The Great Lie

I have been pondering the seemingly genetic quirk of humanity regarding the obsession over negative details.  Being an insecurity addict, I am well aware of this unfortunate tendency to look in the mirror and see a plethora of flaws, faults and flabby failings.  What is the reason behind obviously preferring to look at life through shit-colored glasses instead of rosy ones?  I don't enjoy it; I'd prefer to look in the mirror and be perfectly content with what I see.  Despite my day-to-day struggles against my I-Hate-Me brainwashing, I have to say that I am far, far kinder to myself than I've been in the past.  I used to be so fucked up, I'd slap myself in the face and claw my arms when the self-hatred became too thick a bubblin' brew.  Now, I truly do love myself, with the occasional ugly rearing of some ugly mental trends.  But I'll keep at them, whittling them down with a steady, plodding regimen of positive reinforcements.  But why do I do it in the first place?  Why does pretty much everybody do it?  Why are we obsessed with the negatives to begin with?

Having been married to a scientist for almost a decade and a half (before the divorce), I now have a tendency to look for facts and figures in such a case.  Metaphysical and spiritual reckonings are all well and good, and they have their merit, but I want some cold hard facts to back them up.  What is it inside humanity that swings this way?  Because it seems rather universal and to me, quite stupid and without true merit.  What good does it do to be mean to yourself or others?  Seriously, who thought this negative this shit up?  Who first said, "Oh yeah, let's tell our children how awful they are.  That'll do them good.  Let's nag our spouses so they make an effort to do better; praise doesn't work so let's put 'em down."  As a waitress, I listen daily to people agonizing over calories and inches on their waist.  I hear boyfriends tease girlfriends over their weight, I hear girlfriends nag boyfriends over not being able to pay for lobster, I hear wives and husbands go for each others' throats over the wine list.  I listen with real sadness to indescribably beautiful co-workers talking about yet another new diet because they aren't...quite...small enough yet.  And I do it, too.  I look in the mirror and make jokes about my own appearance.  I used to call myself the Venus of Villendorf and Kermit with Breasts until I wised up and began to pull back the reins, saying to myself, "No.  Don't be cruel.  Don't talk about yourself that way."  Why don't we realize how important it is to protect ourselves inside, especially from our own mean ass thoughts?  I had a tough, tough childhood but nobody was meaner to me than me.  I blamed myself for everything: my own molestation, my ugliness, my stupidity, my talent gone to waste, my lousy choices in not one husband but two, my failure as a parent...I hated Rebecca O'Donnell.  I really, really hated that bitch in the mirror and I blamed her for everything wrong in the world.  Everywhere.  I even began to think that children were starving because I hadn't figured out a way to help them.  There's a weird egotistical factor in the insecure.  We think we can solve every problem, and every problem is our fault.  Then our subconscious, which isn't as dumb as our conscious mind, gets mad and kicks us too.  Something deep inside knows we're lying to ourselves, knows the abusive people we surround ourselves with are assholes, and shrieks at us for getting us in this mess in the first place.  Blame, blame, hatred and rage.  A Bubbling Brew, black and sticky.

I wonder if it has anything to do with survival instinct?  Maybe some primal area of our brain files the negatives in a more prominent area for the protection of the body.  If an animal goes up to a lion and sniffs it, the lion will most likely eat it.  The rest of the herd learns to avoid lions.  If an animal goes up to a tree and lies underneath it, chances are, the tree won't attack.  Trees aren't necessarily a fight or flight reflex memory because they're pretty benevolent.  Nothing will be filed away in the survival instinct records.  An animal won't avoid a tree but won't seek it out either, unless for shade, cover or food.  Not as a thing to be threatened by, or protect self from.  There's no puzzle to be solved regarding fauna.  Could that have something to do with it too?  Survival instinct is all about problem solving.  Avoid teeth, fire and steep drops in the landscape.  Do that and your survival chances improve drastically.  Problem solved.  Then there's the survival instinct predominant in mammals, of obeying the parents.  Don't wander away from mama rhino if you don't want the hyenas to get you.  She told you. Stay close.  So if our parents tell us we're sacks of shit, doesn't it make sense that our primal instinct is to believe, then try to obey and not be sacks of shit?  How does one solve that problem? 

No kid is a sack of shit.  But that doesn't prevent instinct from making us believe it.  We're problem-solving weenies when it comes to figuring ourselves out.  We'd rather diet, or beat ourselves and/or everybody else up, than get to the Rubik's Cube mess that's an abused person's head.  Because we're the sacks of shit here.  We're the ones who made us miserable in the first place.

Aha.  That's the root of all evil right there.  The Great Lie that is told so often, by ourselves and others, by media, peers, enemies, loved ones, advertisements and backstabbing get-ahead-of-the-other-cocksuckers business practices. So try out a new puzzle: work on not believing the bubblin' black hellhole called Insecurity.  It's born and bred of the Great Lie, and that's all it is in the end.  A lie.  You're not a sack of shit.  You never were a sack of shit.  You can be happy in kindness to yourself and others and wonder of wonders, you don't have to feel guilty about it.  You can leave self-hatred behind with a smile and a wave.  It's a laborious and slow journey of discovery, but it can be done.  God knows how, but I really like myself now.  I have my moments, as I've just written about.  I'll always have them because it's embedded in my primal brain that I'm a sack of shit.  But I don't believe it anymore.

Most of the time.  Don't you believe it either.

Love, R

Fat and Sassy

I am still blorked down in a lovely turkey left-over fat stupor.  It's a strange thing, the satisfaction and joy that comes from holiday feasting.  My mind turns to Dickens, and the Ghost of Christmas Present, surrounded with all the bounty and gifts of plenty.  That's what's so beautiful about it: the gift of plenty.  I sit here, typing away, with a warm cup of chamomile tea beside me, my tummy comfortably full of turkey, and I am grateful for it all.  The warm tea, the full belly, the worn out and buttery soft flannel pajamas I'm wearing.  What a lucky and beautiful thing, to have plenty.  I think I sometimes forget that, and sometimes forget to do that: be grateful.  I bitch and whine and snarl displeasure when I'm stressed, when I'm busy, when I'm pissed off.  Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday to remind us of the fact that, on the whole, we have plenty.  With the world crashing and spinning around us, this graceful and often overlooked holiday is a welcome break from the chaos, a time to sit back, let the triptophane kick in, and turn into a couch potato, if only for a little while.  A lovely time to be fat and sassy, laid back and replete, a human horn of plenty.  Thanks for reading my blog, thanks for all the well wishes, and thanks for thoughts of pumpkin pie turned reality.  I love Thanksgiving and its glorious left over weekend.  Now it's time to lie down again and watch some holiday corniness, all with a big satisfied grin on my face. 

Love, R

Quietly Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving, all.  I had a marvelous Thanksgiving all by myself. I was invited by many to go to many places, accepted one invitation and at the last minute, discovered we were supposed to go Wednesday night, not Thursday morning.  I worked Wednesday night.  Strangely enough, I was not at all sad about being unable to go with my friend to her family's house; I'd wanted to be alone to contemplate this extraordinary year.  It has turned out to be a wonderful, gentle Thanksgiving.  I had a turkey, which I'd bought a week ago and was going to cook up for leftovers anyway, so I roasted and stuffed that, ate some pie, which I'd made for the forthcoming feast, mashed some potatoes and whipped up delicious gravy. I did some drawing, embroidered as the turkey cooked, watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Planes, Trains & Automobiles, took the turkey out, ate like a pig, then laid in a triptophanic stupor as I watched the original Miracle on 34th Street.  I lit candles to commemorate all the treasures in my life: my kids, my loved ones, this beautiful place I live in and the beloved roommate I live with, my memoir's soon-to-be-published status; all of it.  One of the great things about having experienced some truly rough shit is, it makes you more aware of the good things.  This year has been more than good.  It has been glorious.  I am the luckiest person alive right now.  To have gone from a suicidal, pissy, miserable train wreck of a human being to this: a good, kind, fulfilled person.  It's extraordinary that I can actually write such words to describe myself after so many years of self-hatred and depression.  Who would have thought it?  Who could have dreamt it?  So today was the perfect Thanksgiving for me.  I wandered about, snuggled on the couch, stitched silently, all the while my mind tripping the light fantastic inside my skull, remembering, remembering, oh, remembering all the things to be grateful for.  I have spent this time, just quietly thankful, content, and happy.  I smile as I write this.  It has been a perfect day.  Hard to believe, given how I've been for the majority of my life, that I could find such happiness with just me in the room.  As I said, who could have dreamt it?  Least of all me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love, R

The Phoenix

The first time I ever heard the name "Phoenix," I was in grade school.  There was a children's book out about a boy who befriends a Phoenix, the mythical bird which regenerates every five hundred years or so by torching itself on its own funeral pyre, then is reborn out of the ashes.  I adored that book.  Then, comic book fanatic that I am, I wept when the Xman Phoenix destroyed herself because her own power consumed her.  She's been reborn countless times since then but that's what Phoenixes do.  They burn up and come back strong.

I have a friend who's in jail right now.  She's the daughter of someone very close to me.  I'll call her Alice.  She's a young kid, very intelligent, who was the apple of her parents' eye back in the day.  Advanced Placement classes, cheer leading squad, prom court; the whole nine yards of the golden child.  Then, in her words, she "went to one party."  She got a little drunk, played a little hard, and tried drugs for the first time.  Peer pressure and the indestructible cockiness of youth wove their deadly web.  A year later, she was a train wreck of a human being and her parents were in danger of losing their home from all the legal costs and stolen credit cards. 

This isn't the only person I know who's in jail right now on drug-related charges.  I just got a letter yesterday from another kid with a similar background, and I know dozens of others through my acquaintance with their parents at my son's old rehab center.  I myself have been the victim of coked-up drunk teenagers who thought it would be a hoot to violate a second grader while high.  Of all the things on earth, there's nothing I hate worse than drugs.  Absolutely nothing.  I watch the news and see all these drug cartel wars; kids getting shot on campus, politicians and police being beheaded, gangs and their turf wars.  I don't get irritated with the obvious villains, I get irritated with their unseen financial backers. In all the anti-drug campaigns on TV, why has it never been put out there - the real costs of a "little selfish fun," as one addict scoffed to me the other day?  The most popular excuse for drug use is "it's my life, I can do what I want with it."  But it's not just your life.  It's everybody who gives a damn about you and every stranger who gets shot, raped, beheaded or rolled up in canvas and set on fire by these horrible people who make their money, overwhelmingly, by the casual user.  Lives are destroyed, neighborhoods are ruined and whole generations are put in peril, all for a little selfish fun.

The good thing in all these maudlin musings and grisly statistics is the individual.  There's nothing I hate more than drugs and very few things I admire more than an addict who struggles to get clean.  It is a lifelong task because it's so fucking indescribably difficult.  I talked to a young addict a few months ago, back when he still insisted he wasn't an addict and could "stop any time he wanted to."  In the same breath, he admitted that the longest he'd ever gone without using was three weeks.  "But I'm not an addict," he insisted.  I looked at him and said, "If I came up to you tomorrow and had a football-sized tumor on the side of my neck, one that bent my head completely sideways, what would you think?"  He just looked at me, laughed and said, "I'd think you had a big fucking tumor on the side of your neck."  "Of course.  But I keep telling everybody it's just a zit, and nothing you can say to me will change my mind.  So, am I delusional when I tell you you're an addict, or is that just a big fucking zit on your neck?"

A using addict is the lowest of the low.  There is nothing they won't do for their drug, very little they won't do while high on their drug, and that's simply a literal and depressing fact.  When they're using, there is nothing good, or kind, or thoughtful, or even decent about them.  They are low down dirty dogs.  But my God, what an accomplishment to crawl back out of that pit.  It is a miraculous thing. One of the blessings I've gleaned from all these crappy memories of mine is the fact that I can see beauty in a pile of shit human being, just so long as he or she tries to crawl out of their own filth.  I always think about the prodigal son story in the bible, the one Jesus told when he was trying to suggest the unheard of idea that bigotry was wrong.  Youngest son, party animal, leaves home, blows his inheritance on "riotous living" then begins to starve to death.  He decides to go home, tail between his legs, Dad's happy to see him, clean living eldest son gets pissed.  Not without cause, either; the youngest son was an asshole.  But look what he accomplished just by asking for help.  He found his humanity again.  The first thing drugs do is cut off your metaphorical balls and make you a dickless wonder.  It's hard to control a person who's brave, so courage has got to go. After that, anything awful becomes acceptable.  Don't get me wrong; there's a threshold a person crosses where I think it's pretty much impossible to go back: pedophiles and brutal murderers being top of the list. I'm not talking about overcoming those kind of atrocities. I'm talking about burning off the self-inflicted decadence and filth of a negative life.  Paying for your crimes and going ahead.  Becoming a human being when before, you were a scuzzball. 

I've been many things throughout my life; loser, weeper, warrior, suicidal, brave hero and bitter hag.  One of the cool things about all of that experience is the fact that I can always change.  I can make an effort to become something else and actually accomplish it.  Only a few years ago, I was miserable and stuck in a rut of my own making.  Self-hatred and fury kept me there.  Subconsciously, I think I wanted to punish myself for being such a stinking loser.  But I gathered some wood and built a pyre, crawled on top of it and set myself ablaze.  I was consumed.  Everything in my life was burnt away in that clean, fierce, brave fire.  And I crawled up out of the ashes of my existence and began again, fresh, new and alive, with pretty, shiny new feathers.  We've all been through shit in our lives, and will doubtless sometimes be knee deep in it in the future.  I myself have been shit.  But look what we've survived.  Look what we're capable of. Phoenixes, rising from the ashes.  No matter how low, no matter how disgusting a skank we've been, we can all pay for our past and start new.  Believe in yourself and take flight.

Love, R 

My Ian

Today is my big brother Ian's birthday.  It's been forty years since he was killed but I still remember it distinctly, as if the moment was a fragrance stored in a bottle, fresh and poignant.  I don't feel much sorrow anymore; it's more like a bittersweet walk down memory lane, where I see him smiling, or pulling canned blueberry turnovers out of the oven while I beg beside him like a desperate puppy.  He always relented and gave me one, piping hot with an extra squeeze of icing.  So I'm going to share a little of my memory walk with you.  Let's saunter together down the gentle and beloved remembrance I have of my Ian.

Ian was twelve years older than me.  I was the last of four kids.  Mom worked as a waitress, so she told my two brothers that they would have to watch over me and my sister Kat when she was not there.  Frank was in charge of Kat, who was a year and a half older than me, and Ian was in charge of me.  One of my first memories was of him teaching me how to properly wash my face.  I was to splash it twice with warm water, then rub it all over with soap in a circular motion, then rinse three times.  He showed me how to squeeze toothpaste from the end of the tube instead of the middle, then told me why this was more efficient.  "If you know why, you'll remember it," he said. 

We lived in a rented farmhouse when I was in first grade.  Ian and Frank babysat Kat and me one Saturday night and let me eat half a box of Chicken-in-a-Biscuit crackers and a whole bottle of Pepsi, which I quickly barfed all over my favorite t-shirt.  Frank wouldn't touch my smelly self.  It was Ian who carried me into the bathroom, pulled that puke shirt over my sobbing head, and hosed me down in the shower.  He dried me with a towel and doused me with talcum powder, telling me how sweetly I smelled after that.  He carried me to bed and tucked me in, dropping a kiss on my embarrassed little brow.  Years later, when I was a waitress, a little girl barfed her dinner all over the table at the restaurant and no one would help her.  Her dad was shouting and embarrassed, her mom useless, the siblings scared and silent.  Even the busboys refused to clean it up.  And all the while, this little girl sat there, filthy and wretched, tears running down her humiliated face.  I went over and cleaned the table, the floor, her face, all the while repeating my Chicken-in-a-Biscuit story.  We became sisters then, this tiny stranger and me, and I remember how important Ian's kindness had been.  I brought her orange sherbet to clean the nasty taste from her mouth, then kissed her  sweaty little head.  Would I have done that if Ian hadn't shown me the exact same kindness?  I don't know.  I hope so.

When I was seven, and our mama cat had her babies in the middle of his bed, he chastised our mother for not calling him home from school.  "Don't ever do that again, Mom," he said, "You make sure to call me.  I don't want her to ever go through that alone again!" 

I was in second grade when he came to the rescue one Thursday afternoon after school.  I was walking home when the local infantile hooligans surrounded me, kicking me every time I tried to get away.  They knocked me down and scraped my knees, trying to pull my tights down so they could see my underwear.  Ian rode up on his motorcycle like a knight in shining armor and chased them away, swearing like a sailor and threatening death if they ever touched me again.

He was studying chemistry as a freshman in college when Kat and I would plague him unmercifully to "spin the dial" on the Twister game so we could play.  He'd lay there on his bed, one hand holding a book, the other one spinning the dial. 

Every Sunday after church, Ian stormed into the house, threw his arms straight up over his head and bellowed, "FOOD!!" at the top of his lungs.  He ate like a horse.  He was allergic to honey but still tried to sneak a taste here and there because he loved it.  We'd know because he would instantly swell up as hives erupted all over his skin.  He mixed a concoction of pancake syrup and peanut butter together that he named "Goop" and showed me how to mix it correctly so I could make my own.  My love of cooking stemmed from those moments of wrist flapping fun, stirring peanut butter, stiff from the refrigerator, with maple syrup until it blended smoothly.  We ate it on saltines.

That's just a small snapshot of moments with Ian, ones that stand out in my brain.  I try not to think about all the blood or his shocked expression in death, the stolen money from his wallet or the gore-sticky motorcycle he died on.  I choose to concentrate on the good and dismiss the importance of the bad.  I spent more than enough time obsessing over the bad; did it for years.  Now I remember his saucy grin, his guitar playing, and that spinning Twister dial.  He was, and is, a beloved character in my life and always will be.  Happy Birthday, Ian.  Love ya.

Love, R

Friendship

Today was my best friend's birthday.  We went to BJ's and wandered around, musing over giant boxes of cereal and brick-sized chunks of cheddar cheese.  I hauled off a load of various gigantic food items while she stuck to tomato sauce and mozzarella.  A weird excursion for a birthday but one that satisfied us both. As I stood in the check out line, surrounded by bathtub-sized bags of candy on my left and flying saucer-sized apple pies on my right, I watched my friend walk to the hot dog stand to buy us some snacks.  I smiled.  Here, on her birthday, she buys me a hot dog and soda.  On her day, she still thought about me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A friend is someone who reaches for your hand but touches your heart."  As she handed me a foil wrapped dog and a soda with extra ice, I felt that warm brush inside my ribcage, touched by her thoughtfulness as well as her friendship.  Once again, I marveled at my own luck.  I might have been raised by the tootie frootie maniacs from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I have been very, very lucky when it comes to friends.  They have been there for me, through thick and thin.  They've seen me rant and rave, sob and tear my hair, in the depths of despair and the heights of living.  Throughout all these myriad versions of Beck, they've stayed true. 

In the hustle and bustle of modern day living, I've seen beloved friends run like hamsters in a wheel, racing, racing in a mobius strip world of unending busyness.  When I suggest meeting for lunch or letting me come over and cook dinner so they can relax, they've been surprisingly reticent, sometimes even hostile and defensive.  They misinterpret my wanting to see them as my wanting something from them.  It's as if they've forgotten what it's like to have a true friend; someone who wants to help ease their burdens, not add to them. 

It's very hard for some people, myself included, to accept help from anyone, and if it's being offered by a friend, it's doubly hard.  My first thought is, "I don't want to be a bother," which is both egotistically self-effacing and incorrect.  Friendship is a giving creature, and I tell myself to calm the hell down and let my loved ones give, even if it's to someone as worthless as me.  Those are the moments when insecurity still rears its sneaky head in my brain, whispering that they don't want to have the burden of my needing anything.  It's a two-faced way of thinking: I offer whatever I can to people I love and quite a bit to people I don't even know, so why is it so hard to let people help me?  When I lost everything after my son was in rehab, including a large chunk of my sanity, three of my closest friends stored the majority of my possessions at their houses; in the garage, basement and utility room.  I was moving back to the Midwest just to "get my shit together" before returning to New York. I vowed I would be back in less than a year.  I was gone for four.  They kept my stuff, without complaint, all that time.  I will never forget that.  I will never be able to repay such kindness.  Because of them, I had something of my old life in safe-keeping.  Those boxes with their Sharpie marker labels were priceless treasures to a woman who'd lost her marriage, her business, her son and seven family members all in one year.  When I finally came back to the East Coast, the boxes were waiting for me.  I unpacked them in my new home, smiling at old photos long forgotten and wrapped extension cords stuffed in amongst the acres of books. As I said, I am inordinately lucky when it comes to my friends.  My heart, stomped to a greasy stain by family members who were supposed to love me, has been pieced together again by a family of friends who truly do.  I have been touched by the hands of friendship and healed by them all.  Thank you, my beloved friends.  Thank you forever.

Love, R

Treasured Souls and Crusty Crabby Curmudgeons

As a waitress, I encounter many different aspects of a person's emotional state.  There are the cheerful couples, the happy kids and parents, the stressed out business folk and the moody non-talkers.  At my restaurant, we have our regulars who encompass pretty much all of the above.  There's the Catfish Man, who comes in for lunch, mumbles his order - fried catfish and iced tea, extra lemon - eats and leaves.  He's a salt and pepper weathered dude, furtive glancing as he rapidly consumes his food.  He doesn't want to talk, he just wants to eat and get out.  There's a manic shyness about him which I find endearing and I like to bring his extra lemon arranged like a flower on a plate.  There's the old World War II vet, whom I embarrass with eager embraces and sloppy kisses on his bald head.  I came in once for lunch on my day off and sat with him for two hours, absorbing every fascinating word out of his heroic mouth.  Who would have thought, watching him meticulously cut up shrimp into doll-sized bites, that he had helped save the world; indeed, saved the lives of over a dozen wounded men in the bomber he was flying over Germany?  Their plane was stuffed to the gills with wounded soldiers on the way back to base when they came under fire.  The shit kicker lieutenant aboard opened the bomb bay doors to lighten the weight, and all the hapless men lying there fell to their deaths.  My beloved old dude pulled his sidearm and aimed it directly at the lieutenant's face, stating the fact that he would blow his fucking head off if he didn't stop kicking the man still clinging to the edge.  I bring him his cheesecake with the strawberries arranged in a graceful arc, grateful to know him at all.  There's the stressed out sweetheart of a daughter, gobbling her hasty lunch and ordering a hasty take out meal for her ancient and Alzheimer-ed mother.  I bring her her ice cream sundae with extra chocolate and a kiss to the back of her hand.  There's the dapper old story teller who comes in for late night dinners.  Everybody knows him by name and everybody loves him dearly.  He wears fedoras and antique rings, a crisp hanky tucked just so in his breast pocket.  I smile as I write this, he is such a treasure to us all. When he first found out my love of the bizarre, he brought in a tiny paper clown from the World's Fair and placed it on my open palm.  It curled into a U and he laughed with delight.  "You're in love," he said, and gave me the clown. They were favors given out at soothsayer booths long ago, when he walked with ice cream laden stride as a tiny young boy.  There's his alter ego, an old man with enormous eyes and enormous heart, who nurses his whiskey sour and grilled dinner, sitting at the bar and watching the world unfold before him.  The fedora gentleman finishes his meal and comes to sit beside him, their heads bent toward each other in the easy companionable air of long time comrades. 

All these people are beloved to me.  I don't know Catfish Man's real name; he's been coming in for years and I don't think anybody else does either. I know only the last name of the veteran and only the first names of the elderly comrades, and the twitchy loving daughter I know only by sight.  It doesn't matter.  They are familiar to us all; a family of strangers made precious by the simple fact of us feeding them.  Caring for them. 

There are so many who sneer at the fact that I'm a waitress and I, myself, once shuddered with fear at the thought of ever being forced to wait tables again.  I did it for years before and during my marriage, and it had become the thing to dread.  But this past year has been a revelation.  I even find myself enjoying this very manual job.  Not the work itself, which is dull and repetitive and often filled with crusty crabby curmudgeons, but those shining moments of treasured souls.  I find myself a magician of sorts: I wave my wand and bring their plates and watch the tension disappear.  Regardless of their often low opinion of me, the untouchable who lives only to refill their glass and clear their plates, I am still creating a positive shift in their emotional state.  Eleanor Roosevelt once said she accomplished more good over tea and crumpets than she ever did over a negotiation table.  There's an ethereal wonder in the consumption of good food and smiling faces.  I've helped the heartbroken (there's a hospital nearby), the angry, the weepy and the raging, and all by the simple act of bringing hot food and a grin to their table.  What's that, if not magical?  Merlin with chips and tartar sauce, pie and ice cream.  That's a secret I've discovered, one I wasn't even looking for: the graceful, unexpected joy of a simple full stomach.

I get a kick out of it all.

Love, R