Low Blood Sugar Blues

I walk in the door after work and shed my tie and button-down, my flat-front pants, changing into my workout shorts and a t-shirt to do yoga.

But instead of yoga, I end up staring into the internet, scrolling through Facebook, watching videos, anything but getting on the mat.

When I finally do settle down for my evening session, I'm shaky and I can't focus, and I lack all motivation, even to do the things that I know will rid me of this sense of unease.

As I'm doing my third round of sun salutation, I try to remember what I've eaten today and realize, almost nothing.

My Boots Make Me a God

"My boots are so awesome," I tell Katie, now that we're home and safely in our warm kitchen, out of the gross puddles and icy sidewalks that felled lesser mortals with inferior footwear.

"I know," she says. "I felt like I had superpowers."

"I am a titan!" I cry exultantly.

Thankless Work

The woman is bent almost double, scraping at the frozen sidewalk with a snow shovel, peeling up the slick ice in sheets.

She looks up as I walk by, trying to stay out of everyone's way as we come home from our evening commute.

"Sorry," she murmurs, her voice breathy from exertion.

"Thanks," I say, meaning, for your service, for cleaning up the sidewalk, but I realize how it could sound.

Intellectual Conversation

In order to stop her from poking me, I've resorted to laying on top of my wife, using my weight to pin her arms to her sides while she wriggles and laughs.

"You're like a baby giraffe," she says, giggling. "With your black tongue and your weird, alien nubs on top of your head."

She pounds me on the back like I'm some sort of horse, shouting, "Your mother was a zookeeper and your father was a giraffe!"

Timor Mortis Conturbat Me

I'm on the can, scanning the news on my phone, when I read he's gone, and the sudden stab of loss slips the phone from my fingers to thud on the rug. I chide myself for an overdramatic fool and pick it up to read the familiar story again: talent, hard work, drug use into abuse into rehab, overdose.

I remember meeting him once, before he'd done more than, I don't know, two movies maybe, shaking his hand, telling him how truly great I thought he was.

Later, as I'm walking down the street to pick up laundry, I think about the decision somebody makes - him, me, anybody - to go do that one thing you can't help doing, not knowing that this time, this is the time it kills you, steals you from the world and the people that love you, leaving the world a poorer, sadder place.

Sometimes These Things Practically Write Themselves

While we stand at the stoplight, the woman jogs by and stops just in front of us bouncing, running in place. She looks like your typical winter jogger - black tights, black tight top made of spongy-looking, wetsuit type material, bright shoelaces on styrofoam and space-age materials shoes.

Katie steps forward without a word, and gently, precisely, plucks a single thick string off the back of the woman's top without actually touching her.

She steps back to my side, satisfied look on her face, twisting the string between her forefinger and thumb, and I shake my head, saying, "Well, there's my four each day."

The Gift

I wake, as I have for the last 4 days, at 6:30, give or take. I pick up my phone, check the time, sip water to soothe my scratchy morning throat from the straw in the big plastic cup I keep on my bedside table.

There's a moment when I consider just rolling over and napping until my alarm goes off in half an hour, but I hear a voice (it's my own) saying to me, "Don't go back to sleep."

'You wanted to get more done, and you're given a gift like this." the voice (still mine) continues, "so you'd better just get up and write," and so I do.