Pinned

I'm currently pinned.

There's a proposal draft I need to read and mark notes on, but I don't have a pen and the nearest one is three feet above me on a shelf.  I've read as far as I could, but then got to a section I really need to mark up, and I just can't go forward without making the marks I need to make, or I'll lose all the value of the read-through.

I could try to annotate on the electronic copy on my laptop, but I'm typing this one-handed and full of typos, which you won't see because I'll clean it up before posting.  A MacBook Air, by the way, is a wonderful machine for a parent since it is so light and can be balanced on your chest, arm, whatever, without any problem.  But although I can use the machine, I sure can't produce content on it right now given my hilariously egregious current typo rate and terribly low words-per-minute while doing low-light upside-down one-awkward-finger hunt-and-peck.

Pinned, flat on my back, able to move legs and arms, but only so far.  Not the easiest position in the world, and if I could still sleep, it would be a fine time for it, but it's morning enough that I'm fully awake and no longer able to drowse.

Drowned my sorrows in blogs for a bit, but now my creative side is itching to get started with the day and do some science.  That's the thing, you know----I think you can't be a scientist without some level of obsession and inability to just let things alone and be content like a normal person. I certainly can't, and given a long enough time of stillness, I'm always going to start try to create something---bring something of value into the world that wasn't there before, my own little strike against entropy and time. Not necessarily science, maybe just cooking dinner or organizing our room or watering my plants.

Not that I can do any of that right now.

But at least I can do something meaningful with my brain, more than playing zombie content consumer on my favorite blogs and web-comics.  And now finally I think I have a solution: this is an excellent time to try to catch up on the literature a bit---or at least plug my fingers in the dike. Not that it will be particularly easy to read, lying here upside down and holding my laptop up above me.

But hell if I'm going to wake the baby when she's decided to sleep sprawled on my chest like a cat.
Even if it does mean I'm pinned.