New rule – no eating or snacking at the computer.

The other day in my frenzy to multi-task I dropped a blob of oatmeal on my keyboard. In cleaning the blob I was forced to take a good look at my keyboard and all the debris that was living in-between the cracks. Indeed there was an entire ecosystem living in there courtesy of my bad habit of eating and snacking over my computer. Can I get a collective “EWWWW”??!!

When I dared to turn the mc-nasty keyboard over in an attempt to rid it of its debris collection I was faced with the evidence of my misdeeds. There were crumbs and small chunks of granola bars and crackers, unidentified dirt and some white powder (damn those powdered donuts the evidence is always there to haunt you). It was like a scrapbook of all my bad eating and snacking habits.

I’ll confess, my first inclination was to toss the keyboard out and buy another, but that didn’t seem prudent. So I began the process of trying to extricate all the stuff my keyboard had acquired based on my bad computer eating habits. I employed all my high-tech techniques such as sticky notes, business cards, scotch tape and then finally a Clorox wipe (not sure if that last one was wise but those wipes do kill 99.9% of germs and I was committed to my shock and awe mission). Yes, I know they sell tools at the store for such a mission, but this called for immediate action and I had to improvise…I had a MacGyver moment.

From this experience I realized that a healthy percentage of what I have been attempting to eat has not made it into my mouth. You would never know that I was the same person who regularly drinks coffee over her keyboard and never loses a single drop. From the looks of my keyboard someone was throwing snacks at me from across the room and I was bobbing and weaving to catch them with a 60% success rate. It was ugly I tell you – scary even – but I did what had to be done.

So yes, I am both the creator and destroyer of life. An ecosystem was birthed and exterminated on my whim. Never fear though that the circle of life has been carelessly and permanently harmed. I have not looked under my couch cushions for months and I am sure that there is a thriving conglomeration of life forms in there living large. I can only deal with obliterating one ecosystem of my own making at a time.

Day ninety-three of the new forty – obla di obla da

CC