Strange morning

nothing much was out of the ordinary right away - i sleepily got Ethan out of bed, plunked him in front of a Blue's Clues episode On Demand, which he seems to favor as a wake-up show, and dozed off on the couch next to him as he watched.

Then, however, the show was over and I woke up and there was a very dense orange cloud sitting on the couch with us, shaped very impressively like a muscular human, but with small horns. Not quite sure what to do with this bit of sensory information, I took in some more. The orange cloud was watching Ethan, who was waving his hand back and forth through the orange cloud-abdomen with a delighted grin on his face.

"This child is delightful!" The orange cloud said, and its mouth moved in exactly the right ways to form the words, but the sound just sort of echoed through the room like it was from a PA system, not really emanating from the mouth region, specifically. "I hope I haven't disturbed you. I know I must look odd, but my last master was a 5-year old who loved the color orange, and I haven't worked out a loophole to change back yet."

It was the word 'master' that slipped things into place for me. Obviously there was a genie sitting on my couch. For some reason realizing this made me feel like I'd learned too much about the genie, violated its privacy somehow, as though I'd been googling someone and noticed they were looking over my shoulder. I purposefully looked elsewhere, and my eyes fell on a plush stuffed elephant on the floor near the piano. It looked very soft, fuzzy, and orange, and suddenly I just really wanted to give it a squeezy hug. Before I really was aware I'd decided to take such action, I was sitting on the floor hugging the bright orange elephant, and both the Genie and Ethan were watching me closely. Ethan made a raspberry trumpeting sound. "that's right, baby! Elephants go pbpbpbpbpbpbpbththpbpth!" I said, trying to be a good father.

A look passed over the genie's orange cloud-face, expressing that emotion one feels when you've arrived at your desk to work, but you're waiting for Windows to boot.

((more later... i need to get my maxiprep out of the centrifuge))