In the Fik of it

There are days where I wish I smoked.   Days where I’d like to just lean back in my seat at work, light one up and watch the smoke curl up towards the fluorescent lights on the unbroken expanse of white ceiling.   Just stare at all those acres of tiles and lights and wonder about their mathematical predictability.   Perhaps a combination of the biological nicotine boost and the social marker of disengagement that the clink of a lighter would give me would suffice.   There’s something about the magical path that a fine curl of smoke produces; its like watching fish in an aquarium with the exception that you don’t feel sorry for smoke like you do for the fish. Quiet introspection that’s embraced by a process both edifying and destroying me at the same time.   Smoke.   Maybe we both need it.   I listened last night as my wife fought to quell the obsessive-compulsive behaviors of Bethany.   She went from tired and frustrated to assertive ...

I ate dinner in the bathroom tonight.   Its not that I wanted to eat dinner in there, it’s that I had to eat dinner in there.   Bethany’s suffocatingly obsessive mood occasionally forces me to have to hide from her and the bathroom is the only room in the house with a table, a chair and a lock.   Tonight, she wanted what was on my plate and nothing else would do, her obsession with eating my food was nearly manic.   I could have put Styrofoam packing peanuts on my plate and she’d have asked for more. I sat there on the stool, it’s a nice German toilet; wall mounted with a concealed tank for easy cleaning (a plus if you have inattentive boys at home).   All in all, a pretty fancy item for an 1870’s farmhouse but since where the crapper now stands, so once was located the kitchen, I figured “upscale” was proper.   I’m told it’s the exact spot where “Grandma Bowmaster” once had the cookie crock located.   I think the stool, or tonight’s din...