Pulling Little Toad Farts

Call at odd hours seem to be the new norm, or at least my willingness to consider them.  It wasn’t imperative that I be on this call at 4:30AM.  But it was probably for the best.  I opted to crash in the guest room, as I’d only be catching a few hours of rest.  I woke before the alarm though, wheezing.  Unlike our bedroom upstairs, this room is not a cat free environment and now a few hours on, I was feeling it.   

And if there is one thing you want when that loss of breath hits its a reprieve.  Where’s the inhaler?  It should be right on my desk.  It isn’t.  Is it in my bag?  No.  I really just want to go back to sleep but I will need to get dressed and check the car and then the upstairs bedroom.  Up in the room I found a used canister that had all but given up its last puff.  I sucked on it, pulling little toad farts of air out greedily, and began reexamining my desk for the new one I knew I had somewhere.

One memory fortunately started waving its hand and eventually punctured my consciousness with a clear vision.  I put it on the stair master when I used the adjacent machine yesterday at the gym.  I do that every day.  But I labored for a second to remember when else I had used the canister since then.  In a manner that that uncommon with age, I knew that energetic memory was the key.  I gave up searching suddenly, sufficiently convinced that I’d left it at the gym.  Fortunately my migration and my kitty free office and a few micro-sucks I’d able to extract were enough to stabilize things.

Later walking across the school campus towards the gym I explained to my younger one that I fully expected to find my inhaler inside.  She was skeptical.  I even knew where it would be.  Someone would have found it and put it on the counter where everyone throws there clothes while they work out.  I went in turned and scanned the shelf.   Deflated I quickly surmised that there was nothing there.  I looked again and resisted the urge to shake down the one coat that rested there, obviously the coat of the lady over there on the treadmill.  I walked reluctantly over to the place where I remembered laying it the day before.  It wasn’t there either.  What would anyone have wanted with my inhaler?  Is there some lost and found I need to visit?  

I went back to the shelf to look one last time.  My daughter called out to me then.  She was already bouncing up and down on the stair-master.  Someone had laid it there on the window sill.  And after a big gulp of whatever it is that inside these canisters, I began my morning routine with the vim that had been missing since I'd been up.

Thursday, 03/16/17