In A Big Hurry

I was trying to get out of the house. I'd promised yesterday to let another club member in on Saturday, since I needed to be there too, and she didn't have a key.

 Sometimes when you are working with glass it's a matter of when glass goes in the kiln, size of the project, exact type of project, which step you are in, and your window of kiln access, all together, which rule when you need to be there.  She was in between fusing and slumping, had a limited window for kiln use before another person had reserved it, needed to pull her fused piece out and put the next step in motion. There is only one large kiln for glass and hers is a large project. I'm lucky in that my project pieces are fairly small and I can fit multiple pieces in either of the two smaller club kilns. I was working with both of those over the weekend when nobody had those reserved. (I pull my latest batch of glass out tomorrow morning so the next person can use one kiln.)

We had agreed on a time to arrive Saturday morning. I'd be arriving first, and  would open her large kiln door so her project would be as cool as possible before she arrived to take it out to work on its next step. The large kiln takes a long time to cool. It happens to significantly slow down one's progress when one burns their hands. Plus, it reflects poorly on the safety standards in the club. For those and other reasons, I was needing to get out of the house quickly.

My phone rang, and it was a friend I haven't spoken with for a while. Between various viruses and her battling depression and a family emergency, I missed her. So I'm tying shoes, locating all the things I need to gather before leaving, taking the dog out for a minute, and making sure all the things which automatically go into my pockets by habit make their way into my pockets right now while I'm carrying on a conversation full of details like when we can maybe meet, how's that family emergency, and would my old scooter be of use to that family member having an emergency if she could afford new batteries in it? All this happened in perhaps three minutes, with Steve in his recliner listening to my end of the conversation.

Suddenly my hand stopped, not finding the last item I needed sitting in my pocket yet. I looked in its usual space. Not there. I looked at the table, but it wasn't sitting there. Did I leave it in a pocket yesterday? Still trying to maintain my conversation, trying to figure out how to deal with two issues at the same time and make some kind of sense, it hit me.

Of course, I interrupted my own sentence to blurt out, "OMG, I've been trying to find my phone!" Her laughing reaction and the look Steve gave me made a perfect matched set!