At last, he was here.

I lifted the plushie god from the numerous styrofoam peanuts keeping him prisoner. Yes, this plushie was a god, but not a god of plushies. Rather, it was a representation of Ra. God of the sun in Egyptian mythology, without whom life in ancient Egypt would’ve been impossible.

Too bad he showed up after the sun went down. He was in the last package to emerge from the FedEx truck as its delivery driver unceremoniously dumped the package on my front doorstep, then sped off without so much as a knock or a ringing of the doorbell. FedEx needs to step up their game.

Just as I pull him out of the box, I hear the cheesy musical jingle that’s unique to Skype from the laptop behind me. Don’t know why some of my friends and family haven’t switched to Discord yet, it’s better in every way. Regardless, I turn around, still holding the Ra plushie in one hand, and with the other, I grab a hold of the laptop’s mouse and use it to answer the Skype call.

I recognize the face right away. “Rob!” I exclaim. My best friend since high school, he knows to expect me with plushies in my hand by now whenever he calls.

“Still being a grown man playing with toys?” Rob questions me.

“Well, YouTube pays me to do so, so why not?” I reply.

“YouTube pays you to animate with those plush toys, not just play with them,” Rob wisecracks to me.

“Then why don’t you let me get back to my job?” I retort.

“Oh, trust me, I will. But I wanted to know if you saw the solar eclipse that happened earlier today! It was wild,” Rob exclaimed.

“That? You know I’m not interested in that sort of thing, Rob! It’s just our moon moving in front of the sun, nothing special. It’s not like you can even look directly at the eclipse anyway. You’ll still burn your eyes out if you try,” I futilely explain to Rob.

“Okay, okay,” Rob resigns with a sigh. “I’m just trying to tell you that you need to get out of the house more.”

“YouTube doesn’t pay me enough to do that,” I reply with a laugh. “Gotta keep the content flowing, at least if I hope to have enough money to do things outside my house.”

“You have how many subscribers, now?” Rob counters. “Somewhere in the millions? With that many subscribers, money ain’t no excuse to never set foot outside your house!”

“Well, I’m working on a project with this Ra plushie and that’s my excuse right now to not step outside, Rob.”

“Okay, I’ll finally let you get back to it, then. Just don’t sacrifice your full night sleep in the name of this project, okay? Go to bed at a reasonable hour.”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks, Dad,” I sarcastically reply. “Good night, Rob.”

Rob says good night in his usual way and signs off of Skype. Finally, some freedom.

The next three hours of the evening are spent placing the Ra plushie in various positions next to the other three Egyptian god plushies I have, and subsequently rigging, photographing, and arranging said photos to create the animated masterpieces (yeah, right) I upload to YouTube. Stop motion animation with plushies is hard work that only pays off in the end, and sometimes I wonder why I didn’t choose a career path with more instant gratification. Especially with some of the comments I get on my YouTube channel. Well, somehow this became my full-time job, and reflecting on how I got here was too arduous a task for me to do right now at 11 PM. That was a sure sign I needed to go to bed.

After I go through my nightly routine, I put the Ra plushie on the nightstand next to my bed and tried to go to sleep, hugging the covers around me. I had further plans for that plushie and his Egyptian deity friends.