum? I put on a pair of warm shoes, grabbed my best winter coat and scarf, and threw my cell phone and my car key into my purse before locking the door behind me. Once outside, my neighbors and I were informed that one of the maintenance men had hit the fire alarm with a dumpster. As I trudged back upstairs, I began to think of all the things I didn’t grab. If I really wasn’t ever going to see my apartment again, it may have been nice to be wearing clothing other than my pajamas. A pair of contacts would have been helpful too.
After thinking about this a little more, it would have been nice to grab some of the Christmas presents that are so neatly wrapped and displayed in the living room. My journals would have been another nice grab. Or my photo albums; or my family history. Or even the 50gb flash drive that has almost every electronic file of value in my life. But I didn’t take any of those things.
When I finally left for work, I picked up the shoes and did in fact return them today over lunch. Wouldn’t want to lose them in the next emergency.
