Ten long, hard hours of intense sleeping without a single break have often left me feeling exhausted and confused, but this morning was the first time that I had trouble locating my pillow after returning to consciousness.  I finally found it - right under my head where it belonged - but it took me both hands and the compass I use to navigate around my more obvious nightmares to do so. 
     The search for the mattress edge came much closer to being outright impossible, but with luck, perseverance, and the unexpected help of the force of gravity, I finally found that, too.
     "Lose something?" I heard the voice of my wife say as I entered the porch thinking it was the bathroom, having left the robe I thought I'd thrown on tightly belted around our bedroom lamp.
     "Umm, I seem to have misplaced my sense of direction," I admitted to a table which looked surprisingly like my wife in the full light of the afternoon.
     "As well as your shyness," she added, holding a section of the morning newspaper in front of my body's prized assets as a neighbor drove by with a honk.
     "Let's continue this discussion in the kitchen - I'm starved," I muttered to the floor, which rather rudely refused to follow as I climbed into a sink.
     "Have you lost your mind as well as your shyness?" the voice of my wife inquired from (as best as I could tell) the general direction of Andorra.  "That's the good glassware from Taco Bell that you happen to be poking a toe into!"
     I sat as still as I could with a fork sticking some body part I couldn't quite put a finger on before realizing it just happened to be a body part I could never put a finger on in mixed company, anyway. 
     To take my mind off the pain, I pondered the possibilities.  A) I was losing my mind; B) I had already lost my mind; C) I had yet to get around to losing my  mind despite that 30-year-old "To Do" list I always carried.  Unable to decide which was the right choice, I impatiently reached for a doughnut and succeeded only in knocking over the toaster oven.
     "Hey!" the voice of my wife came floating by again.  "Next time you try to take your mind off your pain, try not to take my shirt off with it, ok?!" 
     It was at this point that I realized just how badly disoriented I really was.
     Attempting to retrace my steps only led me to the garage.  Every new train of thought I tried to start ended up derailing three feet from the depot.  When I tried to collapse into a pool of tears, I hit my head on a ceiling fan.
     "Just try to follow the sound of my voice," my wife yelled from what seemed many miles away, just like that guy in an old episode of "The Twilight Zone" whose little girl had fallen through a hole behind her bed into another dimension.
     "Maybe if you turn off the fan, I'll be able to hear you better," I sputtered in the general direction of the moon.
     I know it sounds silly, but I was beginning to feel like quite the fool.  I mean, I'd heard of people being lost in space.  I'd even heard of people being lost in Yonkers.  But lost in your own house?  On top of your own spice rack?!
     A shiver ran up my spleen, having obviously mistaken it for my spine.
     "Wait!  I know what's going on!" I heard my wife's voice drift my way from Timbuktu.  A rustling of newspapers followed.
     "I'm suffering a relapse of the shell shock I had after the paperboy hit me full in the face with the want ads section back in '93?!" 
     "No, no.  Here it is - just listen!  'People who rely on the global satellite system called GPS to help them navigate should closely watch the network this weekend as it resets itself, possibly throwing millions of electronic direction-finders out of whack.'"
     "Oh, no!" I wailed, having long ago junked my innate sense of direction for the $3.95 Global Positioning System receiver a friend had picked up for me in New York's Chinatown.
     "Seems the network of 27 earth orbiting satellites used to aid navigation around the world was programmed in 1980 with a calendar of just 1,024 weeks.  Just before 8 p.m. last night, that calendar expired and reset to week one."
     "That would explain my sudden desire to shake my booty again," I whimpered, sadly nodding my elbow.
     WHACK!
     "Hey!"
     "Sorry - I was just trying to reset your system," my wife apologized.  "Did it work?"
     "You certainly seem closer than you did before, but - "
     WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
     "Stop that!  Decapitation is worse than discombobulation, ya know!"
     "Sorry.  Lucky for you, I have a back-up plan."
     "What?"
     "Let me draw ya a picture."
     "Hey, I may be discombobulated, but I'm not stupid!"
     "Drawing you a picture IS my back-up plan, goofy!  Hang on!"
     And that's how I came to be the proud owner of a hand-drawn picture of my home's floor plan.  When that proved too hard to master, my wife just drew me a map.  It's taken a bit of getting used to (especially since I first thought one inch on the map equaled one mile in the house instead of one foot) but I've finally made it to my computer tonight in time to type this entry. 
     Tomorrow I plan on having her make me a complete set of maps - one for the yard, one for the neighborhood, and one showing where she hid all the gifts we got for our wedding 17 years ago if I can trick her into doing so in the heat of drawing.  If nothing else, I know I won't be letting her leave for work tomorrow morning until she has laid down a trail of crumbs from the bedroom to the cookie jar.
     And I know that I'll never, ever again allow myself to become so dependent on technology that my libido can't find my fantasies without its assistance.  Well, not unless prices of GPS receivers come way down from $3.95.
     Right now, though, I need to go take a shower using visual flight rules and hope my life doesn't end up in the toilet in the process.
     If there's no new entry here by Tuesday, please notify the Coast Guard....