I have been operating under a severe lack of sleep lately.  Not only do I go to bed too late and get up too many times during the night, I don’t always go straight back to sleep afterwards.  Add to that the puppy who doesn’t sleep through the night, the older dogs who snore, the cat who likes to knead me after I get back into bed, and that huge airplane that flies over at four something every morning, and one can understand the origin of my zombielike behavior.  Most of the time I muddle through, adopting strategies that are supposed to make up for my general spaciness, but every now and then I do something that is just plain dopey.

Today, in an effort to be efficient, I attached our new Seeing Eye® puppy, Wilda’s, “sample” to the passenger door of my car, so that I wouldn’t forget it when I went to the vet.  Unfortunately I had another errand to run first and when I left to do it, I didn’t remember to remove the sample.  I realized it around Short Hills Road while I was going about fifty miles per hour.  Holding onto the slim chance that it was still attached, and having little choice otherwise, I continued on my way.  When I parked I went around the car to check.  No sample.

This presented a double dilemma.  First the obvious, oh what have I done, this has to be the weirdest kind of littering, having a Ziploc® sandwich bag of poop fly off into traffic, then the less apparent—there probably would not be another opportunity to get a sample before the vet visit. 

Thinking that the loss probably occurred close to home, on the return trip I drove down my street extra slowly.  That turned out to be a good thing, because there was a turkey in the middle of the road.  When it saw me coming, it flew away, perching on the chimney of a neighbor’s house next to their ancient antenna.

I had to pinch myself to make sure the whole thing wasn’t a dream.  After all, I am extremely sleep deprived.