Paper Napkin: Lost: small mind. Answers to the name of Sparky.

Hello, it's 4:30. I'm up because there's no clock in my room-- I can't remember why. I think I squirreled it way somewhere to make sure that Emily wouldn't rely on me getting up, but it could have been just one of the many, many things that the children have pilfered from me. I am raising a bunch of pilferers. If I don't have my cell phone on my night stand I'm time-blind, and my body thinks that 4:30 is 6:00. So then I get up and look at craigslist ads.

Seriously y'all, the craigslisting must stop. I am a woman obsessed with used furniture, and when used furniture is the object of your obsession, it's not a good thing. It's better to be obsessed with something noble, like world peace, or saving the environment, or finding homes for all the orphaned little-baby puppies. When your ignoble cause is used furniture, and you spend all your free time looking at used furniture, and a lot of it's ugly, over time your soul begins to develop leprotic ulcers. I'm pretty sure that's what happened to Magneto.

Oh! I have to tell you about the evil couch-seller. So I'm on craigslist, scouring the ads for the perfect couch. I'm the Ponce de Leon of Craigslist. Now usually I only search ads with pictures, but there reaches a point when I have looked at every freaking couch with a picture, and still the Fountain of Couch eludes me. I become desperate enough to search ads without pictures. I read one idyllic-sounding ad, and I email to ask for pictures, and the owner of "the couch" turns out to be a spammer! She tells me "the couch" has been sold, but generously shares a link which will help me increase my monthly income to five figures! I email her back inquiring why she needs five figures a month, when she's living in a house with imaginary furnishings, because unless I'm mistaken, invisible couches are free!

People, in a matter of seconds I went through the 5 stages of grief for that "couch." My initial reaction was shock and denial. Surely there were no spammers on Craigslist. Heaven forfend! The indignation I felt-- the nerve of someone sending me down the primrose path with promises of fanciful couches. Quick upon the heels of anger came sadness. I was so close. Chenille-covered utopia was almost with in my grasp. For the most part I skipped over bargaining, but I'll admit there was a nano-second when I thought maybe I could buy "the couch" from "the person" to whom it had been "sold." And finally, acceptance. There would be other not-imaginary couches, and I would find one. Maybe not the perfect couch, but a good couch, a fine couch. I would sit and read, the children would spill things, and Aaron would nap. We would love that couch until it was threadbare, and the arms were scarred with cat scratches, and the seats were covered in dog hair.

And then we'll put it up for sale on Craigslist.