fine, fresh, good morning
unicorn in the garden?
No, but I looked

The Unicorn in the Garden

Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his
scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in
the garden.

The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her.

“There’s a unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.”

She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him.

“The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back on him.

The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden.

The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips.

“Here, unicorn,” said the man and pulled up a lily and gave it to him.

The unicorn ate it gravely.

With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again.

“The unicorn,” he said, “ate a lily.” His wife sat up in bed and looked at him, coldly.

“You are a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in a booby-hatch.”

The man, who never liked the words “booby” and “booby-hatch,” and who liked them even less on a shining morning when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment.

“We’ll see about that,” he said.

He walked over to the door.

“He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead, “he told her.

Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn; but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat among the roses and went to sleep.

And as soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could.

She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye.

She telephoned the police and she telephoned the psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and
bring a strait-jacket.

Then the police and the psychiatrist looked at her with great interest.

“My husband,” she said, “saw a unicorn this morning.”

The police looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police.

“He told me it ate a lily,” she said.

The psychiatrist looked at the police and the police looked at the psychiatrist.

“He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead,” she said.

At a solemn signal from the signal from the psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife.

They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally
subdued her.

Just as they got her into the strait-jacket, the husband came back into the house.

“Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?” asked the police.

“Of course not,” said the husband. “The unicorn is a mythical beast.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said the psychiatrist.

“Take her away. I’m sorry, sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jay bird.”

So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution.

The husband lived happily ever after.

Moral: Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.

James Thurber in Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (Harper and Brothers, 1940).

footsteps up the stairs
ache in head starts, builds slowly
inevitable

It started yesterday as a dull point of aching near the top of head.

Hoping I could fight it off, I took some advil.

As usual it had no impact and the dull point of ache slowly expanded to take in more and more of my head.

When I went to bed I knew today would not be a fun day.

It’s isn’t disabling.

Just nagging.

Just there.

I have done profiling, writing journal and recording foods, events and thoughts trying to figure out what triggers these things.

There seems to be no pattern, no rhyme and no reason.

And they usually cannot be stopped.

When I feel that first pulse or throb or echo in my head, I know that anywhere for the next 12 to 36 to 48 hours I will be walking around with one boot off so to speak.

When my sister was in Med School, she explained to me once how it had to do with the capillaries in my brain. She was talking mostly about the use of caffine and how it caused the capillaries to constrict and when you didn’t get the caffine you were used to, the capillaries not only failed to constrict, but actually swelled up a tiny bit in your brain which caused the ache.

Or was it the other way around?

It is these tiny, tiny capillaries that caused the ache.

Of that, I have no doubt.

Through creative visualization, I can see them swelling in my brain, pushing on the nerves.

Not much, mind you.

But enough and slowly, slowly increasing.

How can something so small hurt so big.

I am reminded how much a sliver in my finger hurts.

When the sliver is out, I find it difficult to believe that that tiny piece of wood could have hurt so big.

good day good enough
to make up for the bad days
ebb and flow continues

Summer Solstice – 2019

Google ebb and flow and you can get the response, “a recurrent or rhythmical pattern of coming and going or decline and regrowth.”

My day can change like the weather, with the weather.

A sunny day can make all the difference.

Maybe spending the first 50 years of my live in the Great Lakes State, where the great lakes create a climate that produces 290 cloudy days every year has something to do with it.

Of course, nothing can make my day better, faster, than to see what any of the grand kidz are up to.

Today is the longest day and sunny is forecast.

Cheers for a long, good day.