The Manda Reflects on Chaos Theory

Some signs your life has gone off the rails:

You find yourself on the New Jersey Turnpike at 2:00 in the morning. This alone is a pretty good indicator. If you find yourself on the New Jersey Turnpike at 2:00 in the morning with a mostly-drunk companion, that's another good indicator.

If you find yourself on the New Jersey Turnpike at 2:00 in the morning trying to dissuade your mostly drunk companion not to eat a hamburger that she herownself has characterized as "bogus," then you can expect to find yourself fleeing the scene of a broken toilet in a BP station somewhere on I-95 at around 7:30 that same morning. While life has indeed gone off the rails, it will be fun to watch your companion totter hurriedly across the parking lot on 4 inch red heels as she escapes from the scene of what may very well be a crime in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Not that that ever happened.

Another good indicator that something has gone horribly wrong might be, say, operating power tools in your kitchen at some small hour of the morning. Perhaps the scene involves a misguided attempt to assemble that cabinet that has sat dormant in its box since you brought it home from the Christmas Tree Shop three months ago.

Of course, the instructions didn't make any damn sense, so genius here put the doors and sides on before the countertop. Now I can't get the countertop on the thing because the screwdriver is too long, and the drill is too large. These are not dirty euphemisms-- my life isn't that interesting-- this is the actual state of my kitchen at this moment, which appears to be about 3:15 a.m.

So now it's 3:17 in the morning and I'm wide awake, trying to figure out if its worthwhile to disassemble the cabinet to get this top on it, or if I should wait until morning and go see if the Local Home Improvement Warehouse has a shorter screwdriver. Or perhaps I go off the map and drill holes in the upper surface, bolt the top down as best I can and trust that I'll have the surface covered with an assortment of mail, wine bottles and other crap within a matter of days.

It's not like anyone has seen the top of the kitchen table since last August.