Took some stuff to the dump yesterday because it’s open late Thursdays, until seven in the evening. Got home late from work because traffic was heavy, loaded up the old Dobl

Driving to work Tuesday, I saw the first fog of the season. Apparently there’s a fog season, who knew. I looked for deer, but it was too bright for them.

Fog has a calming effect. Fog is quiet. Deer in fog are even nicer, but fog is okay by itself, sort of coming out of the woods like that.

Around the bend in the freeway, there were a lot of dumptrucks and road construction machinery, and I realized it was actually dust. Dust is almost as nice, as long as you think it’s fog.

This morning I screamed at Gamma. I told her to wear her glasses to school, which she must, and to wear them all day. She said she’d go to school without glasses and wear them in class, which means she did not intend to wear them. I got madder and madder, she started crying big tears. I got so mad I yelled and threw a ring of keys down onto the floor so hard that the cheap plastic piece of shit in the keyring broke.

Gamma is of the opinion she looks like a pig in her glasses. She wouldn’t answer me when I asked who said that. She was not impressed by my statement that I think she looks cute in glasses.

I tried to calm down. She wiped the tears off her face and I walked her to school. I told her I would tell her teacher she had to wear glasses all day, but the lazy teacher wasn’t at school yet when we got there, nor did she arrive before I left for work.

Gamma had her glasses on when I left. She still had them on when I snuck back a minute later to check. No idea whether she’ll wear them all day. If I weren’t her dad, I’d advise her to flush them down the toilet. Then we’d have no choice but to buy her new ones she likes.

When we left the house this morning, there was some real fog in the trees and around the chimneys. The first fog, Gamma said. Fall is coming, I said.

Life lately has been a lot like when they lock you in the rubber room at the insane asylum except the walls are made of beautiful naked ladies not rubber, and when you go to climb the walls they are all covered with oil so you keep slipping back down to the floor, and the floor is made of ugly naked ladies.

A lot, I say “a lot,” in fact that’s exactly what it’s been like.

Three dreams have come true for me this summer: I rode my bike from D

You want something to cry about? I’ll give you something to cry about. You think that’s bad? I’ll give you something bad. Try this on for size. How do you like this? Do you like it? How do you like it? Do you like it like this? What was on your mind just a second ago? Before you can teach anyone anything, you have to get their attention. You with me? You think that’s bad? I’ll show you bad. I’ll show you how to let go in a hurry. You think you want to let go. I’ll show you want to let go. You want relief? There isn’t any relief. This is all there is. Welcome to the moment. You think that was a spasm? I’ll show you a spasm you won’t forget. What were you just a minute ago? What was that? And look at you now, one big vessel of misery. How’s it feel to be back in your body like this? Feel your size? Bigger than you tend to think, aren’t you? Go ahead and move, it doesn’t help. This is it buddy boy, one endless moment. And you thought mindfulness was so hard.

You paint so much better than I do.

That’s not true. I love the way you paint.
No, no. I’ll never paint as well as you do.
Your paintings are great.
Yours are much better. I wish I could paint as well as you do.
I’m 47. I’ve been painting longer. When I was 9, painting totally frustrated me too.
I don’t believe it. You paint so well.
All I do is paint an abstract painting, then when that dries, I paint another one over it, then scrape it off with a knife before it dries. Sometimes it looks cool.
You’re such a good painter.
You’re actually far better.
No way. You’re better.
No, you.
No, you.
You.
You.

[continue ad absurdum]

• Strictly speaking, the manatee is not a fish, although it is often mistaken for a mermaid, which is half fish. Historians think at least one of the three mermaids sighted by Columbus was actually a manatee.

• Severely reduced populations excessive hunting yadda-yadda.
• Manatees are both diurnal and nocturnal, so logically they never sleep.
• They are only weakly social, with few friends. The only lasting bond is between a cow and her calf, and nothing flatters a manatee more than being told that its offspring resemble it strongly.
• Manatees are prone to intense lower back pain, and males have been sighted in front of toilets, clinging to the windowsill with tears in their eyes and their dicks hanging helplessly from their pajamas, waiting for a nasty spasm to pass.
• Manatee are prone to melancholy, which is okay, and depression, which they usually fight with exercise, although if they have sore backs they’re fucked because the muscle relaxants they take for it have side effects including: suicidal depression, irritability, constipation, amnesia, fatigue, insomnia and dizzyness
• The manatee often deals with conflict by withdrawing, to the extent that you can enter a house where the manatee lives and yet notice no evidence of its presence even though it’s right there talking to you.
• Driving to work through 22 degree water at a depth of 6 meters, the only sounds audible to a manatee are Mongolian throat-singing, which provides great comfort, and a high-pitched whistling sound, which could be the throat singing or something wrong with the car.
• Manatees crush vegetation with their molars, because molars are the only teeth they have.

Another weekend like this last one and I’ll have to hire Francis Strand to ghostwrite posts for me. Like,

The Wife, the Pharmacist and I had some delicious penne with porcini mushrooms before visiting the nuns at Maria Langegg. Then, on Monday, Beta and I went to Salzburg where we met the Cellist and had antipasti with her at the Triangel before she snuck us into the opera dress-rehearsal through the stage-door, where we rubbed elbows with the Famous Conductor before all driving back to our house (minus the Conductor) in the middle of the night, where I got the best cello lesson of my life.

The German word of the day is nobel, which means posh.

But, I’m not Francis.

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