Random Esquire

1. Plush dancing = sexy.

2. No woman on her back can be naked enough.

3. Flirting = sexy.

4. Aggressive women = sexy.

5. Plush smells great. Have I mentioned?

Little Filthy and I had a quiet dinner at home tonight. We almost had an argument. I grabbed a sandwich and an apple and set them down on the coffee table so I could get the monster his grub.

Roughly three months ago, Little Filthy ceased his normal habit of eating his food at breakneck speed. In fact, he began to look at his food and then up at me, expressing his disappointment through his very hesitancy to empty the contents of his food bowl into his stomach – stat. This prompted me to try a few different foods, even mixing them to see if he simply preferred something different. Finally, I noted that if I put a bit of warm water on his food, he’d eat with the previous gusto to which I had become accustomed. I’ve been doing this for the past couple of months.

Tonight, just out of curiosity, I left his food dry. He walked over and looked in his bowl and then looked up at me. Back at his bowl. Back at me. And with his eyes, he emoted, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I sighed, got up, picked up his bowl and brought it over to the sink. I pretended to put water in it. Then I put it back down for him.

Let me pause here for a moment. I don’t know why I pretended to put water in his food. It’s one of those dumb things you do because the idea strikes you and you go with it just to see. In fact, many things I’ve done in life later required an explanation that began with, “I just wanted to see what would happen if I…”

Bowl down, me back at my plate. Little Filthy staring in disbelief. Glaring in disbelief.

I got up, put some warm water over his food, put it down, and turned around just in time to see him with his front paws up on the coffee table, delicately pulling the cheese off of my sandwich. I yelled, “HEY!” but it was too late. Cheese gone. Sandwich tainted. He trotted over, ate his food and then came over and sat down at my feet. I guess he’d forgiven me.

Behold. The power of cheese.

I know I’ve said this before but the advice still stands and is worth repeating:

You should never refer to any woman’s body part as her Staples Easy Button.

-R.

I got an e-mail last night at 12:30 a.m. from my sister with the subject, “In labor I think.” She said that her contractions were 8-10 minutes apart and she was watching some television and hadn’t yet told her husband but would when the contractions got closer together.  I sent her a text message and said that I hoped she was not in too much pain and not to be scared.  I remembered something from when my sister had her first child.

She had called me to tell me she was going into labor. We chatted and before we got off the phone, I said to her, “Don’t be scared…it will be okay.” I did not remember saying it but she told me later that I was the only one who reassured her about being scared…and she was definitely scared. She said she told her husband what I had said and he had looked at her a little blankly and said, “Why would you be scared?” I imagine my sister may have rolled her eyes at him for that one.

By 4:15, I had a text message announcing, “It’s a boy!” My sister and brother-in-law waited until their order was served to see if they got a baguette or a crepe (thank you, Avitania, for an analogy I can not quite shake). It does make it a bit more exciting (if that’s possible).

So now I have a niece and a nephew. I didn’t expect to get a full collection quite so quickly. NOW what am I going to do?

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy. –Bob Hope

I know well enough that this image fixed forever in my mind is not you, but the shadow of love which exists in me… and although I know this, I then think that without you, without that rare excuse you gave me,… now a tenderness today would be there within, sleeping still, and lying in hope… then I thank you. –Luis Cernuda

Come, come, whoever you are,

Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving – it

doesn’t matter,

Ours is not a caravan of despair,

Come, even if you have broken your vow a

hundred times.

Come, come again, come.

–Jelaluddin Rumi

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found it was ourselves.

–Robert Frost

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. –J. Krishnamurti

I do not take drugs. I am drugs. –Salvador Dali

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. –Ernest Hemingway

Life is ever

Since man was born

Licking honey

From a thorn.

–Louis Ginsberg

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it. –Annie Dillard

1. My new television came yesterday. The UPS guy was cool and did not leave my packages in the mail room but hauled them all up to my door. (I had four large packages, in total.) I thanked him and he said, “I’m your regular UPS guy and I like to bring big packages up.” He got about halfway down the hall before a thought occurred to me and I yelled down to him, “Wait! This TV is replacing another one…would you like it?” So we both got something new for the weekend.

2. Plush and I went out last night. I do not quite know where to begin to explain the evening…except to say that a stranger planned out our lives for us and it included both children and an early retirement. I believe the names of the children were even decided. Plush kindly talked said stranger out of naming the child Vance.

3. Earlier in the week, Instigator relayed to me that Fresh Express was in the restroom taking, more or less, a sponge bath…except with paper towels. We have both decided that telling strangers stories about Fresh Express makes us look a bit like the teller of tall tales or outright liars. We could not make this stuff up.