I’ve got mice.

They’re everywhere—my office, the kitchen, the bedroom.

And I keep acquiring more, seemingly by magic, every single week.

There’s one that lives in my backpack and goes virtually everywhere with me.

I’m overrun with mice.

Computer mice, that is.

Did I forget to mention that part?

I blame the pandemic.  (Everyone blames everything on the pandemic.  The pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to social media, because now social media is only blamed for half the weird things people do.)

But in this case, it’s true.  In the BEFORE TIMES™, I did nearly all of my corporate work in my corporate office.  I had one mouse at my corporate office and one mouse at home.

Easy peasy.

I’ve always written in multiple places—my home, the library, coffee shops.  But if you’re writing a blog post or a novel and you forget your mouse, it’s no big deal.  You’re mostly just typing.

But my corporate job involves spreadsheets, spreadsheets, and more spreadsheets.

And if you forget your mouse,  you’re sunk.

Now when I’m working from home, my mouse is in my corporate office, and when I’m in my corporate office, my mouse is at home.

I go to the library, or a coffee shop to work, and the mouse is somewhere else.

And since mice are relatively cheap, instead of going without or going home, I buy a new one.

And another new one.

Which would not be a problem (and would not result in an infestation), except that I now share these mice across 3 computers—my work computer, my home computer, and my laptop.

And each of these mice has its own USB dongle that plugs into the computer.

So now, even when I remember to take the mouse, I get to where I’m going and realize that the mouse I have is not “plugged in” to the computer I’m using.

The necessary dongle is at home. (Or my office, or wherever I’m not.)

So I buy another mouse.

You can see how this leads to infestation.

I currently have six mice and precisely zero of them have the correct dongle with them.

Actually, on the recount I realize I have six mice and five dongles.

Oh, dear.

Now I have an eunuch mouse on top of everything else.

So now I have to spend the morning plugging each dongle in and figuring out which mouse it belongs to.

I’ll get them all matched up, and try to keep two at home, two at the office, and that leaves two floaters.

Maybe I’ll put one in the car.

That should solve the problem.

But experience tells me it probably won’t.