Mentally Flossing My Own Teeth

I was pulling out my daughter's tooth, dreaming of the Karaoke competition next week, mentally flossing my own teeth.

You constructed a human-sized hamster wheel and spend weeks running in it. There is no way the hamster should have all of the fun.

I am running after the bus, sweating profusely, speaking in tongues (note to self - trying using fewer tongues).

You are walking on a sandy beach, looking for crab shells. Your grand plan is to make a life-sized crab-styled mosaic art piece of a girl jumping on a trampoline.  

I count my toes, then recount them and finally count them a third time. After a nutritional snack, I repeat. Later in the day, I am clearly bored by this activity, so I start counting my fingers.

You are climbing a tree. Each new branch you step on feels like a new height achieved, a new step, a higher bar. You feel such a sense of accomplishment and  strikingly pretty.

The grass seems to move rhythmically in the wind, almost like the dried grass skirt of a hula dancer. The leaves blow to and fro in the air. A thin layer of dust is blown off the basketball court. I sit there taking it all in, playing with my Barbies.

You are so cool.

I imagine that I am a rabbit and that the little girl standing at my door trying to sell me Girl Guide cookies is a ravenous fox. She seems fairly perplexed when I vigorously hop away.

You park your car and race to your house to answer the phone. As you fumble with your keys, you break into a Broadway-style song-and-dance.

I am learning Latin in the bath so when I sink my enemies boats I can gloat properly.

You are in Rome looking at magnificent art work. Next week you plan to go to your mother's house to mock her. Then you will return to Rome looking for a hug.

I sit on my chair laughing and laughing and laughing. Tomorrow I will try to laugh standing up. If that works I will sell my chair.

Water drips from the kitchen tap while you try to sleep. Drip, drip, drip. Finally, after what seems like hours, you turn on the tap in the bathroom full blast drowning out the drip. Ahhhhh, peace at last.

I move in slow motion. When will the madness end, or at least speed up again?

In your dreams you are being tortured by a horrible prison guard who is barking at you for answers. You awake, startled, surrounded by stuffed animals, longing for some lemonade either for drinking or for setting up a lemonade stand as it is quite clear that business would be great.

I am walking down the street in front of my house, eyeing everyone who passes by either empathically or pathetically based on what I think they need at the moment. This fun activity quickly leads to a killer headache. 

After months of planning you break into the library in the middle of the night and set up a huge fort made out of books. Your initial idea was to make a dominos-like display but you are trying to become less predictable over time.

I am trying to lead life more fluorescent-ally. 

You have this great idea to buy bags and bags of marbles and then mail them to me marble each day. I am forced to go buy bags to put them in and I know that was your plan all along. Touché.

I am starting to worry more and more, and I wonder if I should just give up. As a last ditch effort, I drop everything and spend the afternoon on the bench press to work on my pecs because that is what He would have wanted.

You start to act like a king all the time, wearing a crown, acting pompous, using an excessive amount of nutmeg.

I am riding on the back of a motorcycle whipping around tight corners in the Brazilian forest. Where am I going? Who is chasing me? Who is driving the motorcycle? Damn I smell good.

You buy a huge block of ice and melt it with an iron. You immediately realize the error in your ways and attempt to refreeze it. You've never made this mistake before, and you may do it again because it was actually quite fun.

I am sitting in my room doodling. What starts out as mindless, aimless, meandering drawing slowly turns into a succinct and eloquent solution to the problems between whales and seals. A radical solution that the world is just not ready for yet.

You are filled with equal parts remorse, middle-aged ness and nausea. You are nothing if not good at balancing your feelings.  

I decide to start making my own clothes out of sheep's wool. I start with a sweater, then a pair of socks, some pants and finally a hat. I am so proud of my new duds. Life is incredible! New friends, VIP status and a big raise, but inside I know it is so wrong. A few days later I give myself a shear.

You look into my eyes and smile. I look at your smile and we break into a spontaneous waltz.

Nola Kane: A Character Study

Nola sighed. Another utterly exhausting, yet heartwarmingly fun day was coming to an end. The clock read 6:02 pm and she had just, moments ago, waved goodbye to the last kid still somehow teeming with energy and her significantly less energetic mom. Nola sighed, not because she was tired, though she was. Looking outside at the darkness of the late fall evening filled her with a great appreciation for the working electricity inside as well as the vastness of the universe. She smiled a wry smile at her ability to be so deep after a long day.

As she surveyed the now-deserted room that only a short while ago was bordering-on-but-never-quite-reaching chaos, she felt something akin to satisfaction or fulfillment, but it was hard to tell as she was also quite hungry. Nola just loved these little ones who attended her daycare. When she first started years ago, her mother claimed that she had found her calling, while Nola, even though she thoroughly enjoyed her work, wasn't always quite sure.

Back in school, she had been one of those "most likely" types whom teachers fawned over and fellow students both admired and teased, usually behind her back except that one time when she had sensed their presence and turned around really quickly exclaiming "aha!" The world had been her oyster even though she never quite understood what that meant even after she took up oyster fishing and oyster shell collecting as hobbies. To this day the smell of oysters always makes her feels slightly nauseous.

Despite having so many options in her senior year which was almost debilitating, but not quite, unlike that time when she broke her foot which was actually quite debilitating, she surprised everyone by studying early childhood education and eventually opening up her own daycare. She's learned at an early age that it is much easier to surprise people if you purposely surround yourself with easy-to-surprise people.

Others wondered if she was selling herself short and she kept claiming that she wasn't for sale unless we were talking big money as even she had a price. Others also wondered about her choice of cardigans. While running a daycare appeared to be a perfect match for this fun-loving, yet sensitive, young woman in her mid-20s, in the back of her head she always felt like she should have rolled the dice and pursued her true love, and no, that wasn't referring to her love of games of chance involving dice or the stunning Gill Brooks who lived across the street, though those too.

From her early 20s she'd concealed her true love because she couldn't face the music or the laughter or even the sink without calling a plumber first. Privately she'd always wanted to solve crime or crimes, if one wasn't enough to satisfy the itch. Satisfying itches was one of those things that helped her unwind as well as cutting back on winding herself up which had a very limited upside anyways. She had spent her years in college fantasizing about becoming a childcare provider by day and the catcher of bad people at night and then the president-elect of a fantasy world made up of elves who was slowly bringing down the government from the inside while she slept. But something held her back and she was never quite sure what.

Nola shook her head from side to side, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until she grew tired of it and neck grew sore. She was disinfecting the toys that the kids had slobbered on and shared and then slobbered on some more and just wondering if she was truly as happy as she felt when a certain, key part of her, the desire to solve crimes, lay dormant and unused. Maybe she was too sensitive or maybe she was too fun-loving or maybe it was the precise combination of the two that had her trapped in this world of solely watching and washing children for a living.

Or, maybe, just maybe, her struggles were due to her fear of heights; her debilitating fear of heights. A fear that would be a source of pride, if fears ever could be, which they couldn't. She stopped in her tracks at the front door as she was about to lock up and head home and she looked up at the tall building across the street and shuddered involuntarily. Tops of buildings had always had that effect on her.

In an instant she was taken back to her childhood as she stood there in the doorway of her dimly lit daycare she had build brick by brick from the ground floor all those years ago. True, someone else had actually formed the bricks into a building, and true, there was only a ground floor, and true, she had just turned some of the lights off which explained why things seemed dimly lit, and why she was visiting her childhood as she stood there was a mystery to her. Another mystery. So many mysteries. They surrounded her and kept her up at night; well those, and her addiction to caffeine. All she wanted was to throw off the shackles of her fear of heights and solve them all. She also wanted to buy some ice cream.

She turned back to look at the daycare, knowing that in a few short hours, she'd be back here on Burdett Avenue in the morning. The little ones would arrive once again, and she'd play with them with a joy that naturally emanated from her as she was just such a fun-loving woman. And yet, there was so much more to her that she kept concealed, as if locked away in a small safe hidden underneath her pile of big wool sweaters in her closet. She started to cry and wasn't sure why. If only she wasn't so sensitive. Nola sighed. Time to go home.

Chapter 1 (of the Novel I Will Never Finish): A Day in my Life

I have no idea what is going on.

Actually, I do know a few things. I am afraid of ducks and, only slightly less so, swans. I'm wearing brand new socks. I'm sporting newly straightened hair. And I'm on a bus right now.

Not much else.

While I probably should be concerned about this, I'm not. I don't know where I'm coming from or where I'm going to. But, I am enjoying the whole bus experience - trying to live in the present like that quack doctor advised me to (living in the past was getting way too expensive anyways). I am probably coming from home, but I really can't be sure. I could have gone shopping or maybe I have a job....do I have a job? Do I shop? Should I have or do either? Maybe I live on this bus? No, I probably do not live on this bus, as if I did, I would almost definitely smell worse and I smell really spectacular. I don't even want to spend one more minute contemplating the living-on-the-bus reality, although maybe in that reality I'd be taller. I have this feeling I'm on my way from something - like maybe I am running away from my fears or troubles - I've done that before and I'll do it again. Or maybe I am late on my way somewhere...or if I was late, wouldn't I take a cab?

Looking around it dawns on me that I'm currently sitting on a bus surrounded by a motley crew of weirdos. What else is new? I feel like I've been on this very bus a thousand times. Everywhere I go weird people find me. It is like my doctor implanted a homing beacon calling out to all weirdos when all I asked for was a informational pamphlet on nose bleeds. I wonder how I look to them? Do I appear weird? Are they moaning inside about having to share a bus with me? Or possibly I am the best thing that has ever happened to them as far as fellow, anonymous bus passengers go. I contemplate looking around and smiling and waving at them all, but I decide to dive back into my book. I'm currently reading the classic novel, Little Women - a moving book about...NORMAL-SIZED WOMEN!?!?!? what a misleading and ultimately disappointing title. I was highly anticipating a thrilling story about a group of crime-fighting tiny females who save humanity from extra-terrestrial gargoyle-type creatures who want to harvest our brains for sport. This book was sort of like that except more emotional moments and coming of age aspects. Today's bus riders do not disappoint - they are weird.

On my left is a guy who looks like a combination of someone who was just released from a prison for the criminally insane and someone who just finished shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond. He is either speaking to an imaginary friend trapped in the window sill or speaking to himself - I'm not sure which is better for him or for me. I try to imagine what he did to get committed and how he was able to convince them he was okay. I entertain this thought for a moment until remembering that his mental health or lack there of, is completely my invention and he could be teaching sanity lessons at the local community college. I could learn a thing or two from this living-on-the-edge sort of guy. I am spellbound by the limitless dimensions of his hair which seems to be living proof of the existence of the 24th dimension. It juts off in every direction and would be cool if he was in a boy band or just finished removing his helmet after skating on a half-pipe. My senses are confused. He looks as if he should smell horribly, but instead, I am overwhelmed with the aroma of lilacs. Lucky for him, I have a thing for lilacs. Also, lucky for him, I am not hungry for lilacs - I learned my lesson years ago in our neighbour's backyard.

I turn to my right and there is a woman who just can't stop smiling and doing everything in her power to stifle a laugh while flipping through the magazine she is reading. I'm sorry, there is no way that Cosmo is that funny - regardless of how many overly ridiculously inaccurate lists they have on how to please your man or ways to dress for summer. I mean do they actually survey real flesh-and-blood men? And are there really 99 ways to be pleased? I'm pretty sure I only have 11 and at least three of those is "feed me chocolate". Or possibly she is finding some of the airbrushed pictures particularly humourous? I like the ones where the female models appear to have naturally glossy skin that would be particularly useful if preparing for a slip n' slide. I have heard of some studies that smiling and laughing is infectious. In this case, it is having the opposite effect as I want to scream or cringe or itch something. She is smiling so widely that it is almost as if she has just been to a physiotherapist who instructed her to stretch her facial muscles daily. But, who am I to critique someone else's emotional state? I should aspire to be more like her! Why be all gloomy? Maybe I should read more Cosmo? It couldn't hurt, unless someone like me decided to rip it from my hands and hurt me with it.

In front me there is a young couple with a baby who looks about 6 days old. Why are they taking such a young child on a bus, I'm not sure? Stay at home, enjoy the peace and quiet, change a diaper or two, maybe go for a walk - don't subject the rest of us to a never-ending stream of high-pitched crying and wailing. Impressive lungs though, I have to admit, and the shade of red that her face is turning is making me hungry for my friend Emilio's tomato sauce. Coincidentally, he also screams like that while making his sauce, but usually due to the scalding (once because I "accidentally" stabbed him with a knife to proof a point...or was it to win a bet?) The couple, despite the crying child, is so much in love that I come close to suggesting they get a room, but I'm guessing, based on the baby, they already have...a few times. The baby abruptly stops crying and seems to fixate on my nose, which I have been told on multiple occasions, is quite nipple-like. My reactions to being told this range from anger to concern to curious and then back to anger again. But, it is so hard to be angry with a 6 day old cute baby even though I can tell, by it's look, that it is suggesting some sort of major reconstructive surgery for my nose. Or it is just hungry. I reconsider it's age. It is definitely not a day over eight days old, I think confidently. After a minute, I have some doubt - he may be 9 or 10 days old. Possibly he just looks young for his age.

And behind me are a couple of teenagers whining and complaining about how horrible their lives are. They are taking turns describing the depths of their sorrow and pain and suffering and it actually works out perfectly as it gives me an unforeseen opportunity to mentally rehearse my infinitely sad violin concerto that I've been composing for moments exactly like this. According to them, no one understands these teens (or buys them anything), but I think I do and I'm tempted to stand up and verbally shake some sense into them or orally smack them silly or just buy them a non-fat ice cream cone possibly filled with low-fat ice cream - I just need them to be quiet as they are reminding me too vividly of my own teenage angst which bled into my early twenties angst which led to my late twenties angst which naturally led to that job at the post office. Surprisingly delivering and sorting mail was the cure for my angst and I briefly debate suggesting this to these forlorn teens only to reconsider when they are hit by a fit of the giggles that surprisingly causes me more concern than the angst. Uncontrollable giggles should make me smile, but instead it makes me yawn as I am really really tired, plus the exact pitch of their high-pitched giggles makes me yearn for dog treats for some reason beyond my comprehension. Fortunately, I am carrying an unopened bag of dog treats. I divert my attention elsewhere before they start to notice my calculated stares and either contemplate reporting me or, even worse, start talking to me. The last thing I need is to be tricked into giggling right now. Not on this bus.

I still wasn't totally sure what I was doing on the bus. I was tired and wondered if I could use that to my advantage somehow or at least not have it be the reason for being taken advantage of for a change. Why was I so tired? Why did I feel like I hadn't slept at all in a long time? As I pondered those questions, I itched my nose, scratched my head and stretched and then did the same three things in opposite order for symmetry sake. Then I had to fight the urge to try them all at the same time, which I am pretty sure would have not only worked but may have inspired others to try as well. And then we could have broke out into a well-choreographed song and dance number. But, I quickly decided against it as I am sure I wouldn't have been cast as the lead and I'm tired. Also, I recently made the mistake of being asymmetrical and I am working on that. How long have I been riding this bus? How long will I stay on? At some point, I thought, I should rise with confidence and get off the bus, just so no one else clues into my lack of awareness and direction. I could write a book about my lack of awareness and direction, let me tell you. If I wrote a book every time I thought about writing a book, I'd have written a couple of books by now. Maybe I should do it now? Or just get off the bus already? As I alternatively psyche myself up into making the move and fighting the temptation, I notice the ads on the bus above the windows.

Usually I sit on the bus and am oblivious to these ads, and sometimes I rant and rave in message boards online about bus ads and how they are contributing towards the moral decaying of society. For fun, I often select a random message board -those ladies on that quilting forum must have been taken by surprise. But today I focus in on these ads and maybe it's my mood, but they really get me thinking and questioning myself and how I am living my life. Do I want a new cell phone? Especially one that comes with a plan, and not just any plan, an amazing plan that doesn't outwardly state, but seems to implicitly imply, that it will significantly improve my life, especially in my ability to text more frequently and get more data. I knew something was missing in my life - was it more texting? Perhaps, but I was leaning towards just needing more fiber. Too bad texting isn't also good for digestive health. And what could I do with all of that data! The possibilities are endless and I honestly don't know what any of them are. Will I need a bigger house! Can I still hang out at the coffee shop drinking tea? Should I say goodbye to my old friends who are definitely not big data users? Should I buy a parrot? (actually I have always wanted a parrot and just thought this would be a great time to ask) Previously, I was fairly sure I didn't want or need a new phone, but this highly glossy sign on the bus with its neon colours and large size 120 font letters is fairly convincing. I feel oddly drawn to the sign and decide after some thought, that maybe it is the actual sign that I want and not the phone. I wonder where I can buy a copy of this gloriously aggressive sign.

Then I notice another ad trying to convince the observer to attend the local community college. The two students (or actors posing as students as they look a little too "student-ish" in my mind to be actual students) are seen sitting in the library "studying" and have the two biggest, happiest smiles that are humanly possible. Now, I haven't studied at that college or sat in their library myself, but there is no way they are having that much fun at that library studying. What did the director of that shot want to convey? That students studying at that college are over-the-moon happy all the time especially when studying at the library? And that, if I was to go there, it would lift me out of my sad-sack life and give me a new found optimism and a sense of humour? And what are they studying? History? Not too many laugh-out-loud moments there. Medicine? Possibly they are overjoyed with all of the money they will make one day. Or maybe she just told him a funny joke, maybe something a bit risque or overly high-brow. Maybe, just maybe, they tried a photo of them displaying other emotions like fear ("so, school is scary like I thought" people may say before running away and joining the armed forces), anxious ("if these students, the leaders of tomorrow, are that worried and stressed, I shouldn't be relaxing on my sofa right now" people may say before looking into the logistics of cryogenic freezing), glum ("nothing annoys me more and makes me more angry than young, attractive people in ads looking sad" people may say before storming the campus with flaming torches, yelling angry slogans, attempting to rid the city of the institutions of higher learning that cloud us from the truth starting first with the libraries) or staring straight at the camera with an ultra-serious look ("are you looking at me? Oh, it's on!" people would say before making idle threats that they were in no position to issue, especially when you consider that they were speaking to a two-dimensional advertisement that was in no position to defend itself). Regardless, I am too busy and still scarred from my previous school experience - nobody warned me that universities didn't have playgrounds. But, I will store this info away, if I am in the neighbourhood and want a little emotional pick-me-up, I know where to go.

The rest of the ads are all public service announcements reminding me not to litter, vandalize, ride without paying or smoke. "Thanks mom", I mutter to myself, all of a sudden,.missing my mother even though, ironically she was a habitual litterer, a constant threat to vandalize, addicted to free rides and, although she was highly sensitive to smoke, she smoked like a chimney - taking huge massive inhalations followed by an endless stream of ash and soot. People would always tell her she was doing it wrong and that she shouldn't get so dirty from smoking, and she mostly ignored them and continued on her life work, a musical based on the unabridged dictionary. She didn't seem to enjoy smoking or any of its perks - like the incessant coughing, the perpetually raspy voice and having a built-in excuse to take multiple long breaks at work. I always felt that her smoking was merely a result of her confusingly strong attachment to both cylinders and fire. I spent a lot of time at grandma and grandpa's farm growing up and if I heard the story about how mom vigorously hated squares and rhombuses once, I heard it a thousand times. She was raised to love only three-dimensional shapes and had such a hard time deciding between a sphere ("kind of a like a ball, in many ways...actually, how are they different?", she always remarked about spheres, especially when I was playing with a bouncy ball, which oddly was slightly oblong-shaped due to her leaving cartons of cigarettes pressed on top of it much of the time), a cylinder ("nothing like a long, slim, filtered cylinder to start the day off with" she would say at breakfast) and the lesser-known dodecahedron ("so many angles, so many sides, I could just sit here and get lost in your sides" she whispered to her purple 20-sided Dungeons and Dragons' die the morning that father left with his girlfriend. Father drew the line at 10-sided shapes - who could blame him?). And fire? Mom was so caveman-like in her love for fire. She once spanked me for acting slightly nonchalant about fires and demanded a near-round-the-clock fire-appreciation mindset. That was so tough to keep up, but I tried. I tried for mom. Good old chain-smoking, cylindrical-focused, fire-fiendish mom. She was my mom, and we were always pretty concerned about her.

Abruptly, I stand making an unnecessarily big production out of it drawing the attention of a number of other passengers. Their focus on me is fleeting. Once they see that I am not going to break into song, ask for money or attack them (you always have to be on guard for those solo-belting, currency-focussed, knife-wielding maniacs on our city's buses) they go back to what they are doing (probably plotting their own plans to either sing, ask for money or attack the others). Why did I stand? Am I leaving this rectangular, metal "home" that seems to be rocketing towards some unknown destination that was not of my choosing? I want to leave, but the doors seem really far away. After a moment standing there, I realize that the far away doors are actually quite far away, but they aren't the doors on this bus, instead they are the doors to an apartment building across the street - I have always been confusing doors in my life - an odd, and ultimately quite debilitating problem. I pause, standing there, contemplating my next move. Do I sit again? No! That would be announcing my submission, my defeat, my clear need to add more squats to my currently non-existent workout routine. Do I commence a yoga-like stretching routine? I mean I do need to stretch right now and I recall the advice from my counsellor - "live in the present". I was never quite sure what she meant and I should have asked if I was giving off the impression that I was living in the past due to my wearing an outfit from another time complete with a hat with adorned with a beautiful feather. I want to stretch very badly - check that - I yearn to stretch, but I don't. Maybe stretching is exactly what "they" want me to do. (my counsellor also wants me to stop worrying about these other people I always refer to as "they", for many reasons - "they" may have really peculiar tastes, "they" may not have my best interests at heart, "they" may not actually care nor exist - I have an inkling that she is trying to push me towards realizing the latter, but I am just not ready to take that step in my therapy, mostly because I like my therapist and am trying to see her more often. Not to ask her out, but to slowly try to reverse our roles so that one day, seamlessly, I can become her therapist and she, my patient, and then I will push her towards asking me out. I haven't decided if I will say yes). I decide to leave. Yes! I want to leave and leave I will. Then I wonder how I should approach the rear doors - confidently? (could be a good call - it would give the illusion that I know where I am going not just now, but in life) - non-confidently? (would be hard to display this and have it appear different from hesitatingly and I just don't feel like appearing hesitatingly any more today) Since I am unsure how to proceed, but am certain I need to leave immediately, I get up and race towards the doors and trip on the top step which catapults me into the air end-over-end. I'm not sure how this happened, but I ended up completing two complete flips and sticking my landing causing the entire bus and all of the pedestrian on the street to break out into a standing ovation. While I enjoyed their applause, I quickly started to worry about next time as it would be really hard to match or surpass that.

I walk a few blocks receiving tons of high fives and slaps on the back along the way. Finally I find some peace and quiet and sit on a park bench next to a busy tennis court where a dad is trying to teach his young girls to play tennis. In the part of the lesson I am watching they are learning how to make bone-rattling grunts and how to incorporate gymnastic-style tumbling maneuvers into their tennis game. I feel that this dad is either a crackpot or on to something, but I can't decide so to take mind off the tennis I take out a small handheld mirror I always carry with me in my bag and look at myself (an overly macho friend once commented that this mirror is so small, it is really a compact and that maybe I "needed a purse" to carry it in, so I went out the next day and bought a purse and he hasn't talked to me since). I love looking at my reflection in the mirror and could do so for hours almost as if attempting to memorize the size and placement of each freckle (and possibly naming them much as stars have been named by astronomers - the big one near by right shoulder I always wanted to call "Cancer", but was talked out of it by my overly cautious dermatologist who thought that the name was tempting fate a little too much, so I settled on "Benign Tumor", which he liked slightly more). I tried to limit my self mirror watching to my home as doing so publicly is generally frowned upon for reasons I've never been sure about. Is it because it is "nicer" to look at others? Or possibly I'm supposed to share my mirror with all of the sad sacks around me who either don't own their own mirrors or are just very forgetful? Or maybe my looking into the mirror makes it seem that I "love" myself and that I should be more "normal" and less "strange". "Thanks Ms. Pinter" I always say whenever I think those thoughts in my head, which is strange because the actual Ms. Pinter was my grade 5 teacher who taught every lesson looking into a large mirror instead of directly facing us students, which meant that we learned from the reflection of Ms. Pinter who I had a massive crush on (I was often a bit confused if I preferred her right side to her left side and which side that actually was seeing as it was her reflection). Oddly, my school-boy crush didn't extend to the actual Ms. Pinter. Her reflection helped me so much that year - I have been looking for a motivating, attractive reflection to fill that void ever since.

I also love playing facial games in the mirror. My favourite, by far, was exercising my eyebrows, an exhausting, hilarious way to waste away the afternoon which had the upside of utilizing my Grouch Marx-sized eyebrows that I super-glued to my face and making my forehead quite a bit more muscular and strong which could come in handy one day. I prided myself upon being ready for just about any situation and having a stronger than average face seemed to be a good idea - I mean it couldn't hurt unless a situation called for a weak face. I'd like to have a face that can not only withstand all types of weather and being tar and feathered (I know this doesn't come up much and may not even be used any more) but can also be that face that can adorn posters and pamphlets and help the masses see that there is so much to live for and that there is good in the world and maybe, just maybe, my face could inspire and motivate people to exercise their faces as well (could be some money in this for me).

The park I was in was very serene and I was taking huge, deep breaths of the fresh air which caused the person sitting three benches away to get up and leave - it wasn't as if I was trying to use all of the air or anything! Weirdo! My goal this week is attempting to be kinder to people. I have a weekly goal and spend Sunday evenings either with a huge celebration or a few hours of constant berating and humiliation based on how I have done in regards to the previous week's goal. In anticipation of the celebration I bake an elaborate cake adorned with motivational slogans. In the event I succeed with accomplishing my weekly goal, I sit down to a huge plate of congratulatory cake and if I am not able to succeed, I end up crying profusely, all the while mashing the cake with my fists. Since success feels so much better than failure, you would think I'd steer away from hard to achieve goals and settle on super simple ones, but I don't. I learned that the hard way. It was only Wednesday, and I hadn't done a great job so far, so I decided then and there to stand on the street corner smiling, waving and saying whatever kind thing first popped into my head about the stranger (in some cases this was hard as the first five to ten random thoughts were definitely NOT kind and had to be discarded or saved in case a future goal involved being unkind to people). Being kind to strangers feels good inside and after a few hours of this I was both exhausted (that was a lot of smiling) and much happier. "I am a good person" I thought and wished my ex-girlfriend who always claimed that I was "such a loser" could be here right now, so I could stick this in her face for old times-sake.

The whole goal setting thing came about mostly out of boredom and wanting to avenge the tragic death of my pet mouse (at first he seemed to be enjoying the boat ride in the toilet) and the death of my second pet mouse who sat too close to the fireplace (actually, I sort of "threw" him in when he wouldn't share his cheese tray that was WAY too much cheese for him to eat by himself anyways. I did feel horrible about it, but also kind of justified as sharing was explicitly stated as the number one rule in the house when he first came home from the pet store) and the demise of pet mouse number three who "somehow" ended up in my famous chicken noodle soup when my parents came to visit (the story goes like this - I promised my parents that I would make the soup that they loved and then realized I didn't quite have enough chicken and was just too lazy to go tot the store to buy some more. Look, I'm not happy about it either and if there is such a thing as mouse-hell, I know I'm heading there someday). I also thought that the setting of goals "sounded good" in nearly any social setting and if nothing else may help me find a few more people to help me in times of need (not sure how those two dots are connected, but next time I am trapped at the bottom of the well - don't ask, it's happened a number of times - maybe one of those people exposed to my goal setting may happen to wander by and either take pity or randomly decide to help - you just never know).

I walk all the way home mostly to avoid a repeat of the morning's experience on the bus. I alternate between walking very slowly and speed walking depending on what song is playing. Then the music shifts abruptly to classical and I start to "dance" my way home like I am at a grand ball. One particularly long song with a very slow, meandering opening that is building towards the "meat" of the song comes on and I decide to sit cross-legged on the sidewalk until the tempo picks up. A guy across the street sees me and comes over and sits next to me. I'm not sure why - maybe he is listening to the same song? Or perhaps he thinks I'm protesting something and wants to join in for the cause? Has a couple of screws loose? I momentarily close my eyes and upon opening them there is a long line of people sitting on the sidewalk with me and this guy. I want to ask questions and then I notice that they are all very attractive. Like really attractive. So much so that I feel like I am hogging up all of the ugly, again. After a few minutes sitting in silence with all of these beautiful strangers wondering what we should do together (tag? a choreographed dance number? cheerleading?) a huge gust of wind blows by and I find myself alone again. Did that actually happen? Were those people actually here a minute ago and gone the next? Maybe I missed an ice cream truck a block away that they all ran off to? Or possibly they all jumped really high when I looked and they landed and then ran off after I looked away. Maybe they suddenly became two-dimensional? Can that actually happen? Or possibly I'm still on the bus. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten those five long-expired yogurts this morning as I had given in to my odd craving for bacteria. But hey, at least this hallucination didn't try to steal my pants.

I arrive at my house and sit on the steps.

As I breathe in and out, I contemplate the complexities of life.

It is fairly clear - I have no idea what is going on.

How to Ask a Girl Out in High School

So, you are in high school and you think you've found the girl of your dreams. You don't want to mess things up you say? Well, you've come to the right place as I've been where you are so many times in my past and said and done the wrong things enough to be considered a Rhodes Scholar on the subject. Do you want to get the girl? Follow this advice.

Approach with confidence. Nothing says "don't date me" louder than a total lack of spine. Check those feelings of self-doubt, no matter how strong, at the door. If confidence is generally a challenge for you, consider an accessory like a hard-to-place accent or freshly baked cookies.

Timing is everything! Attempt to catch her at a moment of weakness. Tears are your friend and your queue to enter. If you are lucky she will have just been asked out by a real loser making you seem relatively cooler in comparison.

It is important that she is alone when you approach so you can have her undivided attention in case you decide to perform some magic tricks. Don't perform magic tricks.

In all likelihood she will be surrounded by her girlfriends, who are like a pack of wild dogs. If they believe their friend is under attack, and they will, they will rip your face off. Bring raw steaks.

Don't forget about hygiene! Any extra washing or positive aromas or sparkling teeth are a plus. Now is not the time to show off your acne or your recent ability to grow a handlebar moustache.

I can't say enough about being prepared. Stretch, warmup your vocal chords, liberally apply moisturizers and memorize all of her posts on social media in the past 12 months.

Open with a compliment about her appearance. Don't be too descriptive or graphic or overly verbose. You may be the next Shakespeare or star soft porn director, but now is not the time to show off. Keep it simple and appropriate as if your grandmother happened to be around. Don't bring your grandmother.

Make small talk. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that you are down-to-Earth and normal. Ask her about something general and non-personal like school, music, or taxation.

Don't be too subtle. It is okay to be transparent about how you feel in your comments. If you are aiming for actual transparency, consider opening your science textbook on a more regular basis. It may not be safe for you to be around other humans.

Tell her you like her and want to go out with her, but not in those words. Strike a balance between perplexingly vague and creepy.

Obvious signs to watch for that she is not interested include, but are not limited to, shrieking, constant warning of imminent bear attacks, vacant looks by her where she looks as if she is dying a slow death and being tasered.

If you have gotten this far, good job! You may now proceed and ask her out on a date. You may never know if she is truly into you or is using you as part of a detailed plan of revenge. Thankfully you don't care.

Present a detailed date proposal analyzing the costs, benefits and risks of plans A through H and then step back in anticipation of a standing ovation followed by a brief question and answer period. 

With plans set, excuse yourself. Walk off slowly and proudly on a grassy field in the gleaming sun towards the horizon like a general returning from war. You are a hero and the things of which statues are made on.

The Writing Process: Part 2

So, I am back to continue to enlighten all of you who are still tuning in (is there more of an echo now then last time or is that just the result of all of my vocal training?) about how I write. Note: if any of you are actually attempting to tune in, please stop as it is greatly disrupting my cable and most likely not at all possible unless you have tons of money and then almost anything is possible. For those who missed the first piece about the writing process, these blog posts are my chance to share where my ideas come from and how much it costs for me to purchase them and bring them here from their native Namibia. I am attempting to flesh out how I do what I do without using any actual flesh in the process. I did try to brainstorm how I would use flesh if I wanted to and just couldn't think of a plan that would be overly messy and attractive to ants. There are times when I want to be attractive to ants, but those are some of my dark moments that I don't want to get into right now. No, right now I am thinking of a family in the hills of Germany...and I'm back. That happens to me from time to time - without any announcement, I am mentally whisked away to another part of the world where I will often stay, get acculturated and even be adopted by a family or clan if all things go well. Sometimes the trip is long and heart-warming and other times the people there just want to eat my warmed heart as a tasty pate with a slice of fresh baguette. This time the trip was short, mostly because the German family was at a bratwurst festival (not for eating, but more for the out-of-body experiences that come from eating one too many sausages) for the weekend and also because I feel the need to write.

I also feel the need to decorate my room with various mirrors and colourful drapes for reasons that I have been told by my lawyers I do not need to go into detail about right now no matter how many times I pretend that I am asked. Yesterday it was 5 times. For the record, I don't have any lawyers or even one single lawyer and I have also been told by them to say that as well. Is me writing about me writing sort of like talking to myself while I eat the food I made and telling myself about what a good job I did and patting myself on the back at the same time? Don't worry - I'm not doing that as it is way too challenging to eat, talk and pat myself all at the same time. I plan to do them one-by-one-by-one and that is how I will spend this Sunday! This piece of writing is not meant to sound too self-congratulatory - self-congratulatory too an extent, just not so much so that I make anyone sick or more sick in case they happened to be reading this while sick in the hopes it would either make them better or just distract them from how badly they feel. Either way - I'm good - I take great pride in distracting people from how bad they feel or just how they feel in general. Spend some time around me and you won't have any idea how you feel at all! Not that is a slogan I can live with! It is a gradual process - you will start feeling a lot and then little by little you will grow emotionally numb, some checkers will be played, the wind will howl, the birds will fly south for the winter and a pie will be consumed. All of this for the low cost of having to hear me moan about things - I'm sorry, I wish I could sing better too.

Contrary to popular opinion, writing is not all fun and games. Fun and games is all fun and games - writing is not fun and games at all and I'm not sure why we are spending so much time trying to explain this as it seems pretty easy to understand. Oh, one more thing - fun and games is not entirely all  fun and games, that is just what the powerful fun and games lobby wants us to believe. Occasionally there are tears. Too many tears and the word fun starts to see wrong and quite insensitive and sort of like why don't the rest of you stop playing and laughing and see what is the matter already? I hope we understand each other and I can't proceed until we do or else I will have a nagging feeling sort of like a mother bird when she leaves her nest full of cute little helpless baby birds who are anxious for her to return (is that true - are little birds actually anxious? do they have the ability to feel such a complex emotion at such a young age? and maybe they are happy to have the nest to themselves for a while before boring old mom comes back who only cares about spitting chewed up food in our mouths even when we have had more than enough?)

I know I just said "we" and lumped you into all this when you may have been just passing through and you are most likely thinking "wait a minute! Like woah - slow down, big fellow. Don't get me all mixed up in all of your issues." To which I reply (a) I am willing to take your minute and raise you an infinite number of minutes - That's right! I can wait as long as this is going to take or as long as you will let me stand here on your porch before calling the authorities (ask for Bob down at the precinct, we are on a first-name basis and I know he loves two creams and a sugar in his coffee), (b) I will not slow down (c) "Big fellow?" - have you taken a close look at me recently? That is wrong on at least two accounts and I know I can find at least four or five more if given the time and some chocolate and (d) issues?!?!? What do you know of my issues? Have you talked to Sarah? Did she say that if you read this you could get mixed up in them? For the record I was just bidding time until my "mom" came back to "the nest", if by "mom" I meant "star ship" and by "the nest" I meant "home base" and when I told her that I wished I was a herring who was about to be caught in the net of a muscular, but kind fisherman and his son, I WAS JOKING! Did she honestly think I thought I was a herring??!?! Okay, that actually could make sense - I do get occasionally slimy and have a large collection of all different kinds of scales.

For those that didn't know, I have been caught in nets on two separate occasions - once was my fault entirely as I decided to drape a series of nets in my bedroom the same week I decided that any form of lighting was completely passe and the other time was at a costume party when my best friend, dressed as a net, bumped into me (dressed coincidentally also as a net, only a much smaller one) and we became entangled and lay in a pile all evening long (we believed in not only dressing as nets but acting as net-like as possible to complete the effect) - it was the closest the two of us ever had been and we swore never to talk about that evening again which I am violating right now and feeling actually not so bad for doing. The part about being caught or rescued by a hunky, should-be-in-underwear-ads, fisherman and his equally-dropdead-gorgeous-yet-overly-fish-smelling sons...yeah...anyways...

Easily the toughest things about writing for me are not what you would think of (not that I am pretending to always know what you think, or to ever be knowing what you or any of your kind think. Quite the opposite in fact, I know nothing that you are thinking about as evidenced by my inability to buy you a present or even  a piece of fruit that you don't instantly return. And when I say your kind, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, unless of course it is my turn to be derogatory - for those that don't know, a few friends and I take turns each Thursday from 9am till noon being derogatory to each other - sort of like a snack-bringing rotation except that it usually makes me angry and upset and there is no sugar involved except on particularly creative Thursdays). I can easily find my way to the computer and I get how to turn it on etc etc etc - I am mildly offended that many of you thought that the whole finding my computer and actually getting to my blog would be the challenging part for me. Not totally offended, just mildly, as I said, sort of akin to going walking in the woods and only stumbling upon chanterelles and no wild morels or having two out of five random passersby thumb their noses at me for no apparent reason aside from my decision to wear gumboots to the opera which only shows both my complete inability to anticipate proper attire for many formal events and to read through the lines in my friends texts that were evidently supposed to be sarcastic (I just figured she was quoting some unknown author or authors repeatedly. I did wonder why these quotes were particularly memorable, but I just kept quiet as the last time I admitted to not knowing the source of some seemingly random quotes I ended up having to make egg salad sandwiches for the whole accounting department aside from Fred who preferred tuna.)

No, the toughest problems with writing for me are finding cool and unique names for characters that I am using in my stories. Not that there aren't an amazing amount of awesome names, but I know a lot of people and if I use a name of someone I know they probably think one of the following thoughts (a) should I be flattered or concerned?, (b) let's take a wait and see approach and if he makes money I'll attempt to sue/bribe/threaten him for lots of money over using my name without asking, (c) isn't it weird that of all the millions of names in the world that he chose mine and does that mean that he thinks we are friends? Well, let me put your mind at rest (only literalily of course) - I am attempting to choose names that have zero connection to anyone who may actually read my writing and if I happen to choose your name then it was merely a coincidental slip-up which you should not read anything into. Or if you are in the mood, I suggest you spend hours and hours reading into it and if you find anything interesting, please let me know. Maybe there is some hidden connection that I am unaware of at this point - like maybe I unknowingly used your name because your grandfather once pulled a thorn out of my grandfather's hand when they were playing around that good ol' thorny bush that they spent many an hour playing around as young kids and my grandfather was ever-so-grateful that he just wouldn't let up with the appreciation which usually took the form of cream cheese and jam sandwiches aside from the occasional parfait when his mom just happened to make two of just in case there was someone, anyone, he wanted to thank for some small, seemingly innocuous thing - I'm sure if this happened, my grandfather would have tucked me into bed and told me this story of how your grandfather was such a hero in his eyes and that his eyes had been conditioned to be blind to heros except when thorns were involved and then they were wide open, just not wide open enough to miss the thorn in the first place and usually by this time in the story I was fast asleep, but his story would blend into my dreams and then years later when I decided to launch into some creative writing the name was somewhere in the recesses of my brain mostly because I elected against having that elective and quite-risky-sounding surgery of having the recesses "smoothed" over mostly for cosmetic reasons.

As an aside, I try to do as much as I can for cosmetic reasons outside of buying any actual cosmetic items as I'm working my way up to that, sort of how I worked my way up to hang gliding after just jumping off my couch for years until I both broke the couch and was ordered by both my doctor and downstairs neighbour to get out of the house more often. Note: I've never actually hang glided - I've just worked my way up to it which is akin to saying that I am standing in a line waiting my turn with my prized pineapple to commision a fruit sculptor (someone who carves humourous celebrity faces into fruit) who is currently on "vacation" which means he is in prison for life for mistakenly and repeatedly attempting to carve an actual celebrities face. The names I choose just come to me. Almost like I am still and they are moving at the speed of light or maybe it is the other way around and the names are stationary in space and I am screaming up to them at speeds I am unaware mostly because it will be a cold day in hell before I recognize relativity.

So, to avoid using names of those I know, I am tempted to swing the other way and only use extremely uncommon names, but then people may start to wonder what is up with these names I am choosing and why they all sound African or Korean. That reminds me - I am planning to write a piece about two ex-lovers who decide to move (one to Africa and one to Korea), change their names to fit in with the people in their respective countries and also as a voluntary and totally unnecessary witness-protection program only in this case it was only to protect themselves from each other as the love just hurt too much (all of their friends suggested clipping their nails on a more regular basis and just practicing compassion and stop being so aggressive all the time). After a few years, when they both have become accustomed to their new surroundings, they unveil their plan - to each open up a hair salon that would specialize in straightening afros and perming bangs. These salons would be doomed to fail, which was part of the plan all along, and they would both fly home to the small town in Texas they were from (to be honest, they were from a slightly larger city in Texas originally but I decided against that as I wanted them to have a more small town feel to them, which for me only involved deleting a few key strokes and doing a little extra typing, but for them it involved packing, moving and renting a storage locker to put their huge collection of antique wig stands in just before they were about to purchase their first wig) and meet on the tarmac at the airport only to remember why they left in the first place. They really don't like each other at all and only forget that from time to time because of the fact that they are actually figments of the imagination of a third person who is always mixing up who is who in his head. All in all it is an incredibly bad and intentionally convoluted idea for a story which means that if I eventually write it, it will mostly be out of spite unless I feel that I have already done too much out of spite at the time and then I will do it out of revenge or the need to exercise my fingers in as socially acceptable a fashion as possible.

Along the way, when either preparing to write or writing, I have learned some important things. One thing that stands out is I've learned how important breathing is and also that it is very very important not to touch the burning log in the fire place and also to say please and thank you. It never ceases to amaze me how others are nicer to you when you treat them well and this mostly speaks to how long I've been able to condition myself to maintaining the feeling of amazement. I can go literally for days in this state of awe where I am totally overjoyed and inspired by everything I come into contact with or directly contact head on and I'm also very fortunate when these days ends and I'm not in traction. The word traction almost sounds a bit exciting because as my imaginary friend Joe always says, you can't spell attraction without traction which always makes me smile wistfully and makes me long for some actual flesh and blood friends or at least ones with one of those two criteria, but preferably both as I'm not totally interested in a friend who is solely or mostly flesh and I'm definitely not too crazy about blood.

Another thing I've learned that is worthwhile sharing with you at this time is the importance of looking at someone when speaking to them. The main reasons seem to be that it greatly lessens the confusion of who I am talking to especially when in a busy place like a train station and because in this day and age if you can't look someone in the eyes in makes the other person feel very self-conscious and wonder "what is so wrong with me that he can't even look me in the eyes or even at my nose, which would like some visual attention too from time to time when the eyes have either had enough or decide to get off their high horse and share once and a while". I don't want to make anyone else more self-conscious than me - it is a competition I've been playing in every day since last year went I met that odd lady on the corner downtown with the large collection of stuffed birds for sale. I liked the black and white one the best, and she seemed to be enamored with my shirt collar which I agree was my best feature that day, but just couldn't take it when she offered as my hands were metaphorically full and it was just too confusing to attempt to explain this to the lady who seemed like she would be quite metaphorically-challenged. I do not want to unnecessarily challenge anyone in life, especially since the infamous Balloon Incident.

The Next Day in My Life

It is a beautiful morning with an incredible sunrise. I am at the beach and I am observing a sunrise which seems odd as I am never at the beach early enough to view the rising of the sun. It isn't totally unusual for me to be at the beach in the morning in and of itself, aside from the fact that I wake here which is a change of pace for me as I usually go out of my way to sleep and wake up in in my own bed or at least in my bedroom as sometimes I playfully roll around and off the bed and enjoy the coziness of the rug. I yawn a few times and look around from my vantage point on the exposed sand and sit up. It takes me a few minutes to get used to my surroundings and my mind is full of millions of thoughts and questions including "Why am I waking up on the beach?", "How did I get here?" and "How concerned should I be about not having any immediate idea at the answers to those fairly basic questions?" After some fairly rushed deliberations I settle on "Not sure", "Unknown" and "Quite" as my three answers and I briefly contemplate looking around for applause from the studio audience and for a monetary prize for getting the questions correct. After a moment of being proud of my creativity at such an early hour of the day, I start to panic slightly, which is evidence that the appointments with the therapist are paying off as I used to jump immediately and quite scarily into full panic mode at the drop of a hat and in numerous other situations that extended well past the accidental falling of headware.

Full panic mode is not all it's cracked up to be except that it often allowed me to don some of my shirts that clashed with every pair of pants I owned and have it somehow fit the occasion. No extreme anxiety at the moment, just slight nervousness and a bit of cold sweating - how and why am I on the beach and why am I not at home wearing my comfy slippers that I purchased for the express purpose of making my feet warm. I had tried to think of a number of other reasons to justify the purchase of the slippers as I believe that I should have a minimum of 5 reasons for buying anything. I determined this years ago when I felt a large amount of buyer's remorse when I spent at least $300 too much on blubber and could only think of art as the sole initial reason for the expenditure with food for my as-yet-unacquired-baby-sea-otter as the second. I remember the day I purchased that I'll-thought-through blubber as I had just spent hours forcing myself to paint only pictures of forests of tree trunks knowing how painful those images were for me to paint. It is true, I hate the idea of old-growth forests being chopped down but I also have a nervous twitch when I paint those sort of pictures which usually ends up with accidentally scratching myself around my face and neck.

I decide to calm down by standing and stretching and giving the appearance of fitting in. I've seen so many movies where someone has lost their memory and they almost always get it all back in a series of awesomely filmed, dramatic flashbacks and I am excited all of a sudden as I can't wait for my flashbacks to begin. I look at the seagull in front of me and can almost imagine him speaking to me and helping guide me through the events, but he just gives me the strong impression that he either doesn't speak English or just can't be bothered to get involved with a strange human at this point in his life as he has way too many of his own issues to deal with including finding a meal for his high-maintenance wife that does not involve worms or insects as she has had enough of those to last a lifetime and trying to think up the best way to advertise his new accounting firm that he started with his two best friends considering that most of his potential clients were not socially media-savvy. "I don't need the bird's help!" I said to myself aloud and quite loudly as well, startling my feathered companion so much that he squawked and flew off which was exactly how I thought our friendship would end when I first laid eyes on him five minutes ago except that I wasn't quite sure which of us would be doing the squawking and fleeing as I am well aware of my avian and scaredy-cat tendencies. As I felt a twinge of guilt at lashing out at my only friend on this foreign beach, it hit me that using the term friend is probably a bit too early in the developing relationship and that we were only mere acquaintances and that is how it often is with birds for at least the first few social activities.

All of a sudden it hit me - I  remember that I awoke shortly after midnight and got dressed and that, at some point, I was in the forest.

I love the forest. The trees that rise so high almost showing off, the bushes that are either more satisfied with a "rounder" appearance than the trees or are doing a fairly good job of not appearing to care, the stumps which act both as a reminder to all trees of what could happen to them if they get a little too full of themselves and as a more appropriately-sized companion for the bushes, and the wildlife which is either cute, wanting to detach my nose from my face, or falling somewhere between those two extremes. I often don't know why I am in the forest, but I have tried to stop focussing on the question "why" so often as the answers are long and convoluted and eating up much valuable eating time. No, I choose to allow my body, mind and feet to select the activities and the site for those activities and if they want me to be in the forest, then in the forest I will be even if there is a game on that evening or it looks like rain.

That reminds me of that amazing 5-hour excursion to the forest I took last summer with my friends Dave and Steve as well as my imaginary friend Beth who seems to accompany me to lots of places especially when her other imaginary friends are busy. It is actually quite confusing that my imaginary friend has other imaginary friends and then me, who is quite real. Can you imagine how I feel as the only real person at the sushi restaurant, that is also imaginary? I've tried broaching the topic with Beth, but she pretends that she can't hear me, which is a typical ploy by imaginary beings - the whole "I can't hear you, because I don't actually have functional ears" thing - it is boringly predictable after a while - it does make sense on some level, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. How I love Beth and when the laws are more permissive, I may ask for her hand in marriage as long as she doesn't claim that her hands are too imaginary thus making the offer moot.

So we were in the forest, walking the trails, trying to be one with nature and getting quite close. The best estimation Steve came up with was somewhere between 1.25 and 1.5. And then the rains came and we were forced to either retreat quickly to our modern homes with central heating and slightly-redundant wall-to-wall carpeting or to tough it out proving to ours moms that we could survive in the woods. For some odd reason all three of our moms really want to toughen us up and they even got together and spent three successive Thursday evenings eating praline, drinking peppermint tea out of mugs that were intended for coffee and devising a set of tasks for their sons to make us real men as they were admittedly fairly stuck on having real men as sons for reasons that they were debating going to see someone about. Beth does not have a mom, because I haven't gotten around to mentally creating that for her yet and believe you me, she is getting quite impatient as she really wants to call her mom, once she has one, to ask for her apple pie crust recipe so she can stop using store-bought crusts that are lackluster at best. I keep telling her that my schedule is quite full and it takes more effort and mental-wherewithal to create a fictitious mom than it seems, but in reality I just can't be bothered.

Spending a day in the forest with no supplies aside from allowing Dave to wear glasses was step one in our mother's plans. It was all fine and good until the torrential downpour began, soaking us from head to toe in minutes. Initially it was sort of like a cool shower and was slightly refreshing. I compared it to drinking a glass of cool water after a hard workout, except that I hadn't just worked out and instead of drinking the cool water and having it refresh me, the water was being continuously dumped on me with force instead. After the initial period of joy had worn off, we started to panic - Dave was trying to get directions from a bunch of not-so-helpful squirrels; Steve, for some reason, began to tear off his shirt and replace it with a haphazardly bunched together pile of leaves and me, I made noises with my lips that usually made babies giggle, only there were no babies present so they went largely unappreciated. We spent the rest of the day huddled together, under a small canopy of large, low-hanging branches, sharing stories of love and computer software nightmares and the more powerful love that often came out of those computer software nightmares until the nightmares got worse and no amount of love could cheer us up. We shared those stories all the time, being in the forest in the rain was quite secondary. Finally, the rains cleared and we strode out of the forest, the four of us, three back to our moms and one of us, Beth, decided to go catch a movie.

I closed my eyes and tried imagining the previous evening to determine how I got to the beach. I knew I'd remember as long as I really focused and since I figured there had to be a reason I was on the beach and that that reason may, in fact, be time-sensitive, I got right to it. I remembered that I woke up in bed with a start, preemptively ending an amazing dream where I was some sort of representative speaker for the humans and I was attempting to meet with a selection of specifically-chosen marine life who were very hard to schedule meetings with as they have very busy schedules what with the holidays just around the corner. I urgently wanted to meet with them to investigate the options for a shared currency and a human-marine life exchange program where a bunch of underprivileged youths and at-risk marine life can trade places for a three-month period in order to gain more employability and transferable skills and just when I was about to storm into the head shark's office to demand some face time, I woke up.

I don't recall hurriedly getting dressed, but based on my outfit, I not only didn't avoid any clashes with colours and patterns but I seemed to go out of my way to clash as much as possible with the only limitations being my limited wardrobe and the current abilities of my eyes. I noticed my quite regular-looking socks and surmised that my socks with pompoms, that I can only guess were left at my place as some sort of subliminal message by the cleaning lady who cleans the last Wednesday of each month, were at the dry-cleaners. I can only guess that I dressed in a hurry, with the lights off, and with my eyes closed, which was becoming more and more commonplace with men of my age and socio-economic status, and then I left the house in a rush after locking the door, quickly dusting the window sills and arranging the dried decorative flowers just so and then making a beeline for the forest. I had wished in this attempt of mine to piece together the events that I didn't choose to take an unnecessarily meandering beeline for the forest as I just wanted to get there already and this bee of mine was taking his sweet time and stopping off at every single flower along the way almost as if he was either searching for his long lost friend whom he had heard rumours was hanging out at local pollen salons or he doing some really smart comparison shopping looking for the best price for antique wall hangings.

As I'm standing there on the beach remembering the details of the early morning, I open my eyes as an image hits me not unlike a ton of bricks, but not at all like that as well. I distinctly remember brushing my teeth before I left the house and remarking "my teeth are so white, so white my teeth are, how I love you my white teeth" right before commenting "but you'd think that being so perfect and white that you would either have earned me a higher social standing, some sort of government grant for an enamel-inspired set of monolithic sculptures or at a minimum a date with that cute dental hygienist who just moved in next door and is always wearing her hair up showing off that slender and deeply tanned neckline of hers that shows off both her beauty and her lack of respect for the power of the sun even in the early spring, but no, you are just so selfishly interested in maintaining your own gleaming whiteness leaving the rest of us in your wake and making us so jealous that I can't even make eye contact with you anymore not like before ,and no, I don't need you to remind me that you don't have eyes-  I know that now!" before falling in love with their whiteness all over again. If I didn't know better I would think that I had never been in the forest and that instead it was my excuse that I was giving myself to avoid revealing the depths of a transgression or something, but there was no mistaking the scent of pine and I had given up using pine fresheners as a cheap replacement for deodorant the previous week.

So, I was in the forest and aside from the fact that it was pitch dark and I couldn't see where I was going or what sort of object I was conversing with - it was a fence - I had a great time. I have had so many great times in the dark, especially that one time when my friends invited me to a blindfolded dinner party they were having in their basement last winter. I came over, was blindfolded and then I thought I heard snickering, the sound of a number of shoes on the steps leading upstairs and the door closing followed by sounds that were eerily similar to celebratory high-fives only to have them cut off by a van starting and driving off. I sat there in the basement, awaiting the dinner, for hours, with the anticipation building to a point where I just couldn't take it any longer and I decided to take a nap only to realize that they had tied me to the chair, as a prank, or maybe so I wouldn't get any ideas and either remove the blindfold or sneak a peak at the surprise dinner that I still couldn't wait to try. What an elaborately planned evening of fun, I remember thinking before I accidentally nodded off only to be woken the next day by one of my friends who was shocked that I hadn't "gone home already" and "got the hint" and "my share of the dinner came to $24.75 but that they would be okay with $24".

I loved the smell of the forest and once my eyes got used to the light, I quite enjoyed being with the trees because, as my mom always said, "trees never judge except for cedars. Stay away from cedars with your secrets, they are like sieves." My mom always had an issue involving cedars almost definitely dating back to when her father left her mother with a cedar and continuing when a cedar was responsible for her failing math back in grade 9. I stood at the start of a trail. As a child I had always been consumed with the names of trails and what they could mean and I sometimes felt that the names were part of a large government conspiracy of which I wanted to be the intrepid young whippersnapper who unearthed the plot by the government. I had narrowed the potential details of the plot down to three possibilities: the systematic elimination of all lower case letters, the banning of all dental floss or the staging of a sham election where the people would fall in love with this amazing candidate only to have it revealed at the inauguration that we were all on the moon the entire time and while we were all engrossed in the amazing lead-up to the election with the well-placed and timed ads and well-constructed campaigns, we were all air-lifted to the moon as part of a government plan to rezone the land our houses are on just for laughs and giggles. It was a fairly bizarre plot for a 12-year old boy to come up with and that made me quite proud, as I was that 12-year old boy - if it had been someone else's idea, I would have been fairly jealous and concerned especially because it was in my head and how would the other 12 year old boy with ideas eerily similar to my own, get his ideas in my head. 

I stood there, in the moonlight and looked at the trail map and thought about the names of the trails and what they could possibly indicate or mean.

There was one called Inspiration Trail and I imagined the first people walking on it and being so inspired by the surroundings and leaving the trail to not only return to their loved ones oozing with inspiration and going on to lead infinitely more productive and happy lives, but also using the experience of being on the trail as their main motivation for everything else in their lives. I just hope that they were that inspired, because if they weren't then I have a huge problem with the naming of the trail unless they were meaning it to be somewhat sarcastic and the person who fielded the new name of the trail on the phone didn't quite hear or understand the quotation marks around the word inspiration that would have made the sarcasm more obvious to the reader. Maybe it is extremely un-inspirational and those that go on it literally feel inspiration being sucked out of them, so much so, that many people don't even finish the trail and set up camp and just stay and over time a nice little community of similar-minded, not-so-easily-inspired-by-fairly-commonplace-trails people would work together growing crops, raising farm animals and living off the pretty regular land. I briefly consider how my life would potentially change if I went down that "road" and I decide against it as either way I have plans for the weekend that would almost definitely have to be changed if I came back overly inspired or not at all. My guidance counsellor once warned me that I was easily susceptible to groups of very warm people who lived off the land after only setting off to walk on a trail and be inspired. It seemed like a very random thing for me and my parents to be worried about and I generally forgot about it until this moment. I'd have to remember to mail her a card with a cute kitten on it as she always had a thing for cute kittens - on her sweaters, on photographs on her walls and even in the hairstyle she used for much of the time I was in school.

Next to that trail was a hike to Dog Lake. Most likely a popular destination for dog-owners when accompanied by their dogs or by people without dogs who own leashes as a first step in a 12-step process towards owning a dog and they just want to try out the experience of owning a dog by frequenting places that dog-owners and dogs may go. The next step is buying a bag of dog food and pouring it into a dog dish and seeing how that makes you feel on a spiritual level - it is said that if you can't make yourself buy and dish out the food then you most likely will not be able to care for an actual dog unless you can somehow train it to shop and serve itself its own food or train it to at least feed you so things will seem equal in the area of food distribution. It is also possible that the lake is at least partially dog-shaped based on the appearance of dogs in this specific area at the time the first explorers came upon this lake. The explorers may have been paying homage to the great dogs of the day in the hope that the dog gods would look kindly upon them and not have them spayed or neutered or to at least use some anesthetic if it was absolutely necessary. I can only imagine a group of proud dogs convening on this lake for council sessions that usually were accompanied by a wonderful spread, exotic dog dancers and a fortune teller as dogs in that day and age went bonkers for having their fortunes told. Some say that the ancestors of current dogs still haunt the lake not that they are interested in creeping people out, but mostly because they were told to sit and no one ever told them to stop which would drive anyone crazy.

Or I could walk down the Endless Loop. In many ways, I would describe my teenage years as walking down an endless loop and that was partially due to my feeling stuck in a rut and also the endless loop of staircases my parents installed in our house after accidentally ingesting a strong batch of horse tranquilizer after seeing a particularly riveting documentary on M.S, Escher. It took me hours to figure out how to get from my room to the kitchen and I swear to this day that there was no back door any longer as the steps that used to lead to the back door now went a totally new and quite exciting direction, as long I wasn't in a rush to go anywhere that day. I also ran around and around and around a 400 metre track for a girlfriend trying to get back in her good books after I unknowingly insulted her - how was I supposed to know that her uncle left his wife, her favourite aunt, when he fell in love with a librarian who was also due to inherit a massive fortune because her father was the richest glue manufacturer in the local area. I mean who could predict that exact set of events?

My girlfriend had me run and run because she found it mesmerizing and also because she staunchly didn't believe in dog houses. Seriously - she did not believe in a dog house as a physical or mental construct. When I asked her where did she think dogs lived, she said that she preferred to think of dogs as beautiful and mystical vagabonds who could call any place that they chose to lay as their home. It was just one example of what I both loved and found perplexing about her with the perplexing side eventually winning out when she decided to spend the month of July chasing butterflies with cheap chopsticks. I just couldn't convince myself to walk down the Endless Loop because it seemed like a fairly large time commitment and I had promised myself not to make any large time commitments no matter how tempting because I wanted to walk down a slightly-less-than-endlessly-long path that would take slightly-less than an endless amount of time, but also had the same amount of endless pleasure attached to it. I was quite high maintenance when it came to choosing where to walk in general and that led to my taking a few steps in one direction followed by a turn of a seemingly-random degree and then a few steps in a different direction and so on and so on. Some professors from the local university once graphed my walking on a time/distance graph and the results helped them figure out the secret of the mating patterns of koalas. Somehow I didn't benefit financially at all from that study, although I did get a free pass to the koala exhibit at the zoo. However, I was barred from entrance during mating season as they hypothesized that my walking might lead to several miscarriages.

The final trail that caught my eye was one called Wildberry Trail which got me quite excited as I am a sucker for wildberries which is interesting only in that I am also a sucker for almost everything else that is wild: feral pigs, wild hair, out-of-control neighbours who yell and scream and need police attention every other Friday evening, wantonly scooped Vanilla-flavoured Greek yogurt, and of course, wild applications of lipstick that cause others to feign concern. But wildberries were my favourite! I especially loved that they taste good and also that they don't criticize me and jump on my every mistake and make me sit in the corner while they pop all of my balloons that were also doubling as my friends. I had always been under the belief that we didn't pop our friends or balloons that were doubling as our friends because I had once mistook my friends shrieking and recoiling from the long, pointy needle I was lurking suspiciously around with as a desire to be popped with a needle that I carried around for those specific situations that almost never came up and I was quite excited.

I would have walked down this trail but it was pitch black and at least a few hours until sunrise and I would have no idea whether I was staying on the path or veering towards something poisonous or something sharp or even something resembling my roommate-lawyer. I have randomly bumped into him in the dark on many occasions and have had the chance, the fortune to touch him, to caress the nape of his neck, to briefly lick some part of his leg in a dark, dark room and wonder why I hadn't studied to be a lawyer. I often walk around in the dark simulating licking an ice cream for reasons that I will carry to my grave. I have also requested that my grave be within 250 steps of an upscale ice cream parlour and that the burial occur on a hot day so that everyone walks to the ice cream parlour licking as they go and that the proceeds of the sales go towards improving the lives of chickens as I have always wanted to select an animal at random and to donate money that is not mine towards improving their lives. It is both the most and the least that I can do as I will be buried at the time.

I remember distinctly leaving the woods quite unceremoniously, and infinitely disappointed, as I was expecting at least a small ceremony, and walking straight towards the beach. The sun was now slowly starting to light up the sky and for some reason I needed to be on the beach when the sun came up. And here I was, sitting on a log on the beach. "Always sitting," I think to myself mostly to make conversation and to enjoy a brief respite from the silence that almost engulfs me. Not the most comfortable spot ever, but with all the expected tranquility and postcard-like scenery I expected. "Tranquility is very under-rated" I murmur knowingly, although I'm not sure if it has been rated much at all - thankfully no one is around to refute me...this time. Later on I plan to make a list and post it online, rating it low so that this all makes sense in retrospect. If I could somehow make a living doing it, I would alternate days between murmuring knowingly for show and rating things online also for show. I smile at this thought - always talking about doing things for show, but never having the guts to follow through.

I would love to sit in the most comfortable spot ever, at least for a moment - seems like I owe myself that. But I wonder if that spot would be so comfortable and famous for being so comfortable that it would eventually be either worn out making it less comfortable or inspire others to create new spots in its likeness that would also be comfortable, maybe not quite as comfortable but so close that it would be really really hard to judge and would lead to much debate and discussion at local coffee shops over mugs of scalding coffee. I once bought a series of mugs, drew a wide variety of comical faces on them, filled them with scalding liquid and provided all of the voice work for a really moving version of the hit Broadway show Hair only this time performed by inanimate coffee cups sitting motionless on my kitchen table. I believed that the show was "out-of-this-world funny" and "a show that should not be missed as long as you didn't mind the occasional splash of scalding liquid and if you did, just show up near the end of the first act as the liquid would have cooled down considerably by then" and "quite possibly the best coffee-cup-filled-with-liquid rendition of the hit Broadway show Hair that has been produced in someone's kitchen in this area of town in the past year". I had briefly considered taking the show on the road until somehow the mugs all got smashed to bits when they suggested holding out for more money unless either their dressing rooms were always stocked with chilled European spring water, they received a higher percentage of the gate and their names be printed on all posters and promotional materials in a minimum of 32 point font and I countered by smashing them with a hammer that I always kept on hand for inevitable moments just like this. I did regret what I did the next morning when I had nowhere to pour all of my scalding hot liquid and I felt a lot of remorse and even briefly thought about travelling down to the store in the mall where I had purchased those mugs and asking the sales lady to smash me, but I remembered that the last time I did that she threatened to call my mom. What did she think, that I was 13? I was 14.

It is early on a summer morning well before the heat of the day, and I am mostly alone aside from a few dog-walkers and joggers. These particular dog-walkers seem really boisterous and enthusiastic almost like this is their calling in life - to walk dogs. I am pleased for them and for their dogs as it seems to be win-win, but I remind myself that things are rarely as they seem and behind closed doors the walkers may be sadistic taskmasters only serving average dog food when they are fully aware that the dogs prefer deluxe and insisting that they clean their rooms before getting a treat when everyone is quite aware that their ability to keep their rooms clean is severely hampered by not having hands. Or the dogs may be just putting on a show while in public and at home they may be loud-barking, couch-tearing, and overly-selfish-to-the-point-where-at-least-some-of-the-humans-are-both-jealous-and-rendered-to-tears. Regardless, I don't wish to own a dog - I'm scared of them what with their loud barking, their sharp teeth and the unshakable feeling that I would be a mere stepping stone owner-wise for them and that they would always be on the lookout for an upgrade to someone taller.

Compared to the dog-walkers, the joggers never seem that happy. Aside from the exercise, which is obviously good for you, they just seem to be in a lot of discomfort. Each step they take is met with a grimace or look of boredom almost as if others should take pity on them. I would be first in line to take pity on them, but I feel like my figurative pity jar is all empty as I just spent a lot of time talking to people waiting in line at the passport office. What a sad, sorry bunch of people all suspiciously wanting passports almost as if receiving a passport would pick them up and make them instantly less pitiable. All of a sudden it hits me - while I am not in the mood to show pity for the joggers, I could plan to jog tomorrow with a look of extreme pleasure and happiness on my face and a vibrancy in my body almost as if I had been recently plugged in and charged. Yes, people may wonder what is wrong with that sort of insane looking jogger who was either really pleased before he started running and is having the pleasure slowly drawn out of him by the running or the jogging is actually giving him pleasure, which would be even more confusing to all.

Maybe the jogging is some sort of cord that is plugging me in and sending me electricity not completely like that time when I actually tried to receive electricity through a cord which was both totally dangerous and ultimately quite fruitless as the power company refused to send me any electricity in the mail when it didn't work at home after I wrapped a cord around my torso, plugged it in and waited to either feel brighter, hot or just charged up. They claimed, when I asked for them to mail it to me, that I "had obvious gaps in my understanding of how electricity really works" and "could I please refraining from calling, emailing or standing outside their windows and yelling while flipping through a series of placards adorned with well-illustrated and quite graphic messages" and "they could offer me a yearly calender" which I gladly accepted and came away from the whole experience feeling like I had "won". I wave to one jogger in particular, initially chosen totally randomly, but with the intent to make it look quite the opposite. I wanted him to think that I had chosen him, of all the joggers on the beach that morning, to be the one that I went out of my way to cheer for, to send a message of courage and of empowerment, to make him question what my motives really were before realizing that I was an example of all that was right with humanity and that we had a deeper connection than either of us realized at the moment and that he should also watch where he is going so he doesn't bump into anything which I am fortunately able to relay quite quickly with a series of rapid hand motions thus saving the day.

I move to sit on the sand and enjoy the coolness of it on my bare feet. I had just removed my shoes and socks in an attempt to feel the sand directly on my feet, and it had worked splendidly. I ran my fingers through the sand the same way I used to run my fingers through my girlfriend's hair - smoothly at first, until I got to the ends which were snarled with tangles and knots. It was quite hard to mimic the entanglement my fingers felt in that situation with the sand that was much easier to move through. I'm glad my old girlfriend wasn't here on the beach with me witnessing my joy at the ease of finger movement in comparison as it surely would have led to some discomfort on her part followed by her launching into a long lecture on my not being sensitive enough to her feelings, especially those that were related to her easily-tangled hair, which she usually presented in her unique, slam-poetry-esque sort of fashion that was riveting, hurtful and so effective that she met her future husband, who was not only far more sensitive than I was as he lost both of his parents to tangled hair as a youth, but, ironically, he was also a sand erosion specialist who was raised never to run his fingers through anything sand-like. I learned from the experience to never date anyone again who was so adept at slam poetry that they may meet someone more suitable for them as a result of being so adept at slam poetry. It was a small lesson and quite a random one that almost definitely would never come up again, but it was a lesson and I learned it.

As I played with the sand I remembered that on multiple occasions in my past I have thought about being a grain of sand and what my life would be like. First off, I'd have to get used to being really small. Now, I am not the tallest person in the first place, but going from being slightly-less-than-average to ridiculously tiny would at least need a period of adjustment. I also figured that it would be hard to get used to the feeling that I didn't amount to anything and that no one would miss me if I was gone, not because I wouldn't be one special grain of sand, but because there would be millions and millions of other grains that would be so much like me physically, and that they could probably learn my role and whatever differences there were in personality or abilities could be gotten used to by the other grains. But, I imagined my day as a little piece of sand - waking up on the beach with millions of my friends and family all nestled together, feeling a bit dry and badly in needed of some ointment, but even if one of us magically procured some of it, we have no hands or feet and it would be more of a tease, a point of frustration to have it there, so close and us unable to apply it. I'd look around and notice that some of my friends were gone - probably washed out to sea and, although I'd miss them, with the size of my brain being severely reduced in size and scope, I probably wouldn't miss them for long and even if I did I probably wouldn't totally comprehend where they had gone and what this sea thing really was as I would lack the perspective to see past my little spot on the beach.

I used to imagine that I would be the one grain of sand who understood the world and had been given special powers and knowledge for a reason - I was the grain that would free us all and lead us towards a brave new existence. All other grains would see me as the chosen grain, the grain who would helps us all out of a long period of darkness and feeling stuck on a beach or in a playground or occasionally in an unfinished backyard because the topsoil hadn't been delivered yet and they were closed for the weekend, the grain who could actually talk, which was no small accomplishment in and of itself and shouldn't get downplayed -  I'm just mentioning that as I'm sure some wouldn't feel that it was worth mentioning - but I ask, can any other grains talk? Exactly. Anyways, the dream usually ended with me high on a hill filling the other grains with motivation to overthrown the human savages and turn the beaches into prisons while also turning our focus towards new methods of storing data, preserving food and refereeing tennis matches. We had some random goals, but we didn't mind. We believed we could accomplish anything, so they may as well be random things. The dream usually left me feeling alone and quite confused and with a desire to rent a large blowing tool from the local hardware store and go to the beach and just blow the sand around for a while before dropping to my knees weeping and trying to hold them all.

There is a light breeze in the air that feels more of fall or spring, and I look up, shivering, sort of mentally begging the sun's heat to kick in any time now. Nothing happens. I have had a long-standing, mostly imagined, adversarial relationship with the weather. Now that I think of it I also have a long-standing, mostly imagined, adversarial relationship with my dentist and I wonder if there is any connection between my dentist and the lack of heat right now. Probably not, but I make a mental note to put aside some time for some detailed research on the topic. I chose September.

A set of ducks swim by in a nearly perfect V shape, but not quite. One duck must either be a little sick or in need of reassigning to a different, slower group, almost like a development team until he gets his stuff together. I mean if you are aiming to create a V, then anything less is fairly disappointing - for the other ducks I mean  - it's not like I really care. I come from a long line of people who actually prefer misshaped Vs and we often spent at least part of our winter holiday season in the shape of something sort of resembling a V to the amusement of all present.

Male ducks are so stunningly beautiful. I'm sure female ducks have a hard time thinking about anything else with these ultra-distracting, super-hot male ducks just swimming around them. Not sure what else they have to think about aside from eating and possibly what route to take through the reeds today. I wonder if I should be concerned with how much I am drawn to the male ducks I see. I settled on "probably" and then decide to forget about it just like I have done with some of my other strange attractions including, but not limited to, maple syrup containers mostly for their ability to hold and contain syrup that just wants to drip; sample highlighters, but not actual for sale highlighters, just the ones that everyone can pick up, hold in their warm hands and try out for a brief moment before having to leave; loose change and, of course, sideways glances, partially blocked by the throngs of people at the function, across a dim smoky room that makes me cough and recoil due to the overpowering aroma of the smoke and, as I turn to dash out of the room I look back, sideways of course, and catch her eye and melt to the ground, inside my mind of course. Those female ducks seem like pretty cool customers and I envy them as much as a human male, on the beach first thing in the morning without his shoes and socks on can envy a bird of any sorts, which I realize is quite a lot. I say goodbye to the ducks and wonder if I will ever see these particular ducks again. I feel sad that I probably won't unless I happen to go to the right restaurant on the correct night someday.

I still have this nagging feeling that I wish I knew why I was so compelled to come to the beach today and then....I see her and I remember everything. Today was the day and even if I had wanted to somehow restrain myself, which I didn't, a huge smile broke out on my face. I saw her from a distance as she walked towards me and my first thought was "wow" and my second thought hadn't even formed yet when I started trying to list and catalog and even rank my thoughts in order from best to worst as they were forming which is really really hard to do, so I stopped. "Enjoy the moment" the piece of paper in my pocket said. I had finally settled on that message to myself yesterday morning when I decided that I may feel overwhelmed and need a message to settle myself down and help focus me and I decided that who better to send this message but my sister Lola but she just wouldn't return my calls for much of the afternoon and when she finally did she decided against it as she didn't want to get involved in a conversation that was at least 85% with myself. Finally, I had decided that I would send the message to myself and had originally thought of opening with a joke to lighten the mood or a complex math question to help awaken the brain or a combination of the two and had settled on something so cliched that it made me wish I had chosen a joke or a math question.

And then she was in front of me, holding her sandals over her shoulder and dressed in a very cute summer outfit that looked infinitely better on her and I was glad that I had decided not to buy it for myself and wear it for out meeting as she may have taken it the wrong way. I looked at her and as I was about to speak she said "I thought you wouldn't come."