Time to Make it Snow

He sat on the grass by the lake under the shade of the grand old oak tree spying on her swimming from his private vantage point, just marveling at how wet her hair was able to get and just laughing at how dry it would be later.

She took the expression “if the shoe fits, wear it” literally exactly once a month just so the huge pile of shoes in her closet didn’t feel like a complete waste of money.

He climbed a ladder to the roof of his house, hoisted himself up, and looked back down at the ground with disdain and pity. It was moments like this when he felt so proud and alone.

She is often told that she looks like a woman half her age which makes her understandably happy as well as eager to meet this youthful woman whom she will either befriend, tear to shreds or both.

He drinks water with a thirst befitting a much thirstier person or a less thirsty person who is aiming to fit in among all of the other very thirsty and cool people he is always surrounded by, which he is.

She burst through the door, ran to the bookshelf and hurriedly re-organized her books by their chronological date of publication just in time for the arrival of her mother who only asked for one thing in return for years of thankless parenting; randomly assorted books and periodicals whenever she visited. “Take that mom!” she whispered devilishly under her breath as she heard her mom knocking at the door.

He opened his closet and placed all of his shirts in a pile and then, taking exactly four large steps backward, he leapt on top of the shirts with a glee that could only come from leaping onto a large pile of shirts or finally being completely wart free.

She was heading uptown on the bus surrounded by hippos, most likely hungry hungry ones, and she was just praying that they weren’t also going to the library, no matter how real or imaginary they or her trip to the library was.

He sat in his car and observed the busy street around him – a couple walking their dog, the mail carrier distributing letters and flyers, a young woman going for a run, some kids making a lemonade stand and an older man watering flowers in his underwear. “Damn,” he thought as he looked around in wonderment “this is one amazing tuna salad sandwich.”

She was sitting at her desk in the dark, her face illuminated by the moon in the window, as she faced a giant pile of premium white paper. She methodically picked up one sheet at a time and punched hole after hole after hole in them until all that was remaining was a massive mountain of white circles. With as much restraint as she could muster, she grabbed her glue stick, rose and walked slowly and menacingly towards the freshly painted black wall. “Time to make it snow” she whispered.

He spent his days wantonly and dramatically cracking nuts and then, stopping, feeling guilty and gluing them back together.

She sat at the piano and played slow, moving and emotional songs for hours until she just couldn’t take it any longer as she dropped her head and wept. Steadying herself, she stood, took a step back and then grabbed her trusty saw. No one, not even her beloved piano, could make her feel this way.

He looked at the large, juicy apple on the counter with misplaced jealousy followed by vicious sadistic chopping with his invisible knife before turning to face himself in the mirror with the smug satisfaction of a job well done before settling down to enjoy yet another really great apple still filled with misplaced jealousy.

She sat on the beach watching the waves crash at her feet enjoying this perfect moment of relaxation. A flock of seagulls announced their presence overhead. The waves continued. Her mind drifted. She wondered how different things would be if, instead of water, the waves were in fact made up of flocks of seagulls and she, for some reason, smelled strongly of fish. Or what if she was a seagull and the rest of the flock, all of a sudden, decided they no longer wished to fly with her for reasons they couldn’t completely articulate mostly because they were seagulls. Or if this beach and the waves and the seagulls were merely figments of her imagination or she of theirs. She sat on the beach watching the waves crash at her feet only feeling significantly less relaxed.

He, after many months of menu planning and hiring staff, opened up his first restaurant to rave reviews such as “why does this place reek of fish?”, “you do know that this isn’t your restaurant, it’s my boat, right?”, “stop wildly waving that freshly caught snapper in my face while imitating my voice” and “fine, if I order the bouillabaisse, will you leave me and my boat alone?”.

She often stands outside on her deck on warm summer evenings, glass of wine in hand, just wishing she was more one dimensional in all senses of the term.

He is often referred to as a human garbage can by his friends who are, in fact, garbage cans and aren’t, in his experience, the best judgers of character. And yet, it still hurts.

She held her newborn baby on her lap the way a mother dolphin would hold a baby dolphin if it had arms and hands and a lap. Why she was always making things unnecessarily challenging and awkward and involving dolphins, she’d never know.

He spent his afternoon enjoying the groves of cool jazz, sipping deliciously fruity cocktails, preparing delicate and dainty spinach and feta pastries as well as plotting the brutal and vengeful overthrow of his strata council.

She stopped what she was doing each day exactly at four and ran home. No matter where she was, who she was with and what she was doing, she would abruptly stop, only to resume those activities at exactly 4:25. What happened in that 25 minute period each day and why it left her literally covered in glitter and soot and smelling of talcum powder and orange zest she would take to her grave. It’s how she was raised.

Stop Being Such a Princess!

When people tell me to stop being such a princess, it only makes me dig in and resolve to be even more of a princess tomorrow.

I have been told that if I am not following anyone I won't see anything and I counter by continuing to stare into the abyss.

Interestingly, people that claim they are too cool to dance almost always create the most stylish fruit platters.

Yes, I will continue to split hairs all evening, or split all hairs this evening, or split the evening up by recreating hairdos from different eras.

I was raised to believe that there is no such thing as too much leavening in unleavened bread. I was also raised to never look up the word leavening in the dictionary.

I can't stop monitoring my daughters while they sleep which has kept them safe but has drastically effected both mine and my wife's sleep as to collect and analyze the data I had to convert our bedroom into a high-tech work space complete with....

Since I was a little boy I have been told that "you are what you eat" and I know! Thank you peanut butter, pickle, cheese and banana sandwiches I owe everything to you (plus you've been such a great friend all of these years as well)!

I have been known to sharpen pencils obsessively, never quite being satisfied with the level of sharpness obtained.

I am always hearing the sound of hands clapping off in the distance growing louder and louder, almost as if I am a prize fighter coming down the tunnel with glittered confetti raining down on me from the rafters except that I am actually just sitting in my room playing with stuffed animals that are acting really immaturely.

I want to bake a loaf of bread that is so dense, so heavy, so thick that it nearly collapses into itself, but not quite.

I sometimes wonder if the only reason I am always melting wax onto my arms and legs causing burns and welts is because of the huge amount of wax I was given on my 25th birthday.

I am so fortunate that the symptoms I have are so asymptomatic that my doctor dropped everything he was doing and gave me a standing ovation.

To speed things up, I have decided to only read every fifth word in my book, which helps me complete the required reading much faster and greatly increases the chance of me completely misunderstanding the intent and focus of the author. For example, the spring I read a book that appeared from it's cover to be on tending flower gardens in the Pacific Northwest, but came across much more pro-fascist with a hint towards using flowers as a means towards repressing the masses.

I can imagine that cows must feel ultra-weird when they walk down the dairy aisle at the store and at least slightly conflicted when they enjoy the milk and cheese they bought as secretly as they could.

I really want to click an actual mouse.

I really want to find more opportunities in life to utilize my brining skills outside of making olives as my wife's tolerance for having many nooks and crannies in our house filled with jars and jars of olives is running thin to say the least.

I love indirect contact not because it is safe (which it is) and not because I have slightly sweaty hands (I do) and not because I am afraid of actual contact with other human beings as just one more example of being slightly paranoid and antisocial (I'm not), no, I love indirect contact because of the beautiful and stunning abstract art that naturally is derived from it.

I often go against my best judgement as part of a mostly imagined agreement I have made with the judge who is actually my roommate who just enjoys wearing black robes wherever he goes.

When I choose to share my toys with others, the joke is actually on them because what they don't realize is that the stock in the toy company has recently plummeted rendering these used toys mostly worthless outside of any misplaced sentimentality which is easily countered by my rental fee which is bordering on usury.

They say that no man is an island, but I beg to differ as I am fairly certain that "they" have no idea who I really am.

Lay Off The Pork Already!

When I was younger I really wanted to go out with someone - it could have been almost anyone - mostly because I spent an unhealthy amount of time as an involuntary recluse and needed the exposure to fresh air as well as having the company to share my vague and hysterical theories with.

I once decided to flex all of my muscles at the same time and froze in that position for a few days until thankfully a really strong wind carried me away.

There are many ways to skin a cat and all of them are excruciatingly horrible especially for the cat and for those of us who are forced to watch as some sort of consequence that in no way is appropriate when all I did was take one cookie from the jar.

Sometimes when people yell at me so loudly, I feel like my brain is actually being penetrated but doctors tell me not to be too concerned and I'm actually starting to enjoy it a bit more now.

For all those around me I am a focal point and am growing tired of all of the attention which is making me both self-conscious and wishing I had just read the fine print more carefully.

My mind is unlike a sieve in almost every way aside from one.

I just bought a new raincoat and I have taken to wearing it for solely preventative measures which seems to work until it rains and then I am not so sure it is working as I intended.

I took a shower the other day to get clean, but only the physical dirt washed off and no matter how much I scrubbed and scrubbed I just couldn't feel psychologically clean which I'm pretty sure the soap ad claimed it would do.

I am gradually overtime increasing the number of activities I participate in ironically and, at the same time, I am noticing a gradual decrease in the number of people who will participate with me.

I have come to grips with the fact that I am just more comfortable in the comforts of my own home which is oddly not that comfortable at all as far as homes go.

Contrary to what I have grown to believe long grass does not give me a heightened feeling of security even after I have made myself a new hat.

Meters have been installed, as have valves, tubes and levers - it all works exactly according to plan aside from the fact that I have nowhere to sleep and I am worried that the constant beeping will have long-term negative side effects.

I often feel sad when I should feel happy and that makes me quite happy although I am starting to wonder if it should make me feel sad instead.

Soothing ointments sooth my painful open sores and yet, even I can only handle so much soothing in my day-to-day life before I grow a bit numb to it.

I often feel great pressure to cook my pasta perfectly al dente even though I happen to be one of the 2% of people who happen to love totally over-cooked pasta that I can eat with a straw.

My wife loves and appreciates the clean rugs and carpets at our home, but even she is starting to grow quite concerned about how often I am vacuuming and the fact that I can't stop beaming while doing so.

Instead of calling or texting or emailing you I've decided to write you page after page of emotional and gripping text in large red letters giving the illusion that I used blood even though it is just an old marker and I have decided to plaster these pages all over your bedroom to see if you want to have lunch tomorrow.

I will continue to use the semi-colon how ever I please and am more than willing to return the favour to ensure things remain fair.

Pigs are so cute and if they could talk I'm pretty sure they would say something snorty and adorable with a strong yet subtle message to "lay off the pork already".

Umbrellas just do not keep me dry enough and it makes me so frustrated and the only thing that helps me feel better is a peaceful walk in a heavy rainfall.

An Evening With Jeff

I once was a pedestrian who got struck by a bus. It was totally my fault as my mind was preoccupied thinking about my old friend Jeff who I had not seen in ages. He had always had that effect on me. Luckily for me the bus had been parked at the time and when I say I was hit by the bus it was actually more like I repeatedly jumped into the stationary bus and lay on the ground near its front tire squealing like a pig just hoping a passerby would take pity on me and take me home to nurse me back to health which had always been a fantasy of mine.

Jeff and I had always been best buddies, even when he used to sadistically deflate my balloons and draw colourful pictures of amazing landscapes on my sister. The pictures were incredible, but it took hours to scrub her clean - I still remember the crying as if it were yesterday and that is mostly because I recorded it and was just listening to it yesterday. We grew up next door to each other, attended the same school and joined the same clubs. He was like a brother to me and I was more like a cousin to him - a close cousin, which was fairly similar in reality to a brother, but just not quite the same.

To say that we both loved sports would be entirely accurate. To say that we both loved ancient Greece was entirely not. Jeff was the star quarterback and I was his always-on-queue backup who rarely got to play a snap. I suggested that I should be the receiver so that he had someone to pass to, but he was too busy blowing kisses and signing autographs with imaginary fans that I more properly referred to as blackberry bushes. We would run together and he was always so hyper competitive and usually hid my shoes as well as ripping my socks to threads (which I claimed was excessive and unnecessary) beforehand thus guaranteeing a victory.

I was on my way to his apartment now. I couldn't believe how much time had passed since I last had seen him. The picture I have in my head is of the back of his head as he walked slowly away the final time we saw each other. He was walking so slowly that the image is actually more of a slow-motion video that goes on for at least 10 minutes and I have a really hard time imagining it all in one sitting without taking multiple breaks that involve at least one face washing and a cream puff from the local bakery. He used to have quite the spectacular head of hair and I mentally prepared myself for the inevitability that it will either be as amazing as I remember it thus producing an audible gasp or two from me or it will be even better as he may have invested an understandably large amount of time and money into improving upon the perfection that was his head of hair.

"Don't forget the Mexican spices" Jeff had reminded me on the phone before I left my house in a tone that came across as quite menacing which was a result of his still recovering from elective tooth implants. He had told me he was having larger and sharper incisors put in exclusively so he could increase the frequency and level of enjoyment of his wild boar intake. I was pretty sure he was leading me on as he had led me on relentlessly and continuously from November 4th, 2006 to January 11th, 2007 which was easier to grow accustomed to than if he had taken breaks or mixed things up either due to misplaced pity or actual pity (I wouldn't have been picky) as, if nothing else, it was quite predictable and comforting to an extant as well.

We were making tacos. We were always in a state of making tacos. Either planning to create them, actually cooking them, or laying, belts loosened, on the floor (when he was between couches) dreaming of the next tacos in the near future. I once opened up to him about a dream I had where I was somehow unable to move from my chair at the kitchen table and he arrived on his golden steed, bursting into the kitchen, observing my motionless body and then creating the most delicious tacos imaginable only to eat them all himself. All I received was a kiss above each eyebrow and exposure to a wonderful and dusty cloud of cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper and what I surmised was fennel, a surprise guest to the party, before preceding to hack and cough as he road away thus ending the dream. I loved tacos and I loved that they brought me closer to Jeff, even if the love was atypical to say the least.

After dinner he told me about the crazy adventures of his rock band "15 years Without Parole" and how things were looking up and up and occasionally down just as everyone's necks were quite sore but then up again after a prescribed rest period of looking at, and gaining a new appreciation for, floor tiles. They had a moderate hit that was played on stations in town called "We Are Going To Rob The Bank On 3rd and Brown on Monday the 21st at Precisely 2 pm Dressed As African Gorillas Escaped From a Local Wildlife Enclosure and We Will Be Parking Our Getaway Car Around the Corner Near the Ice Cream Parlour That Makes Those Sundaes That Were Featured In the Lifestyle Section of The Weekend Paper". The ridiculously cumbersome title and chorus were counter-balanced by a very catchy hook and uniquely modern cord progressions as well as absolutely beautiful harmonies during the bridge.

The song had been meant as a read-between-the-lines subtle satire poking fun at those who were trying to enforce limits on the length of popular song titles, but, unfortunately, the rest of the band members (and the law enforcement officers) took the title and lyrics quite literally and they were now actually spending 15 years without parole in jail which, due to their lack of liberal arts education, meant that the irony was also lost on them along with their freedom to create more harmonious and modern rock music for the locals to enjoy. Jeff felt badly, to a point, that they were all in prison and that he was free and that was mostly as a result of his initially not feeling badly and gallivanting around town like nothing had happened and receiving some fairly harsh criticism from the media. He probably felt worse about the negative attention and less about his band mates, but he was willing to spread it around.

It was my turn to share. I told Jeff about how I had hit rock bottom a few years ago and that it all started when I went to Chicago once and I just did not feel safe. I had intended on taking a soul-searching journey where I travelled the world to find myself as well as any other cliches linking travel and personal improvement that I could incorporate into the trip on a limited budget. I left my home one day and ventured forth, excited by the journey ahead and stubbornly refusing to even peer behind me to see what a trip that way could bring. I dreamed of visiting India, the Far East, and the old country (I wasn't totally sure which country it was as I come from a long line of mumblers).

I only got as far as Chicago, which for some would be quite impressive, but for me it was only a short 30 minute bus ride on an air-conditioned express bus with plenty of comfortable seating, as I live just 30 minutes outside of Chicago and go there quite often. This time, the mean streets of the big city, which had previously fallen somewhere between nice and ambivalent towards me, were pretty mean which I guess was their prerogative. I felt viciously attacked, almost as if I were a dirty stained shirt being tossed around and around and around and then having the laundry machine specifically choose not to wash me citing ethical reasons almost as if that made it okay or right. I stumbled around town looking for love, for acceptance, for a really good slice of pizza (which I found plenty of) and after weeks or months (I lost track due to my disorientated state - I later found out that I had either been there for one day or not at all, it is quite unclear) I decided to return home because I was fairly certain that I missed it as that was probably what I was supposed to feel. Turns out I was just a bit gassy.

Jeff rose and gave me the most awkward combination of a pat on the back and a hug that I had ever received which was quite impressive as he had announced that that was what he would be aiming for as he walked towards me and he completely nailed it. We hadn't seen each other in so long, but our friendship was still as strong as it ever had been and I told him how much I appreciated that he was always there for me even when I was unable to find him for years. We took turns expressing our parting words and I left and ventured into the frosty night. Jeff was a good friend and he wasn't pushy at all - he could actually stand to be slightly pushier as a person as I think, what with his good looks, disarming falsetto and charm to spare. He could get away with it.

As I walked through the night back to my place I imagined that I was the lone person walking my way and I was being met by a veritable army of invisible, expressionless drones walking towards me. I had to force my way through them and I felt as if I were Noah parting the sea except that I had to actually part it myself, which made me a tad bit jealous. These drones pushed against me as if to convert me to their cause, their fight, their direction of movement and I fought against this as much as I could without drawing attention to myself as all anyone else would see was a guy walking by himself making overly dramatic and concerned hand and arm gestures. I've always disliked pushy people, especially those that were invisible, showed no emotion and were products of my vivid imagination. I was quite annoyingly precise to what kind of pushy people I disliked and was thinking of pitching that to Jeff as an idea for another mind-numbingly long song title that I knew he was partial to once I got home.

I Declare Immunity (and other random thoughts)

I've heard that it takes one to know one, well I demand two!

After many years, I have decided to put function over form and let the chips fall where they may. I also need to plan ahead and buy some chips.

I only swing for the fences. When all of the fences are gone, I will alter my goal.

In my world, it is always sweater weather. On a side note: I have a whole closet full of unworn vests that I am looking to unload.

Please don't try to sell me items or services door-to-door. I was raised in a home where we NEVER attached doors to each other by hyphens or any other means as it would have made getting around the house or quickly moving from room to room too challenging.

When I am told I have no one to blame but myself I often spend hours trying to either find someone else or pay someone else to blame before embracing it and making it my own and attempting to bask in the blame, which is harder than it sounds.

I show a constant and blatant disregard for all minimum and maximum height requirements.

I totally get that this draws unnecessary attention my way but I have to come clean. I will reuse and recycle, but there is just no way that I will reduce. I also have to come clean that I am too proud to admit that I'm not totally sure what reduce means and that while I'm sure it has it's merits, I've already made such a public display stating my case against it that it is just too much work to change course now and will make me seem more wishy-washy then I already am.

While it's not my favourite, I will take your pity if it is all you are offering as long as I have a chance to upgrade to sympathy at a future date.

All of the water that I had is now under the bridge that I constructed in my backyard and my only concern is that I now have a bridge in my backyard. Where will I plan my herbs?

When I declare immunity, I expect you to listen flu bug!

The only problem with dot-to-dot puzzles is that after hours of connecting fun I find it exceptionally challenging to stop connecting dots once I've started.

If I had to choose, I would prefer to hang dry rather than be tossed around in the dryer. Thankfully, up to this point, I haven't had to choose but you never know what tomorrow may bring. For that reason I decided to take an ax to my dryer...and that is why I am seeking your professional help today doctor.

Sorry if I offended you with my frankness, but there have never been any attractive dictators and there never will be. 

I enjoy a close shave as much as the next guy, and that is why I am offering to shave you right now - you really look as if you'd enjoy it and if you aren't interested could you please move aside and make room for someone else to stand next to me for a while?.

If I have to look before I leap, then I'll never leap and I never do. On the other hand, if I walk around town with my eyes closed, leaping may be just one of the exciting new experiences I encounter.

I am constantly stumped when asked if I am ready for the cheque because I am not at all sure if I am.

My beauty may only be skin deep or it may go some amount further, but I'm too squeamish around blood, particularly my own, to find out. 

Regardless of what you've heard, I am not a book worm although I do display worm-like tendencies on a regular basis.

Every day I stretch  to be less stiff, more flexible and just a fair amount longer-limbed as I think that may be beneficial in the future.

Another Day in My Life

The following is part 2 of a story I am writing. To see part 1 please click here: Part 1

Part 2

I sit there on my front steps and survey the area.

It is true, I live on a really attractive block and I can only hope that I have become more beautiful as a result of all of the time I have spent here. I'm pretty sure I am more attractive now then before I lived here and not only because of my once-secret downstairs lab of mostly-male beauty products. I say once-secret because I recently took some photos and submitted them to the local newspaper who is running an expose on downstairs labs of local residents. I also refer to the products as mostly-male as I am not ashamed to admit that I do use a few products intended solely for women as well as one that is supposed to be for canines which is making my chest hair so light and fluffy that even my dog growls softly whenever I enter the room. It is an attractive block - splendidly tall trees that reach up to the sky as if leading a yoga class only with a fair amount more greenery and they create a very fresh and natural aroma compared to the last block I lived on that only smelled of toothpaste. There are no potholes on the street or cracks in the sidewalk the result of a neighbourhood group that was struck to crack down on late night acapello singing and an unforeseen byproduct was eliminating the potholes and cracks as it was determined that they could be connected to all of the singing. There was a newly painted fire hydrant that seems to scream out "let me spray you!" and "my name is George, by the way, in case you were wondering" and it was the talk of the street usually on Saturday mornings and the occasional Wednesday if baseball was rained out. And to top it all off, there was quite a set of front yards that are stunning in and of themselves and all-the-while piquing your interest in what could possibly be happening in the backyard. I mean, could it be even nicer most passersby would wonder, and the answer was yes, the seldom seen backyards made those front yards seem so pedestrian and more of a way to cover the earth then a yard. They couldn't hold a candle to those backyards, but I could, and I did every once and a while for no apparent reason or pleasure. My holding-a-candle-to-backyards thing started out small and stayed small - it just never caught on, not sure what I did wrong.

This is almost definitely the longest period of time I have sat and appreciated the neighbourhood, or anything for that matter, aside from the day my brother was born. Now that was a cute baby, I remember thinking at the time, and one that I could use for monetary gain or access to clubs and teams previously off-limits to my kind. I come from a long line of people who strongly felt that there should be limits to time spent sitting and appreciating anything, especially neighbourhoods, and also roasted chicken, freshly manicured nails or humourously trimmed hedges. Sitting for long periods of time was okay as long as you were okay with people talking, as was appreciating objects or people or political movements no matter how asinine, just not pairing the two together. I often wished my family was more normal in these areas, or if they were going to be weird, to be a whole lot weirder. My family fell into a gray area of weirdness that usually resulted in lots of sighs, murmuring and raised eyebrows. What I would have given to have qualified for some nervous laughter or an occasional exaggerated eye roll or maybe having a concern citizen ask if I was okay in a quiet and gently voice that would have actually made me feel less okay. I found myself mentally applauding the idea of grouping so many individual houses together to form this neighbourhood. It was also a good idea, I continue to think, of grouping so many pieces of wood together to make the houses too. And, whomever came up with the idea of stairs, bravo! Of all of the way that houses could have been configured, this seemed to be the best, but I was always slightly put-off by how rectangular and perpendicular everything seemed. Some days I wished I had been consulted and that we could have experimented with some nouveau shapes, something I can always do when decorating cakes or shaving my beard. I have learned the hard way never to do the two at the same time unless I want a sugary, frosting-covered goatee and a hairy, mostly inedible cake, which I almost never do. What did we do before neighbourhoods or houses or beards were mainstream and generally accepted by the public I wonder. Did they have to grow beards and build houses and secretly develop communities in private? Thankfully, we can openly do these now and I plan to pay homage to this by either growing a fantasticly resepefctful beard or just painting my house so that it looks more three dimensional.

After sitting for a while on my steps and enjoying both the vertical and horizontal sections equally, I decide to enter my house. The first thing that catches my eye is my umbrella and I find myself instantly taken back in time to my youth and a particular day when I was splashing in puddles, dancing to and fro and spinning and singing all-the-while twirling and tossing my beloved umbrella in the air. In this memory, I am young and free and with each leap, I seem to bend and almost break the laws of gravity, sailing higher and higher. I move dramatically to the sounds of a large string orchestra and splash and get wet as only a young boy like me could, or possibly a young girl or a different boy or one of those kids with certain haircuts that make you honestly not sure - I'll never know as my strict therapist trained me to have playful fantasies only involving myself usually playing with an umbrella in the rain - as a treat I was once allowed to eat some pizza in a daydream too. And as quickly as this daydream began, it ends as the phone is ringing. I contemplate my options which seem to be limited to either answering it or not. I curse my lack of creativity in regards to how to handle this interruption and to prove a point, I decide to talk into a unsuspecting banana instead which causes me to high five myself for such a display of spontaneity and to roll on the ground laughing at the idea that a banana could actually be a phone! "Who comes up with these things?" I say amidst the laughs and then I remember that I do and that results in a celebratory banana. "Mmmm, tasty!" I call out to myself and I wonder if that will become my new catchphrase. Only time will tell My voice mail light starts blinking from the missed call and my mind allots the next 5 minutes to who was calling and for what reason. Maybe a sales rep from the struggling local newspaper was calling asking me to increase or enhance my subscription. I can imagine the conversation so well that I am tempted to act it out then and there in my front hallway, but I decide that this prime comedic moment would be better saved for when my hand puppets have finally been fixed by my ex-girlfriend, who was both directly and indirectly responsible for their being damaged in the first place. Directly in that she cut them viciously using scissors and indirectly because I angered her so much by opting to spend our anniversary weekend staying in my room playing with the hand puppets. Buying her a pair of sharp scissors as a make-up gift and presenting the gift wearing the hand puppets was almost definitely the final straw from her perspective. Me, I don't believe in ranking straws and personally, I chose to believe in a future where there are limitless straws. If not the newspaper, maybe it is a recorded message from our local actor-turned-street performer-turned-hammock tester-turned-dolphin trainer-turned dog walker-turned-voluntary doorman-turned politician urging me to vote in the upcoming civic election and once voting, to vote for him. Would I vote for him if I chose to vote? I did like his hands I had to admit - strong, yet smooth and graceful. Hands that were the envy of most men and the object of affection for most women. The rest of the population just didn't care much for hands in general. If I could be assured that his hands would play a significant part in his duties as mayor outside of opening doors and holding papers, I could be convinced, because if not, what else does he have to offer the average person like me? He does have a nice face too and if I had to spend time looking at his face for a long period of time, say a week, it would not be a totally horrible experience, nor would it be at all a huge waste of time as I have nothing booked next week as it is.

Or maybe it is my credit card company letting me know about my incredible credit almost going as far as comparing my credit with a perfectly feathered peacock or freshly sponged compact car or a whole series of other comparisons that make little to no sense and definitely do not help me better comprehend my credit. I had some idea about my credit standing seeing as scary looking men in black suits very rarely come by my house any more unlike the old days when I subscribed to a service that had a guy in a black suit come by once a week just to chat and ask me about my day. I usually store all thoughts about banking and money in the deep recesses of my brain or, during holiday season, at least in a room nearby that is available hopefully with a kitchenette as I like to give my thoughts the option of making their own dinners to save money. The man from the credit card is trying to either sell me on a new feature that I would be almost idiotic not to agree too or possibly not idiotic enough - as an aside, for years I have been honing my idiot skills which included an exceptional package of books and exercises that I mailed away for while watching some really late night TV after eating an excessively large dinner of sauce - some tomato, a little plum and a whole lot of alfredo. I know I'd be almost tricked into buying this new feature, because he'd have a svelte voice almost as if his vocal cords were actually made out of suede that had been generously slathered in butter and I am often quite susceptible to talking men, to suede and to things slathered in butter - put all three together and how could I resist? In fact, my father routinely got me to eat my broccoli by talking with a deep, sexy voice, dressing head-to-foot in suede and slathering himself with butter. I mistakenly tried covering myself in butter once on a third date only to have my date attempt to leave abruptly only to slip on some grease and have to be rushed by me to the hospital for bumping her chin with the unexpected upside being that the creamed corn they fed her was quite bland and needed some butter and I was only happy to make myself useful. With my newly featured card I could buy things, earn points to buy more things more easily then I ever have before, which would earn me even more points and more things until I was either broke or had no more room for things or points. I sat there trying to consider a world where I had too many points, but was unable to. Must revisit that mental construct again after I've had a good nap.

Quite possibly I've won a trip! "Guess what?" the overly excited recorded voice would mutely scream, "You've been randomly selected to win an all-inclusive vacation to the Bahamas." They would go on and on about how lucky I am and that all I have to do is answer a skill-testing question and attend a meeting about an awesome timeshare that I may also be interested in buying all-the-while I'd be considering breaking my phone with a fury that I've been saving for just the right moment and I would resist as I just know that the true moment I've been waiting for is when my boss at my job fires me and I want to react with as much faux-anger as humanly possible in an effort to save my job as I know my boss has a thing for faux-emotions- he even went as far as make a series of funny pins that said as much.You know, I've always wondered are those skill testing questions actually skill-testing for anyone? I wish they would devise some questions that are incredibly skill testing and have the skills be as varied and random as possible - like the skill to yodel underwater, or the skill to build relationships with marsupials or the skills to actually pay the bills. I would love to have that skill! Or, if someone cannot answer the simple skill-testing question, I would only hope that they aren't my surgeon or my future wife or my wife from a previous incarnation who was also a surgeon who harvested my internal organs after a night of festive partying only as a way of exacting revenge as she just lived for exacting revenge and for harvesting - her father owned an apple orchard and was always going on and on about how his only dream in life was to have his only daughter give up her dream of being the best, darn apple farmer (and only female, as apple farming in that neck of the wood was a career only open to men and sometimes to really talented and non-temperamental gorillas, a completely sexist tradition that she ate many an apple while ranting over) this side of Oklahoma (really confusing for all as they lived on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean almost directly opposite Oklahoma making it hard to know which way to go), go to school, study surgery with a minor in illegal transplants and then steal organs from the rich to give to the poor sort of like a modern day Robin Hood, which was quite confusing to all as Robin Hood hadn't even been born yet. And saying I did actually win a trip to the Bahamas, who could I trust to watch my goldfish whom I would be confident wouldn't touch my collection of antique gold coins or my collection of frozen fish.

Or potentially it would be a charity asking for a month-by-month donation. These ones are hard to say no to and they know it. They know that you are hesitant to refuse as that may make you seem like more of a social deviant than you already are (your past habit of throwing recyclables at the neighborhood boys didn't help, especially considering they were choir boys - past tense "were" as many of them did quit - and they were only going to help you with your recycling well before curbside service began) and they always sound so sweet, so just and so full of themselves just knowing that your money that you were going to spend on a yearly subscription of after-dinner mints is almost theirs. You were so taken with charities that you had once planned to launch your own but on the way to the government office you ran into an old friend you hadn't seen in years. The two of you immediately picked up where you had left off with a handshake and saying goodbye. You felt like you should stop and talk and hang out, but it was already too late as you had immediately jumped into a taxi on your way downtown. You had a long history of taking taxis downtown. A long, completely uninteresting history completely devoid of even the smallest odd or funny event. You always wished that something more reportable would occur on these cab rides just so you could add in a funny caption in your scrapbook that you were working on and so you could tell your mother who was complexly and totally unsupportive in almost all areas involving transportation aside from fleeing, flying and floating and, under the right circumstances, pogo-sticking. So the charity person would go on and on and you'd listen, mentally counting the money and completely revising your detailed and extravagant 9-course menu you'd been planning for your old college friends. They never came over, but that didn't stop you from constantly and enthusiastically planning menus you think they may enjoy including a few you know they would be highly allergic too, those good-for-nothing friends who couldn't even pick up the phone or drop in with cream puffs. Man, I enjoy a good cream puff especially when I need to work out my frustration with my old college buddies. Even a mediocre cream puff would do.

I notice that the street lights have come on and that somehow it was nighttime. I guess I had been sitting there for quite a while without noticing. The fresh air can do that to me sometimes, so can misreading the labels on the expired medicine I accidentally inhale mistaking it for a jar of peanuts that I also love to inhale as a tribute to elephants both real and imaginary. My next door neighbour is just returning home and he stops and is about to speak before he breaks into a extensive and exhaustive song and dance routine as his way of rehearsing in front of an audience before his big audition tomorrow. When he is done, I leap in the air and shower him with hugs, flower petals (mostly from his overhanging lilacs that he just won't trim no matter how many times I cryptically ask him - I am really bad at sending cryptic messages as they are often far too hard to decypher and I just don't have the energy to try again) and inspirational quotes from famous Asian people like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Ho Chi Minh. It is my hope that he finds these quotes as inspirational as I would if I was him, as I don't personally find they do much for me at all. I hope that he does well in his audition as it would be strange for me to spend all of my free time writing and choreographing mean-spirited cheer-leading routines against him and driving to the houses of the director and producer of the show and spray-painting their cars with hate-filled messages illegibly from him and renting an off-road vehicle, driving through the mud and then parking in their spots at the theatre knowing of their dislike of off-road vehicles, mud, and nonsensical and anonymous pranks that could be mistaken as a gift of a used car. Plus, I like him and I want him to work and it would be far too much time and effort to execute the plots against him. If he works, maybe he will buy me a rose bush. I've always wanted a previously, out-of-work actor, who has recently found work, to both give me a perennial flowering plant. It is a bit weird and so random that I am not at all shocked it has never happened, until now. Go, neighbour-who-probably-has-a-name-but-I-either-never-knew-or-was-told-and-purposely-forgot-or-was-told-and-was-humming-too-loudly-to-impress-my-cat-so-it-sounded-like-meow-as-the-cat-was-highly-appreciative-of-the-humming-but-it-almost-definitely-is-not, go.

Across the street, I see a girl proudly skipping on her front lawn without a care in the world. I am torn between going to my basement and practicing my own skipping and then coming out and showing her to be the fraud that she is, or going over there, with the best of intentions, and reeling off a number of topics that would be guaranteed to give her a care or two to think about. I decided against both of these choices as they seemed petty and mean and quite unbecoming for the man I hope to one day, years from now, become. Plus she seems like such a nice girl - in fact, I would buy her a skipping rope if she didn't already have one. She seems to be lost in her skipping - maybe her mind is elsewhere and she is preoccupied by naming her socks or brushing her hair or stuffing her socks with her own fallen hair and making them into sock puppets and then creating a vibrant and dramatic series of sock variety shows that she would perform for her parents who are usually so consumed with her excessive skipping, brushing her hair and lack of human friends. Maybe she is skipping for a reason or a cause like generating electricity for her parent's illegal black market dealing of electrical current or having to log a certain number of hours of skipping to gain visiting hours with her pet bunny Alexis or she is skipping to remember her best friend, Gail, whose family moved away mostly because they were imaginary but also because her father was just given a new position within his company and transferred. The position sounded made up to the girl's father, mostly because it was, but also because why would a clothing company need a massage therapist in the first place except of course if the work was overly strenuous on the shoulders and upper back. I sat there and watched her and wished I was a young girl like her, but I had learned the hard way to keep those thoughts to myself.

Then a young boy walked by delivering newspapers. He smiled and waved and tossed me a paper with an admirable amount of coordination which either came naturally to him or was a result of hours of training with another master of the trade. Regardless I felt quite uncoordinated relative to him and also uncomfortably conscious of the raw emotional scars I still had as a result of a particularly uncoordinated youth as well as the actual scars from being to rawly emotional around my nanny who believed that a proper young boy should never display any emotions and should be aiming for robotic perfection. I felt like I knew him, or that I sort of knew him. It is so hard to know anyone anymore I thought, especially a young boy like this. I mean, I don't even know his first name. I tried out a few potential names to see if any of them rang a bell and if they did, to spend a fair amount of time figuring out how and why me saying a name rang the bell and who installed that bell there in the first place? Was it Sebastian, the young paper boy with a heart of gold who was delivering papers to save up money for his first baseball glove which would be a confusing choice as he much preferred baking to baseball? No, probably not Sebastian. But maybe he was Glen, the renegade paperboy who regularly stuck his nose up at the whole paper delivery system and its proud traditions and instead preferred to do things his own way ignoring the wrath of the others and who one day would either revolutionize the industry or bring it down from the inside - either way really, he didn't care. Definitely not Glen, but he could be Wayne, the narcoleptic, addicted-to-his own concoction of sugar, caffeine, and red food colouring he liked to call "yummy", cross-eyed, double-jointed and often mistaken for a cactus owner's son, the boy who could do no wrong, and the heir to the thrown (yes, his father actual bought and sat on a thrown). Hmmm...probably not. The unnamed boy had stopped and a look of worry crossed his face almost as a reflection of mine. I tried to fake a smile so I could release him and allow him to finish his route. Unfortunately, I am not very good at fake smiles and the look I gave him fills him with a mix of horror and confusion and also some pity. It is times like this when a little pity goes a long way and I am now motivated to practice my fake smiles more often. He has such a bounce in his step - he should probably get that checked out - and he is years or at least months away from being jaded or hardened by the harsh, cutthroat realities of the paper distribution business. He still delivers each paper like it is the right thing to do and sees himself as part of a team, or an army (he also privately sees himself as part of a gaggle, but hasn't worked up the courage to talk to his colleagues about this as they will wonder if he sees them as human, paper-delivering geese or a group of mostly male, prepubescent, completely underdressed nuns). I can tell by how he clutches each paper that he has a deep respect for the paper and probably, as I did when I was a young paper boy like him, has a hard time letting go. He wants to prolong the moment before he has to let go - to say his goodbye, to wish the paper well, to say he is sorry for the whole playing with matches thing and, if time permits, to dance a little jig - newspapers, according to lore, love little jigs especially when danced by young human boys. But, let go he must, unless he wants to turn from a paperboy whose sky is the limit to an old weirdo who has a massive newspaper collection in his basement and, when no one is watching, he hugs the big stack of old papers and, if it has been a good month, offers it a glass of merlot and a freshly baked brownie...not that I know anyone like that personally.

Seeing these two brings me back to my youth and, after being momentarily lost in my youth (I took a few wrong turns and then had no idea how to get out), I remember some of the kids i grew up with. There was little Johnny who was always swinging his imaginary baseball bat at imaginary balls. Johnny wanted to become someone that that could swing an actual bat at a real ball, but whenever we suggested baseball player. he instantly turned pale and drifted away to what seemed like a very dark place inside his mind and only a well-cooked pork chop and slap with said pork chop would snap him out of it. Then there was sunny Sally always munching celery and laughing a little too loudly at everything I said. At first I used to enjoy having a sidekick providing my own personal laughtrack who was clearly well off in the dietary fibre category, but after a while I started questioning many things like how funny I actually was, how she had access to a seemingly never-ending source of celery and why it always took a few too many "Sally"s to get her attention. And I'll never forget Ralph and his younger brother Geoff as the two of them were so motivated to follow in the footsteps of their father, the most famous garden manicurist in the neighbourhood. Ralph was the strong and silent type and George was always deferring to his older brother, which meant that the two of them didn't speak a whole lot. The only way they got any message across was through a series of incredibly well-illustrated drawings delivered with an impeccable, yet mostly silent, presentation. To let the gang know about their garden manicurist plans took 45 separate and detailed drawings presented over 10 consecutive Thursday afternoons. The presentations started with a lot of pomp and circumstance, but got a little boring in the middle - so it is good they decided to serve snacks. And, of course, I will never forget Rachel, the love of my pre-teen life  - her plain, straight brownish hair that was aching to curl and be noticed; her small collection of cute freckles that captured my heart and only gave it back for, what was considered a good deal at the time, $40-worth of gum; and her walk - she vowed never to take the same set of steps more than once which, while sounding avant-garde and like a good idea at the time, rendered her motionless for days and weeks on end as there are only so many different combinations of steps one person (and a young girl preoccupied with her straight hair and freckles at that) could reasonably devise. Rachel was so sweet and letting her get away is one of my main regrets in life, but her family moved and I just didn't have enough money to stop them. Her dad opened the bidding at $50, and by the time I called in a few favours, broke open my piggy bank and sold my precious, one-of-a-kind oyster pearl that looked like JFK, the auction had closed and they were halfway to Toledo or Tofino or Toronto or wherever they were going. I was quite unhappy that they left without even saying goodbye as I had planned and rehearsed a very emotional, long and drawn out, running down the street while weeping and sobbing, tearful and gag-inducing goodbye to Rachel before heading inside to make some popcorn and watch some cartoons. For a while there every time I saw anyone who reminded me of her, I broke down in tears. Luckily this didn't last long and eventually I broke out in laughter as a way of coping when I was reminded of her which was only slightly better - who knew people would be offended by a little boy, they didn't know, doubled-over laughing and pointing at them. I was only grieving and grief takes many forms including stuffing your own socks with foam, drawing faces on them and reenacting the Industrial Revolution - a very dry and mostly eventless period to reenact but I just couldn't bare getting blood or even ketchup on my socks. It is amazing how long ago all of this was and how much nut butter I've consumed since then both with honey and without. I wonder what they are all up to now and whether they are all happy, attractive and okay and what they would think of my plan to only keep objects in my house that start with vowels as my long-overdue way of objecting to consonants.

Finally, I decide to get up and go inside and make some dinner. As I walk up my stairs and into my house, I am deliberating between an intricate 5-course meal featuring products from local farms and artisan cheese shops that tell the story of my life up until this moment or a few boiled eggs and a glass of orange juice, which oddly would also tell the story of my life quite well. I enter my kitchen and I decide that I just don't have the energy to cook anything to laborious or time-consuming and yet I don't just want some eggs, so I take out some veggies and begin chopping them up while also putting on some water for some pasta. I really enjoy chopping veggies and find it both cathartic and poetic. However, last night I made the naive mistake of lining up the bell pepper, zucchini, mushrooms and broccoli on my kitchen counter, spending quality time with them which included showing them around the house (them seemed to love my use of feng shui), giving them a nice warm bath in the sink (which included a massage and rubbing them down with extra virgin olive oil at the end) and ending off with a viewing of Star Wars (who knew they hadn't gotten around to seeing this classic film, but then again, they were relatively young and probably hadn't had the chance to get out that much growing up on a farm way out of town). The zucchini seemed to be suggesting that we were turning in too early and that perhaps a night on the town, maybe taking in a show or hitting up the clubs would be a good idea, and I almost agreed until I thought of how it would look - me walking around with an armful of veggies and I decided against it, mostly because I wasn't taking the chance of setting any new trends after what happened last time - long story short - everyone was sprinkling their clothes with red and blue paint ala Jackson Pollock for a while. I also had no way of knowing what that loose-cannon of a broccoli would do and say once we were out and I wasn't interested in either spending the night in jail, bringing the party back to my place or getting engaged. So, we stayed home and after playing a few card games, we turned in - me in my bed and them back in the fridge. There was lots of complaining, so I hand-crafted sets of pillows and comforters for all of the veggies and read them the complete works of Richard Scarry before closing the fridge door while singing a few jazzed up versions of standard lullabies accompanied by the amazing harmonies of the mushrooms who hit all of the notes with pizzazz. After spending a really great evening with them I felt like I knew them - I knew their names, their personalities and, if they were forced to choose, the animal they'd most want to be sculpted into if I chose to make some animated animal-vegetable-art. Surprisingly, they hated the game 20 Questions as they believed that having to select an animal, vegetable or mineral was cruel and unnecessary mostly because they vastly misunderstood the rules as they were only inanimate vegetables hanging out with a guy who's imagination had been declared by at least three different professionals as creative, troublesome and the reason we often should be seen and not heard. Giving the veggies names was a big mistake - it is so much harder to eat something that has a name - maybe that is why they kept on suggesting it. Oddly, I had no trouble cutting up the named veggies or stir frying them, but the eating, it just didn't seem right. I felt overwhelmed with a flood of memories of similar experiences - I have always had a hard time eating food that I had creatively assumed or assigned personality traits too. An average carrot? Yes! But a happy-go-lucky carrot who just wants to make the world laugh? What sort of devil am I to eat that carrot? A regular zucchini? No problem! But a zucchini who is manic depressive? Not as easy. Yes, eating him may ease his pain in the short term, but I'm pretty sure that that is not one of the methods that medical professionals at Johns Hopkins are currently recommending for his long term coping. What a dilemma! I almost felt like patting myself on the back and going to my favourite podiatrist and once there, have him look at my arches. Finally, my hunger for food took over and not a moment too soon as I it was starting to get a little boring just hanging out and all. I'm hungry all day long for something - sometimes the truth, sometimes some fresh air and other times a good talking too, but nothing makes me more satisfied then some good food, and if that food is also accompanied by some truth-telling, a few breaths of fresh air and a deep conversation with a therapist then I feel totally full in every sense. I cook the veggies, saying a tearful goodbye to each one - knowing that I'll never see the little mushrooms grow up and the red pepper will never ride a horse or experience her first kiss, the miniature corn on the cobs will never get over their feelings of being inadequate compared to their full-sized cousins (I once made a joke about my full-sized cousins which would have landed me in hot water both literally and figuratively except that I was fortunately recovering from a bout of laryngitis so no one heard me except for my sister who just couldn't stop laughing and eating kale chips) and the vastly misunderstood red chard who was planning on proving to all that he was not, contrary to popular belief, a communist although he did have a soft spot for one particularly attractive communist female bunch of chard who was worth the risk.

So, dinner was cooked and eaten and I lay on the couch enjoying some TV dramas. Nothing like lying on a couch and watching TV to help me settle down before going to bed. I had tried numerous other methods including throwing darts at pictures of my enemies, throwing pictures at drawings of my enemies playing darts and calling my enemies up and treating them to an exquisite meal of scallops and risotto served with an amazing vintage pinot gris where, by the end of the evening, I would have not only grown to love them all but to go as far as sharing stock investing secrets, planning to go on vacation to Mexico next year and finishing off the evening with a game of darts that feels just a tad bit strange to me. I knew I had a busy day tomorrow and that I shouldn't stay up too late, but I was really digging the whole couch thing and just wished there was some way to bring the couch along with me on all of my journeys. As I lay there, I was hit with a detailed dream I had once where I imagined a world where there were couches everywhere and all the people were full of bliss and joy due, in some part, to all of the options for places to relax. The people treated the couches well, at least they thought, until one day the couches decided enough was enough and they all got up, shook off the dust and the crumbs (they kept the loose change stuck in their cushions - could you blame them?) and all simultaneously walked off. The people all returned from their work, their tennis games and their other daily pre-couch sitting rituals and routines to find no couches anywhere, only the empty spots where their beloved couches once sat. Everyone would always remember this day - the day the couches left and the day when people tried to not take things they sat and occasionally lay on for granted, which they did until it was time to go to bed, because as great as the couches were, and they were pretty awesome, you just can't beat a bed. I smiled at the memory of this great dream and wanted to turn it into a play that could run at the local community theatre. But, that would have to wait for another day as I needed to get some sleep. I turned the TV and all the lights out, enjoyed the onset of the darkness that felt sort of like an envelope that I, the letter, was being placed inside. Having said that, I felt like a letter in many situations in life and that may explain why I felt so comfortable surrounded by my half-written, never-sent, lavender-scented-as-that-aroma-of-paper-just-happen-to-be-on-sale-the-day-I-spent-way-too-much-time-at-the-office-supply-store-for-reasons-I-still-had-not-determined letters in my office. I also held envelopes of all kinds in high regard and planned to leave at least part of my inheritance to envelope makers worldwide to both aid them in their arduous work and to provide them with a small nest-egg (I had thought it was really odd that my grandfather had left me a huge collection of fermented eggs in his will). I headed up the stairs, brushed my teeth, washed my face and went to bed. Washing my face always made me laugh - it was a private joke that lost a lot in the translation from its original Russian. My last thought, as I closed my eyes, was about a man, just like me, standing in Russia also washing his face and wondering if, for that one, short moment, he felt a connection to me that ran deeper than our freshly-washed, acne-free, multi-freckled-faces. I wanted to see him, to hold hands and dance in a circle to Japanese folk music, to share veggie bacon recipes that are appropriate at both holiday time and when eating a meal after being chased by a group of wild raccoons who ended up just being a few joggers out for a late night run and to put my finger on his nose. I have always wanted to touch a Russian man's, for failing that a goat's, nose. I would also gladly touch a Russian woman's nose, but in some remote areas of Russia that is considered a marriage proposal and the last time I married someone based on how their nose felt I ended up having to burn all of my shirts and I couldn't look at a pickle without shrieking.

Something in the Oven

I do have something in the oven, thanks for asking!

When the lights are on at my house, somebody is home and when they are off, I can't see at all, so while I'm pretty sure I am still home, I could have wandered aimlessly into the woods.

I am often gassy which I blame completely on Big Oil and Gas.

Allergy alert! I may contain peanut butter, cashew butter, almond butter and/or other tree nut butters as well as a significant amount of bread and jam.

I live life on the edge by swimming 29 minutes after eating and proudly deal with the resulting cramps. I have contemplated giving myself even less time, but don't want to appear like I'm showing off.

Sometimes I grow a beard as I am trying to hide something.

I'm trying to convince myself that it is totally random, but why won't any of those balls bounce my way.

Not only do I dream that I'm a frisbee, but I'm trying to live more like one in my waking hours as well.

Once and a while, after not shaving, I am much-moustachioed.

I do wear glasses to increase the chances that a random passerby will ask me a skill testing question.

Everything on me right now is for sale for exactly $1.

To the best of my ability, I made sure that an entire village was used in raising me. No one got off easy.

I am proud to say that I am fully three-dimensional and am considering upgrading to four in the near future.

Videotaping me and showing the tape without my expressed written consent can result in a $5000 fine and/or jail time.

When I splurge and get the best shampoo and soap, I am treated afterward to a wonderfully soft and smooth coat.

I have been known to walk around town whistling a happy tune that is unfortunately significantly marred by my inability to really whistle.

No matter how hard I try, I can only write cheques that my butt can't cash. Honestly, after multiple attempts I am still no closer to accomplishing this at all.

I wear earplugs to tune the world around me out and I also enjoy some cool jazz at the same time.

Even if the owl has called my name, everything those owls say sound the same. How am I supposed to know if he is talking to me?

I always eat with my eyes first and, depending on how messy I have been, the meal at the restaurant prematurely ends there.

Even when the sun sets on my day, I always respectfully keep on going for a while to show my appreciation for all of its hard work.

I am watching the pot boil. Now I am watching it boil over. And my pasta is overcooked and stuck to the bottom of the pot. When can I stop watching this pot? Anyone?

My shadow is so tall and lean and almost definitely mocking me.

With increasing frequency, I know what time it is and what people are talking about.

I believe I can fly. In other news, I am an incredibly broken man.

Things I Really Appreciate

I really appreciate the first taste of freshly squeezed orange juice first thing in the morning. Sweet, tangy, full of citric acid and vitamins and I enjoy it up to the point, but not past, when I have saturated my senses with juice and I sink into a state of delirium where I imagine I am being chased by an army of oranges riding larger, horse-like oranges hurling smaller, grenade-like oranges at me and all three sizes and genres of oranges have fully-equipped faces including adorable eyes and curly moustaches that would look appropriate on certain French chefs.

I also appreciate orangutans as I'm fairly sure it would be unwise not too.

I really appreciate chalk for providing me a means to communicate messages via sidewalk, the least transportable, but often times, the most convenient method of communicating. Many of my most interesting, thought-provoking and meaningful communiques have been delivered on the sidewalk - what can I say, hardened concrete inspires me and it always will. I also like having my body traced as if I were a victim at a taped-off police crime scene as I believe in being prepared for just about any situation that involves chalk and sidewalks.

It is hard not to appreciate a really comfortable couch - soft, cozy, relaxing - all the things the couch in my living room is not - it is almost as if I have the couch who was excommunicated from the wonderful land of the couches, and the monarchy that was fair and just for all, for being abrasive, rude, practicing witchcraft and always talking in jealous tones about how many of the couches who walked around so superior like were just glorified and oversized chairs in the big scheme of things. I understand that this thought is still relatively unformed and in its' infancy - I'll work on it more and flesh it out when I have that comfortable couch.

I have grown to appreciate fans overtime and have progressed from barely being able to handle using one small fan on particularly hot summer days to the present where I have filled every square inch of my house with super high-powered fans that make it next to impossible to make my hair at all presentable but with the upside of making things extremely light and breezy that I haven't sweated inside my house in years and have literally flown from room to room.

I truly appreciate great art including anatomically-correct sculptures of human beings especially the ones that teach at the local community college - I owe everything I know to those walking, talking and well-dressed moving pieces of three-dimensional art. It's also highly possible that they are, in fact, just actual people who work as instructors, and if that is true, they are now even less interesting than before. Here's hoping they are sculptures.

I can't stop talking about how much I appreciate the word "the" and to show my appreciation I have created a musical comedy/multimedia presentation featuring hand puppets and an interactive slide show that is both highly controversial and overly sentimental. The show takes the audience through the sordid history of "the" from infancy through it's present-day mature adult who dresses and acts about 10 years younger then it really is which is both embarrassing and humourous for it's friends "and", "then" and "yet". The show highlights certain times in the life of "the" including "the's" rebellious youth (wanted to go by solely "T"), the radical period in it's 20s (started wearing berets, shades and listening to jazz) and  "the's" middle-life crisis when it felt that half of its' life was wasted and wished more time had been spent travelling, spending time with family and charging for each written use of itself. The show ends with an allegorical act making a commentary on the role "the" has played both in the rise of the humans and our eventual fall.

I appreciate one of nature's little miracles, the squirrel, always running, jumping, bouncing and looking for food and dancing beautifully with a reckless abandon to the songs of nature and Mother Earth or they could just be jumpy and nervous and need to relax more.

I truly appreciate my eyes for granting all that wish to pay the $25 access fee for a view through the window to my soul - for only an extra $5 you can look into my ears where I believe there may be enough free wax to go around.

I really appreciate the lock on the door of the room I am locked inside of as I am attempting to see the positives in everything and I have learned the hard way that just staying angry, especially at inanimate objects like this lock, are a waste of energy - "it isn't the lock's fault" I tell myself, although in moments of anguish and frustration, I just want to smash it to bits right before trying to befriend it.

It is hard not to appreciate the gentle background buzzing of a far off group of bees - so calming, so pleasant and such a perfect natural soundtrack for me to enjoy while I lean back and enjoy eating spoonfuls of sweet, thick honey while sitting in my favour spot surrounded by clovers and other flowers almost literally dripping with nectar. I don't have a care in the world and nothing bad is going to happen to me today, I just know it....Is it just me or is the buzzing getting louder and more intense? No matter, nothing is going to disrupt my peace and my pure enjoyment of this magical honey.

I really appreciate the glass of water I have in front of me that I plan to start drinking out of momentarily. It is currently so full, almost bursting with water and a such a picture of perfection that I just can't get myself to take the first sip even though my lips are chapped, my throat is dry and my headache is growing worse by the minute. I look around and admire my room that is literally full of glass upon glass of crystal-clear, very-drinkable water and beam like only a proud father could.

I also appreciate objects, unlike me, with thick skins such as unripened bananas and my great uncle Larry. There is just so much I can learn from these two about not letting little things get to me and letting small annoyances roll off my shoulders, and in exchange I believe I can teach them all about the wonders of becoming yellow and edible as well as the fact that the war ended decades ago. 

I have grown to appreciate pond scum and am working hard at learning to appreciate all types of scum as I don't want to give the appearance that I am playing favourites.

I just totally appreciate dresses and the whole worldwide dress-designing and making industry. These expert dress people are so skilled, what with the measuring, the sewing, the careful-determining-of-profit-margins-to-arrive-at-slightly-unfair-but-not-enough-so-to-raise-the-alarm-that-was-built-just-for-potentially-price-gouging-moments-like-this-because-if-it-did-it-would-cause-a-revolution prices and the bringing of smiles to women both young and old around the world and also to admirers-from-afar like me with closet-room to spare and really poor decision making when it comes to saving, investing and spending my hard-earned money. When I need to drown my sorrows for being broke, I just sit in my closet and rub the soft fabric of these dresses on my face and neck and I feel so alive.

I have a deep appreciation for things that appreciate in value like my collection of rare stamps, my never-used expensive Italian car, my big bag of polished chicken bones and the unopened bottle of apple juice I'm holding and considering saving and selling to the highest bidder during the rapture. There is a chance the bones are worthless and, in that case, at least I need to find a new item that will appreciate to maintain my minimum quota and to cook less chicken as the bones are worthless and I am a vegetarian anyways.

I will always appreciate leaps of faith as they are daring, exciting and breathtaking and can be done both blindfolded and partially asleep while also involving next to zero actual faith in anything at all (believe me, I asked around and most people just nodded their heads and took the first bus uptown) or belief in anything outside of what I can directly experience.

I completely appreciate dots for their simplicity, for helping me either end or extend sentences, for dancing in front of my eyes and keeping things optically interesting, for their freckleness and for appropriately always paying homage to their ancestors the circle and, the infinitely more exciting, rings.

I will always appreciate where I have come from and the people who helped me leave there and get to where I am now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart- I couldn't get out of that sink hole fast enough. 

I appreciate the simple things in life and the ridiculously, mind-numbing, hair-pulling-out complex things as well as some of the things in between except of course: congealed chicken fat (unless there is about to be a food fight or prizes are about to be awarded for the greatest array of fats), excessive punctuation (I have always believed that if you can't express something with three punctuation marks or less it isn't worth expressing and you should probably just calm down), watching paint dry (or just watching paint in any stage of being made, bought, applied, dried, and waiting until the onset of the eventual peeling which will lead to scraping it all off and starting again - once you are in, it is an endless loop of horrible and mind-suckingly boring experiences all involving paint), the letter 'm' (it just seems like an inverted w and it is fully aware of that), bats (no explanation needed aside from my tears), periods of silence (it all depends on how long the periods are and how much and what quality of noise I will be treated to afterwards) and those rows and rows and rows of white pillars that I must run amongst for what seems like years and years all the while being pelted with rain and snow and sleet while also dealing with the teeth rattling-screeching of the hundreds and hundreds of black menacing birds by air and the unbelievably large, blood-thirsty wolves and coyotes by land and having to make split second decision after split second decision with the adrenalin pumping and the heart racing and the excessive sweating overwhelming my body. That's right, I appreciate everything but those things.

Go Hide All Of The Knives

You are rinsing freshly picked blueberries.
I am defrosting frozen blueberries.
You beam with a confidence that only fresh berries can provide.

I look across the crowded party and smile seductively at you.

You return my look but mix in an emotional cocktail of doubt, guilt and ignorance.

I decide to make my move as I interpret your reply in as creatively positive a way as I can.

You liberally spread peanut butter on your toast.

I agree with your choice of spread but feel conflicted due to your excessive and wanton use of peanut butter.

You comment that the purchasing and consumption of toast have brought us endless joy and crumbs.

I am updating my profile online.
You notice glaring discrepancies between reality and the information I've just entered that are either accidental oversights, purposeful lies, or confounding examples of the dream-like world I am living in.
I enjoy living in a world of discrepancies.

You playfully mess up my hair.

I playfully mess up your hair in return.

You may grin causally on the outside, but we both know that inside you seethe.

For years, it felt as if \you were moving from relationship to relationship, although you could have been staying still and it was the relationships that were moving. Each person had their good points and their bad, although for some reason the good ones were more noticeable early on and the bad dominated as time went on. You yearned for someone who made you laugh, just not too much or too hard. You longed for someone who listened, just not between the hours of 4pm and 5pm - that was your time. And you ached for someone to hold you, or failing that to keep you from falling when standing or rolling off the bed when lying down - when sitting, all bets were off. You believed that you had so much to give in return - money (mostly in small change), a never-ending supply of apples during the fall harvest and stories of great apple harvests from the past during the rest of the year, paint and paint-related accessories and innovative cardboard box designs with a starter sheet of cardboard to make your very own box. You were happy but always a bit lonely, until we met and then you were just happy and always looking for a new, secondary supporting feeling as lonely no longer made sense.

I am picking individual blades of grass with a fair amount of angst.
You, on the other hand, are very cavalier and carefree about it.
I decide then and there to move out of this angst-filled period of my life and to attempt to live with more trepidation and malaise.

You spend one morning vividly talking about selecting and cutting open watermelons for the purposes of enjoying their juicy flesh.
I nod my head, but as a precaution, go hide all of the knives.
You are nothing if not amazingly literal and confusingly euphemistic.

I love talking about personal philosophies over herbal tea.
You love the tea but find my philosophies equal parts nonsensical and pathological.
I contemplate switching over to caffeinated drinks.

You are attempting to get my attention using only your eyebrows.
I am enjoying a wonderful "waking dream" about two dancing caterpillars.
You never know how to react in situations like this.

I can't stop smiling at you.
You can't stop smiling at me.
I decide to go take a nap, exhausted from all of the excessive smiling.

I spent my twenties actively searching for the right person to spend the rest of my life with. I put up signs, made t-shirts and handed out samples of freshly made grilled cheese all in the effort of finding "The One". The grilled cheese was always well prepared but didn't quite help with the romance, and the sheer cost of all of that cheese made it an unsustainable plan moving forward. After years of hitting the pavement which left marks, making the rounds which just seemed like walking in circles but who was I to disobey such a tried and tested expression, and frequenting places people may go and talk to other people and, if all things go well, spend more time, at a future date, talking with one of those people, I was ready to give up. I daydreamed of kissing someone and had to increasingly make sure I wasn't in a public place while daydreaming as the dreams became more and more exciting and risque. I believed that I was a good person and, that if all was right in the world, good people like me should have good things happen to them and that included, but was not exclusive to, meeting a wonderful, beautiful, fabulous person who may or may not be good with numbers. And then along came you.

You are writing a particularly personal diary entry.
I am envious of that diary as I wish you would be particularly personal with me.
You have experimented with writing on me but my love of showering rendered it pointless.

I take a deep breath and slowly breathe out a long sigh.
You also take a deep breath and release a long sigh.
I will always have the satisfaction that I sighed first.

You stare whimsically at the expensive sculpture.

I silently wish that I could be the object of such whimsy.

You have always reserved your "top" and most rehearsed looks for sculptures.

I am enjoying an afternoon in my new kayak on the lake.

You keep reminding me that you are not a kayak.
I finally agreed that it all made sense as I had been wondering for a while about my troubles with buoyancy. 

You yawn and lay on the couch.

I suppress my desire to yawn so as not to appear overly dependent.

You are enjoying the bliss and comfort of the couch and the break from my usual dependence.

We worked. We just did. And not just in the conventional sense of getting along and supporting each other. We went out of our way to work in as many senses of the term as possible which took a lot of care and research, aside from actually working at the same store or business together as that would be far too literal and we wanted to keep our personal and professional lives separated - aside from the huge summer BBQ and then all rules were tossed out the window. It was pretty ridiculous that the company actually transported a window to the function in the first place -we were prepared to be symbolic. We often completed each other's sentences and when we didn't we often had hours of awkward silence. We experimented with just regular silence, but it just seemed incomplete and comfortable and almost fun which only led to more silence, so we implemented a house rule to make it awkward. We were so in love that we danced to the tune of our own drummer - a very exhaustive process and expensive budget item; we sang at the top of our lungs which just led to horribly sore throats and endless trips to the store for lozenges; and we artistically made clay bowls together, our countless limbs intertwined, our bodies covered with clay from head-to-toe and our faces covered with sweat - these moments felt so right that we got married immediately and decided to sell pottery. The pain of past failed relationships drifted further and further into the past as we made positive new memories together. Not to say that all of the pain was gone, we made sure of that with daily pinching and scratching, just that the frustration of dating was now over -we had each other and we would always be together.

More Questions I Have

Does it get exhausting, after a while, being a question mark? Probably, and I'm sorry "question mark" as much as I'd love to give you a break, I just have so many questions. I tried for a while asking questions without you, but they ended up being boring old statements that no one replied to leading to lots of silence and awkwardness. Then I tried asking no questions and that made me a whole less interesting and unable to find the washroom in public places. Face it, "question mark", this is your world and we are just living in it.

Is it wrong of me to get so much pleasure out of peeling the skin off of grapes with my two front teeth? And if it is, I don't want to be right.

Why does wearing glasses make you appear smarter but wearing 5 pairs all at the same time one on top of the other, make you look crazy? It's not my fault I gave in to the incredible sale the glasses store was having where if I bought four pairs I got the fifth one for free. A pretty weird and totally impractical promo now that I think about it  -I mean who, aside from the incredibly forgetful, ever need 5 pairs of glasses, and yet somehow it worked on me. I guess I'm their target audience and to think I just thought I was a target.

I have been asked all my life if I'd rather be the tortoise or the hare and I've always wondered why I am constantly surrounding myself with people who ask that question - is it random or maybe I seem like the sort of person who needs to be asked that question in order to find my purpose in life or just to be preoccupied so others can enjoy some quiet time or people can tell that I have such a magnificent brain and will give a timeless, articulate answer to this age-old question. Well, after much thought, and understanding that slow and steady wins the race and not being too over-confident like that hare and all of that crap, if I had to choose and was able to choose, I'd opt to be a rare tortoise-hare hybrid; the result of a number of generations of cross-breeding initiated by an overly amorous tortoise and an adventurous and partially blind hare. It would be the best of both worlds and bully to you if you call my answer evading the question. 

If a newborn baby smells so fresh and clean and everyone enjoys it, is there a reason they've banned me from the hospital for lurking around the pediatric area sniffing like a dog?

What is more important - to look good, to smell good, to hear well or failing those, to at least be comfortable for others to sit on and/or tasty in case others get hungry and desperate?

If I had to choose between being really, abundantly, disgustingly, brush-defying, is-he-an-animal-or-just-a-wild-man-who-accidentally-left-the-jungle hairy or having zero hair, sort of like scorched earth after a fire where someone who was quite OCD carefully removed all of the dead grass, cue ball-esque, a freaky cross between an alien species who have evolved beyond the need for hair and an alien species who really understand the intricacies of closely shaving hair, which would I choose? On the one hand if I had tons of hair, I could save a lot of money on clothes, invent a number of new braiding techniques that could gain me notoriety in hip hop circles, and always have a good buffer of personal space, but on the other hand, I would be super sweaty most of the time, windy days would always leave me at risk of getting arrested for exposing myself, there would almost definitely be a minimum of one hair in all of my meals and the sheer amount of shampoo and conditioner required would probably lead me to have to take a second job. And who would hire me? If I was completely hairless I'd enjoy covering myself in wax and just sliding everywhere, increasing my chances of getting the part of the misunderstood weirdo in locally-filmed TV shows, and experiencing life as aerodynamically and as drag-free as possible. However, I'm not sure if anyone I know is ready for someone to have zero eye lashes, eye brows and only the occasional nose or ear hair; being referred to, even with a complimentary tone as "The Mannequin" would grow old fairly quickly and I'd miss running my fingers through my hair in moments of boredom or exhaustion. I guess, after considering the options, I'd like to ask to continue having some hair with the option of either increasing or decreasing the amount incrementally depending on the season.

Why does it seem like every time I genuinely say that I'm sorry there is no one around? And why does it seem like every time I'm a total jerk I'm standing in front of a massive audience dressed like a penguin?

Why do we think so highly of those that volunteer to go first? Isn't it possible that they should think things through a bit more carefully especially when the noises behind that door sound like those of a crazed and ravenous beast.

What happens if I am not only part of the problem but also part of the solution? I know, I am confused as you are! I specifically requested to be a "solution-only" sort of person and I did tip big. But instead, I am stuck both creating the problem and giving lots of helpful hints towards solving it. I enter the room and unsolvable questions and dilemmas appear almost out of the woodwork and as I exit, the codes are beginning to be cracked and what was once though of as overly complex and complicated seem a lot easier. In an ideal world, I would choose to be able to first be all problem all the time, just creating these situations that added stress and strife to everyone and then nip out of the room almost a la Clark Kent and then whisk back in just at the moment where everyone has given up all hope and have headaches, like a beam of sunlight breaking through the seemingly impenetrable clouds with solutions aplenty and have praised showered down upon me. But, alas, I am stuck in this middle ground of just not amounting to very much at all.

Which of you took my beloved purple fluffy ear muffs? I mean, who took one of my pairs of said ear muffs? A man's gotta have backup if you know what I'm sayin'. Do you know what I'm sayin' or is it just me...I have a sneaking suspicion that it is just me.

Why is it cruel to take candy from a baby? I was going to give her something in return! Aren't I allowed to teach my baby advanced bartering skills to prepare them for the harsh realities of the world? Plus, what kind of father am I if I allow my baby to have candy in the first place? A father who does not care about dental hygiene that's who and I refuse to be that kind of dad. So excuse me if I make my baby cry all-the-while placing their lack of future tooth decay on the top of my list of priorities. Great candy by the way.

Does anyone want to join me lying on the couch watching movies, ordering take out, eating chips and relaxing instead of going to work? I tried that last week and now I have time to do it every day!

Disclaimer: I love cheese. And I live in a society where my cheese-loving is both applauded and seen as normal behaviour, aside from those who are either lactose intolerant or just intolerant as it wouldn't matter at all what I did in those people's eyes. Anyways, it got me thinking what if I was a cow who loved cheese? I can only imagine how difficult that would be for me, the cow, who enjoyed eating a product made from my milk, although it would be hard to ensure it was actually my own milk - there are just so many cows. I think you humans would probably see it as an oddity that may draw a scattering of tourists from time to time to my barn on the farm, but it wouldn't be front-page news or even retweet-worthy. Now, among the cow community, I could see it being a bigger deal and I would probably have to consume the cheese when no other cow was watching as eating the cheese would be seen as silent approval of the whole cheese industry which some cows may not be big fans of. I'm not sure what they would want to have happen to all of that milk - don't get me wrong, we love being milked - it feels awesome, let me tell you, but to see the humans benefitting both financially and enjoying the fruits, or cheeses as it may be, of our labour is really hard to handle. So, I'd be living with other cows who would be fairly unhappy about the stealing of the milk and the money - the turning milk into cheese isn't the big crime, I mean once the milk has been taken, do what you want - knock yourself out. And then you have me, the cow who loved cheese, set against this backdrop of unhappiness. I'm sure my cheese eating would be seen, first and foremost, as disgusting - I mean can you humans imagine doing the equivalent from your own milk? I know, right? And second, if it is so good, and the cows can get over the potentially disgusting nature of it, then I may be looked down upon for not sharing. As you can see, life would be full of challenges if I were a cow who loved cheese. Good thing I'm not...yet.

I have always been told don't run into a burning building, so then why did I get chastised for standing outside playing games on my phone while the building was burning?

What is going down and what is up and, more importantly, where are these things happening and do they allow people like me to come in and participate in all that is going down and up and if so, can I either get directions or a ride or borrow some cab fare? I can't wait to be part of what is happening - I am usually the last to find out and, by the time I do, it is old news.

If I had to steal to feed my family knowing that I may be at real risk of being caught and that if caught I would immediately fold and cop to everything and when on trial I would whimper like a baby pleading for mercy and embarrass not only myself but my immediate and extended families and then once in prison I would be seen as the weakest, nerdiest and potential-snitchiest of all and everyone would leave me alone which would be both good for safety reasons but bad as I'd be missing human interaction and have no one who could help me get stuff and then once I was released for good behaviour my once-starving family would have moved on almost immediately upon my sentencing and found a new provider who had access to the finest breads, cheeses and meats and I'd have to settle on washing dishes or taking out the trash or cleaning the latrines and after years of doing this and being hardened by I would probably have lost all sense of humour and faith in human kind and society and I would stow away on a ship and travel the world in search of some meaning only to settle down as a human lab rat finally realizing that stealing is wrong. Would it be worth taking the chance stealing some food for my family or would I have just been better off taking the job that runs counter to everything I believe in that my father-in-law offered me at his bank where I would only rise up through the ranks slowly and steadily from a job in the mailroom up until I was a president who was so preoccupied with my own wealth and status that I never paid attention to my son to even notice that he had fallen in love, got married and had two children of his own only to realise that I had been a neglectful dad just in the midst of time when it appeared that their family was crossing over to the wrong side of the poverty line and he may have to consider stealing to help his family survive and I would offer him a job at the bank like the magnanimous man that I used to be before I took that spirit-sapping job at the bank? It is true what they say - it is important to think of all of the consequences. Only thing, is now I am having a hard time thinking of anything but consequences.

Why is it that every morning when I wake up I have sneaking suspicion that someone has rearranged the books on my bookshelf? It could have to do with this series of detailed, suspenseful, half nightmare/half welcome-relief-from-reality dreams I am having these days involving a species of highly-intelligent, sentient books who travel many light years across the galaxy to Earth and initially befriend the humans and just have a really great time, or as good a time as my limited imagination can summon up for talking, walking, razor-smart books and an average group of humans. My favourite part is a particularly poignant walk in the park with a young, at-risk teenage human and an old, wise book. Everything is going well, until one day while rushing to a restaurant for a brunch engagement, the books happen upon a bookstore and see their brethren sitting nae trapped on these wooden boards almost as if on public display for all to see the titles of these shamed books that can no longer roam free and assemble as they please for purposes of socialization or overthrowing the government. "But, they never could roam free, assemble and socialize" the average humans in the dream say to the alien book species before the war to end all wars begins. The dream goes on and on with hyper-real gore and violence only to end with the humans setting a huge fire and burning all of the books. After the fire is doused, and the book spaceship is investigated, it is realized that they were here to help us avoid our catastrophic, impending doom and it was only our lack of foresight to see beyond our antiquated view of books and shelves that led to their and our demise. The dream always ends with one kneeling human holding a bit of the binding of one of the burned books and weeping uncontrollably. I guess I am lucky that the only symptom of these recurring dreams is the feeling that my bookshelf has been played with.

I have been told that you are only as old as you feel, but what happens if I am completely out of touch with how old I feel? I have no idea how old I feel despite all of those long afternoons touching my arms and the part of my back I can reach, and consequently, have no idea how old I am.

Can seeing the glass as half-full as well as half-empty at the same time be a problem? I also went through a time in my life where I saw the glass as either totally full and totally empty -I'm not sure if my current state is progress or not. Also, in my youth, I had a hard time seeing glasses at all which alternated with days where I saw thousands upon thousands of glasses everywhere. My goal in life is for the people of the Earth to always have plenty of glasses and for them to not have to concern themselves with whether it is half-full, half-empty or mostly full or in the progress of being emptied.