Pontificum Scriblerus

What is that law... in chemistry, I distinctly recall learning it from old Doc and Mr. Wells (I wonder if they're still alive and "together")... it takes more energy to get a reaction happening than it does to keep it going? Same law in physics, I think.... More force to move an object from stationary than to keep it moving? Google it. I'm living proof. I don't want something. Whatever it is; medical school, a boyfriend, an orange. Then somehow I consider that it might not be so bad. And then, I invariably change my mind. And then, once over the hump, once the reaction starts, no one can stop me. Impatience, a low energy force, takes over.

Remember that moment in the great GenX masterpiece, Reality Bites, where the mean interviewer asks Wynona Ryder's character to define irony, and she can't? Bear with me. So, when we moved here, to where we live now, I evaluated my surroundings, and said with a chracteristic scoff, what's with all the Asian restaurants? Is it not enough that I work in Chinatown? Every corner has a Vietnamese place? What, is that "COOL" now? Fast forward 4 years. Now, it appears, we're forced by fate to become suburbanites. We've got a town all picked out, bought a second car, some LL Bean boots. In a masochistic effort to figure out if we're gonna have things to do and stuff to eat "out there" I googled the town restaurants. ...And I thought... This has got to be wrong! It seems that the only Vietnamese place is 10 miles away? Yesterday I was working, and I lamented about this to a friendly nurse. She also thought this had to be a mistake. She said, I...

There was a park near my apartment block when I was growing up, and I used to there with grandma or mom on days when it was nice out. The best was when after first snow, there would be new ice, and someone would dump a bucket of water over the slide, and make it icy, and you'd get to climb up and come sliding down on your bum, or on your feet... Grandma and other parents and grandparents stood on the bylines conversing and watching. They never got on the slide. They couldn't: they were too big. Climbing up the ladder; looking down from an impossible height; allowing fate and gravity to bring you back to the ground... Was SO fun! I used to look up at the grownups and think, god, these poor people, can't enjoy this slide, how does one live with something like that? And then I'd feel pangs of what must have been first signs of anxiety, because I realized that eventually, I'd be a grownup, and wouldn't be allowed on the slide. Of course, now I AM a grownup. A...