Money and Timing

I understand so much more now:
why accountants worry about rules
why bill collectors are quick to anger.

Product delivered
long before,
yet no word and no word and no calls back
I reached further to the cahootant accountant
who hubristically said,
"Your check is in the mail!"

I check the mail
today and today and tonight and tonight
week, 'nother week, week-week.
And my check is not...

"The postal workers are slow and bogged down!
And Presidents' Day last week came to town!
Your check, just keep looking, check the mail and you'll see!
Your check is in the mail, it is, trust me!"

Now I understand why we need contracts
and laws and lawyers and the threat of them.
I know how to fight, but I don't like to.

The check, finally retrieved by hand
the money is in my account,
the client is history.

My karmic lesson:
Don't make people wait for their money.
It's rude.

"Do you like my hat?" "No. I do not." "Good-bye." "Good-bye!"

A year ago, I went to Manhattan for the first time. I liked it there, once I relaxed and stopped asking myself, "why are all these people here?" It was cold. I wore a hat, gloves and a coat while outside.

One day, my friend and I were walking up 5th Avenue, and we passed someone famous. I kept my awareness of him a secret til he was a safe distance away, then I told my friend, "Ah! That's who it was! I just saw the blonde guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy!" It had taken a moment to place him, but I recognized him by his profession first, because of the look on his face, now and forever etched into my memory, as he observed my hat, looking askance, absorbed in it. Either he loved my hat, or he did not like that hat.

I decided that if in about a year, everyone was wearing a hat like I had on that day, it would figure he'd loved my hat. I do not see blue barets abounding. I do not think he liked my hat.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Miss You!

Some people, when they say they "I miss you!" don't mean they want to spend time with you, it just means they miss you. They miss lots of people, but that doesn't mean they're going to stop what they're doing to spend time with them. This personality type is simply interested more in the singular path than the mutual.

This public service announcement brought to you by the person who just figured this out.

Spelling Out Sports

I know sports make people happy. I'm not against sports, I just don't like watching them (but playing can be fun). In an email to me, Blue Green Power Plant pointed out that sports are at least fair and relatively peaceful compared to the news. BGPP is right.

My absence of appreciation for sports is that the reality they set up is so arbitrary and yet people take them so seriously. What is this connection with a group of people from (or sponsored by the economic interests pertaining to) a particular city that makes that city better than its antagonist? Does one city have better sanitation, parks, or police or fire response time than the other because of the sporting team's performance? Nay!

But speaking of things being arbitrary, indeed the same is true about everything. BGPP's comments motivate me to introspect further. I have discovered this: Sports throw me into existentialist angst. To manage this, my mind goes soft and I fixate on color schemes and physiques, the layout of the game venue and ideas like whether spandex still be the top choice in athletic fashion fabric as the 21st century develops. Will nanotechnology affect team gear significantly so that players can sweat and yet never get wet?

I like the human dynamics that sports can illustrate though - win, lose, try, fail, fight back, back off, strategy - but must I sit through four hours of color comentary and crashing helmets for this?

Maybe I need it spelled out for me without all the clamor: get to the point. Beneath all the rattle and roar and clash and spit and rah rah and war drums: What's this game really about?

Show me the human drama and make the game a metaphor. Give me mooring against the bleak expanse between being and nothingness.

Give me sports through a movie like, "The Longest Yard" or "Karate Kid" or that one about the teenagers in the bike race on the high school track that starred the kid from my math class in Jr. High who grew up to win an academy award last year. Oh what is the title of that movie or that actor's name... Maybe BGPP remembers.

Absentum non Chasem

OMG! I missed the superbowl!

"If it's so important for them to get the ball over the line, why don't they just take turns and get it over with?" - me, age 6 +/-

Glazed

My friend Poncho (not his real name) came to visit me this morning. He was half way through a piece of carrot cake and also had an apple-filled, "huge bearclaw!" in hand.

Poncho is a fit, handsome, self disciplined, health-conscious man, but since the holidays he has been off his game. He says he's been craving sugar and fats, mostly. He had a cold recently and craved greasy fatty food, which he ate, and which helped him sleep - a lot.

He is going back to his healthy lifestyle Monday, after the Superbowl has passed. I think after he finishes that bearclaw in about ten minutes, he will be sick of bad food. He gave me a bite. It was delicious. Now I want a buttermilk donut and a cup of coffee.

When we eat healthful foods, we crave them. When we eat junk, we crave that. This is a fundamental law of human physiology.

Con carina,
Ponchita