Weather

It is important to remember that emotional pain comes in waves. Remind yourself that there will be a pause between the waves.

Someone says hello to me and I see it’s the hot guy from the bus. He is wearing running clothes, which lowers my opinion of him.

A woman walks into a dentist’s office and says, “I think I’m a moth.”

The dentist tells her, “You shouldn’t be here. You should be seeing a psychiatrist…”

The woman replies, “I am seeing a psychiatrist.”

The dentist says, “Then what are you doing here?”

And she says, “Your light was on.”

Our very last stop is the Spy Museum. Ben grumbles because I seem to have picked the only museum in the city that is not free. He says he’ll wait in the lobby. I’m happy though because we narrowly missed having to go to the Holocaust Museum.

Eli is excited about this place. We are given a cover story, must memorize it quickly, then answer a series of questions. There is a hidden passageway that kids can crawl through. I limp around, looking at the exhibits. There are lipstick guns. Camera guns.

But the best thing is an ordinary-looking pair of glasses. Cyanide tipped. To be used if you are caught by the enemy so you don’t betray anyone.

The pros of New Zealand are that it’s beautiful, politically stable, and moderate in climate. The cons are the government has restrictions about what you can name your kid. Sex Fruit and Fat Boy are forbidden. Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter are okay.

“Where did all these hipsters come from?” says my brother in his fleece-lined trucker’s jacket.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to stop making bad decisions. The weird thing is they don’t sneak up on me. I can see them coming all the way down the pike.

Q: What is the philosophy of late capitalism?

A: Two hikers see a hungry bear on the trail ahead of them. One of them takes out his running shoes and puts them on. “You can’t outrun a bear,” the other whispers. “I just have to outrun you,” he says.

A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person.

He was just a kid, so I let it go. And now, years later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day.

Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?

Old person worry: What if everything I do does?