Tech-tock

Having decided against the hearty chicken-noodle soup, I consumed instead half an apple pie for breakfast as being in character with the bent times, the weather, and the recalcitrance of inanimate objects, of which I have an inordinate supply. You may for example smell my neighbor’s sweet detergent and inhale her lint in my dryer, while my washing machine in wall-eyed revenge overflows into her ceiling of its own free will, and I pray will not infect her electrical system. Outside, the garage-door, adamantly closed against the season, refuses to open by its electric gizmo unless I stand at the top of three flights of stairs and aim the thing at my next-door neighbor’s window. My camera ate its last film, along with precious photos of my visiting grandchildren, and had to be relieved of both by brute force.  The clerk blamed the camera, but I stood my ground, insisted on a brand-name film, and the camera meekly submitted to its demands. Being right was not credited to my account. In my embarrassment I came home and poured buttermilk in my coffee, which looked funny but tasted vaguely of Tibet and other climes. I cut one of my cat’s toenails too close and she bled; luckily, a vet’s smart secretary knew this wasn’t fatal: dip the paw in powdered cinnamon, she said, and I done so.  Now I have cinnamon paw-prints on pants, rug, and bed, but I am happy to see them and will end this letter here before my computer tries to bury it in a sea of lost correspondence, wasted emotions, hapless waving of hands. The heart, like buttermilk, clots, too -- did you know?