Let’s take stock of my current desk situation, shall we?

Sure there’s a keyboard, laptop, extra monitor, mouse, pens and some paper; so it may look a lot like your desk too. You might even have a giant coffee cup or a post-it reminder with instructions of what to do before your kid has a sedated MRI.

But, do you also have your son’s prescription ear drops and a half-eaten doggie football? What about the things you can’t see stacked up behind the monitor? Do you have a dishtowel, a dog bowl, an unused extension cord and some headphones – all things the puppy was chewing on and brought to you?

People think I am so lucky to work from home. Sometimes I am, but sometimes I find an undershirt on my keyboard or the battery “borrowed” from my mouse and put into the remote. During conference calls you can hear the Wii, a dog barking, or a child asking, “Mom, what’s for dinner? Thank goodness for mute.

And, thank goodness I have a wide lap since it’s the only space I have left for taking notes.

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Every Sunday at church I reach for him during the sign of peace. As I simultaneously shake his hand and lean over to kiss the top of his head I remind him to look people in the eye when he says, “Peace be with you.” It’s not necessarily something that comes naturally to him.

There are times, of course, when he will sit and stare intently at my face as we discuss the day’s events. Some evenings he will sit on my lap and I’ll tell him stories and he’ll look at me so closely that I can count his freckles.

But, more often than not, when replying to someone he quickly glances away as he says, “Thanks” or “Bye.” Eye contact is not his strong suit.

Well, with humans anyway.

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“Hey, Mom. Look what I drew! It’s a rainbow monster!”

“That’s pretty cool, buddy. Is it…um…farting?”

“Yeah! And, you should see what it’s doing in the part of the picture I drew with invisible ink!”

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If you’ve ever been to Key West, you know there are certain things you can find there; great Cuban food, the favorite haunts of Hemingway and Buffet, the Southernmost Point, a deliciously strong Goombay Smash, and a t-shirt shop on every corner.

When my family and I were there last year we passed one such store and my daughter stopped in her tracks. “Mom, look! This is crazy!”

On the other side of the glass we saw a t-shirt with my son’s face staring back at us.

Indeed, it was crazy. We all just kind of stared at it wondering if some t-shirt manufacturer had stolen his likeness from this site, but I couldn’t think of any similar photo that I had posted online. We chalked it up to extreme coincidence and, because my kid is a chick magnet we bought the shirt. Granted, the chicks are usually middle-aged women, but they tend to have more money than 5th grade girls so I’m fine with that.

Regardless, I forgot about the shirt until I snapped this picture of him at the hospital week before last.

Someday, someone will be lucky enough to have this real, live chick magnet. Someone will appreciate his strength, sense of humor, quirkiness, OCD, and blatant honesty, and they won’t even have to fly to Key West and pay $5.00 for it.

But, I sure as heck hope they have a low deductible.

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