The Bloody Doors Off

What the fuck am I even doing here?

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Graphic designer, playwright, occasional asshole

  • Fallout Boy Meets Girl

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    TLDR: Walked the dog in the rain, took an umbrella instead of my cane to keep me balanced and my gait consistent.

    I got a block and a half before I fucked it up. And like an idjit, I kept going along our usual nightly route because the poor girl has been really sick this week and today was the first day a spark returned to Maisie’s eyes.

    I might have to resume wearing das boot tomorrow.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

    I will not leave the house again without my cane. Holyfuckinggodthishurts.

  • 1994 (Taylor’s Version)

    In 1994, I was:

    • Working at CIBC Wood Gundy nee CIBC World Markets (freelance, hadn’t been upped to full-time yet)
    • Had produced my first Toronto Fringe play, “Live at the Apocalypse” (that later became a much superior “The Promised Land“)
    • Heavily involved with TheatreSports Toronto

    It’s amazing how much I’d forgotten until I saw this flyer posted on Facebook by my friend Chris Hayward. This was the year I’d met Joe (from the NY TheatreSports team) and we became instant friends (after being so sure we already knew each other). He extended an invite to jam with their troupe if and when I visited the Five Boroughs. I went the following spring (or late winter, I remember it was cold) and while they were between seasons on stage, I sat in on a workshop where I learned the Coming Attractions game that I brought back to Toronto.

    (This was also before Times Square had been sanitized and made family-friendly. I took a trip there. It was… eye-opening. And it fit me like a glove, so what does that tell you?)

    I crashed at a friend’s fourth floor walk-up in Lower Manhattan (and where I learned how you afforded New York City rents; rent out every fucking room and put in at least one bunk bed). I stood outside the Today Show studio with its glass wall so people could look in (and for the cameras to look out at the idiots trying to get on camera… I think I was spotted, but as the show was live, who knows?). I loved riding the subway to Brooklyn. The graffiti was iconic, to me at least. I think Letterman was at the Ed Sullivan Theatre then; I have a memory of staring at Rupert G’s deli (didn’t order though).

    All this from a flyer posted on a social media website. Stuff I’d buried/forgotten until now.

    Memory is a fucked up thing.

  • (We’ve all come to look for) America

    Better have a seat; this might take a while.

    Maybe dim the lights. Atmosphere.

    And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you know. (Maybe take out a restraining order.)

    It’s been incredibly hard of late.

    And I may have talked about this below. And it could be contradictory by the time you get there. (Because I’m writing this part last. If that’s not clear, then I suck as a writer.)

    But I think I’m allowed.

    Financially, I’m on the razor’s edge.

    I have a monthly commitment to the CRA for back taxes, and the credit card likes to crawl over its limit and fixing that takes a good chuck of change. Add in a few choice spends (paying for groceries for a change), wet food for the cats, kibble for all the fur babies. It adds up. Last month I had a $6 Uber charge bounce (twice) and got charged $45 NSF (twice!), which put me in the negative. I eventually got it reversed (after applying for overdraft, how do you think that conversation turned out). But. Fuck.

    There are days I can’t walk the length of the condo, I’m in so much pain from the plantar fasciitis. When I can walk, I cannot overextend myself or it’ll trigger a flare up and that’s all she wrote for at least 24 hours.

    I think my memory is impaired.

    That’s the first time I’ve thought that out loud, let alone admitted it publicly.

    I forget conversations. I forget names. I forget events.

    At least the imagined conversations were dreamt as I’d nodded off moments earlier.

    It could be a side effect of a drug I’m on. Wouldn’t that be awesome?! Find a different medication for my restless leg and I won’t keep dropping people, places and things.

    But.

    And there’s always a but. Amiright?

    Old, buried memories. Events and people and vivid details of such. Someone created a Paul Koster Film Festival and are replaying lost memories because isn’t it fun to see where you thought you’d be or how the fuck could you make THAT decision, you nit wit? Occasionally? Oh yeah, I remember her. I can replay running through the secret path behind the houses on the north side of Painted Post Drive during a game of hide ‘n seek and remember when I had to climb over or squeeze through, start to finish.

    But I didn’t remember we had that conversation yesterday.

    Tonight, I’ll sing my songs again. I’ll play the game and pretend. (Can I get an occupation? God’s receptionist? Thank you, you intelligent bastard.)

    This all I write now. Complaints and snide comments about the American political landscape. No one fucking cares. It scares the shit out of me because it will spill over here. I don’t know to what extent. But we’ve already seen the Freedom Convoy occupy the city of Ottawa in 2022; what a shitshow that was. This was our MAGA-equivalent, striking a blockade and demanding repealing vaccine mandates and other extreme shit. Ha, this was the one time the US tried to follow us. Someone south of the border tried the same thing and no one showed up. Too many truckers and people on the fringe who want change because goddammit I don’t like these fucking guys walking down the street holding hands, and they’re trying to implant a 5G tracking chip in me through the Covid-19 vaccine, and it’s not really Justin Trudeau running the country, it’s a consortium of lizard people from the dawn of time.

    (Okay, I made that last one up. Or did I?)

    Things are. Fragile. That’s the only word I can attach to what I see happening in America. Hungarian Prime Minister Dictator Viktor Orban recorded an audio endorsement for Trump today. And then everyone reacts as they always react, with either outrage or a shrug and an excuse for his behaviour. Even people who’ve realized the orange cheeto is a fraudster and rapist and grifter and have successfully deprogrammed themselves from the cult will still vote for him because the other guy is (a) three years older than Trump, and (b) he’s a democrat and they’re worse. How? Why? Because. Don’t ask questions I don’t have an answer to.

    And I don’t think anyone does, to be honest. I don’t think anyone really knows how this is going to play out through to November.

    And we’ve got a federal election happening in 2025. Thankfully our election cycle lasts six weeks. But it’s the lead-up. Will Trudeau step down and let his party elect a fresh leader? Doubtful. And Poilievre? I had to reference check the spelling 5 times. And see, that to me feels like the core issue with him. I cannot fucking get used to the mere idea that he could win a year October and the horrors he would inflict on Canada. He’s Donald Trump if Trump looked like a high school math teacher who also coached his son’s baseball team, and only discovered contact lenses because his wife thought he’d look younger. And here, we have Doug Ford, Ontario’s answer to what would happen if we elected Ron Desantis to run our province?

    Did you know? If you have a wart on your finger our socialized healthcare will not cover treatment, even though they are easily transmissible. But if it’s on a different part of your body, well friend it’s your lucky day. After they freeze the wart on your naughty bits, you should go out and by a scratch off ticket, because you’re one lucky son of a bitch! Oh, but you sir, here’s the bill. Will that be cash or credit?

    Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered, or driven to its knees. (Put the baseball bat down, that’s more than enough.)

    Okay. I was writing the above section and a word caught my eye.

    Fragile.

    And I wasn’t talking about politics.

    Earlier this week, for maybe the second time ever, I posted a long screed to a very select few people.

    I told them. I was spiralling. I laid it out, and said thanks for listening and they didn’t need to respond. But friends never listen to you, do they?

    One person made an offer, the same offer from in 2013. I felt stronger this time. And by the next evening, I was on my feet again. (Ironic choice of phrase, as I’m currently suffering through plantar fasciitis (which I’ve suffered from (as I can recall) the early 1990s) in both heels and diabetic nerve pain in various spots in my right foot (recent).

    When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. (I think the movie Coffee and Cigarettes was based on the hours I spent in a mall donut shop in the early ’80s.)

    But yeah. Didn’t know where this was going. Is it too late to pull the ripcord and junk this?

    I promised to be honest in these chronicles, whether or not it makes me look like an asshole, or needing professional help.

    Fuck.

    Honesty’s hard.

    Honesty hurts.

    Being honest with others is easy for me, once I trust you. There may be stuff you should know about me that I haven’t told you (yet), but that’s only because I’ve forgotten it.

    And if I’m being honest with myself right now?

    I’m not in control.

    Things are not five-by-five.

    It’s one-thirty in the morning and I haven’t had dinner yet. And as a diabetic, I need to inject insulin approximately 12 hours apart to maintain a steady level in my body.

    That never happens.

    I punish myself at night. I make myself wait to decide on dinner, or I will subconsciously snack on something (tonight it was potato chips with a french onion dip, something I haven’t had in years) to push back the need for my third meal.

    I’ll make dinner for my wife, I generally do. I even make extra salads so one is prepared for the next night. I haven’t done enough to forward that same offer to the boy, and that’s my failing. He’s gotten very independent of late — which is so fucking awesome, my pride for him is enormous — but I can and should still at least offer to feed him, right?

    Oh hey, look at the clock, I’ll say. It’s approaching midnight. I should eat something.

    Such a horn of plenty on offer: 2 frozen dinners, frozen chicken strips. If I want something hot I could fry up that ham steak sitting in the back of the fridge (for how long now? at least it’s vacuum sealed so it’ll last another week, right?) but it’s late and Marlo isn’t a fan of the smell of ham cooking so I could run the range fan to suck out the smoke but now it’s going to be loud and dude, it’s midnight for fuck’s sake what are you doing polluting the condo with the smell of meat across the room from a vegetarian?

    Well, there’s beans. Again.

    Or I can put a ham and cheese sandwich on the griddle.

    Path of least resistance.

    So I’ve been trying to change that. I fried up the ham steaks, fried some eggs. Made spaghetti for the first time in a decade, I’m sure. Felt accomplished. Felt good.

    So why am I not doing that now? Why did I buy those pork chop things that I used to enjoy, just sitting in the fridge. Because it’s ‘too late’?

    Or I haven’t got the willpower.

    It’s too much work to feed myself.

    Hence my abnormal (until recently) amount of delivery orders from various restaurant chains.

    It was one or the other, as far back as I moved away from home (the second time). I would batch cook food on Sundays to last me for a week. My go to’s were meatloaf, tuna casserole and spicy sausage pasta in the crock pot. Jesus Christ, you put cheese on top and microwave it just enough to melt? I made food, and it was good.

    Maybe that was the secret. I got it over with and didn’t have to face that reality again for another 7 days.

    Never gonna happen like that again, unless we get a kitchen twice our current size and a 36 cubic foot, stainless steel French door refrigerator with an ice maker, a spout for cold water, a computer panel that temperature controls various compartments based on its contents, and a transparent screen that, with a push of a button, will light up and show you how many yogurts you have stacked.

    Yes, I’ve thought of this.

    Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be 70.

    I’m phoning it in with my psychiatrist. And as he is now in his mid 80s, and should probably quietly retire, his questioning of late aren’t very probing, even after I told him I was spiralling (before I wrote it in a private Facebook post) and he asked if I needed any refills on my pills and confirming the same conversation in two weeks.

    So I’m intentionally withholding vital information about my mental health from a man who has medical privileges at North York General and has been helping people fight their demons his whole adult life.

    My demons sense a chink in my armour.

    And I’m worried they’re about to storm the castle.

    Think it’ll work?

    It’d take a miracle.

    It’s 2:25 am. I guess I should eat something.

  • Burying the Lead

    It’s a crisp fall night at the end of January (thanks climate change). After midnight, the only sounds come from a passing streetcar to the Distillery Loop. Our street has just enough light to be atmospheric.

    I’m walking Missus Maisie. She’s having a blast. We started out back in our condo because I’m doubling up my activity with taking out the organics to the bin. Maisie waits until she’s past the final recycling bin to squat and relieve herself. I’m a proud poppa. (The building manager sent out a building-wide email with a complaint that dog owners were allowing their pets to pish by the bins and residents have complained because allegedly they stepped in the liquid and carried the smell back to their unit. The email came the morning after I’d taken her down and she did exactly that, so it’s pretty clear he looked at the security footage and sent a subliminal ‘fuck you’ to me through the internet.*

    *I don’t know why, but I get the feeling he doesn’t like me. On January 1st, we had a small flood in the bathroom (late in the evening) and had to call the emergency number. They routed the call to him and he asked me to ping him on WhatsApp to send photos. So when the Fucking Debacle That Was the First Attempt to Deliver the Washer/Dryer went down**, I hit him up on WhatsApp to tell him we needed the cleaner to stay past 3pm so I’d still have access to the elevator I booked. And boy did he lay down the law on that one after.

    **Because of the snowstorm the night before, the delivery guys were running late. I had a noon to 3pm window, and they weren’t going to be at the condo until closer to 4. The cleaner — who doesn’t speak English but I lucked out and a resident was there on the other end of the call and she translated. After securing his overtime, I got another call from the delivery guys confirming their approaching arrival and asked nonchalantly if the w/d had been disconnected. As they were going to install the unit after delivery, I thought they would disconnect the existing. I was wrong. They turned the truck around and I had to rebook. (Ultimately, I had to rebook 4 times.)

    So we’re walking.

    Along the little strip of road from the back of our building, that empties onto Trinity Street. But what was once a car park to the north is now a beast of an ‘urban planned’ condo construction and we are separated by a flimsy metal fence with a blue tarp draped over it. (Were they embarrassed at how chintzy the ground floor looked?) Maisie loves, loves sniffing around that area. She pulls the leash hard so that I have no choice but to follow, and it’s killing my feet because my plantar fasciitis hasn’t eased that much.

    But as I said, she was loving this. Down the cobblestones between our companion condo and a boarded up remnant of when the Distillery District was a distillery, Maisie zeroes in on one of the concrete planters that are bereft of life. This doggo spends a good two minutes sniffing one wall and a spot on the ground. Clearly another dog left an opus to be deciphered and responded to.***

    ***I’m reminded of a sketch the late Frank McNulty performed with 500 Miles Off Broadway back in the ’90s. He enters the stage on all fours, clearly playing a dog who comes upon a pish that was just left by another canine. As he sniffs, a voiceover booms something akin to “Please leave a message” and then Frank lifts a leg and another voiceover with a staggeringly funny blow line that brings to the lights and the audience down. {If there’s anyone who remembers this, it’s gonna be MJ Jacques. She was there during the golden age of sketch and improv in Toronto.

    As we turn back onto Mill Street and head back to the condo, a thought. Remember how I said earlier that it was a crisp fall night for the middle of winter? I was wearing an unzipped hoodie and loved that slight chill that perks you up and makes you want to do something. (What, only me?)

    I think how wonderful it would be to sit on the bench in front of the building and wrap myself in this feeling of bliss. I’ve made my decision.

    But then.

    I have no phone so I can doomscroll Twitter (NEVER calling it by it’s new name). It would be an eye strain if I were to get a book. Plus, if I came upstairs for a book, I probably would talk myself into not going back.

    Which means. I’d be alone with my thoughts.

    And someone says (probably Harold, that fucker’s been MIA for a good long time, of course now he’d drop his bags and announce an extended stay), “that’s really not a good idea.”

    I know it to be true.

    And that kinda scares me.

    And that’s where this post ends. Because I scurried up the stairs and through the vestibule. Had to distract with TV and throwing this out to the internet to be judged and trolled, probably.

    But that’s nowhere near as bad as being along with my thoughts right now.

  • Maisie is from Mexico. This is her first winter in Canada. It’s 2am and she needs to pish.

    It’s -21°C outside, and Maisie needs a pee before night-night’s.

    I grab my hoodie and grab her leash. She’s not wearing her winter coat; qe won’t be that long.

    We go out back, and my fingers are already fighting frostbite. Maisie pees once, sniffs around. This girl needs 3 stops to empty her tank. I walk her around the covered area for recycling and organics bins and the back entrance for any move-ins(outs) and deliveries. Management has terminated elevator bookings on Thursday and Friday to ensure the City trucks have access to our waste. Even booking a weekend slot is frowned upon, so you get Mon-Wed, 9am to 4pm. But that’s another post.

    We circle again, Maisie finds her spot.

    Great. I tap the sensor and the heavy steel door opens.

    But Maisie has other ideas. She walks north, insisting I follow her. I try to take back control and bring her to heel. She sits. Stares at me with her convincing smile. She woofs, as if to say “We’re going around the block”. I tell her no. Maisie stands on her hind legs, and twirls.

    We went around the block.

    And she did poop.

    It was tiny, and I couldn’t really see it mixed with twigs and dirt, so I had to reverse baggy my hand and manually search for it.

    Not that Maisie cared. And we were off to complete the circuit.

    My fingers eventually unfroze.

    Could you say no to these eyes?

  • It’s the great Christmas light fight, Charlie Brown

    I’ve been plagued by memories of early childhood of late.

    A jigsaw puzzle but the pieces are all turned over so all you see is the cardboard. The only way you can see part of the picture is to match two pieces based entirely on shape, and only then do you turn over the interconnected bits to see.

    Tonight turned up memories of parents’ less than amicable split in the ’70s. (Just figuring out the basic timeline makes me feel old.) Things are still fragmented; clearly not enough puzzle pieces have interlocked yet. I don’t remember when my father left.

    Kicked out. He was kicked out.

    He had a drinking problem.

    He had a girlfriend problem.

    I hadn’t learned these facts until much later in my life.

    One second he was working all hours at a green-hued metal desk in their bedroom, taking booking requests for stagehands at various Toronto theatres, and calling people to give them a few days of back-breaking work loading and/or unloading travelling theatrical productions.

    Aside. I remember that desk well. It was near the back wall, under the bedroom window. And it provided a fantastic place for a tiny me to find myself leaning against in the middle of the night during winter months as the furnace pumped out air directly below. That particular floor vent was the holy grail of places to toast my feet (second place was awarded to the wall vent in the kitchen, just inches from the kitchen table; our dog Brandy knew the sitch and would run there every time he heard the furnace click over). The compressed, hot air was (is) soothing for reasons I cannot put words to. We share a symbiotic relationship. It needed to provide me warmth and the bottoms of my feet needed to roast over the grill like 10 little marshmallows on a stick.

    I couldn’t tell you when that desk disappeared.

    All I remember were late night shouting matches, partly because my father had been kicked out (and hadn’t left voluntarily, as I learned later), with vitriol over his infidelity and drinking.

    The cops were called.

    At least once.

    My bedroom was on the other side of the dining room, which was open to a seating area, with just a wall separating from the kitchen. You could hear everything from the front door. Or maybe he tried to enter through the side door; that would’ve placed them directly opposite to my room. My door was always closed back then. But I could hear everything.

    And here is the point of tonight’s screed.

    No one told me. What was going on. I was, what, in 4th grade? (I remember a wellness check with the school nurse, but I think that was 5th grade.) My point is, I recognized something was going on. My father, who I’d chosen as my hero when I understood what a hero was, was no longer living with us. No explanation was provided to me. No one spoke about his late night arrivals. Like the time police had been called to remove him from the premises. (Was there a restraining order? I have no fucking clue. NO ONE WOULD TELL ME.)

    Only that fateful (cold?) night that my mum drove me (and only me) and simply said they were getting a divorce. And oh yeah, she bought me a Star Trek board game that night. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better.

    So I have deep seated issues when something’s going on and I’m kept out of the loop. Which I think also fuels my need to write shit like this down and share it with the world writ large.

    I can’t stand not knowing.

    And the fucking puzzle pieces are a right bitch to assemble.

  • Chumbawumba, bitches.

    I was out, earlier today. Errands. Needed coins from the bank for laundry (our washing machine is the one thing in our house that doesn’t get agitated when the furry kids don’t get along) and to drop off 2 parcels to Canada Post.*

    *Should have been 1 parcel.** That’s another story.

    **Two bags. I don’t know why I couldn’t find a reusable bag large enough to fit them***

    ***They’re taking over the hallway. Has anyone realized yet this is worse than the previous system?

    The streetcar was short-turning one stop east of my destination. No biggie. Weather was nippy and overcast; pulled up the zipper on my new winter jacket.*

    *That’s another story too.

    I cross the street south, and carry on.

    Two steps and I trip. I careen forward, picking up speed as I flail my arms as if they will catch my descent and reverse the incline.

    There’s a woman directly in front of me. I can’t get out of the way. Maybe she’ll brace with extended arms to catch my fall.

    Or she could step aside and let me eat pavement.*

    *I wanted to make this post a Choose Your Adventure but I live in Toronto. There’s only one outcome.**

    **I ate pavement, the packages scattered on the concrete.

    I rolled onto my back. I’m pretty sure I said FUCK* at least once.

    *Is the bold face too much?

    Thankfully, a good Samaritan crossed the street to assist. He helped me up, made sure I was okay.*

    *I don’t think he lives in Toronto. My bet is he was on his way to catch a GO Train at Union Station to parts east of the downtown core, where they make a habit of stretching their arms and catching people as they trip on a smooth surface.

    When I got back to the neighbourhood, I slipped into the Distillery Winter Market and stood in line for 30+ minutes to get 5 bars of Aero Truffle candy.*

    *These are full size. And they’re giving them away.

    Once out of the uh, dome*, I hot-footed it to the exit and home.**

    *Why does EVERYONE have to take a fucking selfie in that thing? Okay, it’s got pretty lights. But are you really gonna post a picture of you holding multiple chocolate bars?

    **The crowds are INSANE. Even on Monday. And we’re stuck with this until January 7th, 2024.

    TL:DR I am starting to hate this city.

  • Tweeter and the Monkey Man

    I keep calling him Skeeter in my head, even though Tweeter works better.

    Latest earworm.

    Almost sparked an idea.

    Took me back to improv days. One game to play, if you had a musician accompanying, was Make a Song. It’s what it sounds like. Improv = making shit up, Improv Song = making shit up, but with a beat and rhyming.

    And this song. This song.

    I swear.

    I can imagine these guys were just goofing in the recording studio when someone laid down a guitar track and Dylan began to tell a story.

    And those are the best songs: when they have a story.

    Stories.

    I love telling stories.

    When that door opened. With my first play. Which we all know was done in a panic because I’d gotten into the Toronto Fringe and all I had was a (shitty) title.

    I struggled. The only play that really came naturally was A Song For Rachel, and only after events of October 2013.

    When I discovered Sing For Your Supper and Toronto Cold Reads, that’s when my creative mind cracked wide open.

    And I wrote some great stuff.

    There was a piece inspired by an actual improv event some years back, which became a play within a play involved me and Marlo, as ourselves, within its 5 pages. Incredibly meta. And I swear, it can only be performed that one time.

    Then you should agree with me. The scene was a circle jerk. Better to provide the mercy killing it deserves and move on.

    Go Long, by me

    IYKYK, know what I mean?

    Sometime during the Covid shutdown, I lost it. Whatever spark I had, that thrill of telling a complete story no longer than 15 pages.

    It left.

    And then I have this blog. I was writing it in. A lot.

    Until that evaporated.

    Granted, I seem to be slowly finding that voice again.

    Curious to see what language it speaks.

  • Last Dance with Mary Jane

    They’re playing doubles Pickle ball at the Y, as the harvest moon casts a tawny glow across Front Street.

    But that’s not what this blog post is about.

    Last Thursday, I bought a small deep-dish apple pie from Metro.

    I’m pre-heating the oven and as it ticks up from 145 degrees Fahrenheit (Canada is metric because I don’t know why, we wanted to sit with the cool kids?).

    I’m pre-heating the oven with my love’s help. She put the pan in the oven and set the timer, so technically she’s baking the pie.

    And I think to myself.

    It’s Saturday.

    Saturday.

    It’s not Sunday.

    Because, growing up. My mum, dad and then step-father, my brothers. Doris and Bill, my maternal grandparents. We visited them most Sundays. It was always pot roast (which, because the English (they’re from England, came across by boat in World War II; I think there’s a story about a German torpedo hitting or nearly hitting the boat) and I’m German on my dad’s side, so imagine the constant war in my head, two sides unwilling to yield any real estate) anyway, made a conscious choice to cook it in a roasting pan WITH THE LID ON.

    (Anyone catch if I missed a closed bracket in that preceding ramble? My copy editors broke for lunch ten minutes ago.)

    But it’s not Sunday.

    It’s Saturday. And I miss them. My mom. Doris. Bill. Kevin, Wayne and Donna & the kids. And other relatives I’ve lost over the years.

    If only the tawny moon would grant one more family dinner. So I can tell them I love them. And to introduce them to my family. And while we don’t have traditional traditions revolving around meal time, we’re developing a few of our own.

    The artificial Christmas tree was delivered Thursday.

    Three cats. One anxious dog. Existing in the same space as a six foot five inch seductress.

    With twinkly lights.

    …

    What have I done?

    Surprisingly quiet on Mill Street.

  • Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood?

    Mazel Tov to the happy couple