My wife Dawn sits in her chair so long that at times I begin to wonder if she has transcended space-time. I’ll hear the ebb and flow and the staccato crescendos of keyboard clatter, at times sounding like a battalion of boot-clad squirrels marching on tile floors. She could just as easily create a sound loop of her attacking the keyboard, play it, and then clamber out the adjacent window, with no one the wiser. I just assume otherwise that she sits in her chair, eternally, a Schrödinger’s cat of typing/not typing, depending on whether she’s being observed.
I’ll get her a cup of coffee, only to check later to see if she wants an additional cup. Many times, I’ll pick her cup up, only to find that it has turned into a solid slab of creamer, given that a century had elapsed between the times she got out of the chair.
I often wonder if we had to have official portraits done whether she would opt to have hers done while seated in her office chair; I might not recognize her otherwise.
Today, I jumped up to get fresh coffee and offered her another cup. She said, “Sure.”
As I headed into the kitchen, I laughed, and asked her, “Do you want me to save you some time and just dump it directly in the sink once I make it?”
It’s unfair, really, to condemn so many cups of coffee to certain death. But I must play my small role – that of dutiful husband, supplying incessant cups of ignored coffee.
This joke reminds me of Jim Gaffigan’s comedy bit, the one wherein he recites the directions for eating a Hot Pocket: “Take out of box, place directly in toilet.”
I suppose I could eliminate all the steps when I make coffee and just have it drip brew directly into the drain as I make it. Somehow, that seems wasteful, though.
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P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 