Difficult to write with a cat where the keyboard should be. Fortunately it’s a wireless keyboard.
Does mean I’m sitting very awkwardly. If I sit with my knees under the desk and keyboard on it to one side, I have to twist my lower back to reach it. Not good. If I move my chair so I’m directly in front of the spare bit of desk, my knees are hitting the desk drawers and I have to stretch forward which also puts a strain on my back, and I have to reach over the keyboard when I need to use the mouse, which is awkward. I’ve tried with the keyboard on my knees, but that’s also awkward and I can’t look at the screen at the same time.
In trying to take a photo of this situation, I noticed the mess on my desk. What on earth is the end roller of my old Dyson vacuum cleaner doing here? Box of tissues (fair enough); empty cassette box (who knows what happened to the cassette?); CD box containing – a CD which – yes! – does match the title on the outside of the box (Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’); copy of ‘Tea With Douglas’ which I was using for reference in my last book design job; two empty (used) jiffy bags in different sizes; copy of ‘The Culture of Contentment’ by John Kenneth Galbraith, which I was also using for reference (for the same job, on the order of the front matter for a non-fiction book); a dozen recordable CDs, some with backup data from years ago, some blank, all on a spike; a note book; a Black and Decker Dustbuster on its charging stand (which is here because I’m supposed to use it for picking up dry cat litter off the bathroom floor, and this is the nearest place I can plug it in which isn’t on the floor where it’s liable to get tripped over); a ceramic pot with a large capital ‘B’ on the side and ‘RUSH’ inside the bottom bulge of the B, which is intended to hold toothbrushes, but I bought it because if you think about it could be a pun on my name, and I intended to use it for pens but it contains only a green CD writer pen whose felt tip is fuzzy, dried up and unusuable, an orange gel pen (probably also dried up) and a pencil with a hand carved and decorated end like a cute penguin; stack of four 5 cm diameter semi-clear pastel coloured round plastic boxes containing small stationery items (on closer inspection, two hold buttons, one pins and one miscellaneous including staples, picture hooks, screws, drawing pins, freezer bag ties, a green magnet from a notice board and a small metal plate with East Asian characters which appears to have come off the back of something); three coasters and a coffee cup.
And a cat. Except that she has now woken up, jumped down and walked off in a huff.