contentment

Today is a good day. And I’m knocking on wood and all things particle board to keep it that way.

My sister has agreed to go on a trip with me, one originating in Venice in the fall, and I thought my head would explode when she accepted my vacation proposal. My enthusiasm for the long term is closely followed by complete thrill for my date for Valentine’s Day, a woman with whom I will compete for the most stellar Missed Connections post in the history of Craigslist (you: blonde, chin covered in turkey leg grease and mead; me: noble knight smelling faintly of horse manure; us: fortuitous meeting by the stocks after supper?)

Cricket took her asthma medication without writing her gang sign in my skin. The writers’ strike may end today, giving me something other than PBS and sanding my foot skin to entertain me. 7-11 had extra Super Big Gulp cups hidden in the cabinet, and the clerk retrieved one for me with a smile and without a comment about caffeine addiction. My apartment is incredibly toasty despite the bitter cold. I am down three pounds. I am not Amy Winehouse.

There’s always someone to ruin a beautiful day like this one and today is no exception. This is the person we all know, the one who waits at the side of the stage stroking his handlebar moustache while plotting a puppy’s drowning. If the opportunity presents itself to me again today, which it will undoubtedly do given that I haven’t felt this positive since Noah built his ark, I will smile, threaten to pull his eyelashes out one by painful one, and remind him in a whisper that one cannot smell even the faintest traces of cyanide in Diet Coke.