A Queen, Not a Princess

Today I am offering you a rare view into my bottom desk drawer. The top drawer is filled with office supplies--extra rolls of Scotch tape, staple puller, letter opener, quarters for the vending machines, that kind of thing. The bottom drawer, though, is my comfort drawer.

In this drawer are hand sanitizer to keep me healthy, lemonade mix to keep me hydrated, notecards to keep me connected, and the most important element of all, a rice bag to keep me from running into the hallway shrieking "It is so cold in this office that I CANNOT WORK. OR LIVE."

What, you don't have a rice bag? Where do you live--Equatorial Guinea? Obviously you do not live anywhere near God's State. We have been in a weather pattern that means it's 60 degrees on Monday-Wednesday-Friday and 15 below on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, with possibility of weather change on Sundays. It is the weirdest weather ever, and means we have no chance to acclimatize to the cold.

I'm prepared for this variability, though, because years ago my mother made rice bags for everyone she knew. I had never seen one of these rice-filled pillows with the cozy flannel covers before, but it only took approximately six seconds to become an adoring fan of the idea. Stick the rice bag in the microwave for a couple of minutes then apply it to anything that is needs to be warmed up--feet, hands, neck, nose, anything that's chilly feels better instantly and the heat lasts for hours.

I have rice bags everywhere. There's a basket of bags at the bottom of the stairway, ready to be heated and slid under the covers for a few minutes to pre-heat sheets. There's a rice bag next to "my" television watching chair so I can have warm hands while I pretend to be Lady Grantham. And there's a rice bag in the bottom drawer of my desk so that the stone walls of our 100-year-old administration building don't give me chilblains. (Wow, you will so regret a click over to that Wikipedia link. Ick.)

The only problem is that my rice bags have led to a moment of discovery about myself. This morning I woke to find that the rice bag I preheated my sheets with had been so cozy that I fell asleep before I scooted it out of the bed. I had spent the night rolling around on two pounds of rice, and the lump in the bed didn't even wake me up.

Apparently I am not a princess. How disappointing.