Will It Explode If I Touch It?

I had just put the coffee on this morning and was doing a little stitching---I’m in maniacal stitching mode these days---when the doorbell rang. Which necessitated a mad gallop to the bedroom, shedding sleeping garments en route and leaping into shorts and shirt, before opening the door, with my best, unruffled “Oh-I’ve-been-dressed-for-HOURS” air and accepting THIS


from the delivery man .

Have a good look.

Can you guess what’s inside?

I recently had a birthday. A big one. The kind that moves you out of one decade and into another. To mark the occasion the OC gave me a heart attack. Well, almost, when I came out of the den on the morning of my birthday, determined not to mope, and ran right into his smiling face and the bunch of roses he was clutching, in the living room. Which wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, be grounds for heart failure, except that I thought he was thousands of miles away in the frozen north! It was a very pleasant heart attack.

And my sister got me that brown box up there.

Have you guessed yet? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist……Even I know what it is.

He-who-barfs-on-quilts gave the box a thorough inspection. From every possible angle. Just to be sure no mice were being smuggled into his domain, don’t you know. Having satisfied himself that the box was rodent-free, he returned to the arduous tasks of washing himself, and quilt supervision.

And then it was my turn to cautiously circle The Box. I thought I might poke it experimentally from a safe distance with a broom handle……Then I thought I’d better hide it, in case The Bean saw it and tried to pressure me into opening it before I was good and ready. So, at the moment, it is safe in my closet.

Unopened.

Can you believe my sister? She got tired of hearing me moan about our current, almost dead dinosaur, and disagreed with the OC, who can’t imagine what I could possibly want with a computer of my own. He might have a point. The world would be a safer place if I stuck to pen and paper.

The truth is I’m terrified of that box. Just knowing Rise’d do something like that for me is present enough……..What I need is a crew of Rise, Lily and myself. We could do it together. Without any yelling. I keep telling myself that dumber people than me have figured out how to set up a computer. But I do wish it was as straightforward as, a toaster, say, or a sewing machine, or a mixer, or an electric toothbrush. If there was just one plug I’d be all set.

If you could look under the desk here, you’d understand my terror. There’s a thingamajig with GO written on it. It has a small wire plugged in one end of it and a thicker wire in the other end, and a blue light glowing to let the world know it’s doing whatever it is it’s supposed to be doing. Then there’s the long yoke that says PANAMAX, that has six, I kid you not--SIX more wires of various thicknesses plugged into it, and not one, but two little green lights glowing……And I have not the foggiest notion what any of those wires are for, or why, for heaven’s sake, there are so many of them!

I think I’ll go to sleep now. Sometimes I dream my way out of problems. And even if I don’t, maybe I’ll summon the gumption to at least open The Box in the morning!