There are a lot of things involved in my day to day life that people don’t have the slightest idea of. Then again, I rarely have a clear picture into other peoples’ lives outside of what they choose to share with me.

I roll into work around the same time every day. It’s the same time I’ve been getting into work for the last seven or eight years actually. Every day I try to get in early but, I don’t have a great reservoir of energy and that morning time is precious.

It’s usually in that first hour or two after I get up that I have the most energy and can accomplish much, much more than I ever can in the evening. Part of it is just being refreshed after sleeping and another part is not yet having the weight of the day or my life bearing down upon me just adding to the burden of what needs to get done.

Plus, of course there’s the unbearably long commute. No matter how many times I describe it, it just never seems to ‘stick.’ There’s the drive, then the train ride, possibly the subway and the walk a series of dominoes where if any one part doesn’t fit just so, it can set all the others out of kilter, increasing the amount of time and the tension level to the start of the day.

In recent years, a few friends have taken the plunge and moved from their commuter friendly addresses (read Williamsburg) to the hinterlands. They’re not by me but, now have a comparable commute. So, there’s a certain wry satisfaction I get when I hear them bemoan the lack of sympathy they get from co-workers when they try and describe their two times a day trek to their peers.

Yes, if the stars are aligned and everything works out perfectly it’s a beautiful thing but, most often it’s not. After awhile, while I do still care about it, I‘ve become numb to getting excited about it anymore when things don’t go the way they should - it has more to do with keeping my sanity in a less than perfect world.

Outwardly, I think people confuse my numbness to the issue as indifference or a lack of regard but, again I don’t think they have a fair understanding of the situation (walking a mile in my shoes and all that).

Plus, this business being what it is, it seems I rarely get out at the time I’m supposed to. I can’t begin to reckon the number of times I’ve been corralled in that last half hour of the day to deal with some urgent matter because somebody has come to realize I’m about to leave - never ceases to amaze me.

Anyway, part of that whole daily routine is the household chores. Being in the situation I’m in, it’s more a matter of making sure things are done or finding them becoming much, much larger things to have to deal with. People with children have some say in the matter but, when dealing with an aging parent you get very little in the regard of say plus, you’re fighting the eccentricities that accompany the progression of the years.

So, tonight when I was looking around for a heating pad for my neck and was told I could find it in the EYOC’s room in a drawer I guess I should have been far from surprised to find that a frying pan along with it’s lid had taken up residence in the bottom drawer of one of the night tables.

I mean, I can’t imagine there isn’t anyone among us who hasn’t awoken from a sound sleep in the middle of the dead of night with a sudden urge to fry something?

We all have those strange cravings, don’t we? Two o’clock in the morning rolls around and I sit bolt upright in my bed stricken by the compulsion to make french fries and of course at that moment I certainly don’t want to be fumbling through a kitchen cabinet looking for pans. Maybe even fry up a nice fillet of flounder, wouldn’t that be yummy?

Does this even begin to compare with the hemming of the pants with the common office stapler? Or the home repairs done with the Swingline office model?

No, but it ranks right up there with them.