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So check it.

One of my jobs last week was at the Women’s Imaging Center which is a really nice name for Miss Carol’s most favorite place- the boob moosher. You know, the place where you ladies go to get tortured checked for breast cancer?

When I got the work order I was all like ooh baby, baby.

I’m thinkin’ my day’s gotta be filled with Playboy bunnies and Penthouse Pets and Victoria Secret models parading around topless waiting for mammograms while I try to work and not stare, right?

I am such a turd.

Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. After tossing and turning through an anxious and anticipatory sleepless night, I strode manfully into the Women’s Imaging Center breathlessly expecting endless eye candy.

And guess what?

The waiting room was chock-a-block full of really old, REALLY FAT women. Women that I would NEVER EVER want to see topless. Women that I didn’t even like looking at fully clothed. I mean, women that even really old, REALLY FAT men wouldn’t want to check out.

And ya know?

It reminded me of a different similar experience. Decades and centuries ago when Miss Carol and me were first married, we were living in Florida, and the company I was working for scheduled me for a service call at a nudist colony.

I was all like, yesssssssss.

But then I got there and reality slapped me.  Nudist colonies are crammed full of pasty, pear shaped, ugly, white people with flappy boobs. Even the chicks.

Shit.

Why is it that my fantasies can’t be my realities?

I mean, c’mon.

Anybody who reads my crap knows this ain’t a chick self-help feel-good kinda website.

But.

I’ve noticed something kinda interesting over the last year or so. Something that seems to help with the day-to-day crap. I don’t know if it’s meant for everybody, but, hey? Call me dr. ror.

Ya know how lots of times your day totally sucks? And you’re pissed and you’re over all of it? And you just want to move on to something but you know not what?

Hang with me, we’re all with you.

Start doing this- grab the mindset that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is simply purrrrrfect.

Check it.

So you’re driving to work in the morning and you’re texting and spilling coffee on your best jeans-don’t get pissed off, think, hey, the stain is in a purrrrfect place and the coffee that’s left is the absolutely purrrrfect amount.

Then, when you get to work and you have to park all the way in the back- think, well shit, it’s not raining and it’s a purrrrfect amount of walking.

Are you getting it?

And when you land in your stinky little cubicle of work-time hell? Think, gosh, it’s a purrrrfect size for me and I’ve purrrrfectly decorated it with pictures of my lonely little life. And let’s don’t forget, the walls are the purrrrfect shade of gray.

Later, while you’re eating lunch all alone at the crappy, greasy fast food place that you know the guy you briefly dated until you found out he still lives with his mother will never visit is purrrrfect for it’s solitude and loneliness.

And then, while you’re sitting in rush-hour traffic on the way home to your lonely apartment be sure to remember it’s a purrrrfect time to reflect and maybe read. If only you’d brought a book along, it’d be purrrrfect, right?

Once you finally get home and you’re munching on a microwaved macaroni and cheese dinner and watching the emptiness of TV think about

whoa. stop. Fuck.

It’s weird sometimes where writing something sometimes takes you. You go along for the ride thinking it’s gonna be backseat fun with cute little cheerleaders and you end up driving your demons.

This started as one thing and went way south.

shit.

sorry.

So I’m walking the boys and I’m grumbling and all the sudden Cutter bristles and sits down.

I tug at his leash but he just glares at me.

What the fuck is the matter with you now, he asks.

I stare at him and then look away. Whatta you mean? I ask.

You’re being pissy, Cutter says.

Yeah, Tug says, straining at the end of his leash to smell some poop.

I stand and I look skyward and I say, I don’t know. I’m just tired. Work and working on the house and working on oceandoggy.com and other stuff is just wearing me down. I feel like I don’t have any time for the things I wanna do.

And Cutter says, hoo, boy, that’s some kinda good shit right there. I’d laugh if I had lips.

He fidgets for a minute and then sits up straighter, glaring at me. So, let’s check it, he says- you live the life you want to live and do pretty much what you want to do and you’re pissed because of the choices you made feel like you don’t have the time to do the things you want to do, even though they’re what you chose to do? I’m confused, he says.

It’s baffling, Tug barks, coming up and sitting next to Cutter.

Yeah, well, ya know, when you put it in THAT context, I say, you’re right, I sound like a big whiny pussy.

And what other context would I put it in?, Cutter hisses. (I hate it when he schools me)

Content, Tug says, licking himself.

Put it in perspective, Cutter says, standing up, YOU have ALL the choices. You get to choose what you want to do and when you want to do it. Your life is a dog’s dream of happiness and heaven.

Lifting a leg and peeing, Cutter says, think about it- we don’t even get to choose when we get to go to the bathroom. Think dude, he says, taking off after a feral cat and snapping my arm.

Yeah, dude, Tug says, slamming past me and surging to the end of his leash after his brother.

C’mon buddy.

On any other day I fucking love Stephen King. I’d read his laundry list, or his callout menu. Anything.

But this book? I don’t know. Maybe not so much.

Full Dark No Stars is four short stories with an afterword that maybe tries to apologize for them?

Let’s count them out.

The first is a kinda Edgar Allen Poe rip-off of the telltale heart. And I don’t know why it ends the way it does. If it was me, I’d a been cool with it.

The second is an inexplicably wild vigilante thingy that would NEVER happen. We all love relentless revenge and  you’d like it to happen, you want it to happen, but really?

The third is pretty cool- classic Stephen King.

The fourth story is something that you probably need to be married for decades and centuries to appreciate- but it’s probably the best of the stories.

And honestly? I’m a nobody and my review amounts to something way less than nothing.

But hey.

A seemingly long time ago Miss Carol and me painted the living room and kitchen for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time Miss Carol decided she didn’t really like the color a week after we had, you know, painted it?

Maybe it’s a chick thing.

Anyway. A seemingly shorter time ago Miss Carol and my brother’s little cupcake were talking and the cupcake decided we should have an accent wall. And not just any accent wall, but an accent wall painted a dark blue.

Blue?

The whole outside of the house is painted blue. I live in the bluish nightmare of Miss Carol’s favorite color.

So I was kinda like, bleah?  More blue?

But the cupcake is good at this stuff and we’re not and she persisted. She took pictures of our living room and virtually painted it. And Miss Carol was sold- she was ten times excited, going- WOO-HOO!, BLUE!!! (did I mention blue is Miss Carol’s favorite you know? color?)

Anyway, fast forward to Sunday.

Miss Carol let me sleep in while she walked the boys. I was laying there listening to the howling wind and pounding rain and dreaming about a quiet day in The Me Only Room and thinking about how much I loved Miss Carol for walking the dogs while I practiced my slothfulness, when they all came bounding up the stairs wet and cold and happy to see me.

Cutter and Tug jumped up on the bed and buried me in their damp dogginess and Miss Carol asked if I was ready to paint the living room.

Um, fuck? Today? Shit. Damn. Aaaarrggh.

So Miss Carol thought for a second and then she stripped down and slipped back into bed to convince me just how much I’d love painting the living room.

And she was right.

And the cupcake was right.

The colors are amazingly warm. I’da thought they’d be waaaay too dark but not only are they not, I effing love the blue.

The cupcake rules. And she rocks.

And so does Miss Carol.

Even after all of our decades and centuries spent together, Miss Carol still has the capacity to surprise me sometimes.

The other night, while we were cocktailing, she looked directly at me and asked-

“Does a tattoo hurt”?

And I thought for a second and I said, “Nah, it’s more scratchy than painful”

Why?

And Miss Carol said “I’m thinking about getting one. A tattoo, I mean.”

um, Really?

And Miss Carol said “Yeah, I’m thinking about getting ror tattooed on my finger”.

And ya know what?

I was floored. I mean, I was totally, honestly moved. And it takes a LOT to move me, or even make me feel anything, somedays.

She looked at me and grinned and said,”yeah I think I’m gonna do it”.

And I know it sounds sooooo completely hokey and rednecky and white-trailer-trashy but I was all like, wow. Shoving aside the trailer-trashiness and hokey-redneckiness I thought it was so amazingly cool and heartfelt and just plain rub up against me good feeling that I didn’t even know what to say.

So I just kissed her and didn’t say anything.

Right?

The end of the road.

Miss Carol and me desperately needed proximity to the airport ’cause our quickie honeymoon redo was rapidly gasping it’s last breaths. We like short, intense vacations and this one was nearing it’s edges.

It was time.

We cruised into Fort Lauderdale feeling a little bruised and raw from two nights of hotel room rockin’ and rollin’  and immediately headed to an old haunt Miss Carol and me knew from the way way back seeking cocktails and something to eat. I mean ANYTHING eating-wise would’ve put a smile on my face.

But they were closed.

So we went across the street and sipped beers until they opened.

And when they did, we streamed in and get this? Our bartender was an ex-fashion model. Not only was she not hard on the eyes, her stories of her travels were flipping amazing. I mean, this chick had a billboard on Times Square. How cool is that?

Did I want to take her home with me? Oh yeah. But Miss Carol was staring at me sternly.

So we headed back out into the bland and vanilla-ee streets of Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale to me is just kinda generic. It’s like every other mediocre beach place. A yawner. Even with spring break going on.

Yup.

Another spring break. And, honestly?, this one was kinda bland and vanilla-ee too. Miss Carol and me spent some time around the hotel pool and then, later on, cruised the streets and it seemed to be the same thing everywhere.

Dudes. Fort Lauderdale was chock-a-block full of little white girls with tiny discreet, easily hidden, and socially acceptable tattoos and probably familially approved belly piercings, hanging out sipping frozen and largely alcohol absent drinks sunning themselves and bitching and moaning about the quality of the mostly nerdy geeky guys flocking around them, whom, for their part, were murmuring nervously amongst themselves lest they draw the ire of the little princesses.

Whew. Is that a sentence or what?

It’s funny but the Offspring song Pretty Fly kept slipping in and around and slowly caressing my brain. It fit so perfectly what was going on around us, I had to laugh. What the hell happened to men?

Anyway.

Later on while I was peeing off the hotel roof, I had to reflect on the radically wild differences between spring breaks at South Beach and Lauderdale.

I’ll take South Beach any day.

When my most favorite little sister-in-law heard we were going to South Beach she actually groaned, you know, over the internet.

You’ve gotta be kidding, right? She said.

And I was all like, hey, hangin’ and clubbin’ with my homeys, homies, homeies, whatever, could be fun, right?

She groaned again internetally and gave up on me.

But ya know what?

She was wrong.

I flippin’ LOVED South Beach. I don’t know what it was or what it is but there’s a vibe there that just latched onto me and burrowed down deep.

I don’t know if it’s the cool architecture or maybe the singularly individualized lifeguard stands. Or maybe it’s probably all of the above.

Whatever dude.

‘Cause I mean, honestly?, who does this shit? Looooovvvve it, baby.

And even though we ran smack dab into the middle of southern college spring break (meaning LOTS of blacks that for whatever reason meant LOTS of cops with their cop cars and cop harleys parked militarily perpendicular across from the strip, watching and waiting and I only mention this because of the weird spring break juxtaposition coming up next?) South Beach is still one of the coolest places I’ve ever been.

It’s edgy and retro and waaaay laid back (except for the cops and spring breakers) and it’s all wrapped up in a warm tortilla of misty-eyed want that I need to go back and fondle repeatedly.

South Beach was the only place in our whirlwind Floridaaaayys Tour that I missed as soon as we were leaving.

I didn’t cry but, yeah, I teared up.

Ya know what?

Escapism, given certain constraints, has it’s merits. Like, loads of merits and let’s just tuck the constraints somewhere we don’t have to look at them. ummK? You with me?

Miss Carol and me escaped the Little House of Horrors last week for a couple of days in Florida. Actually it was our anniversary and it was one of those biggies that scream you better do SOMETHING SPECIAL.

So we did.

Decades and centuries ago, back when airplanes still had propellors, Miss Carol and me moved to Boca Raton to get married and live out our lives in beachy breeziness.

We felt we had to move away mostly because Miss Carol’s family didn’t much like me at the time and because we figured Florida was the best place to escape to.

The move didn’t last but our marriage did.

So last week we blew back down to the scene of the crime and we spent the first night in the hotel in Boca that we honeymooned in.

And it was, umm, interesting?

Way back when, in the murky then, before cars had engines, we’d been told by countless well wishers that Florida was chock-a-block full of old people and, at the time, I was all, like, so? C’mon Miss Carol, we’re MOVING, WOOHOO!! And getting MARRIED!! OOH BABY, BABY!!

Silly me but we found out just how true it was. Old people suck. Especially really rich old people.

But I’d forgotten just how much they suck and how crotchety and shitty and just plain crappy mean old people can get when they’ve got lots and lots of retirement time on their hands to stew in their crappy old meanness.

And Boca Raton is FULL of ’em.

So we hung out and used the hotel room like rock stars and tried not to breathe in too much of the old people smells.

And then we bolted for South Beach.

Dudes.

I am on such a tremendous tear right now. Three books into the new year and they’ve all been great. I feel like I’m on THE DRUG THAT IS CHARLIE SHEEN. First there was ROOM, then THE BAD GIRL, and now this.

THE SWEET HEREAFTER by Russell Banks is the story of a little town in upstate New York that suffers a huge tragedy when it’s sole school bus ferrying the town’s kids to school plunges into a quarry and a bunch of the children drown.

Before you get mad and hate me I’m not giving away the ending- this is the beginning- to a really good book about small town America and how folks handle shit when it’s thrown at ’em in big bunch’s like that.

Russell Banks tells his story from several different viewpoints including the slick-as-shit New York City lawyer trying to build a negligence lawsuit for some of the families whose kids died in the accident.

It sounds terribly depressing (even to me as I write this) but it’s an awesome book that, overall, leaves you feeling really good and really hopeful about people.

I loves me some Russell Banks.