Toast

Up to our asses in glasses, that's us.

First-world problem, No. Umpteenish: Our kitchen cupboard is overgrown with glasses and cups and tumblers. Glass glasses and plastic glasses and ceramic glasses.

Wine glasses and water glasses and iced tea glasses. And cups just for Christmas.

In fact, Christmas is the reason the cupboard fills to the brim, flouting the laws of physics.

Christmas is when more glasses and cups show up — also, ironically, the only time so many glasses are really necessary.

And even then, not so many glasses. Not nearly so many. 

The rest of the year, the glasses expand to fill space. They creep to the edge of the shelves at night, while we're sleeping, and lean just so. They grow fat in their disuse, and jostle and grouse in their overcrowded condition, and make themselves ready to fall and shatter to the ground at the next opening of the cupboard door.

Some day, they conspire: Some day.

I can't ignore a certain — insularity — with these posts lately.

The newest glasses are Mason®™ jars with threads along the lip, like for lids. The acquisition of a gift exchange, they have overlarge unwieldy handles that elbow aside other glasses and don't play nice — what do you mean, "insularity?"

Gee, glasses today … the last one was literally about walking your dog around your neighborhood. And before that — coat hangers. Coat hangers? I mean, come on! Live much?

I live plenty. The blog's by me, about me. Write what you know, you know?

Ok, not insular. Parochial. Picayune.

Parochial?!

And Pick. Uh. Yuuuuune!

I write about other stuff.

Yeah, guns ad nauseam. I see the blood dripping lower and lower with each post about it. I'm not sure people notice, though.

Maybe. I'm trying to make a point. Maybe it's too esoteric. I write about politics. And social issues that resonate with me.

And?

And what?

That's it? Do you do anything about it?

Like …?

Act on your convictions? Give to a campaign, call your representatives, do something? Anything?

I wrote my congressman a couple of times, and my senator once. I receive talking points emails about the subject in return.

So, the answer is "no."

No, not really. I'm working things out, which is why I write them out. I'm never sure what to do.

Grown man like you. Think you'd have it figured out by now.

Yeah, you'd think.

Now it's glasses and coathangers and dog walks. Heavy.

Well, the wine glasses — of which we have many, the majority of the household loving wine — fit warmly in the hand but don't stack very well, so they're in a fragile state of constant teeter —

And the "drawn" part of "Shawn Drawn," getting simpler by the day. Or more simplistic.

I'm toying with a new style.

Or just trying to get the "drawn" part done as fast as you can. Like you've got somewhere else to go.

Well, maybe I do.

Got your mind on something else?

A thousand miles away.

Write about that, then. Sure beats wandering around your house, pontificating about dust, or coasters or messy rugs.

Nothing to write home about, really. Just other stuff to get done. Maybe. After.

Maybe you need a breather.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it. Thinking through my fingers, like this, has fed energy into other things I do. But lately the other things have crowded into this time and space, and require me to think through my fingers in other ways anyway.

Ya gotta rest.

And grown man or not, I really do puzzle over stuff I'm probably supposed to be firm about. Not that typing solves the puzzles, but it makes them more concrete.

Like glasses?

We keep these enormous plastic cups we got as gifts — of course! — which would stack quite nicely if they weren't so tall. So they must be arranged upside down and rightside up instead, carefully, or the kitchen becomes chaos.

Tough life.

Yeah, maybe I need a breather. Maybe once a week with these posts.

Try that, see how it goes.

Hmm. Nice talking to me.