The Junk Drawer In The Bedside Table...

...it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Ergo, herewith, sans further ado...

Contents of same:

Spare pair of fabu sunglasses. Used to have five pair identical. Now down to the ones I wear and these. The style is called "Dottie."

White kid gloves that belonged to my grandmother. I have her hands, so I got all her gloves. (By which I mean my hands look like her hands: I don't have her hands. Yuck!)

This is not crack:

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you: my poor knife broke the other day. I tucked it away for safe keeping until I was sober enough to try to fix it. Haven't been able to find it since. So this is where I tucked it...

Because where else would you keep the picture-hangers...?

Hey! Sister-cat! Out of the way!

Girlie screwdriver is not a toy, Sister!

Nor is the skylight-crank!

Ahem.

This is the direct phone number to Dad's hospital room. Dad was discharged last October.

I don't know whose phone number this is, but I sure hope he had a pleasant evening.

Apparently I smoke in bed...


...and drink.

Is it okay to throw out the manual for the pulsating shower head if it has a little piece of soggy candy-cane stuck to it?

A tube of Arnica cream my Lady gave me when I fell down the F-O stairs...

...but why so many tubes of Bacitracin?


Expired in January:

Because the drawer wouldn't close if I left them in the box:

Bandaids are not a toy, Sister!

Here, Sister...

...eat this:

Yum yum.

Now, where were we? Oh yeah.

Because I do so much mending:

Hot balls are a good late-night snack.

But these I'm throwing out. They are dis gus ting.

Because you never know when you may have to jam...

... or deal a quickie hand of five-card stud.

A pile of assorted extra parts and hardware. Yes, that is a shower head. No, I don't remember how it got there. Or why.

Ooh, gotta keep this. It's the itty-bitty allen wrench in case the toilet roll falls off the wall.

Does this belong to anybody? Seriously, I found it in my car one night after a bunch of us went out to dinner. Sarah? Lisa? Wendy? Apollonia?

Pretty jewelry...

... but am I the only one who thinks this might be a lump of hash?

Aha! The missing button off my overalls! Now I can quit tying them with baling twine...

...but what do I need so many other buttons for?

And a whopping seven cents:

Actually, it's eight cents. I just thought "seven" sounded better. I'm writerly like that, but too integretous (a word I just made up?) to throw a coin out of the picture for the story's sake. Speaking of which...

I'm a writer, for crying out loud, and the thing I've got the least of in my drawer is writing implements? Two pens and a stubby scoring pencil. Good grief.

Okay three pens. But you better watch your back, Sister...

...even if I am thirty-eight years old and still keep a tube of Clearasil in my bedside table drawer:

At least my allergies haven't been so bad this year.

Et voilá! C'est finis!

Because really, where else would you keep the picture hangers?