♫Saturday, Sunday, Too Many Spoons Day....♫

We both took on too many spoons today. Both should have seen it coming and didn't.

If you're not familiar with the concept, it apparently dates to this article. The underlying condition of the original author was Lupus, but the idea carries over to disorders of many kinds or just general overwhelminess:

I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have Lupus”. She looked at me slightly confused, as anyone would when they are being handed a bouquet of spoons. The cold metal spoons clanked in my hands, as I grouped them together and shoved them into her hands.

I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted.

The shorthand of "too many spoons" has been with many people for years; for us, on and off, for many of them. Today, in spades.

We knew what today would be: a gaggle of Ghostbusters coming into our house to blow insulation into walls and do assorted insulation related fixes in various places.  Even though we'd done everything we needed to do for preparation- removing things from walls, lowering the stairs to the attic, clearing shit off the floor up there- it was still a good size clanky pile of spoons waiting for us. Would they arrive on time? (More or less.) Have enough to get the job done? (Took a detour to Home Depot, but eventually, yes.) Would they do everything they needed to do? (Unknown, Captain.) Contracts are paper; spoons are cold metal. Spoons beat contracts.

We'd known for weeks that this day was The Day for this job. It was on the kitchen calendar.  I'd originally kept it free, Just In Case anything went goofy, but then I heard the clanks. 

Clank One: Client has to have a motion heard before October 5th? Fine- I put it on for September 20th! (That was today, if you're keeping score at home. Never mind that the judge does these hearings every Monday except fedurul holidays, so why not the 27th, or October 4th, which ::checks TARDIS:: is still technically before October 5th? I have no idea. Early birds and worms, or something.) (PS: It was heard this morning, and got put off until October 4th, which is as fine as it would have been if I'd done that in the first place:P)

Clank Two: Late Friday, coworker interrupts my lunch because Potential Client wants to hire me. I'm not dropping my sammich to see him on the spot, but when can he see me? Today, of course. Now I'm stuck out of the house from 10 until at least 11:30.

Clank Three: The company calls about the new printer for my office. When's the soonest they can deliver before the Infinitesmal Percent Remaining on my current LOWWWW TONER! runs out? Today. I booked them for noon, because Potential Client's already booked for the earlier hour. Now the whole morning is full of spoons. And that's just mine- the whole office had about 3,000 closings today, plus at least two Very Annoying Clients I heard them trying to talk down off ledges on introductory phone calls.

Meanwhile, back home during all this, Eleanor was rooting through the silverware drawer herself. Yesterday, she kindly volunteered to bring laundry up that I'd started while I was clearing out the wall for today's spoons. And of course SHE saw the dryer ductwork had come loose again. As it consistently has because no contractor will assume the risk of connecting it to an outside vent on their liability.  Next we know, she's in the silverware drawer, and on the drawing board, designing a foolproof new way of connecting that ductwork so it won't fall down go boom.  This of course gets implemented while the Ghostbusters were beginning their work. She headed off for a minor purchase, and then spent hours in major labor doing the fix. All of which while I was out dealing with my own day's tableware.

Then the dog, who I offered to bring with me to the office, peed all over the rug where she'd been restrained from bothering the Ghostbusters. Clank.

I got to hear this after my postponed hearing, and just after the slightly late Potential Client came and went and during the effort by the New Printer Guy to set up the beast, connect it to my laptop and get the scan and wireless print functions working.

More than three hours later, it was all finally more or less done. Ghostbusters busted out, and New Printer was running. Old Printer is now in our garage, awaiting similar re-setting up on our home network, but my spoons are all bent right now. We ordered Wegmans takeout for dinner, watched nothing in the way of entertainment, and will regroup tomorrow.

All I have is a series of three phone or Teams court hearings between 9 and 3. And no more spoons.