Sometimes you just stare.  It might not be anything interesting to the outsider, but to you the subject is a playground for your eyes.

For me, it’s often a fire.

The flames jump, change color, grow smaller or reach higher.  Sparks may even fly off.

My brain swirls while my eyes are occupied with the show.  Thoughts waft in and out.  Problems are contemplated–sometimes even solved.

Fire has a meditative quality.  The bubbles in a drink may hold the same for you.

There are times I want to talk to you.  Times I wonder how you are.  I want to call, but there is no number to dial.

You’re not there anymore–at least not in the way you used to be.

You are very much here in my thoughts, even in my dreams.  So I talk to you in my head, send words to you up through flames, let free my thoughts to the universe hoping one or two will find you in a warm, gentle breeze.

I wish I knew for sure you got them.

Some days you have to focus on the small things that make your day.

My new snazzy toothbrush came with a clock that’s handy to have in the bathroom. It’s a nice little reminder of the time as you’re getting ready in the morning–you know in case you get a little too carried away flossing. Another perk of my fine clock is that it times how long I brush.

When I brush for two minutes it gives me a smiley face.

And when I brush for more than two and a half minutes??

It winks at me!

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My office is on the 22nd floor. Getting on an empty elevator from the garage usually means I get to travel all the way to my floor without any stops.

This morning I got to pick my nose in peace all the way to 22 (Don’t think I haven’t thought about cameras. I’m just sure they’ve seen much worse.).

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No clients today, so I got to wear these.

I’m kinda hinky about religion. I’m trying to work on it, but this general outlook results in a habit of not making bargains with G*d.

I do, however, on occasion find the need to enter into small agreements with inanimate objects and small children and pets who have no possible way to understand the ramifications of the covenant I’m making with them.

When my adorable, little puppy ran into the middle of a flag football game being played by a dozen hot guys down on the Mall that day in my 20’s, I promised then that I would forgive the future destruction of one item that she was sure to undertake.

When my youngest child behaved incredibly in the ER waiting room for hours on that visit when he was two? Well he doesn’t know it yet, but he has one free pass on breaking curfew when he’s a teenager.

I forgot to get gas before leaving for home tonight (what is it about the gauge that it always ends up in my blind spot?). I had to be home in twenty minutes. There was no time to stop and even to make it in that time I’d have to take the HOV lanes (there are no gas stations or exits on the HOV lanes).

The needle was on empty as I pulled out of the garage. The little orange light was on.

I really didn’t want to run out of gas. I didn’t want to stand in the cold. I didn’t want to wait for AAA to bail me out. I DID NOT want to hear it from my husband.

So I made a bargain with the car.

She has more than 100,000 miles on her. I tend not to give her the respect she deserves. I often let my eyes stray to other cuter, younger cars.

But I made a bargain with her.

My little car got me home tonight. I wasn’t late, and more importantly I didn’t have to listen to my husband rant about my inability to pay attention to the gauge (or the clock).

So I will stick by my promise. Next time I’m tempted dismiss that little car, I’ll remember she got me home on fumes.

I’m sure playing cards were purposefully created to be difficult for children to hold in a fan to keep them from losing all their money at poker.

Sometimes when you lose something you don’t even notice it’s gone until you see it in an old picture and casually wonder where it went. Other times, the loss is so great you don’t know if you’ll ever stop looking in the back of that drawer just one more time.

Why are some things so hard to let go?

Bedtime has arrived again and I haven’t recorded any grand thoughts, figured out which came first–the chicken or the egg–or even found some mildly funny words to make at least myself giggle.

In exchange for the prophetic, I leave you with some little nuggets of late.

As I sat in the doctor’s waiting room today–the foot and ankle surgeon–I looked up and took in the image of the man in a wheelchair sitting across from me. He had no legs from the knees down. WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING SEEING A FOOT AND ANKLE SPECIALIST?? HE DIDN’T HAVE ANY.

First grader came home from school before the holidays with a 3-D paper creation. The hubs complimented him on his dreidel. Son gave him the hairy eyeball and proclaimed, “Duh, it’s not a dreidel dad, it’s a lantern. The Jews use it to celebrate Ramadan.”

My first activity of the new year was so incredible that I don’t know how the rest of the year is going to be able to compare. I woke at 7:00 a.m. to the sounds of a whining puppy. I tried the time-tested approach of putting the pillow over my head to make her stop, but that approach was a failure. I rolled out of bed, threw on the closest items to protect any still-partying neighbors from the sight of my pale flesh and shuffled down stairs. And what was I greeted with?? A nearly six month-old puppy covered in her own poop looking up at me from her crate. So weird how the rest of my family was so tired they didn’t hear any of the whining.

There I was trying to get her out into the backyard and the crate…well somewhere without getting covered myself. Crate unceremoniously deposited in the carport awaiting some other sleeping ass’s attention, the puppy was brought upstairs for a bath–AT 7 FREAKING 30 on New Year’s Day. Oh yeah, it’s gonna take a lot to improve on the start of this year.

Baseball season is upon us once again (does it really ever end?) and as you know there aren’t many options for a girl when nature calls at the field.

I avoid the dreaded Port-o-Potties as much as possible, especially after the incident last year, but sometimes there’s just no choice.

We were down at the fields for a marathon afternoon and all of the sudden my breakfast came back to haunt me.

There wasn’t any time to make it home.

I found a relatively clean cabinet o’ ca-ca and went about my business. So many thoughts ran through my head as I was finding my way to sweet relief.

What if some kid forces the door open and everyone sees me with my pants down?

What if a long line has developed since I stepped in here?

Is the tank full enough that the next person will know I had the sour-apple-quick-steps?

As these totally rational and sane thoughts caused me to sweat a little, my eyes landed on this:

I HAD to know whose job it was to figure THAT out.

As part of my research (see what I do for you??), I made the most fascinating discovery–the PSAI–and boy is their website full of interesting information!

For instance, did you know that there are 1,400,000 portable toilets in use worldwide? That they call waste “effluent” (I’m kinda liking that word)? And that they have developed a Special Events Usage Guide?

I know, me neither.

Those portable sanitation people are some helpful folk.

To top it all off, the nice folks at the PSAI hand out the M.Z. “Andy” Dump–I mean–Gump Award which is a “lifetime achievement award honoring those that have improved the image of the industry and have created innovative approaches for sanitation needs through new and improved products and services.”

I want to party with these guys.

There are days when your kitchen sink develops a clog and it’s a holiday weekend and 35 people are coming to your house so you run back and forth to use the guest bathroom sink while preparing the food for said guests–ignoring the fact that you will have no way to clean up after them when they leave at 3:00 a.m.

There are days when you read her and you almost wet your pants because holy crap is she funny, but then you secretly plot to steal her brain because you know you’ll never be that funny, but then you secretly thank the goddess of discount designer shoes that she walks this planet at the same time you do.

There are days when your six year-old mumbles the word “evaporate” as he’s drifting off to sleep so he can commit the new word to memory and your heart just explodes with pride, but then you remember five minutes earlier he was telling you about the “masagna” he had for dinner and you decide that he might not get that Nobel after all.

There are days when you don’t think your blogging is ever going to amount to much and then you get invited to this super-swanky, invite-only reception for the premiere of a new movie and you decide that you might not abandon your blog after all, until you get to the super-swanky, invite-only party and they play Kung Fu Fighting over and over and over again for two hours straight and there is no alcohol, so you decide that the party was secretly a punishment and you were invited because your blog sucks big black licorice-flavored turds.

There are days when your friend complains over email about all the traveling they must do over the summer and your inner bitch can be silenced no more so she sends a snide reply suggesting that the person have a terrific summer and contact her when they actually want to talk, but then your bitch rethinks her rudeness and cancels the reply before it’s sent. Still feeling pissy after the original reply is discarded, the bitch decides to send one anyway–just a bit snarkier this time–only to realize once that one is gone that they were both sent and now you just look like an idiot.

There are days when you can feel the scream begin deep in your stomach and as it rises you know that if you don’t figure out soon what your purpose in life is there is no way you’re going to prevent that scream from deafening those around you so you decide to tell your husband about it and he suggests you quash it by getting up earlier in the morning to make your children pancakes.

There are days you don’t kill your husband.

There are days when you are little and you think it would be cool to have a retainer or a cast or something neato like that and then you grow up and you trip on the sidewalk because apparently a single step down can be dicey terrain to negotiate and you break your ankle and you get a cast and then the cast comes off and your ankle still doesn’t heal and then you want to remove your leg at the knee and use the separated appendage to knock your orthopedist silly until he fixes you enough so that you can wear flip flops again, because damn it’s finally flip flop weather.

Yep. There are days.

If I avoid walking through my kitchen today, does the mess cease to exist?

Welcome to my Sunday experiment more easily accomplished because of the two baseball games and the meetings both the hubs and I need to attend today. Add to it the fact that I’m supposed to be using crutches again and I think I feel perfectly justified in closing my eyes as I walk through that room just one more time as I head out the door.

Hope you’re enjoying your Sunday and ignoring the ugly in your life–even if it’s just for one day.