Well, it's been one of those days. I just spent half an hour looking for my coffee cup, which had disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm one of those people with a strong visual sense: I notice where objects are placed almost subliminally, and can often tell you that your car keys are on the mantel if I'm around when you've lost them. This is a useful trait, although, naming no names, it's been known to irritate those of my friends who had something they were hoping I wouldn't notice.

The only problem is that when I lose stuff myself it drives me instantaneously crazy. I knew I'd made coffee at 6 a.m., and had sat on the sofa to drink it, listening to the world wake up: trucks grinding up 49 out of the river canyon, the early commuters whizzing along Newtown Rd. Then the first birds; a neighbor calling her dog. The stove finally beginning to creak with the fire's heat.

I took a second cup (it's decaf) down to my studio around 7:15, put it on the maple-leaf shaped coaster next to my mousepad, and got so involved returning miscellaneous e-mails that I forgot to drink it. That was the first place I looked just now. Then my bureau, where I might have put it while I was getting dressed, the kitchen counters, back to the table next to the sofa. It was not in the bathroom, not by my bed. I checked the rusty stool outside the front door where I put things down when I come in from the car. I even went up to the laundry room, though it couldn't possibly be there.

By this time the Mulder half of my brain (you know, from the X-Files) is wondering, in a purely academic way, what space aliens would do with my yellow ceramic coffee cup, while the Scully side, rejecting space aliens out of hand, is considering if my brother might really drive the three hours from Marin to indulge his passion for practical jokes. Because clearly the cup is gone, and clearly I didn't lose it. I'm actually surprised the sun is still shining and gravity still works.

I check inside the icebox. Nope. I go sit outside and try to forget about it. This doesn't work at all, but it's warm and quiet and my mind does calm down enough to notice a pair of nuthatches scoping out one of my birdhouses. Each one in turn goes in through the little round hole and then pokes its head out and looks at the other. Nuthatches are very good birds. They're the only ones that can walk straight downhill on a tree, and I've always liked them.

I walk back inside to heat up some soup for lunch, and open the microwave. I'm not going crazy after all. There it is. One nearly full coffee cup, patiently waiting for me to find it, invisible all this time behind a white plastic appliance door.

I'm quite relieved. Not least to know that space aliens haven't yet found Newtown Rd. And you probably thought a poet's life was boring!