Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. This morning, I seem to be in the depths of mental illness, as evidenced by this interview with myself.

J: Good morning, J.D. How are you today?
D: Not so good. I think I was robbed last night.
J: Robbed!?! That’s not good.
D: No, it’s not. When I got in my car this morning, things were missing.
J: I’m sorry, man. How’d the crook get into your car. Wasn’t it locked?
D: I think so.
J: You think so?
D: Well, I park it on the side of the street, right? And I lock it every night after I get the mail. I don’t recall doing anything different last night, though maybe I did.
J: Maybe?
D: Yeah. It was trash day, so I had to drag the containers back behind the outbuildings. When I came back to get the stuff out of the car, I got the mail first. And then when I’d gathered everything, my hands were full with a footstool, my backpack, and a pack of Hostess Sno-Balls.
J: Mmm. I love Sno-Balls.
D: Me too. Anyhow, I’m pretty sure I locked the car, but maybe I didn’t.
J: Was it locked this morning?
D: I think so.
J: You think so?
D: Well, yeah. I don’t know for sure. In the morning, I walk down the sidewalk and as I come down the steps to the street, I unlock the car with the remote. The car made the same unlocking noise as usual today, so I think it had been locked.
J: Then how did the crook get in.
D: I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t lock it.
J: What’d the bastard take?
D: My brown Pendleton hat, my CD-visor, my Patrick O’Brian CDs.
J: Which O’Brian book were you reading. Er, auditing.
D: The Mauritius Command. And it was just getting good! Stupid old Clonfert’s eye was dangling out.
J: Gross. How many CDs were in the CD-visor?
D: Maybe a dozen. And they were good ones, too!
J: Wow. What did you have? U2? Jet? The Decemberists?
D: No, no. I don’t carry pre-recorded CDs with me in the car. I only carry mixes I’ve made. So the visor had all three of my vintage mixes (which include pop songs from the 1950s), my Mexican mix, my funk mix, my ambient mix, my two “clinging to vinyl” mixes, and so on. Lots of great stuff.
J: Er, this is great stuff?
D: It is to me. I worked hard on those CDs, and now they’re gone. Which bums me out because I don’t have those playlists recorded anywhere. I had the visor upstairs so that I could re-create the playlists in iTunes, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
J: So where’s the visor?
D: Upstairs. In the media room.
J: But I thought you just said it was stolen.
D: Hm. I guess I’m not sure where it is. Maybe it wasn’t stolen.
J: Uh-huh.
D: Well, it’s hard to keep track sometimes. The media room’s a mess right now because I’m still in the midst of my ironing project.
J: Ironing project?
D: Yes. I’m ironing nearly every piece of clothing I own. It makes it difficult to find a place to put anything. Or to know what’s there. Last night Kris and I watched a Netflix movie, and I had to scrunch around a pile of clothes. And I couldn’t put my feet up because my hat was in the way.
J: Which hat?
D: My brown one. The Pendleton one.
J: The one that was stolen?
D: Er…I’m not sure. Maybe it wasn’t my hat on the coffee table. Maybe it was something else.
J: …
D: I mean I looked for my brown hat when I left this morning, but I didn’t see it.
J: Where did you look?
D: Just downstairs in the mudroom.
J: …
D: sigh
J: Do me a favor, will you? Go out to the CBS sales car and tell me what’s on the front seat.

…time passes…

D: Look! Look! It’s my Patrick O’Brian CDs!
J: …
D: Hm. I guess I should call Kris and tell her not to worry. Maybe my car wasn’t robbed after all.
J: Right. And after that, why not call a shrink. Your memory problems seem to be morphing into something a little bit stranger. I mean, you’re writing a weblog entry in which you talk to yourself.

In other news: I saw a dead skunk on the road this morning, about a half mile from the office. This filled me with excitement. Might it be possible that this was my skunk? Might it be possible that my office wouldn’t smell of musk and decay this morning.

No, it would not be possible. That would be hoping too much.