My Little Golden Book of Phobias

A lotta babies lately. Because I lose sleep, and time, any ritual I might have becomes a moment when I did something with regularity but, uh, not now. Instead, I eat whole sleeves of little lemon cookies and stay up watching the first episode of Rome (ug, way too much violence) and listen to the cats fighting. Hugo (nee Wishbone) and Lola play fight and Lupine fights for real, growling, hissing, tufts of fur and general meanness. 

Tonight because it is so cold outside, I'm going to stand in the wet grass in my bare feet and stare up at the apple tree. This is the 'off' year when the tree makes zero apples, not a single blossom. Last year there were hundreds of apples. My neighbor's pear tree in covered. I await some grocery bags full of pears.

Pear sauce:

Cut up a bunch of pears with the skins.

Put them in a pot with a bit of water and a smidge of salt.

Cook down until they are all mashy

Put through a food processor

Eat warm. It tastes buttery and delicious. Better than homemade applesauce. 

I witness suffering, in my job, in life in general. Women tell me things. Sometimes terrible things. I hold it all. Humans are capable of the worst. And the best. You come around a corner and someone clobbers you or hands you a flower for free. 

I remember a TV show called "The Millionaire." John Ashford Tipton went around handing out checks for a million dollars from a mysterious stranger. The recipients would then proceed to screw up their lives. If someone came to my door and handed me a check for a million dollars, I would endow my artist friends so they could have a really nice vacation. A million dollars doesn't go very far any more. My friends couldn't retire or anything. They could go to Mexico and lie in a hammock in the sun with a big alcoholic beverage with a paper umbrella in it. A pink umbrella. 

I once had a drink in a pineapple. It was at a cheesy luau we went to in Maui. We were given plastic leis and there was a photographer who took our picture. There were piles of roast pig which I didn't eat. And poi. Poi is this greyish gluey stuff, starch of the masses in Hawaii. The best part of being there was swimming with the turtle. Big green turtles.

The last morning we were in Hawaii, I got up early and went swimming. Me and six turtles. I touched their shells, just a little. They were so beautiful, they fly in the water. I looked into their lidded eyes and fell in love. They didn't mind that I was swimming with them. Sometimes I think about them when I can't go to sleep.