if you were to take a dream dictionary and removed all allusions to sleep, perhaps it could be marketed as a guide to omens. from validity's point of view, there's not much provable difference.
i spent my 35th birthday delivering bread to my friends. it was a long and detoured route that wound from HeeHaw through Browntown, past Parentsburg to P.Otts, where i stopped and had a beer on the house. from there, i failed to meet Rob in Larryville and drove through to Capital City to spend the rest of the day with Lupita. somewhere north of relative everywhere, it occurred to me that it was my birthday. "oh yeah," i thought. they just don't mean much anymore.
last month, i had a very close call while driving. the sum total of the damage was a smear of plastic from the lady's truck left on my door, and later i discovered a small chip missing from the underside of the plastic case of my side mirror. i didn't worry about it too much, being that the little hole isn't conspicuous or devastating. the day after my birthday, one of my back teeth broke and left a similarly inconspicuous hole in my upper row. of course i notice it; i can't keep my tongue off the sharp, serrated edges of the evidence of neglect. it happened at Lupita's house--a small chunk of rotted tooth may still be in her bathroom sink's p-trap, and it was horrifying. i felt kind of low-class; trashy. i was ashamed, thinking about my fortunate genetic legacy of having good teeth: my father never had a cavity and even died with a primary tooth in his mouth(yes, it was one of his own). nobody in my family ever needed braces. my teeth were always straight, but i had a couple fillings by the time i was 10...i always had a sweet tooth. it was like having been given a shiny family heirloom and allowing it to become tarnished.
been thinking a lot about the slow decline and future of my car lately, about as much as i have been thinking about the future of Lupita and me. secretly i've been wondering if this really has any future; if it's going anywhere. secretly, i've been doubting. then from out of the blue she hits me with "do you think we could ever live together?" i'd honestly never seriously considered it--she lives and works near Capital City, and i'm planning on moving somewhere no closer to there than here after i graduate, and then re-enroll and finish my culinary degree before focusing on finding the big job. apparently unsatisfied with the level of my discomfort from this line of questioning, she finished the combination with "where is this going? what are your intentions with me? i don't want to invest all this time and energy into this and be left hanging...you're not that selfish are you?" and so on. she even re-questioned my fidelity. nothing enrages me more than being put in impossible positions; being asked impossible questions. i see them as unfair game; a no-win manipulation--on one side, the result is making a commitment to something you're not sure that you want to do for the sake of someone else, and on the other side, it's a setup for either an answer you don't want to hear or a potential resentment. the night grew cold and slow and silent. the conversation words, usually scribbled cursive that lazily flew through the air became concrete blocks of letters that sporadically fell from the sky, threatening to crush us. one hard look shows that yes, i could be that selfish, but i can't predict the future--there's an awful lot of room between now and any point of then. i admitted that i didn't know if i was in love with her, as she told me she was with me, but i know how much i'd miss her if she were gone, and that must mean something.
while this was going on, 100 miles away, Elrod was sitting in a restaurant being berated by his girlfriend, who was also beating him over the head with impossible things: "yeah, even the fact that there was no parking and i had to drop her off at the front, drive to find a spot and then walk to the place was my fault..." to make matters worse, there was a box of diamonds and gold burning a hole in his pocket as he questioned asking the big question to her.
friday was apparently a rough day for relationships in my world.
luckily, nobody freaked out too bad; Lupita and i are still together, and Elrod is now a financ, and if everything stays steady, i'll be ministering two weddings in october.
i spent my 35th birthday delivering bread to my friends. it was a long and detoured route that wound from HeeHaw through Browntown, past Parentsburg to P.Otts, where i stopped and had a beer on the house. from there, i failed to meet Rob in Larryville and drove through to Capital City to spend the rest of the day with Lupita. somewhere north of relative everywhere, it occurred to me that it was my birthday. "oh yeah," i thought. they just don't mean much anymore.
last month, i had a very close call while driving. the sum total of the damage was a smear of plastic from the lady's truck left on my door, and later i discovered a small chip missing from the underside of the plastic case of my side mirror. i didn't worry about it too much, being that the little hole isn't conspicuous or devastating. the day after my birthday, one of my back teeth broke and left a similarly inconspicuous hole in my upper row. of course i notice it; i can't keep my tongue off the sharp, serrated edges of the evidence of neglect. it happened at Lupita's house--a small chunk of rotted tooth may still be in her bathroom sink's p-trap, and it was horrifying. i felt kind of low-class; trashy. i was ashamed, thinking about my fortunate genetic legacy of having good teeth: my father never had a cavity and even died with a primary tooth in his mouth(yes, it was one of his own). nobody in my family ever needed braces. my teeth were always straight, but i had a couple fillings by the time i was 10...i always had a sweet tooth. it was like having been given a shiny family heirloom and allowing it to become tarnished.
been thinking a lot about the slow decline and future of my car lately, about as much as i have been thinking about the future of Lupita and me. secretly i've been wondering if this really has any future; if it's going anywhere. secretly, i've been doubting. then from out of the blue she hits me with "do you think we could ever live together?" i'd honestly never seriously considered it--she lives and works near Capital City, and i'm planning on moving somewhere no closer to there than here after i graduate, and then re-enroll and finish my culinary degree before focusing on finding the big job. apparently unsatisfied with the level of my discomfort from this line of questioning, she finished the combination with "where is this going? what are your intentions with me? i don't want to invest all this time and energy into this and be left hanging...you're not that selfish are you?" and so on. she even re-questioned my fidelity. nothing enrages me more than being put in impossible positions; being asked impossible questions. i see them as unfair game; a no-win manipulation--on one side, the result is making a commitment to something you're not sure that you want to do for the sake of someone else, and on the other side, it's a setup for either an answer you don't want to hear or a potential resentment. the night grew cold and slow and silent. the conversation words, usually scribbled cursive that lazily flew through the air became concrete blocks of letters that sporadically fell from the sky, threatening to crush us. one hard look shows that yes, i could be that selfish, but i can't predict the future--there's an awful lot of room between now and any point of then. i admitted that i didn't know if i was in love with her, as she told me she was with me, but i know how much i'd miss her if she were gone, and that must mean something.
while this was going on, 100 miles away, Elrod was sitting in a restaurant being berated by his girlfriend, who was also beating him over the head with impossible things: "yeah, even the fact that there was no parking and i had to drop her off at the front, drive to find a spot and then walk to the place was my fault..." to make matters worse, there was a box of diamonds and gold burning a hole in his pocket as he questioned asking the big question to her.
friday was apparently a rough day for relationships in my world.
luckily, nobody freaked out too bad; Lupita and i are still together, and Elrod is now a financ, and if everything stays steady, i'll be ministering two weddings in october.