Tired of those impulse buys at the grocery store?

Take it from me, nothing quite focuses your willpower like the certain knowledge that you are going to have to carry anything you buy a quarter mile uphill through ankle high slush.

Yep, suddenly that bag of chocolate chip cookies looks more like a bag of boulders than a bag of heavenly delights.

So we're officially in the miserable season known as betwixt. Too much snow to get a car up here, not enough snow to get the snowmobile up. The cupboards are full to bursting with non-perishables, the freezer is topped up, but there's the pesky question of a week's worth of milk (he drinks soy, I'm partial to the bovine beverage), fresh fruit and veggies, bread and miscellaneous.

Normally miscellaneous contains Food o' the Devil. Oh, don't pretend you don't know of what I speak. SOMEBODY has to be buying that big two liter bottle of pop, the bag of potato chips, the ginormous tub of Death By Chocolate ice cream.

Well, this week it wasn't me.

I limited this week's miscellaneous to two tiny packages of lunch meat. Part way through my second trip up to the house with the final load of grocery bags, I seriously considered waving the lunch meat around in the hopes that it might attract wolves or something so that they could just take me out of my misery.

No such luck.

I was kind of tired tonight, but a friend had invited me to a reading by a bunch of local folks in the village, so I hauled myself back down the hill and motored to the bookstore.

It takes tremendous guts to write something and read it aloud to a room full of people. I was very impressed by everyone involved.

And then we came to the part where I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and hum really, really loudly Until It Was All Over.

I would, of course, be talking about dreams. Someone wrote about dreams.

Okay, here's the deal. We all have dreams. I realize that your dreams are endlessly fascinating to you. You probably get enormous personal insight from your dreams and I can respect that. But see, that's the deal with dreams. They are intensely personal.

Unless I know you really, really well your dreams won't mean anything to me. They will, in fact, throw me into a boredom so intense that if you were to hook me to a brain monitor I could pass as legally dead. Frankly, as I see it, if you start telling your dreams to me you've strayed into that territory legal scholars have defined as justifiable homicide.

In short, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR DREAMS.

The bit about how your brother and you were standing on a cloud and the wheel of life appeared below you and It Suddenly All Made Sense?

I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT.

The guy on your porch in the business suit overwhelmed by the emerald trees?

PUT DOWN THAT DREAM.

BACK AWAY SLOWLY AND NOBODY GETS HURT.

Oh yeah, in my head I'm one tough cookie. The reality?

When the author was done I applauded enthusiastically, just like everyone else in the room.

I am such a sissy.

--Marn

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