Tilefortlauderdale

Flower Eyes

2012-01-07T19:32:00.002-05:00

After years spent mostly in front of a computer working, working and working, Flo realized that the most valuable lessons she learned were in her garden, where her mind wandered as freely as the vines that had silently taken over her tiny estate.

While pulling weeds in her neglected garden one weekend, Flo realized that she was working her life away, basically so that she could continue paying the mortgage on a house that had become little more than a giant cubicle. Work, work and then fall into bed. The hours kept getting longer, but the pay did not increase accordingly. The more she thought about her life during the very few hours she now spent in her garden, the less sense it all made.

Flo resolved to abandon her computer, and her evil workplace, and get the hell outside. When a neighborhood blog did a little story about her transition, the article got picked up by a local newspaper that had fired most of its writers and began relying solely on bloggers who worked for free ... Apparently, many cubicle dwellers and other workers decided they liked Flo's little idea. They printed T-shirts that said Go with The Flo and several stopped working overtime. Their days of volunteering for large greedy corporations were finally over.

Instead they started digging into the earth and planting things that were beautiful, life-enriching and often edible. They began trading fruits and flowers, living in huts built from things found in nature, and eating together in the evenings. In their spare time (a term that had been long lost to many of them) they painted, made music and danced and drummed until they found their inner rhythm again. Their family members who still had to work in what they now called "the factories" to help support the gardeners dreams, were rewarded by the gardeners who were helping them to find their own secret niche so they could eventually transition out of the factories.

Pinot Grigio flowed freely at their New Year's Eve party. At midnight they raised their glasses of Blind Moose and said, Go, go, go with The Flo and then they danced like there was no tomorrow.

Flo, who has since changed her name from Florence to Flower Eyes, was dropped at Gateway Shopping Center earlier today. She's in an alley just across the street from a shop called Thousand Pound Egg and near Molly's Studio.

Mary gets her shiny back

2010-10-28T19:30:00.000-04:00

After way too many days and night in the word factory, Mary vowed to spend more quiet time in her old zone. She wanted so badly to hear that voice again, the one that fluttered in on golden wings and talked to her whenever she drew pictures, painted, played kazoo, cleaned, cooked or gardened. That little voice knew her inside and out and kept her work honest. It told her the little stories that helped her make sense of her life. Without that little voice, her life felt less shiny, less tolerable. Mary wanted her shiny back, and now she knew what she must do ... be real quiet and wait for the shiny to reappear. That it will reappear the very month that the Great Pumpkin makes its annual appearance is no small coincidence. Shine on Great Pumpkin, like a long lost friend.

Left Mary in a quiet zone at Tropical Smoothies Cafe on Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale.

Stuck in the Gooey Gumdrops

2010-06-11T20:51:00.003-04:00

Candyland is not always a game for children. Just ask Meghan who has been stuck in the gooey gooey gumdrops for some time now ... and with all this summer heat, they're getting gooier than ever, and the blue ones are getting particularly aggressive and ever so melty. They're threatening to take over and make her life messy, as blue gumdrops have been known to do at times.

Yeah, things are getting very gooey .... and with no yellow card in sight, Meghan fears she might be stuck in the gumdrops forever. Yet she knows that when it comes right down to it, we're all stuck somewhere we don't want to be and we just gotta tell ourselves stories to get through it. People keep telling her she's damn lucky that she still has gumdrops to be stuck in .... but Meghan's just not feeling the luck of the stuck. She knows that given the rising heat index, she's probably headed for a meltdown. But she thinks of that box of Crayolas she left in the car as a kid and tries to remain hopeful anyway, wondering what gorgeous new color her life will take on once all the melting is done.

If there's one thing she's learned from cleaning her tiny apartment, it's that things get a lot messier before they get neat again. It's just what happens when you pull all the guts out of everything and look at it up close with a sense of clarity that only comes when doing deep, deep cleaning. And Meghan's ready for a little tidiness again, even if it means that things get very, very messy first.

Meghan is hanging out on the counter inside the ladies room at Tokyo Sushi at 1499 Southeast 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. She's on a little pedestal, waiting for her yellow card. Someone should go and rescue her from the gooey gooey gumdrops in her mind. She's on a pretty big tile, but you shouldn't be afraid to carry her out. If you are, then take a bag .... a sticker on the back assures that she belongs to the person who finds her and loves her enough to rescue her from the gooey gooey gooey gumdrops.

Not that Meghan's asking for help. She would never do that ... but getting unstuck is sometimes hard work. Sometimes all of your friends must come together and pull and pull and pull till your feet suddenly become free of the gumdrop muck and everyone falls to the ground and starts laughing, and they're all completely covered in gooey gooey gumdrops, and you realize you're really not alone after all.

Where have all the Freeples gone?

2010-04-18T19:00:00.001-04:00

Ever wonder where the characters in a story or novel really came from? Some were born into those stories the way we’re born into families. Once born into a tale, many characters are content to make do with their storymates but sometimes a character wants more than a story can offer, so one day they just walk out of their novel.

Such was the case with Iona, who grew increasingly unhappy with her tale. The writing was uninspired, the transitions seemed forced and it took place in Texas. Iona isn’t even sure how she wound up there, as she hated country music, rodeos and most things associated with Texas. She didn’t even like how things were always bigger there … as she was kinda fond of miniatures. Despite that she had no business being in the Lone Star State, it took her a long time to depart.

When she first considered leaving her book, Last Tutu in Texas, other characters tried to talk her out of it, saying she oughta learn to settle rather than stray off into uncertain places. “Do you even have another book to go to?” one asked. “Or are you just gonna be a Freeple, ‘cause being a Freeple ain’t much of a life. You got security here in this book, and you can stay forever.”

But that’s what scared Iona most. She’d already been there too many years and she knew she could be there forever, but that the novel was never going to get any better. What good is the security of forever, she thought, when you feel unhappy most of the time?

She knew Freeples at least had hope, so she headed to Freepleville where masses of former book characters who’d joined the Freeple movement were trying to figure out who they were and what made them that way. Ultimately, the Freeples had to find a new story or remain on their own forever. Iona chose the latter, because a good story that one can just slide right into like they’d always belonged there is very rare.

The chances of that are about the same as the chance of happening upon a puzzle that contains 499 interlocking pieces and discovering you hold that 500th piece that’s been missing. Vacant story roles are typically too well-defined once a book has been written.

Before one could even consider a new role, there are questions Freeples must ask themselves, difficult questions like “Do I ever want to be in a new story again?” and “Do I want to be a Freeple forever?” Being a Freeple is liberating but Freeples must be tightly glued at all times, because they juggle so much and can’t afford, emotionally, financially or otherwise, for anything to go wrong. But things do go wrong nonetheless, and In Freepleville, all of one’s weaknesses eventually come to light, but so do all of one’s strengths. Sometimes people begin to unravel, and keep unraveling until all you see are their shiny little cores. It’s a beautifully honest, yet frightening, place at times.

It is in those core states that Freeples become more in tune to their own needs, and begin to see themselves and each other for who they really are. Some Freeples are unhappy with themselves, but instead of working on their issues, are looking for a story to complete them, but none ever will. Other Freeples just seek the unconditional love they received as a child and have left their stories to search for that. They fail to realize that this doesn’t happen in the adult world, where there are no parents to shield them from the ugly truths of life, to protect them when they fail. Some of the more distressed Freeples just keep hoping they’ll get swept into a good novel with a happy ending, that some author will conjure a tale that saves them, a tale that seems to have been awaiting them their entire lives.

The Freeples who go on to live the most fulfilling lives, however, are the ones who realize that they ultimately have only themselves to rely on, that a story is a choice, and not a crutch, or a savior.

Those Freeples tend to craft their own stories. It’s a difficult process and not everyone survives it. Some instead settle for temp work in short stories that never become novels, over and over again. But those who do the hard work of writing their own stories sometimes bond with others who are doing the same and occasionally they collaborate on tales that turn into brand new gorgeous heartfelt novels.

There’s no real formula to make this happen, but studies have shown that it happens more often when Freeples are looking inside, rather than outside, for their happiness. When the outer layers finally unravel enough for Freeples to connect with their own inner source of happiness, there’s a little glow that surrounds them and that glow sometimes draws people closer, close enough to see their shiny little cores and all that is inside of them.

That’s how Iona met Ernie, a character who clearly didn’t need a short story or novel to define or complete him. She loved his imagination because it was pure, unfiltered and innocent, the way she dreamed imaginations should be, but much like her, he’d stopped thinking about novels. He thought only in short stories or sudden fiction, which is really short, but easier to make come true. But deep inside Ernie came to want something bigger and intuitively, and almost subconsciously, sought that out … one tiny chapter at a time. That’s what Iona loved most about him, his ability to dream things up, in little baby step ways, and then make the dreams come true by simply believing them. She loved how all the little stories he dreamed up were interconnected, like there was a golden thread that ran through them and would eventually pull them both into one giant heartwarming novel.

Iona had lots of short stories too, just waiting to be told. And no one wants to keep all the short stories they’ve been writing in their heads bottled up forever, so eventually, they tumble out and sometimes they collide with another’s stories and those stories sit on fences together and listen to music and drink wine and roll down hills and lay in grassy fields beneath starlit skies and eventually kiss by the light of the full moon, because not doing so is not an option. Afterward they contentedly sleep all curled up beside one another like little puzzle pieces that have finally found their little place in the world.

Freeples are a secret underground movement of characters who have mysteriously gone missing form their original novels. Only very careful readers will even notice their absence because long after the reader falls asleep, book in hand, a character will escape and begin the journey to Freepleville. When this happens, the words of their original novel rise off the pages and swirl madly for just a little while before falling back into place, rearranged. If you return to a novel you’ve been reading and feel like someone is missing but cannot put your finger on it, just know that you probably lost a character to the Freeple movement, and just be excited for them. This tile was dropped off deep in the heart of Freepleville.

Jack's Tini-Weenie Fridays

2010-03-05T02:14:00.007-05:00

Every single day, Jack had to wear a suit to work and act all corporate and official. But come Friday night, anything goes. That's when Jack goes home and changes into his favorite PJs - the fuzzy ones with little bears all over them - and his slippers that look like wolves. Then he mixes a pitcher of Cosmo-tinis and fries up some hot dogs that he will later slather in bright yellow mustard. He calls his little end-of-the-week solo party Tini-Weenie Fridays.

After the hot dogs and while still working his way through the pitcher of Cosmo-tinis, he conditions his hair, applies a mud mask and watches whatever Netflix movies arrived in the mail that week. Jack lives for Fridays. His friends are always asking him to go out for a few beers or dinner or whatever. But Jack never goes out on Fridays.

His friends just laugh at him and shake their heads and ask what he's doing instead. "It's FRIDAY," Jack would say laughing. "So you KNOW what I'm doing. I'm getting teeny!" They already knew that, of course. They just liked to hear him say it.

Dropped Jack in a box for employment newspapers just alongside of State Road 84 at the shopping center with the Big Lots, which is apparently having a huge clearance sale. The box is out by the highway near a mailbox. It's not the bright blue job newspaper box. That one's empty, because everyone and their sister seems to be looking for a job these days. Jack's just trying to hold on to his until he can find something better, and that requires washing away the stress of his week with cosmo-tinis and hot dogs.

Three Sisters

2010-02-06T07:57:00.006-05:00

Sisters don't necessarily have to be related. they just have to accept each other for who they are, even on the crappiest of days, and especially if those crappy days fall on rainy days and they're feeling cranky, tired and hungry. Dropped the three longtime friends at Ernie's BBQ. Last I knew they were in the ladies room, the one on the bottom floor, swapping secrets about their lousy little day .... Probably getting ready to head upstairs to the patio, one of the best places to enjoy the rain without actually getting wet, and drink a few beers and laugh about all of their little tales of woe.

Wonder where the sisters will end up. Hopefully someplace nice with lots of chocolate and beer.

Malorey's not-so-little secret

2010-01-31T12:56:00.004-05:00

Sometimes Malorey Merrit hid the things that mattered most ... she was only trying to protect them. But some things eventually grew too big to stay hidden forever.

Malorey is hiding out at Starbucks, the one near Southport Shopping Center in Fort Lauderdale, where she got her most recent caffeine fix. Do you know they have skinny cinnamon lattes now?

Everybody loves Ray-Ray

2010-01-30T15:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes long, winding stories just aren't necessary or desired, which is why Ray-Ray's tale is summed up in a dozen words. He kinda wishes people would tell their stories to him that way. In fact, he's thinking of setting a 12-word limit for all his very dramatic friends.

Left little Ray-Ray at Sushi One Takeout, one of my fave sushi spots. It's at 23 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale. Ray-Ray is hiding behind a pot of flowers in the cafe's only rest room, wrapped in plain brown paper. If you take him home, remember this: Next time you want to complain about the latest drama in your life: 12 words. That's all you get. By the time you whittle it down to 12, you might realize it's just not that big of a deal and you probably don't need to talk about it at all. Some things really are just better left unsaid. Just ask Ray-Ray.

Worry Girl

2010-01-23T01:16:00.003-05:00

Most days Cindy Lou could effectively block out all of her worries and concerns and hone in on the tasks at hand. Other days, she wondered and worried incessantly about one thing after another, prompting her brother to call her Worry Girl.

She wondered how that man who’d been sleeping on a bench outside the BK for four hours wound up so sad and hopeless. She wondered if she would be the next person at her workplace to lose her job and health benefits, She worried that the hard little lump on her leg was something serious and whether her stiff knee meant that it had spread. …. When it rained, she remembered that she forgot to get new windshield wipers and wondered how long it would be before her roof sprung a leak …

While driving, she worried that some outrageously expensive Escalade would pull out in front of her and she would barrel into it, causing more damage then her insurance would cover. … She also worried she wouldn’t be able to meet her work deadlines, or that she would commit to something bigger than she could handle in her ongoing efforts to prove herself worthy enough to continue employing …

She worried her cat would not recover from his battle wounds and that those waxing strips she bought at the drugstore would pull her whole eyebrow off …. She worried that her long lost relative would never call her again, or that he would and she would have no idea what to say since she doesn’t know why he stopped talking to her to begin with ….

She worried that someday her secret blog would be exposed and all the kids at work would laugh and laugh and laugh and she would simply die from overexposure… She worried that she would die before she got around to making those cremation plans and her kids would get stuck making the tough decisions … She worried that she would wake up one day and realize she’d been so busy working that her entire life had passed her by …. She worried that her kids might never realize how much she loved them … She worried that they would realize it and miss her terribly and be inconsolably sad when she was gone …. She worried about how much she had begun worrying about “when she was gone,” as if she was going somewhere and that maybe this was a sign that she wouldn’t survive the accident with the Escalade that she hoped not to have ….

She worried that the movie The Secret was right and that somehow worrying about these things would cause them to happen …. She worried that her boyfriend would meet someone far more chatty, upbeat and well-suited for him and fall madly in love with her but not have the heart to tell her that and then she’d be forever stuck with someone who secretly wished he was with someone else …. She worried that she left the stove on, the candles burning and the back door unlocked … She worried that she did lock the back door but would lose her keys and not be able to get in the backdoor …

She worried that some old friend would drop by unexpectedly while she was wearing plaid shorts and a striped shirt and fuzzy mismatched socks and her house was a wreck … She worried about all the people wandering the streets all around the world who were displaced, hungry, sad and feeling like no on in this entire earth loved them enough to help them …. She worried, when she couldn’t take much time out of her day to hang out with her little cat Blackie, that he would feel hungry, sad and like no on this earth loved him enough ….

She worried that when the guy on the corner asked her for money that she wouldn’t be able to differentiate between someone who was sad and down on their luck, someone who wanted to buy crack and someone who could no longer afford the meds they needed to treat their depression… She worried that she might one day feel sad, down on her luck or like she needed a drug to get through the day … She thought about all the people she knew who took doctor-recommended meds to get through the day ….

She considered the morning she watched a pharmaceutical company rep arrive at her doctors office and ask how he could get face time with the doctor and the receptionist telling him, without cracking a smile, that it would have to be a luncheon appointment and explaining where the entire staff likes to be taken to lunch …. She considered how he happily agreed to whatever they demanded because he works for a big corporation with an expense account and wants to sell lots of drugs to make his wallet fatter and his employer richer and more powerful so they could continue prompting doctors to push their drugs and make enough money to buy more politicians ….

She worried about the Supreme Court’s decision to further empower giant corporations to buy politicians and envisioned politicians giving speeches in caps with the names of the corporations who support them while a sidekick with a very soothing voice interjects with details about the side effects of certain decisions: "For some, this solution may cause poverty, hopelessness, illness and depression …."

She wondered why her primary care physician’s office had recently become a Botox facility …and worried that she hadn’t yet found a new doctor because all of her friends docs were now Botox clinics too … She wondered if this was a new trend. She googled and discovered that it was ….She wondered whether the Botox patients were more lucrative and if this was why she now had to wait a month for an appointment … She wondered if she should just make an appointment for Botox and then upon arrival tell them she really didn’t need something that would paralyze her facial muscles and simply wanted a Pap smear to make sure she didn’t have cancer. … She wondered why the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suddenly decided that women in their 40s don’t really need mammograms and how all the women who were diagnosed with breast cancer while in their 40s, or younger, felt about that.

She worried about how little she sometimes thought about all the crooked things going on in this world because she felt powerless to do much about them and was too busy working anyway … She worried how much powerful people would get away with, knowing so many people are too busy working anyway …

On good days, she just worried that she wouldn’t get through all of her work by 6ish on Saturday so that she could go out with her boyfriend and chat and laugh and have a big old glass of wine and worry about nothing except whether to order the burger or the shrimp. … She worried about how all of her worries melted away on Saturdays and what that meant. She began to calculate how many Saturdays she would have in her life if she lived until 70 … then thought better of that and took a little gulp of her Saturday wine and drank to denial, and the comfort it offers.

Then, almost immediately, she felt guilty about just forgetting it all … but not that guilty because, after all, it IS Saturday, and even worry girls should forget about everything once in awhile. If we don't take time out to talk and laugh at ourselves occasionally, we'll never be able to maintain the energy it takes to do all the worrying.

Worry Girl is wrapped in a brown paper package and hiding at the Briny in Fort Lauderdale ... It's where she landed after dinner and a glass of wine. She's on a gigantic tile .... bigger than all of the others, because she was a little worried that no one would find her otherwise.

Long Live the 5-7-5

2010-01-09T21:25:00.002-05:00

Haiku Jones’s parents met at a poetry event and bonded over their love of haikus. Naturally, they named their firstborn daughter after the 17-syllable form of Japanese poetry that brought them together and extremists that they are, both agreed that it would be wondrous and magical to only speak to their daughter in the language of true love: haiku.

Perhaps because that was almost all little HJ ever heard for the first years of her life, her first word, was not momma or milk or baby. One day, Haiku simply blurted out: “I really want milk. I want it right now, Mommy. Pass my bottle please.”

Haiku's parents, Shelby and Vince, were overjoyed. Vince even shed a little tear. The milk request was the first of many, many haikus their daughter would utter in the years leading up to kindergarten.They kept many of them in a scrap book that showed her growth and development, and would share them with others. One read: “Play Doh is awesome/Red, yellow, blue or orange. Mold it into balls.

Shelby and Vince’s friends thought their haiku-spitting daughter was pretty cool at first but after awhile the novelty wore off and they just felt kinda sorry for Haiku, and stopped letting their kids plays with her.

Until Haiku went off to kindergarten and even for years afterward, she didn’t fully grasp just how different she was, or exactly what set her apart from the other kids. She just knew that other kids told her she “talked funny.” She thought they talked differently too, but thought it was sort of beautiful the way they rambled on incessantly, like a river that just kept flowing and never felt the need to stop and consider things before moving forward.

In second grade, her very wise teacher, who had majored in English, sat Haiku down and explained that the language Haiku had spent her life developing was indeed gorgeous, but more than a tad limiting and that there was a world of other possibilities, other ways to express one’s self. She told Haiku that a girl her age shouldn’t try to limit her thoughts to 17 syllables even if she clearly was very good at doing so. Haiku was intrigued, though a little confused. She never knew she was developing anything or consciously trying to limit herself. It’s just the way she always talked.

But she told Mrs. Lively that she would try to break her 5-7-5 habit and try new things, like just “free talking.” Mrs. Lively said she thought that would be for the best and that she’d even talked to Haiku’s parents and that they had agreed it might be a good thing for her to explore other conversation options.

That made Haiku feel like she’d done something wrong. She hoped her parents weren’t going to be mad at her. That night on the way home, she started practicing new speech patterns. It was more difficult than she imagined it might be. As Mrs. Lively pointed out, she did consistently speak in the 5-7-5, but it was never an effort. It’s not like she counted syllables; they just flowed that way for as long as she could remember. But now she had to count them all the time to make sure she didn’t have the 5-7-5 pattern because then she would have to reword it in such a way that it seemed “free.” Oddly, all this effort, made her new sentences feel anything but free.

But soon, the efforts began to pay off. Sort of. Not that her new language felt natural. It didn’t. But in the years to come she did begin to fit in better. Other kids began to accept her and were allowed to come over to her house and stuff. She liked that part of it, even if she had to keep counting and saying things that didn’t feel right to her. She never talked to the other kids about it, except for Inky, the girl who always had ink stains on her hand. Inky felt like her one true friend because she accepted Haiku even back when Haiku was openly doing what her teacher called the 5-7-5. Inky loved words and was always writing in one of the many sections of her gigantic loose leaf paper- filled binders. She had about 7 dividers in there,with pictures drawn on them to represent the various categories of her writing. "Love" had a gigantic red heart with lots of little teeny conversation hearts inside it. “Diary” had an illustration of a giant keyhole and a kid with a key hanging around her neck. “Overheard” had a giant drawing of an ear that Inky told her belonged to an artist named Van Gogh. She said he didn’t need that ear to hear with because he listened with his eyes and talked with his paintbrush. She was funny like that, always saying really unusual things, but Haiku liked her because she was just so darned interesting, not like other kids who just talked about boys and dances and other stupid stuff that didn’t mean much at the end of the day.

Haiku told Inky about that talk she’d had back in second grade with their teacher Mrs. Lively and how Mrs. Lively explained that her talking in the 5-7-5 all the time just wasn’t right, and how she tried hard never to do that anymore but that secretly inside her own head, everything was still all about the 5-7-5.

Inky was fascinated and said she wondered why Haiku had stopped speaking in what she knew must have been her native language, but agreed that a secret haiku language was indeed special and that sometimes secrets are the only way we can protect such special things from the ridicule of those who don’t understand them. She made it clear, however that she understood about her language and would be honored if Haiku didn’t feel the need to hide her 5-7-5 ways in her presence. So Haiku talked to Inky in the language she was most comfortable with and Inky would sometimes ask Haiku’s permission to write something she’d just said into her giant binder of words. Inky clearly loved Haiku's language, and Haiku loved the stories Inky obsessively wrote in binders that lined the shelves of her room.

Inky told Haiku someone once tried to tell her that there was something wrong with her, too. … that some therapist her mom dragged her to discussed her obsessive writing habits, and even had some long name to describe it and pills to "cure" it.

“See how life is,” Inky said. “The minute you develop something unique and beautiful, people wanna tear it down and call it a disease, just because they don’t have it, and if they don’t have it, then for God’s sake, there must be something wrong with it." You believe in God?” Haiku asked.
“I thought you were atheist. Believed in nothing.”

“I believe in some things,” Inky says. “I’m not exactly sure what yet, but I do think it’s interesting that people are always asking other people if they believe in God. I never hear anyone ask anyone whether God believes in them, because if God does believe in them, then he should trust them to do what’s right. And if people can be trusted to do what’s right, then they don’t really have to keep putting all of their decisions in God’s hands, like I always hear people saying. Think about it. If there is a God and he created us, then don’t you think he’d have given us what we needed to make decisions for ourselves? You think he’d wants us having to come to him for every little thing. I mean, what is that, job security?"

It was these sort of frank discussions that led Haiku to remain friends with Inky for years to come, and to find her own voice again -- the 5-7-5 that came so natural to her. No longer did she have to hide it or feel ashamed of it. She knew now that it was a beautiful and natural thing, a rhythmic language that was involuntary, like a heartbeat, or breathing, or a genuine friendship.

She didn’t speak it all of the time. She knows what she must do, to get a job, hold a job and deal with people who were nothing like Inky, but occasionally she meets another free spirit and in her head, she always sums up every conversation, every life experience, and every major event in her life, in the language of her people.

Recently, for example, her kitty Blackie began having dreams about a big black dog and developed an irrational fear of being alone, so Haiku was unable to leave her apartment for more than a few hours a day on weekends. This meant she could not go see her big fancy boyfriend and spend the night, and he in turn was unable to stay at her house either. Haiku’s bed was just too tiny. It was sad, and after he explained why he could not ever stay, she replayed his conversation in 5-7-5: “I love you a bunch/but your bed’s smaller than mine/no where for my feet.”

She’ll do the same thing after an afternoon of gardening, summing it up with something like “Vines are so gnarly/They kill everything in sight/And then reach for more."

She had haikus for each of the 19 times her heart got broken, and summed that all up with "When hearts do flutter/Know just how fragile they are/Not unbreakable."

The 5-7-5 is what helps Haiku keep her head on straight, and for the last few years she’s been touring the college circuit, talking to students about celebrating their differences and making the most of the things that set us apart from one another, because somewhere at the heart of those things that set us apart, lie our strengths, our beautiful shiny little cores.

Long live the 5-7-5. Haiku is hiding in a drawer in the ladies room of Total Wine on Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale. That's right, second drawer down, in the ladies room.

The new Polly

2010-01-01T23:58:00.001-05:00

2009 was a very tough year for the typically optimistic Pollyanna. Silver linings in black clouds were elusive. Her Uplift Tea simply put her to sleep and she all but stopped saying things like “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” … and “This too shall pass” … and “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

She realized that the light at the end of the tunnel was fading for too many people and that despite what she’d been saying for years, hope was not always on the horizon. All the things she once believed in now felt like a little crockpot of crap.

To make matters worse, Polly was one of 100 Pollyannas charged with spreading hope and optimism in her increasingly large region, and 70 of her co-Pollyannas were terminated this year, their positions simply eliminated. Each received a pretty little pink slip that read: Every time one door closes, another one opens.

Now Pollyanna had three times her normal workload, but with no extra pay and clients who were sadder and more hopeless than ever. Pollyanna, who’d always prided herself on her work, could no longer do such a shiny knock-up job of providing hope. She no longer had the time or resources to customize individual hope plans and secretly inject them into people’s dreary little lives.

Now her support to the masses has been dwindled down to the one line she feels covers everything across the board. Her new advice: "Just find whatever little glimmer of hope you can and hang onto it as tightly as you can, for as long as humanly possible. Then hope with all of your might for the very best." There are no more charming or clever tricks in her little bag. That's all she's got left.

Happy 2010. Now do like Polly says and go forth and search for your glimmer. Don’t forget to hang on and hope for the best. Hope with all your little might. Hang on tight.

Tiles are typically put on the streets to be found, or in other relatively public places, but Polly's had an extraordinarily rough year, so I dropped her in a place where I knew she'd be warmly welcomed ... at a close friend's mom's house. She's not just any mom. She's a card shark who will beat the pants off anyone in rummy. She'll act like she doesn't know how to play, saying something like ... "Hey, those twos are worth 20 points right???" and then turn around and beat the heck out of ya, while playing the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in the background. BTW, she does a mean pirouette to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Let's just say she knows her Radetzky March from her Blue Danube, ya know what I mean? She knows her German chocolates too, and is reportedly the Rummikub Queen. That's right, she will put you to shame.

So we think Pollyanna's on the right path, because Rummikub Queen is probably going to teach her how to play Rummikub ... a nickel a point, and then Polly won't have to work so hard all of the time, and maybe she'll have more time to dream up a hope plan for others, like us.

Rhododendron's Roots

2009-12-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

When Rhoda was a little girl, drawing, coloring and writing and talking at the kitchen table, she always told her mom that she couldn't wait to grow up and do whatever she wanted. Now Rhoda would do anything to have just one of those days spent at her Mom's kitchen table, dreaming about life's seemingly endless possibilities. She so loved all those possibilities, and she loved her mom too, even if she did name her Rhododendron. Rhoda used to complain to her mom that the kids at school made fun of her real name when the teacher took attendance, but her mom told her that it was special and that having such a special name would make her stronger. Rhoda believes that it really did make her stronger.

Rhoda's on a bench outside one of the many empty shops in Southport Shopping Center on 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. It's kinda desolate there, but she's not scared.

Random

2009-09-28T12:01:00.002-04:00

On some days, Random feels hope slipping from her grasp and realizes she's exhausted from holding on so tightly, and working so hard. So she lets go, feels the colors rushing out like blood from a wound. Weakened and dizzy, she lays down on her comfy couch and looks inward for a very long time ... imagines a world devoid of color.

Eventually she dozes off, dreams that it is raining in her living room and that she can't find her black umbrella. When she awakens, she trots out to her overgrown garden and considers how long it's been since she spent any time out there, how long it had been since she had dug in the dirt. She approached her once-gorgeous red, yellow and purple flowers that now looked tattered.

A closer examination revealed that killer vines had moved in and were slowly but surely trying to choke the life out of the colorful flowers she once considered her babies. The vines were almost camouflaged. She could imagine how it all went down, as the uninvited guests slithered over the fence and reached down, down, down, getting each day a little closer to the prey eventually moving in, just a little at a time, and wrapping itself around ever so tightly until it seemed the plant's only purpose was to help the evil, greedy, callous killer vine to thrive.

Random knew she must save the vines, and save herself too. She began pulling them out by the roots like a madwoman, grabbing hold of a string of leaves and pulling, pulling, pulling until there came a snap from somewhere. She filled up one big yard waste bin after another, after another ... This went on for the better part of a weekend, until her flowers were finally free of all that had snuck in while no one was looking and was slowly but surely trying to kill them.

Satisfied with her efforts, she unearthed the garden hose, partly buried in the dirt from sheer non-use, and proceeded to water her flowers, watching them sway freely as the spray of the hydration hits them and the water glistens and forms translucent beads on their thirsty little leaves. It was like a little dance of freedom.

Once the plants have had enough water, Random traipses into the house, covered in dirt. She pours a large glass of water, adds lemon, drinks thirstily and steps into a hot, hot shower to wash away the muck. Afterward, she wipes the fog from the mirror above her sink, catches a glimpse of her own face and says "There you are!" and laughs aloud. She brushes her teeth with an electric toothbrush. then slips into her softest flannel pajamas, puts on lipstick, climbs onto her big comfy couch and makes a new to-do list. She then closes her eyes and imagines herself putting little check marks beside each item as she completes the tasks that will bring her closer to unraveling herself from the vines that have crept into her own life.

Then she brews a cup of catnip tea and crawls into bed beside her mean little kitty cat who loves her unconditionally. She looks down at her hands, which are cut and scratched from thorns and flower rescue efforts, and makes a mental note to buy yard gloves and a nice little bag of shrimp for Blackie.

Random is in the rest room at Holland Garden Center, 1035 Southeast 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. She dropped in to look for gardening gloves, but got caught up looking at all the cool art and secret garden-type hideaways in this location. She's on a wicker shelf in the rest room ... hiding under something. Seek and you shall find.

Stir Crazy

2009-08-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

Heide sometimes has trouble sleeping. So occasionally in the middle of the night, while everyone is fast asleep, she goes out and walks for a really, really long time. She never tells anyone she does this because they'd just think she was a little weird ... But Heidi likes her secret walks in the wee hours. The world is a very, very different place at night when all the shops and restaurants are closed ... no people, no laughter, no screaming kids, and hardly ever any cars going by. All she can hear is the sound of her own footsteps and that little voice in her head that says "You know you're not supposed to be doing this." Actually, that might be her mom's voice.

But once the rain stops and all the stores close ... Heide will probably wander around outside ... she'll probably have her little nose pressed up against the glass at Kilwin's, wishing she had a little fudge or ice cream, maybe mint chocolate chip ... she kinda likes walking around really late at night after the rain because then she can skip through the puddles really, really fast .... just like her mom always told her not to do when she was a kid.

But sometimes when it's all said and done, Heide's all wet from the puddle-jumping and feels kinda chilly, and she doesn't wanna walk all the way back home. She kinda wishes that someone nice and totally reliable and trustworthy would give her a ride home, maybe have a nice little cup of herbal tea waiting in the car ... and the car would have those fancy schmantzy little seat warmers that make you feel real happy and not so cold, like someone is giving you a big warm hug. Maybe afterwards, they'd play a board game ... and she'd win. And then she'd hear her mom's little voice in her head going, "Yes, that's what you're supposed to be doing."

If rain can lead to all that ... It's never a bad thing.

Heide is at Stir Crazy at The Shops of Pembroke Gardens ... because it's been raining all day and even though it was still daylight, she got a little Stir Crazy, so she had to go somewhere, and it seemed like a good place to be. She's in the ladies room of Stir Crazy, eavesdropping as usual ... people are saying they like the food, that it's very yummy, and healthy too.

Laney's Limoncello Dream

2009-08-03T13:35:00.016-04:00

Now that so many people have lost their jobs, it’s become all-but-forbidden for the Lucky Ones, those still collecting a paycheck, to complain about the fact that they’re now expected to spend most their waking hours working, but for no extra pay. As an added bonus, their offices, stores and factories are basically an episode of Survivor and on any given day they might be voted off the island, which makes it hard for them to sleep in the few hours they get to do so.

Despite all this, they’re supposed to keep on pretending they’re lucky to have jobs, ‘cause they are … they are soooo lucky to be working 60-70 hours, even if they only get paid for 40, cause hey, at least they’re’re not behind in rent or mortgage and at least they haven’t had to go back home to live with their parents … some of them don’t even have moms or dads anymore. But they can’t complain, ‘cause hey, at least they’re not homeless.

Laney liked her job, but just hated working so darned much and sometimes she really did just wanna complain about it ... but she never felt like she could ‘cause everybody just kept telling her how incredibly lucky she was to be working. That’s how it is now. Just keep on working and keep on dealing with it, 'cause you're lucky. Lucky. Lucky Lucky. Shut up. Deal. You're so Lucky.

So yeah, no one complains anymore. Complaining is just boring anyway, because it's not like anyone’s situation is particularly unique … everybody who still has a job in the same boat … not really a boat though, more like a canoe that you have to keep paddling against a current so increasingly strong that it makes one wonder when their arms are finally going to give out and what will become of them when they do. We keep hearing and seeing little indicators that things might get better, that we should all try to hold on, but seriously, are companies every gonna bring back all those people they fired, or will they just keep firing more and paying increasingly less wages or hiring indie contractors so they don’t have to provide any benefits? …. Meanwhile, there are a few less foreclosure signs in the neighborhood now, and the empty storefronts that once housed profitable little businesses are again showing signs of life, including lots of pizzerias … ‘cause even those who can’t afford to go to dinner now … still like to enjoy an occasional slice. We’re all about slices now, ‘cause you gotta take a little break now and then and call up your friend and say, “Hey, ya wanna meet for a slice?”

And a slice is nice, real nice, but Laney sometimes needs more than a slice to get her through the muddle, and one night at her neighborhood restaurant, The Sliceria, she found just the cure.

It was a Tuesday, much like any other Tuesday, except it was sorta special because she and her friend, Lil Bea, had decided to just drop everything they were doing and meet down at The Sliceria for a delicious slice of eggplant pizza around 8 p.m. It was kinda crowded for a Tuesday. In fact, there was only one table free and the hostess just grinned and said, "You guys look tired. You been working hard?"

“Of course,” they said in unison.

"We're lucky," Laney explained, "that we even have jobs."

“Well, you’re in the right place now,” the hostess says, “and you’re just in time. “

Lil Bea got all excited, because Lil Bea loves being on time and secretly loves being rewarded for the politeness that comes so natural to Lil Bea. “We’re just on time, Laney,” Lil Bea said. “I wonder what we’re gonna get?”

“I think they’re gonna try to sell us a time share,” she told Lil Bea.

“I’m kinda in the market for one!” Lil Bea said, laughing.

Minutes after they’d been seated at the only remaining table, the crowd began counting down really loudly …. 59, 58, 57, 56 …. They were all going mad and swirling around and hugging and kissing one another like it was New Year’s Eve or something. Laney and Lil Bea were mesmerized by all the totally unexpected excitement they’d encountered, yet slightly uncomfortable and a little cautious, feeling like they’d walked into the middle of some weird yet joyous cult meeting. But the people didn’t look like cult members. Most were just wearing shorts or jeans and some were in work duds still, like mechanic uniforms with those little name patches on them. Others were wearing business suits and still madly chatting on cell phones about work. When the countdown got to one, someone yelled “Drop!” and the swirling stopped and everyone dropped to the floor in dead silence as though they had fallen into a very deep sleep. Everyone except Laney and Lil Bea, that is, who were still in some kinda shock.

That’s when this really sweet-looking old lady with a big purse and wearing a headscarf and curlers, emerged and looked dead into the eyes of Laney and Lil Bea and said …. “Did you not hear the announcement? I SAID everyone is to drop!!!!”

Laney and Lil Bea looked at each other with wild amusement, shrugged their shoulders and threw themselves to the floor and closed their eyes but each kept opening one of them to look at the other and trying not to laugh real hard. I mean, really, they went for a slice and now they’re on the floor, and they don’t even really know why, but something about the whole thing makes them want to laugh really hard. Both knew they could probably pull off not laughing if they didn’t look at each other … but then the laughter started to ooze out of Laney and then Lil Bea started laughing at her, and the next thing you know, they’re hysterical and others are laughing real hard too.

Then the old lady said, “OK! It’s 8:08 at The Sliceria, and you know what that means. Do the Lemon Drop!!!!”. Everyone jumped up and started dancing about wildly and flailing their arms and laughing really, really hard for about 3 minutes … and then everyone just drifted back to their seats and servers started swirling around and handing out little tiny glasses of what looked like lemonade … and saying happy things like “Bottoms Up!” and “Make Lemons Out of Lemonade!”

Laney and Lil Bea were speechless, which is a rarity, especially for Lil Bea.

Then some character dressed as a giant Lime started playing a cello …. Afterwards, she took a deep breath and said “I guess some of you might be wondering what the hell we’re doing here.”

Lots of laughter ensued. “Truth is,” she says, “We’re just fed up with working all the time. Do ya feel it?” she asked. “Yes!!!!” people shouted loudly. “Then say it!!” she yelled. “Say it!”

People started yelling, “I am FED UP!”

“Louder.”

“FED UP!” they yelled.

“Louder!”

This time Laney and Lil Bea joined in, raising their tiny little Lemonade glasses into the air and yelling: “Fed Up!”

The servers continued bringing around those little tiny glasses of Lemonade … and Laney was loving them. The giant Lime raised her glass, too and said Limonnnnnnn Cellooooooooo. Everyone started chanting “Limon Cello! Limon Cello!” Eventually things quieted down and the ever-popular Lime Lady said “Look, don’t be letting nobody tell you that ya don’t have a right to complain about this hand they’re dealin’ ya, that you’re supposed to just go around feeling lucky for the privilege of doing twice as much work for the same pay. This is your life that’s passing you by and ya know what that is? It’s bullshit. Can ya say it? Yes, we can!!!” Everyone started yelling “Bull shit!!!!”

“This is fun!” Laney told Lil Bea.

Then the Lime’s voice went from assertive to to sorta soothing, and she says “I know, my children, I been there and I lived it, and I know you gotta do what ya gotta do to pay those bills, but you also gotta come together on this and you gotta call it what it is!!!! Don’t let nobody take that away from you. And do the best you can to get out from under it, because y’all know you ain’t just here for a slice. Ya came here ‘cause you need to get out from under it, and you need to come together, and talk and you need to pile those worries outside the door and FREE your mind. I said FREE your mind of the bullshit of those big corporations that have you under their thumb ... ‘cause honey, you might be seeing less for-sale signs and you might be hearing that things are changing, but big old corporations have realized they can treat ya like poo now and that you are gonna put up with it and pretend to feel lucky to do so. Am I right? You all been pretending?”

“Alleluia!” yelled Lil Bea, who leaped from the table hands in air.

“Sit down,” said Laney who was now laughing cause Lil Bea actually had a cushy job and didn’t even have to work unpaid overtime.

“Sorry, got caught up in the moment,” Lil Bea said.

“Go head and tell me I don’t know,” the big green Lime continued. “I was once one of y’all professionals, and now I’m a freaking 53-year-year old lime. But I ain’t given up. I am a lime with a line, and I am fine.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the crowd chanted.

“Yes,” she says, closing her eyes as though she was channeling some kinda higher lemon-lime power. “Yes!”

“Thing is,” she said quietly. “I know you all, deep down inside ya there, are angry, but ya don’t show it often, ‘cause ya don’t know what to do with it. You feel sorry for your bosses, even as they fire your asses one by one, and maybe because they have to fire ya one by one … that’s why they keep ya, my little dears, cause you ain’t angry enough. You gotta express that anger and work it on up the chain. Those bosses you feel sorry for … they ain’t feeling sorry for you … they gotta feel your discontent, they gotta know what they’re doing to ya, and yeah, it’s gonna make 'em feel bad, but how bad do y’all feel doing what ya gotta do now? Shit, they don’t even know.”

There were rumblings among the gathered. “”Ya know” she says, “why we do this at 8:08. Cause we know that you know that ya ain’t got no control. You take 8:08 and you do all that work to turn it upside down and whadda ya got? It’s still 8:08, right? And that’s the whole damn problem. You can work so hard and turn the whole damn thing upside down and in the end, whaddaya got. Same damn 808 ya started with. It’s a bitch, ain’t it? But here it was 8:08 tonight and are ya at work? No? Are ya having fun? Yes. Are ya bonding? Yes. That, my little dears, is what it’s all about. So good on ya for taking a step out from under that BS they been feeding ya. Ya feel me?”

“Limon Aid. Limon Aid!” yelled a man in a mechanic suit with a patch that read Billy. “Love the Limon!” he yelled while throwing back his tiny glass of lemonade.

“I ain’t gonna harp on this no more,” the Big Lime said. “I’m just gonna play my cello and offer you some Limoncello, The Happy Lemonade” and I’m gonna ask you to spread the word, spread the relief, ‘cause I believe in you. Ya hear me? I BELIEVE in you.”

Laney felt like she was at some sorta holy roller convention, but the only one that ever made sense to her in her life. She looked over at Lil Bea, who was doing the infamous eye roll, which made her laugh because she knew that even though she and Lil Bea had mad fun together, they did in some ways live on different planets. But she still loved the trademark eye roll anyway, and pretty much everything about Lil Bea, who really was a worker bee trapped in the body of a person with a cushy job.

Lil Bea, even while pretending to be caught up in the moment, recognized the event as crafty marketing from a liquor company, and it ultimately is, but Laney believes in the dedication of that giant Lime, and knows that lime is working for a living too., and that having to dress as a giant lime at the age of 50-something can’t be easy. But she’s trying to make it work, to use her position for good, to gather the masses to rise up together and yell a big loud resounding “No!” Maybe they can’t change the world … but it’s nice to have a place where people can come and be themselves for awhile and not have to pretend like everything is OK all the time when it clearly is not.

Laney began thinking about how she could carry that into her job too, to incorporate a little of that spirit. She began making a little more room for the limelight … Now on certain nights of the week, she just stops working, lights candles and drinks tiny glasses of Limoncello while listening to songs by The Lemonheads and dreaming of a better life. She finds it easier these days to feel more open to new ideas and to forget about all the struggles everyone is going through.

Then one night, Laney was down at her local supermarket and the cashier and a customer were having a conversation about the state of the economy and all the people in their families who weren’t working now because they’d lost their jobs. So the customer said, “Yeah, I’m driving an ice cream truck to make ends meet.” The cashier responded that her husband was also driving an ice cream truck now. Laney got to thinking about how even in times like these when people had to work two or three jobs, kids and adults are still chasing down ice cream trucks because we all need a little comfort.

Laney got to thinking about a late night Limoncello Sno-Cone truck for adults, so that she could help spread the word of the Lime and to comfort the stress-out and overworked and give people something to look forward to … Instead of that silly ice cream truck music, the Lime-mobile would just play music by The Lemonheads

While her nightly activities don’t get her health insurance or even pay the bills, the late-night venture she dreamed up by candlelight while drinking The Happy Lemonade is more fulfilling than she ever imagined it could be. Mostly it’s made her dream again of the many possibilities life has to offer.

This is how Laney became a full-fledged member of the Church of The Happy Lemonade. Laney calls it the Kool-Aid alternative and when she parks the Lime-mobile in a neighborhood, it becomes a gathering place for the overworked masses in need of Happy Lemonade Sno-cones. Those who gather have begun swapping stories about their lives and talking long after the Happy Lemonade Lady has driven off into the night.

Lemons and limes are driving Laney’s life in a better direction now. Call it inspiration in its purest freshest Lemony form. She considers it a vocation, a calling of sorts … to provide a place where the tired and the hungry and the stressed can slurp up sweet cold confections, and consider ways to eliminate the BS, and make their lives all shiny and new again.

Deep inside, that’s all everyone really wants … for their lives to be shiny and new again.

Laney has been dropped at Carcione's Pizzeria in Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale. They serve up a nice little slice and seem to cater to the hard-working masses. Laney is in the restroom, hiding in a box of bleach, trying not to laugh.

For the record, Laney is a made-up name and any resemblance she might bear to someone dressed as a Giant Lime rolling down your street late at night in a Sno-Cone truck that’s blaring Lemonheads is completely coincidental. Besides, everyone knows that Limoncello Sno-cones are completely illegal without proper licensure, and Laney can’t afford all that … so obviously she is NOT driving a Limoncello Sno-Cone Truck. Definitely not.

The truth about scallywags

2009-06-18T11:25:00.006-04:00

Coffee had always been one of Ramona’s dearest friends. It had gotten her through many a life crisis, and it helped her to work hard and be more productive.

But Ramona also knew that coffee had become the death of her. She wasn’t sleeping well, and no matter how hard she tried to be diligent about her work and her increasing workload at The Office, she knew her company was a sinking boat and that all she could do was bale out water over and over again. Sure, there were different strategies, so the buckets were thankfully a different color each time, but in the end, she know none of it would matter and that she had to start looking at her life differently. All that coffee she drank just to stay aboard had taken it’s toll healthwise. So she wasn’t surprised on the day her doctor said. “Ramona, you need to get off the coffee.”

Ramona cried, just literally fell apart, right there on the little crinkly paper sheets while wearing her ridiculous looking paper gown.

There’s a reason you’re having heart palpitations and anxiety, her doc said. It’s all that caffeine. Why do you drink so much?”

“Because I think too much,” she says, “and I have to stay awake to finish all the stuff I gotta do. It’s not like life used to be, where at 5 p.m., you just go home and call it a day. And f I lose this job, there’s not another around the corner waiting. The manager down at my neighborhood Quik Stop advertised a clerk job and 200 people applied. So now, even though I’ve worked hard all my life, I’m not sure I could even get a job at my neighborhood Quik Stop, because I’d have to compete with 200 people, and I have bills to pay.”

“Tell me about it,” the doctor says. “I basically work for your insurance company, and as you may know by now, they’re not that generous.”

“Yeah, I do know.”

“Look,” the doc says, “You can still have a cup or two of coffee on weekends, but you gotta seriously cut back. I know your having anxiety about issues beyond your control, but here are medications that can help take the edge off, so you can function, just while you are going through this period. Why don’t we give that a shot and we’ll see ya back here in a few months to discuss the results.”

“I don’t know,” Ramona says. “I hate pills.”

“Alright, well, you could just continue self-medicating with those giant coffees and we would talk further after you keel over at their counter.”

Ramona laughed, but only because she could imagine that actually happening, that somehow it would all unravel down at the coffee shop one day. She accepted some samples of the magical pills and began the drive back to office hell. Along the way, she called her big brother, who knew better than to ever expect a call from his little sister in the middle of the workday.

“What the heck ya doing, scallywag?” he says.

“Did you seriously just call me a scallywag, you eejit?”

“Yeah, I did, he says laughing. “That’s what mom used to call ya … So why ya calling me, scallywag??”

“Cause I just got out of the docs and they gave me anti-depressants.”

“About damn time someone gave you some meds,” he said, laughing.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m not sure I wanna take them,” Ramona said.

“Well,” he says. “Do ya need em? I mean what did they say when they gave em to ya?”

“They said no more coffee, and then when I cried, they said I could have it on weekends. Only.”

Wally laughed really hard at that, but Ramona explained that even though the withdrawals might kill her, she was kinda sorta OK with the coffee thing, since having it every day made it feel not so special anyway, like something she needed rather than just wanted. She was afraid, she told Wally, that the coffee was becoming less of a treat and more of a crutch.

“Whadda ya need a crutch for?” Wally asked. “Can ya not walk?”

“Of course I can walk,” Ramona replied.

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” she said through her tears, “is that I don’t know where to go.”

“Ah, I get it. But those pills will help you to figure all that out, right?” he asked. “They must be those ones they advertise on TV, he says, where at first people are holding their head in their hands all slumped over with the weight of the world on their shoulders and then they take the pills and suddenly they’re jumping through the air on a spring day catching Frisbees and throwing their heads back and laughing … while a summer breeze rustles the leaves of a big oak tree and people drink lemonade on front porches. Did they give ya that pill? Huh? Huh? Because I want some of those. I wanna catch Frisbees and drink lemonade too.”

Ramona laughed again, while crying. “Yeah, I think that’s the one,” she says. “I got a buncha samples right here, undoubtedly delivered to my doc’s office by a pharmaceutical rep who took the entire staff to lunch at whatever play place they demanded to be taken to.”

“Probably threw in a big old wide screen TV, too,” Wally said. “So you gonna take the pills?” he asks. “Start catching Frisbees?.”

“Whatever,” Ramona said. “I don’t really care about Frisbee. “I’m just tired of feeling like I’m ready to fall apart.”

“Yeah, you know what really sucks about feeling that way?” he asked. “That you have to eventually do something about it in order to stop feeling that way. But now that they have these pills, you don’t really have to do anything,” he says laughing. “That’s great! You could probably, in fact, go through the rest of your life without ever having to make decisions. That really will free you up, for Frisbee and lemonade and stuff. Maybe this whole thing is a blessing in disguise because once you feel the magic of these pills you could probably just quit your job and devote your life to something meaningful. You could become a pharmaceutical rep. … distributing pills and Frisbees to all who need them, and taking people to lunch … not a bad job if ya think about it. Hey, could you send me some pencils and clip boards and some of that other free stuff you guys always get? …. My little sister, a pharmaceutical rep ….. Wouldn’t mom and dad be proud? Maybe they’ll send you to one of those seminars or continuing education things they organize for doctors in Hawaii, or wherever they hold those things. That’s probably where your doctor learned about these pills. And if she says you should take them, you definitely should, ‘cause she wouldn’t prescribe pills you didn’t need. Just do what she tells ya.”

“Hey, did you take the first pill yet?”

“No.”

“Whatcha waiting for?”

“OK, I’m not taking the damn things,” she said rolling her eyes. “I’m just going to continue instead to feel like total and complete crap. Isn’t that what you’re suggesting I do?”

“Exactly, Wally said. “But remember that every time you cry or get angry or feel frustrated or uncomfortable ... it’s just a growing pain … If you continue to do nothing about the pain, it will become unbearable and you will eventually be forced to do something … that’s how life works. All the unpleasant things that you don’t want to feel right now, are also the very things that bring you closer to making a needed change.

“You are not broken. Frustration and despair are like the indicator lights on your car … they tell you when something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Your indicators are working fine. Maybe you don’t know how to fix everything yet …. But taking pills to mask your feelings is like seeing your check engine light come on and putting black tape over it so you can forget you’re having a problem.”

“By the way, is your engine light still on? Did you get that timing belt yet?” Wally asked.

“No, you said to do it by 70,000 miles,” Ramona replied.

“I did, but here’s a little secret,” Wally revealed. “You don’t have to wait until things break down completely to fix them …. I know you don’t have time to deal with this stuff …. But if you do it now, it will save you lots of time you don’t have later …. It’s kinda like life that way … you can rush through all your stuff till 3 a.m. every morning and keep doing that till ya keel over or your can save yourself from eventual breakdown by taking the time you need right now to think and listen to the voice deep inside you …. The one that goes, what the hell are ya doing, ya little scallywag? are ya in there somewhere?"

Ramona is at the Dunkin Donuts at 1579 S. Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale ... on a shelf in the ladies room .... unraveling.

No More Reruns

2009-05-25T11:54:00.000-04:00

Lucy pretends to listen while Jill rambles on incessantly about her crappy job, her latest no-good boyfriend, her meddling mother, her crazy neighbors and all the drama that constantly swirls around her life ... Lucy tries to muster concern, but sometimes she just gets tired of all the reruns. She realizes that people, much like TV sitcoms and movies, fall into categories. They might be a comedy, or a romance, or in Jill's case, a full-fledged drama but with no real closure. Lucy doesn't know how many times she can keep hearing those same stories over and over again. She's hoping for a new season, or a sequel, in which Jill finally learns from her mistakes, solves her problems and moves on to a place with new stories that aren't so draining.

Meanwhile Lucy is hiding under the sink in the ladies' room at Dough Boys Pizza on Southeast 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. It's quiet down there, but it's kinda dark and a little dull. She's hoping someone will come and take her away to somewhere new, someplace cheerier, a place where there are no reruns.

Purr-fect Dilemma

2009-05-17T10:45:00.001-04:00

Heide met someone she really loved but was afraid to get too close to him for fear he would discover her deepest secret: When she feels really happy and content, she purrs like a cat. She tries real hard not to do that but if she completely relaxes and lets her guard down, it just happens, usually as she is drifting happily off to sleep.

She blames Blackie, who had been sleeping curled up next to her for years. The purring must have somehow rubbed off on her in kinda the same way Blackie took to snoring. But Heide had no idea how to explain this to Joey. Then one Sunday afternoon while lying in a grassy lakeside field after a local hopscotch tournament, she involuntarily succumbed to her overwhelming feeling of content and drifted off and began purring.

When she awoke Joey was looking at her with a silly little grin on his face, and suddenly she realized she must have slipped up and begun purring. But Joey just seemed relieved. "And I thought I was the only person on the planet who purred," he said laughing.

Heidi is in one of the restrooms at Ice Box in Miami Beach. Not the cool one with all the nooks and crannies and hiding places, but the other one. She's beneath a stack of paper hand towels on a table just to the left as you walk in. If you listen real close, you can hear her purring under there.

Eyebrow

2009-05-10T21:58:00.006-04:00

Ginny remembers looking through the old family photo albums that her mom had spent an entire summer organizing. One album for instance, would have several pages devoted to one child, with yearly school pictures from kindergarten clear on through high school. Ginny still remembers how all of her siblings would laugh at her photos and the one thing that remained constant year after year -- her big bushy eyebrows, the ones her mother always called "Irish eyebrows."

Her brother once got so hysterical laughing about the eyebrow pics that Ginny thought their mom might have to slap him just to stop him from laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. "Look," he says, "pointing to a baby picture of Ginny. You were born with those eyebrows." Unfortunately, it was true. She hardly had any hair on her head ... She was all eyebrows ... and they remained bushy right through 7th grade but in 8th grade she was hoping to change all that. Her brother, however, told her she was stuck with those eyebrows .... that they would just keep getting bushier until they were one big fat hairy brow. When he could see that Ginny was about to cry, he'd say, "Don't worry Ginny, you're still very special ... in a short-bus kinda way."

Ginny had always hated her eyebrows and pleaded with her mom to let her pluck them. Her mom, however, wouldn't let her anywhere near a tweezers, insisting that for every hair plucked, two more would grow back. "Besides," she told Ginny, "those eyebrows give you strength and character. They're what make you stand out. You just need to learn to make them work for you, and you'll figure that out with time."

But if there was one thing Ginny didn't want, it was to stand out. After standing out her whole life, she simply wanted to blend in, like camouflage. As for making her eyebrows work for her, she hadn't a clue how that would work. But as is often the case, it turned out that her mom was right. Ginny eventually learned to accept herself -- Irish eyebrows and all. Not that it was a smooth transition. As a teen, Ginny was frequently cited for behavioral problems and eventually was made to take the short bus to a special school for kids who who'd been getting in trouble. Fortunately for Ginny, she felt right at home with the group of outcasts she met on the short bus and made fast friends. eventually she recruited a few of them to start the bagpipe punk band she lovingly named Irish Eyebrows and the Short Buses. They got signed shortly after releasing their first CD, When Irish Eyebrows Are Smiling, and have since been touring in a short bus that runs on vegetable oil.

Ginny, now known simply as "Eyebrow," is happier than she has ever been and is overjoyed that many of her listeners refuse to pluck their eyebrows too. When she stands on a stage and looks out at the masses of bushy eyebrows, she smiles inside and can almost hear the voice of her sweet departed mother saying what she'd always say to Ginny when what she really meant was "I told ya so." ... "How now, eyebrow??"

Ginny is in an employment newspaper box near the mailbox at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale.

Poppy's Magical Hot Spells

2009-04-14T17:14:00.007-04:00

Since that downer of a day when all the heat began emanating straight out of Poppy's head, she just wasn't feeling quite herself. Suddenly, she was having little hissy fits over minor things, crying at the drop of a hat. She couldn't even decide which clothes to wear, let alone which of her tasks to complete first. She was completely out of sorts.

Tired of frazzled nerves, sudden feverish sweats and a not-so-funny hairdresser who took to calling her Hotflash, Poppy decided to make the big M work for her. Now she imagines that these little hot spells are magical and that each will enhance her ability to paint, draw, write garden, sculpt and create music. So far, it's working. She also discovered that she could use her hotflashes as an excuse for expressing random bursts of pure honesty among total strangers.

Just this morning, for example, Poppy watched some woman who was on a cell phone and had one of those little froo-froo dogs in her purse sneak past a man who was in the line but was too busy gazing longingly at the apple fritters to notice the woman who butted in front of him. She gave Poppy one of those little looks that said "Hahaha, just between us," as if Poppy would think what she was doing was OK or somehow approve of her rude behavior. Poppy hated what froo-froo dog lady did and really hated that she would have the audacity to drag her into it. Poppy typically would just roll her eyes at such behavior, but today, she was having one of her little spells and feeling a little hot around the collar, so she just let her have it ... well, in her own Poppy way.

She interrupted froo-froo dog lady's phone conversation and said "Excuse me, but I think I speak for everyone in this line (even though it was her just her and jelly donut man) when I say that your inflated sense of self-importance is something we could all live without. I realize you're very busy, what with your silly phone conversation and your little purse dog ... and I know you think your time crunch is somehow more urgent than ours, but we won't tolerate your behavior and if you don't go to the back of the line like everyone else, well, you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.

When Poppy arrived at the counter, the cashiers who knew her so well and had never before seen her act this way, asked if she was OK. Poppy pulled out that little fold-up fan she now keeps in her purse and began waving it back and forth and said that she was fine, just fine, and that she'd like a small vanilla latte and a couple of those little munchkins.

Dotty, who looked like she had had some experience with hot spells, laughed and gave a her a big giant vanilla latte and a whole box of munchkins, and told her it was on the house. She said to come on back tomorrow, as they could use a little entertainment in the mornings.

Poppy is in the ladies' room at Starbucks near Southport Shopping Center, 17th Street Causeway, Fort Lauderdale.

Bonnie of the Patties

2009-04-02T22:08:00.003-04:00

You’d never know Bonnie is 49 years old. She’s always stayed young-looking by doing every new thing that comes down the pike -- eye jobs, lifts, tucks, whatever it takes. She runs out to the mall after work, not to go clothes shopping but to get liposuction, because you can do that in her fancy schmantzy plastic little town.

But eventually some of the procedures that had served her well for so long began to take a turn for the worse. She thought, for instance, that her eye job was a success, but then her right eye began drooping in a way her left did not. She knew it was only a matter of time before her boob job did something similar. Despite all the pain and money, and all the fat she’d had sucked out of her at the mall, she still found herself craving those little peppermint patties she adored. She swore she wouldn’t have anymore after getting liposuction at the mall … but afterwards she went home and dropped into bed, and no sooner did her head hit the pillow than she was dreaming of peppermint patties galore raining down from the sky.

She awoke with an overwhelming urge to get the cool sensation. So, looking all tired and still wearing her blue jammies with the cows all over them, she drove down to the 24-hour grocery store, grabbed the biggest bag of Peppermint Patties she could find and a small carton of milk and got in line.

A sweet redhead named Roxy asked her what she was doing out in her jammies so late at night, and whether her work was keeping her up that late. Bonnie told her she didn’t have a job, and Roxy commented that she understood how that feels and how hard life can be at times. She was the nicest cashier ever, yet Bonnie was annoyed after realizing that Roxy only charged her for only the milk and not the patties. She had the feeling that Roxy thought she was poor or that she lost her job, when the truth is that she just didn’t need one, what with the trust find and all that.

Bonnie didn’t like being thought of as poor, and yet in this moment, as her well-intended efforts to look younger were backfiring on her, she too felt very sorry for herself, hence the undeniable middle-of-the-night craving for peppermint patties, which were sometimes the only way she could fill that big void in her life.

Roxy, of course, understood all that because Roxy is Roxy. She insists that it’s possible to be poor, worn out and abused by the system and this entire screwed-up society, and still have a wallet fat enough to buy plastic surgery and new parts that don’t always work out. “Those people might be financially rich,” she was always saying. “But that doesn’t mean they’re better off then the rest of us. Sometimes they need kindness too, and free stuff, even if it is just peppermint patties.”

Bonnie wasn't accustomed to people being kind to her, because she wasn’t all that kind to people, mostly because she didn’t really care about them. This whole cashier encounter irritated her, but then on her way home it also kinda made her cry because that cashier didn’t even know her and her niceness was probably the closet thing Bonnie had felt to unconditional love since her mom died when she was little.

So there she was in the middle of the night, driving down the road in her blue cow jammies, stuffing mini peppermint patties into her mouth, and crying, but just from the one eye, ‘cause the other one is all screwed up from her eye job. Sometimes Bonnie wished she never got all that surgery. Maybe she shoulda just tried to cut back on the peppermint patties and late-night ice cream, and tried harder not to get all bent out of shape about a few wrinkles.

Bonnie is in an Auto Guide box near the mailbox at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale. It's blue, like her jammies.

Roxy's Secret Mission

2009-03-25T20:55:00.002-04:00

Roxy, a cashier at the local grocery store, is on a secret mission. She says that desperate times call for desperate measures, so when she sees people coming through her line who she knows are struggling really hard to feed their families, she conveniently forgets to scan many of the items in their cart. Roxy knows how unfair life can be. A friend is always telling her that "Hey, life IS unfair, so just get used to it." But Roxy would rather do what she can to help turn things around. She knows that grocery chain she works for has plenty of money and that these poor people in her line do not. She says it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fix that situation, just a well-meaning cashier. Roxy says in these hard times everyone must do what they can to help, even if it means breaking a few rules.

Roxy is in a newspaper box outside the Winn-Dixie on Cordova Road, alongside Southport shopping center in Fort Lauderdale. As cashiers go, she is one of the best,

Margaret of the Rain

2009-03-24T21:36:00.005-04:00

Margaret was feeling increasingly stressed by her workload and the mounting tasks on her to-do list. When life became overwhelming, she typically found comfort in nature, but now the grass was all burned and dried up and dying as, it seemed, was everything. Maybe even Mother Nature was too overwhelmed to deal ...

As for Margaret, it had been so long since she’d spent any time in the garden that her hose was partway buried in the solidly dried up ground, weeds having tangled it into the raggedy landscape that was her yard. The yard had been calling to her for help, and she'd managed to solidly ignore it for literally months.

But then, on a Saturday after a severely long dry spell, she awoke to the sound of pouring-down rain, the kind she knew would last all day and flood every street in the town with glorious puddles too deep to even consider driving through. She felt secretly relieved. Her mama told her there would be days like this, days when going absolutely nowhere is as good as it gets, which is pretty excellent.

The rain always made Margaret think about the things that were really important and it wasn’t the to-do list that typically ran her life, but simple things, like hanging out in her kitchen, making spontaneity soup from whatever she could muster, listening to her favorite songs on the CD player, singing silly songs no one would ever hear, and talking to her cat who was a surprisingly good listener. She called it her drift time because she could just let her mind meander wherever it needed to go.

The thing about drift time is that most people don’t understand what it is, let alone the need for it. Like if one of you friends call you and ask you to go have a drink and you say “Sorry, I really need to stay home and make soup and just let my mind wander,” most people are just gonna say, "OK, sure Margaret, I understand" and then get off the phone and tell whoever is in earshot .. something that probably begins with “Oh. My. God.” and is accompanied by a big heavenward roll of the eyes.

It is, on the other hand, perfectly OK to say that it’s hailing marys outside and there’s just no way on earth you are going to go out while it’s raining like cats and dogs, and the thunder! The thunder!!!

Margaret loved thunder almost as much as she loved the rain. The combination of the two, and all that accompanies a good storm, was perfection.

Margaret feels a special connection to the rain. Sometimes when it’s just a drizzle, she takes to the street walking, and watches the raindrops hit the puddles. It reminds her of the fudge her sister used to make, and how it looked when it was just coming to a boil, before it got poured onto the big aqua plate where it would harden before being cut into little squares. The ones in the middle were always the biggest, but the little ones on the end were clearly the most delicious.

But Margaret doesn’t make fudge. She’s forgotten the recipe. Now, she makes soup, and on the day of the glorious rain, the smell of simmering spontaneity soup permeated her entire house. Margaret lit candles and loaded up her CD player with Eilieen Ivers and The Frames and Leonard Cohen, and she painted and contemplated sharing her spontaneity soup because drifting through the perfect storm has a way of making one feel cleansed and renewed and ready to talk and laugh and share again.

She knew that would happen. It always does. Even while the rain pounded upon her tin roof, creating the rhythmic pattern of a creative day of wandering, she could envision a day that ended in laughter and Scrabble and wine and a very long and restful sleep followed by a morning of digging into the earth in her little jungle of a garden, because gardens love a good storm too.

Margaret loved when the rain set in and canceled all her well-intentioned little plans. It allowed her to forget all else and focus on the mundane little tasks that allow her mind to drift far, far away and eventually bring her back to the place she calls home.

Margaret has drifted off. Word has it she’s at the phone booth in front of a building at 17th Street and Andrews Avenue, just caddy-cornered from Broward General Hospital. It was once a CVS … but now it’s just empty.

Jane says ....

2009-03-19T13:45:00.001-04:00

Jane warns that we should not let what happened to her, happen to us, and even though it sometimes seems impossible to find time for play, she's right. When all is said and done .... do we really want to look back and say, "Wow, I sure did put in a whole lot of hours at the factory." Besides, how productive can you really be when you're tired, cranky and mischief-deprived?

I, for one, plan to take Jane's advice and stop letting important things in life, like hiding tiles in random spots around town when no one is looking, slip through the cracks.

It's been awhile, but I'm back.

Jane is trying to get out and have a little fun now too. She's at Lester's Diner on SR 84 in Fort Lauderdale ... in the ladies room, I think.

Rainy: Queen of Chocolate Hearts

2009-02-07T21:00:00.002-05:00

Rainy always hated Valentine’s Day. All that mushy fake romance stuff was more than she could bear. She once boycotted the holiday altogether, but in recent years had begun dabbling in Valentine’s Day traditions because a) she uses it as a way to help lovesick co-workers; and b) people assume she's anti-Valentine's Day, and Rainy hates to get too predictable.

Everyone in her life, both work friends and personal, knew how Rainy was, or how they thought she was … “Don’t even ask Rainy about romance,” they’d say, “because if you’re having a problem with your boyfriend or your girlfriend and you’re trying to fix it, she’ll just tell ya, “Don’t go there. These things don’t typically work out, so don’t sweat it. If it’s that difficult, it’s probably not a good idea.” And sometimes it wasn’t, but no one at work besides Rainy ever had the guts to tell people that. Instead, they would see a young co-worker about to tie the knot with someone they knew wouldn’t be good for her or him, and they’d all just go, “Wow, congratulations … Have ya told Rainy yet?”

They wanted her to do the dirty work, and Rainy was up to the task. She felt like it was her responsibility now. It was a thing she did well, like a little role she’d come to play in life. She didn’t want to talk people out of things that were truly good for them, but she wasn’t opposed to helping people to see that they shouldn’t look for someone to complete them, or fix their messed-up little lives. She didn’t come right out and say that, of course. She’d just tell little stories and ask the sort of questions that helped bring them to their own conclusions, make them think harder.

Some viewed Rainy as unromantic, and cold, but the truth was that she was exactly the opposite. She knew that some relationships were very special, and others were not, but that even the special ones -- especially the special ones -- should never be rushed or smothered.

Rainy also knew that some of those co-workers who approached her wanted to be talked out of decisions made hastily in the heat of the moment. Like Kara, one of her younger co-workers, who came to work one day and announced she was planning to marry her boyfriend of two months, in a month. Not surprisingly, Kara made this announcement around Valentine’s Day, and Rainy was ready with chocolates.

“So Rainy, what do ya think of this?” Kara asked at the end of a Friday. “Well Kara,” Rainy responded, “are you sure you want to spend the rest of your entire life with a guy you met just two months ago?”

“Yes, I think I am,” Kara said as if trying to convince herself.

“How can you tell?” Rainy asked. “I’m curious how people know these things, because it seems such a difficult decision to make in such a short time.”

“Oh, it is,” Kara says. “I mean, you know me. I’m a very independent sorta girl. I wasn’t even looking for a boyfriend, but then I met Georgie at my friend’s party and well, we just chatted all night, like we were oblivious to anyone else. It felt like we’d known each other forever. We see each other like four or five times a week now, and even that’s not enough. I want more. I want it all, Rainy, because I love Georgie that much. He’s all I can think about.”

“Kara, remember those dark chocolate Godiva’s you got last year from your other boyfriend, Jason?” Rainy asked.

“Rainy, I was 20,” she said rolling her eyes. “I don’t still have feelings for Jason.”

“Of course you don’t,” Rainy said. “The guy dressed like a chicken and twirled a sign by the side of the road on weekends, and it was the best job he ever had, and he still hated it. C’mon, that could’ve been a fun job and all he ever did was whine about how he lost his boring job with Fed Ex. I wasn’t implying you loved Jason, but you did love those chocolates, right?”

“God yes,” Kara said. “I adored those chocolates.”

“Good, ‘cause I have some,” she says pulling a huge heart shaped box from her desk drawer. “Duuuuuuude,” Kara said. “You are the best.”

“Don’t ever call me dude again,” she said laughing, and offering the freshly opened box of red-foiled wrapped chocolates. “Dig in. Got some nice wine here too,” she said pulling a bottle of Kara’s favorite pinot noir from her personal fridge.

They drank wine for awhile, ate chocolates and chatted about work and love and all the fun Kara had been having with her boyfriend, and how perfect he was for her. The time was flying by, and Kara was getting giddy from all the wine and chocolates. “You know,” she says, “Bobbie Sue warned me that you might try to talk me out of my decision. She said you were bitter and cold, but I can see that you’re clearly not. Anyone who keeps these chocolates and that pinot noir in their desk drawer at work has got to be fun. But look, I drank most of the wine and have eaten almost all of your chocolates and you’ve only had two. Don’t you want more?”

“Nah,” Rainy said. “I used to eat more because they were are just so freakin’ good that when you have one, you just want the whole darned box. I love the pinot noir too, and on a few occasions, drank a bunch of pinot noir, but at some point I realized that didn’t make me feel so good. In fact, it made me feel like total crap.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, ‘cause I do that too,” Kara says. “I love those chocolates so much that I just want more and more, and then when I have them all, I just feel sick, like I might never want another. But then after awhile I forget and do it all over again. And again, I feel sick in the end.” Kara then stopped talking for awhile, and sat there deep in thought. “So if you love these chocolates too,” she suddenly piped up, “how do you resist?”

“Oh, it just comes with time,” Rainy says. “Us humans are stupid like that. We have to experience the unpleasant result of things a lot of times before we exercise better options. I do love chocolates and I want another even now, but if I kept eating them, they wouldn’t be so special.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret,” Rainy continues, pulling open her largest desk drawer to reveal three more frilly heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. “I have a LOT of very special chocolates, more than a girl could ever want. But I only allow myself to have one every three days, and I savor it, and then for three whole days, I look forward to the next.”

“My god, Rainy, did you knock off a chocolate shop or something?” “No,” Rainy said, laughing, “they’re from my boyfriend, Random.” “You’re boyfriend?,” she said laughing now too. “You didn’t tell us you had a boyfriend, and his name is Random?That is so random.

"Well, most people call him Randy," Rainy said, "but I prefer his real name."

"Yeah, it's a cool name," Kara said. "But how come you’re so secretive?”

“Cause when you get to be my age,” Rainy says, you begin to know yourself, really know yourself. “I’ve learned, for instance, that I hate overindulging and feeling like crap, but that I like dark chocolate, jogging at 3:30 a.m. and secrets. I like you too, Kara. That’s why I’m sharing some secrets tonight. Look, I know you thought I was going to try to talk you out of getting married at 21, but I'm not. I know that your intuition, that wise little voice inside, will tell you what to do, so just listen closely and trust it. But now I’ve gotta go, because we’ve been sitting here for hours and my kitty-cat is impatiently waiting to be fed.”

“Ok, but before you go," Kara says, "tell me about this random boyfriend of yours. Is this a new development? Are you happy?”

“Not exactly new, we’ve known each other 12 years, and yes, I'm happy,” Rainy says.

“How often do you see him?” Kara asked.

Rainy smiled and responded: “About every three days. That way there's always plenty to talk about.”

At that, Kara laughed and thanked Rainy for the chocolates, the wine and for being there when she needed a friend. About 30 minutes later, Rainy arrived home to her loudly meowing Blackie. She knew if he could talk, he’d be saying, “Where the hell have ya been?”

“Chill, little kitty, I was on a mission," she told the cat. "Just when I think I’ve got them all straightened out, another little lost soul comes along. Ya know Blackie, it’s not always all about you.”

At that, Blackie meowed and tilted his head sadly. But then Rainy assured him that, of course, on most days, it really is all about Blackie.

But Blackie, who knew that Rainy had been spending a lot more time away than usual these days, was not entirely convinced. So Rainy gave him a fat jumbo shrimp, and that made him feel a bit better, but Blackie knew he'd feel a lot better, if he had about four or five more, every night. Blackie thinks moderation is just stupid.

Rainy is in a Valentine's Day-red box outside a Mobil gas station at State Road 84 and Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale

Seanchai's Tales

2009-01-27T20:49:00.002-05:00

When Seanchai was a little girl, and things felt beyond her control, as they sometimes do, she’d make up little stories in her head to help her get through things. She had this one little character she called Stacey, which was actually her birth name, and she’d imagine Stacey always doing what she knew in her own heart was the right thing to do.

Once she thought about it long enough, Seanchai usually did know the right thing to do, but didn’t always have the courage to do it. It often felt too risky. Like she remembers this one time that a new girl had moved into her small-town neighborhood, a mod big-city girl who smoked cigarettes and drank and had lots of boyfriends back home and deep dark juicy secrets to share. Sonya was two years older than Seanchai and her friends. But since there were no girls Sonya’s age in the neighborhood, she broke into their little group quickly, and became the big sister who told everybody how to get in trouble without getting caught ... 'cause no matter what it was Sonya had been there and done that. She knew everything about everything. Whether it was drugs, boys, sex, how to get tattoos without your parents knowing, she'd have the answer. She had all the answers and at least 5 wildly entertaining stories to go with each one.

Seanchai was amused by Sonya’s tales, but knew she was lying at least half the time. Well, not lying really. She suspected there was a kernel of truth to Sonya’s stories, but that most of them were simply about people she admired and wished to emulate, even if they did wind up in reform school, which is where parents once sent kids they could not handle.

Seanchai only knew one girl who’d been sent to reform school, and that girl’s parents had told her parents that they sent Patty there because they had other younger children and they were afraid Patty would be a bad influence.

When Seanchai told her grandma about Patty going to reform school, her grandmother said that’s just “a load of malarkey,” which is what her grandmother said about a lot of things. There’s a reason they call it reform school, Seanchai’s grandma told her. It’s because kids have be reformed, because their foundation’s screwed up from the start. The reason for Patty’s troubles, she declared, is that no one ever listened to her. If people would just listen to people, she said, they would know how to deal with others, and successfully navigate life. Parents expect, she says, that their kids are like them, but they’re so not, she said laughing. We have to come to become acquainted with them, without our own baggage, she says, and that only happens by being quiet, and listening.

These weren’t empty words. Seanchai knew her grandmother had mastered the art of listening. In fact, her grandmother was the one to whom she told all her stories as a kid, and grandma never tried to interpret her stories. She simply listened and asked Seanchai questions that led Seanchai to realize what her own stories really meant, because sometimes, even while she’d written those stories in her composition books, she didn’t fully grasp the underlying meaning until she’d talked them through with her grandmother.

She told her grandma about Sonya too, and how she knew that Sonya was a storyteller, and had talent for it too, but that she was using that talent to turn Seanchai’s friends away from her, and that some people were falling for it.

First, her grandmother, who’d been the one to dub Stacey “Seanchai,” explained that Seanchai did mean “storyteller” but that it’s original meaning went back to old Irish history and laws that weren’t written down but related through stories. But all the stories we tell ourselves and others, she told Seanchai, and even the ones that only exist in our heads or our hearts, are valid, and important, and every word we write comes from our own history. Sure we bring imagination to it, she says, and we should, to meet our challenges. But from our own personal history, she assured, we develop the “laws” of our life. The law, she says, is basically truth. If we listen, and we operate in honesty, she said, no other laws are needed.

“As for Sonya,” she added, “you see her soul as a fellow storyteller, and you will know what to do about that. She's as lost as the rest of us, but you can help her find her way.” That conversation stood out in Seanchai’s mind to this day. ... "You will know what to do."

But it was hard for Seanchai to deal with Stacey, who acted so meanly toward her. She kinda didn’t like Sonya for doing that, but then she thought about it long and hard, and wrote another story in which she imagined telling a little tale of her own to Sonya, about a girl who deep inside was afraid to put her whole self out there, but knows that if she could truly find the words to express and share all of it, that people would probably understand, or maybe they wouldn’t. What's important is doing it, because ultimately, one of the most challenging and exciting and rewarding risks you can take, is to be completely honest, and know that some may not accept you. What matters is that you’ve been real, and if you have the courage to do that, you can overcome a lot in this life.

Many years later, Seanchai and Sonya still keep in touch, about life and the stories they continue to tell themselves when their worlds feels out of control and they don’t have the answers they feel they need. But then, Seanchai will hear in her mind the reassuring voice of her grandmother, saying “When the time comes, you will know what to do. You'll just know.”

Sometimes it really is that simple. And usually, she does know. The little voice inside tells her when the time is right.

But is she doesn’t listen to that little voice, she also will hear her grandmother saying, "Seanchai Stacey O'Connor, you had better listen to that wise little voice, because if you don't, well that's just a load of malarkey. Pure malarkey.”

Seanchai's in a newspaper box --- some big fat box that has Citylink and a Spanish-language newspaper in it, just in front of Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale. Not the newspaper boxes by the Dunkin Donuts ... the other ones by the mailbox.

Binky's Revelation

2009-01-17T18:31:00.006-05:00

Binky had been working in the office for about 10 years. After 9 years with the company, new management came in and they were, to put it bluntly, not very nice. Binky realizes that’s not really all that blunt, but she hates anger and confrontation and people saying things in a way that’s not very nice, and that’s how the new people at the top were …cranky, power-trippy types who believed they knew everything about the business, even when they clearly did not. Like they got their jollies speaking to people in a ridiculously condescending manner when really all they had to do was be straight-up honest in a nice way and things could’ve gone far smoother.

At first, she would go home and feel all stressed about it, like she was about to explode, but Binky usually did well with keeping her anger in check. She just didn’t know what to do with all this stress. Then she started going out with the other office workers on Fridays and everybody would whine and complain all night over drinks, but that didn’t really make her feel better either, ‘cause then she’d still feel all negative and have a little chardonnay hangover the next day.

Then late one night Binky couldn’t sleep because it was a Sunday and she knew she had to go into that angry workplace again on Monday where the tension was thick and the tempers short. She turned the TV on, hoping the boring infomercials would lull her into the sleep zone, but they didn’t. The infomercial was sorta fascinating. It was all about calming herbs and the books you could have shipped for only $99.95, with eight E-Z payments spread out over a whole year, and if you ordered now, they'd even throw in a Calmerizer blender and three herb starters.

Binky lay there, with her cat Blackie curled up at her side and began to dream of the whirring blender that could change her world. She never did order the book or the Calmerizer but began googling for herbs the next day at work. She ordered a bunch and that night bought her own fancy stainless steel blender.

The following week she went to work like the mad scientist she was about to become, right in her own comfy kitchen. She’d play music all the while, mostly opera because it always made her giggle. But she could never tell anyone that, because her favorite operas, they're apparently sad and they end in tragedy. Yet that high-pitched passionate and crazy singing, for some odd reason, makes her laugh so hard that tears start rolling down her face and she just can't stop. Once when she saw a Maria Callas performance in a movie, she broke down laughing until the tears rolled but all was OK, because the serious movie goers at the art cinema house simply thought she was overcome with grief. Digging deep into the cavern of her very large purse, she unearthed an old Dunkin Donuts napkin to sop up her tears. It smelled like a jelly donut, which made her laugh even harder, and cry even more. While exiting the movie, a distinguished looking older gentleman who appeared to be choking back tears of his own, handed her a perfectly white starched and unused old-fashioned handkerchief, what her grandma called a hanky, and said "Do not worry, dearest. You cried for all of us."

Binky thanked him and laughed hysterically most of the way home, and felt completely emotionally cleansed. She filled the hanky up with catnip, tied the ends together and gave it to Blackie, who rolled around on the living room floor and laughed too, in his own little kitty-cat way.

While Binky has developed an affinity for catnip, she doesn't need as many herbs as the suits, because she and Blackie listen to the secret opera. She mostly does the herbs for the suits. They seem to really need it, and she was doing her best to provide that in order to make going to work more manageable, for everyone.

She soon had a whole stockpile of herbs and would whip up things special depending on the mood of the office on any particular day. She had St. John’s wort, valerian, chamomile, red clover, black haw … Binky never heard of most of these things before but soon became obsessed with growing and smooshing herbs and learning how to incorporate them into delicious brownies, chocolate chip cookies and even carrot cakes, all of which she brought to work and happily watched everyone around her consume. The suits especially loved the catnip oatmeal cookies … but she just called them oatmeal cookies. Said they were her favorite grandma’s special recipe. She felt sorta bad that she'd fibbed about her late grandmother, but she knew her grandma would have supported her in this venture and would probably get quite a kick out of it.

After awhile, those herbs started to kick in, and even the crankiest little suits became pleasurable to be around. She loved how she had taken control of the situation in her own little way. It made her feel like she was quietly running things. She could see how this was making a difference not only in her own life, but everyone around her seemed happier and healthier, and was getting along better. She watched one of the suits actually apologize for the way she'd been acting, said she didn't even know what had gotten into her but just woke up one day and realize she was being a complete ogre. Binky watched in wonder as some of the walls began to crumble and the sun began to shine down again on her little office.

She liked to imagine the tiny role she had played in her co-workers lives without them ever realizing. Even Blackie was happier. She loved it when Binky baked those catnip cookies because she always threw some of the catnip on the kitchen floor, and he’d roll all around in it. When she was done, Binky would make herself a big cup of catnip tea before turning in for the night.

Sometimes, Binky wished she could share this little herbal secret with the co-workers with whom she’d grown closest, but she knew them well enough to know that there was no way they could keep a secret this good. She could just hear them talking now … “Yeah, Binky over there, is the one who’s really in charge … do ya know she has us all secretly drugged with her herbs? We don’t even wanna know what she puts in these cookies, but they sure are good. Wanna try one?”

Binky knew that the very reason this little experiment was so compelling to her was the secret nature of it. She never wanted to be a real manager, the type where people expect you to be in control and run things. That was way too much pressure. She felt far more powerful being a secret manager with a magic herbal lab, with a forever meowing four-legged assistant known simply as Blackie.

Blackie kept all her secrets, and in return Binky gave him a special treat each day -- one large jumbo shrimp.

Left Binky in the ladies' room at the Starbucks on Davie Boulevard and Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. She likes to drink the herbal tea there, but always adds a little dash of the catnip she carries in a fancy little jeweled box in her giant purse.

Mysterious Mona

2008-12-27T19:42:00.012-05:00

Mona works in a Laundromat. She takes in endless sacks filled with dirty, wrinkled clothing and bedsheets and towels and transforms them into lovely little shrink-wrapped packages of freshly laundered, neatly folded wonders. Her job fits very nicely into her life, since all that repetitive folding and wrapping and hanging allows her time to wander deep into the word factory of her mind where her short stories are produced.

There’s usually a lot to process there, since every place Mona goes, every person she meets, every object she encounters, every thought that lingers, has the potential to make its way onto a page.

Mona loves the process, but sometimes wonders if the words will ever be as uncomplicated as the laundry she sorts, washes, folds, hangs and sends back out into the world. That process is always so incredibly neat and organized whereas words can get really sloppy.

People are always saying that Mona is kinda quiet, and some jokingly call her Mysterious Mona. They like to use all those little worn-out phrases about still water running deep or giving her a penny for her thoughts or that one that goes "Cat got your tongue? which Mona never really did understand. How can a cat have your tongue?

The funny thing is that Mona doesn’t feel like she’s being that quiet, because in her head it’s not quiet at all. It actually gets kinda loud in there and half the time, when people think she’s just being quiet, she just feels busy trying to keep things calm and orderly up there.

She’s got a lot of words inside her head, but sometimes they’re just floating around all willy-nilly in there. She lives for the moments when transitions arrive like tiny saviors to help her tie them all up neatly into a story that makes sense of the world, or at least her tiny place in it, during a particular moment in time.

But no sooner does she get the words all wrapped up and out the door than new thoughts surface and start hanging around the edge of her brain. Like garments waiting to be sorted, washed and folded, they’re waiting to be invited in, analyzed and transformed into something logical, rather than something scary, sad or worrisome. They’re anxious to make their way into a story because they don’t really know where they belong yet and they’re curious about where they’re going to wind up. But they’re not happy about waiting. Mona sometimes envisions all those new pressing thoughts lined up at the Red Velvet Rope, but the beefy little bouncer in her head won’t let them in yet because there are already too many words in there, and Mona is still waiting on transitions … which are apparently on back order. Again.

Sometimes the sheer ongoingness of this process is exhausting. While the word factory typically runs slower at night, it never completely shuts down. It’s pretty much a 24-hour operation, so when transitions don’t arrive, everything gets backed up. The only way to make room for incoming words is to package up all the in-house words in stories, and get them out there into the world. But that’s not possible without transitions, and the beefy little bouncer in Mona's head is getting irritated now. “Mona,” he’s yelling, “Get on the phone and call the parts company and get that transition truck over here, so you can get the damn words out the door! These newbie thoughts have been waiting in line for days and some of them look troublesome. I think they’re about to start rioting? What the hell are you doing in there, Mona? Mona???!!!!!”

Mona knows it’s a mess in there. Piles of words all over the place, and way too many ellipses, which is never a good sign. It’s difficult to even work in these conditions.

Sometimes Mona doesn’t know why there’s never enough transitions to go around, why the factory can’t simply produce more transitions so there will be enough of a supply to meet demand. She realizes, however, that this might detract from the specialness of transitions. As it is, she eagerly anticipates the arrival of those beloved connectors and when she runs out of them, she misses them dearly and excitedly looks forward to the next shipment. If she had a whole stockpile of transitions up there in the word factory, she’s pretty sure they might not feel as special or important. She supposes it is their rareness that makes her want them so much.

So when transitions don't arrive and the factory is too crowded with words, and thuggish thoughts are trying to push past the Red Velvet Rope because Mona’s sleeping and the bouncer has walked off the job, Mona tries to remember that the transitions will eventually be shipped and all will be right with the world again.

Dropped Mona at Mr. Fabulous Coin Laundry and Dry Cleaners, 2200 NE 21st Street, Fort Lauderdale. She's in the rest room hiding out until the transitions truck arrives.

Let there be peas on earth

2008-12-25T18:30:00.002-05:00

Patsy’s mom had been warning her from the time she was a tadpole that if she ever kissed a human being, she would turn into one of the Pea People. What that meant basically is that she would have frog feet and hands and still be the color of a frog but with a big roundish body so that she looked just like a pea of the Jolly Green Giant variety. In addition to looking like a cross between a pea and a green peanut M&M, Pea People become fascinated with anything beginning with the letter P, and most frogs consider an obsession with only things beginning with the letter P a tad limiting.

Petey’s mom warned him about kissing human beings too, but the minute he became a teenager he stopped doing anything his mother told him to do, because teen frogs are just like that sometimes. Patsy, on the other hand, wasn’t really trying to disobey her mom. She actually thought her mom said never to kiss a human bean, which she never ever did. The only reason she kissed a human being was because of that silly fairy tale that implies that if you kiss a prince, the prince turns into a handsome frog.

But after the kiss, the prince was still just a prince, and now Patsy was a full-fledged Pea, as was Petey. Both had become outcasts in their respective frog worlds because frogs harshly judge Peas just because they’re different and sometimes defy authority. Some even put bumper stickers on the back of their cars that read Visualize Swirled Peas, and Patsy, who can be a little Paranoid, was pretty sure they were just mocking the Peas, like they wanted to see them swirled in a blender or something really harsh like that.

At first, Patsy was hurt that she was no longer accepted by her peers, but eventually she stopped caring so much. She realized that anyone who judges Peas like that is probably not worth getting upset about. Instead, she started looking for other Pea People with whom to bond, and of course, she became increasingly obsessed with things beginning with the letter P.

Sometimes, non-Peas would ask her if she ever got bored with the letter P, but she said that she felt lucky to be a Pea because if you’re going to have a one-letter obsession, P’s not such a bad letter to focus on. But the non-Peas didn’t usually understand. Sometimes they’re unwilling to give Peas a chance, so Patsy started avoiding Frogland and began hanging out in the Pea Patch. That’s where she met Petey, who was wearing Pants with lots of Pockets and was gathering Pinecones. He believed they were magical and eventually convinced Patsy of their Powers too.

Patsy took an instant liking to Petey. Many of the other Pea People she met around the Patch were not that happy about their life. But Petey always made the best of everything, and rather than running around looking for elusive letters like Q or R, he simply found beauty in the letter P and continued to enjoy his Peasful life. Some might call him downright Pollyannaish in his optimism. But Patsy loved his Positive nature. If a frog would ever actually sit down and talk to Petey about his life and the letter P, they’d probably wanna run out and find a human to kiss so they could become a Pea too. Petey could seriously be a recruiter.

Patsy was equally happy about the letter P, since it encompassed so many of the things she had grown to love. … Peppermint Patties, Pencils, Ping Pong, Popsicles, Pumpkin Swirl coffees … and she had always been mad for Plaid. She believed that she would never run out of new P words to explore for as long as she lived, and was happy to have met someone who shared this approach rather than always searching for elusive undefined things, as some Peas do..

After chatting madly in the Pea Patch time and time again … Petey eventually invited Patsy around to his Pad in P-town for Pasta and Pinot Grigio. That went well, and soon they were a Pair. In the wintertime, they would walk around town in their Parkas and go for Pizza. Sometimes they’d hit a diner to see their server friend Pink Poodles. Occasionally, they’d enjoy a day at the Park or visit the candy store where Petey would get Pecan chocolate chunks and Patsy would get Peppermint chocolate chip ice cream. They took little day trips to other nearby P-towns like Pompano and sometimes all the way to Pahokee. Along the way, they took lots of Photos, whenever they remembered their cameras.

They also spent much time apart doing other things, so they wouldn’t run out of P words to discuss. Petey might go hang out with his Posse at Panera and Patsy would go to Pearl’s to buy new Paint for her Palette, or to Publix and chat with People in the Produce department. On weekends they discuss their outings over Potato Salad and Prawns at a Picnic.

When Patsy and Petey got together they were like two Peas in a Pod, and ultimately they were glad to be Peas. In fact, if they had their lives to do all over again they would both do whatever it took to become Peas because now they know better than ever that Peas are special and have just as much of a right to be here as frogs. They just want all the Peas and Frogs and everyone to finally realize Peas are OK, and to stop thinking negatively about anyone who is different.

All they are saying is give Peas a chance.

Patsy and Petey were released at Birch Park in Fort Lauderdale because spending a Peasful afternoon among the Pines in the Park with all the happy People, it's impossible not to realize that P really is a very special letter, unlike all others. ... I hope that 2009 brings Peas and goodwill to all.

Ballerina Billy

2008-12-24T00:26:00.006-05:00

After 12 years of working as an art director for a tourism mag, William was replaced by an intern. The magazine had grown skinny and there just wasn’t enough to keep anyone on full-time and pay their health insurance and all that beneficial stuff.

William remembers when he started working there, how impressed he was … not just with the standard bennies like health insurance and tuition reimbursement, but there was a gym they could go to for free and all those fancy lunches out on the town, and the office with a view of down-freakin'-town! He was in heaven. But in recent years things had changed … scaling back they called it … not enough ads, not enough tourism, not enough people who could fork over the bucks to fly anywhere. Now William was jobless.

There was a time he worked really long hours and even got hefty bonus bucks for doing so. But William knew those days were over and that he was lucky just to have a job for as long as he did. It’s not that William didn’t try harder to be indispensable. He began diversifying, and doing other things to try to drum up business for the company in recent years. He started a travel blog, mostly about Broward, even tried helping the ad department organize special ads based on events that would bring people to town, get all the hotels involved, but many of his ideas got shot down. When they gave him an intern he thought they had big plans for him … now the intern had his job, only she got paid next to nothing to do it, and was damned happy to have that job.

William was tired anyway, tired of everything. He was ready to do something new anyway, so everyday he’d read the ads on Career Builder and Monster.com and all those sites. But when he put in the keywords “art director,” he’d mostly see ads for how to get paid for being extras in movies. Ditto for assistant art director, graphic designer, Web designer and other related titles. There were some jobs that one could afford to take if they lived at home … like with their parents. But most 38-year-old guys do not.

Finally he found an ad for a job he thought he might have a chance of getting if he played his cards right. It read: Valet Parker Needed. When he was little, he thought they were ballet parkers … and he never quite got why they called him that and was disappointed that they didn’t actually do ballet. One thought led to another, and he said whatever he needed to get the job.

Billy, as he is now known, works at Pinky’s Steaks. It’s not the most fancy schmantzy downtown restaurant yet lots of rich people who appreciate good local food and great service go there, and many of them ask for Billy by name. He wears a ballerina suit and slides behind the wheel of ridiculously overpriced cars every night, each time leaving a little card that says Ballerina Billy, Marketing Genius. Through his little card-dropping and schmoozing, he has been asked to work many a ritzy party where he gets tips galore and even more work.

Earlier this month, Billy was asked to perform at a big corporate holiday bash for a jeweler. The event featured a giant child’s jewelry box and when the lid was raised at the kickoff of the party, Billy rose up, like a little jewelry box ballerina and began slowly twirling, arms arched together high above his head. This is the stuff he dreamed about as a kid.

He was also hired by the local performing arts center to park cars during a whole week of special holiday performances of The Nutcracker. Billy earned some very big tips that night. Oddly, Billy is happier and more financially stable than he has ever been.

The tourism magazine, however, is not faring so well, so Billy’s pretty happy that he got fired. He’s since been offered some decent steady jobs, but they don’t pay like they once did, and Billy is doing far better on his own. He skips and twirls and does little pirouettes at his ballet parking job and it’s paying off for him big-time. Billy is just completely amazing in a way that tourism magazine William could never have been.

Billy always loved ballet as a child and his parents discouraged him from taking lessons. His dad said it was for sissies, and his mom just went along with his dad, and didn’t stand up for Billy’s right to ballet. As a result, Billy doesn’t have much dance experience. He’s not smooth like those ballerinas in the Nutcracker ballet or anything, but that is the beauty of Billy … that he realizes now that you don’t have to be smooth. You just gotta have guts.

Wherever he goes now, people kiss his hand, give him free drinks, have their pics taken with him. Ballerina Billy is a celebrity unlike any other. But what he’s most happy about is the way he’s inspired others to take seemingly meaningless work and twirl it into a dream-come-true. Recently he received thank you notes from a Disco-dancing dishwasher, an opera-singing taxi driver and a dry cleaner attendant who sticks funny little haikus in the pockets of her customer’s clothing. They’re all doing well, and seem very happy.

Billy’s new theory: You gotta do whatever you gotta do to pay the bills, but no one has to do exactly what’s expected. There’s way more to life than that. That’s what Awesome Billy says.

Billy’s at The Field on Griffin Road in Dania … He’s in the ladies’ room, the one closest to the door. It says Lasses on it. He went there to learn how to stepdance, maybe do an Irish jig or two, but when he got there he found out it was a Beatles tribute night, and a bunch of drunken company holiday party jolly types were all singing along, very, very badly. So he slipped into the Lasses room for a quiet moment, to collect his thoughts … Billy likes hanging out with the Lasses.

Lydia Dares to Dream

2008-12-05T01:00:00.003-05:00

Baby Gingerbread creatures are born into this world with fresh slates -- no buttons, no eyes and no baggage. But no sooner do the little ones pop out of the oven, arms stretched wide, than they find themselves facing grave consequences that no Gingerbread newborn should have to face.

After all the tender and loving care they receive, they’ll more than likely be lifted, chewed and then forced down a long, dark tunnel into a sea of eggnog, melted chocolate, turkey, stuffing and little sticky candy canes bits. Naturally, they’re scared. Their only comfort is in telling each other that it’s a special place because all the good Gingerbread eventually go there … that being specially selected for this based on their attributes … whether it’s fancy buttons, little green gloves, or a special look on their face …. is what allows them to reunite with the others who’ve gone before them. The Gingerbread men and ladies believe that once they go through these trials they’ll be made whole again in this place … and that maybe they will find True Love there. But only if they’re very specially selected.

Not all Gingerbread wind up there. Some very fortunate ones live in Gingerbread houses, and have long, happy lives, at least in terms of Gingerbread years. A few lucky ones are preserved as ornaments and hang on brightly lit trees each holiday season. But most are just slid onto a platter and eventually go through a selection process which is not unlike being picked for Dodgeball teams. Yeah, everybody gets picked eventually …. But clearly some are more desired that others, and really, is there value to a Gingerbread knowing that someone selected them because that fancier Gingerbread, the one they really, really wanted and had their little heart set on, was unavailable.

That’s the question Lydia kept asking herself as she lay in the bottom of that cheery red holiday bowl feeling bewildered. All the others were gone now, and she knew the little orange-haired boy was eventually going to pick her. But she also knew she wasn’t his first choice. He wanted Jane, the Gingerbread girl with the purple hair, red heart and polka dot gloves who was riding a skateboard … but the boy with the yellow hair snatched Jane right up, and he didn’t even care about Jane’s skateboard or her heart. She could have been any gingerbread. He was just hungry.

The orange-haired boy, however, cared deeply about Jane. He cared so much that he wasn’t sure he wanted another Gingerbread and waited some time before contemplating whether to settle for the pink-haired girl with the matching buttons. Lydia senses that he was contemplating her and her pink buttons now, but she also knew he was still dreaming of Jane, and feeling deeply infatuated with her fancier Gingerbread ways … But Jane was deeply buried in the gooey holiday mess now, and the orange-haired boy was alone, and hungry for gingerbread. So he thought that maybe in a jam, the pink-haired Gingerbread girl with the matching buttons would suffice. Maybe he could learn to love her instead. If he tried really, really hard, maybe he could even feel the same way about her as he did the purple-haired Gingerbread girl that left him so smitten.

Lydia, meanwhile, was feeling uncomfortably vulnerable in the bottom of that cheery red dish. It had been 22 hours since she popped out of the oven … and in Gingerbread years, that’s a very long time. She’d had much time to think and analyze, and was on the cusp of her own decision …. She told herself that the only one thing that could stop her from running off permanently to the fruitcakes that lived in the kitchen cabinet was the kind of True Love that typically only freshly baked Gingerbread creatures experience, and it was a little late for that.

Lydia knew she wasn’t perfect, and that after 22 hours, she was probably a little stale … She might even crumble soon. She wasn’t hideous looking or anything. She matched OK and all that, but her facial features were off, especially the eyebrows, and her buttons weren’t very big or fancy. Also, she had five buttons whereas most of the other Gingerbread had only three. Her maker told her she was lucky to have extra buttons, and she did feel lucky at first, but now she just felt freaky. It wasn’t enough to make her want to run off and join a Gingerbread circus or anything but it was yet another thing that set her apart from other holiday treats, Lydia frequently felt like an outcast.

She did, however, feel at home with the fruitcakes she had come to consider close friends. They had their own special attributes. As such, they stayed in their little tins and kept to themselves but led comfortably uncomplicated lives on the Top Shelf. Their tins were soundproof so they never had to hear some of the unkind things people said about them, and as a result led relatively long and painless lives. Their armor made them seem unapproachable, further contributing to their preservation. Lydia sometimes felt bad for them, and wondered if they got lonely, but she knew they still dreamed and that they did not sell out and try to become something else, and she respected them for this.

The Fruitcakes’ “special” features are well-documented, and Lydia noticed how people, aka the Gingerbread Eaters, sometimes compared their fellow people to the tinned loners. They’d say things like “Oh yeah, that guys a fruitcake,” when what they really mean is that he’s different and keeps to himself and lives in his own little world, without regard to what others think about him. What they’re also implying, of course, is that he’s some kind of freak or reject. There are certain assumptions people make about Fruitcakes just because they look less decorated than say, a cupcake, and taste different. No wonder Fruitcakes wear armor.

People make assumptions about Gingerbread too …. but in the opposite way. They think, because of those little permanently outstretched arms, that they’re loveable and so hungry for love that they’d be happy to be selected, even by someone who doesn’t love them the way the orange-haired boy loved the purple-haired girl. But Lydia sometimes thinks life is too short to live with someone who just wished they loved her. She's not so sure she wants to be rescued from the bottom of that red dish by a little orange-haired boy who doesn’t dream about her. Maybe she’d rather live out the Gingerbread season alone with her dreams, or with Fruitcake friends who effortlessly love and appreciate her – weird eyebrows, extra buttons and all.

Sometimes, Lydia isn’t even sure she’s cut out for being a Gingerbread. She thinks she might be a mixed breed. She knows her mom was a Gingerbread, but never knew her father and suspects that he may have been a Fruitcake, the kind in a tin. But she looks like a Gingerbread Girl, so people expect her to be cute and fancy and loveable, which she clearly is not.

She knows Gingerbread creatures are by their very nature, supposed to be special because they are only born during the Christmas holiday season, but Lydia thinks that’s just rigid. Yet she does understand how diversification can ruin a treat.

Look at Peeps. Peeps started as brightly colored standard marshmallow treats that had just as much right to populate an Easter basket as chocolate bunnies… But the ones showing up in October shaped like little orange pumpkins and white ghosts are clearly not as special and don’t seem to have as much right to Halloween traditions as, say, Candy Corn. Ditto for the pink heart-shaped Peeps that surface around Valentine’s Day, which is typically reserved for chocolates in heart-shaped boxes. And those red-white-and-blue star Peeps born on the 4^th of July are downright ridiculous. As for those Peeps that have begun imitating Gingerbread Men during the holiday season, we won’t even speak of those wannabes.

Lydia knows there are plenty of Peeps who would kill to be Gingerbread men or ladies, but they don’t understand how it feels to be laying at the bottom of a red dish like last year’s foil-covered chocolate egg that got trapped below the Easter grass. It’s a very fragile space in which to live.

Lydia doesn’t like feeling so damned vulnerable and out in the open like that. She’s planning to leave that empty red dish on her own accord before it’s too late and to relocate to that safe place on the Top Shelf she calls Land of the Forgotten Fruitcakes. She knows it’s a tight squeeze up there …. But she’s pretty sure it’s where she belongs. She’s grown to love those Fruitcakes, and has come to think of those shiny tins on the Top Shelf as the little houses in her new neighborhood.

She knows she’ll fit right in there because Lydia has a mind of her own, and in this prefab, façade of a manufactured world, this makes her a fruitcake … and even though Fruitcakes don’t have little outstretched arms that make them look like they need hugs, they need friends too, and they need to be loved, but only by someone who really means it. Not someone who says, “Oh, thank you, I love fruitcakes” and then sticks them on the Top Shelf. Lydia doesn’t feel that way about the fruitcakes. She loves them and she really means it.

She figures once she settles into the Land of the Forgotten Fruitcakes, she can lighten things up a bit on the Top Shelf. She can almost imagine all of them sitting up there with the Jameson Irish Whiskey that only leaves the Top Shelf on Paddy’s Day and having a good laugh and maybe some loving chatter with the abandoned box of Conversation Hearts in the corner. They’ll joke about how things could be far, far worse than what they’ve got going on up there. “We may not have been born as Whitman chocolates in a heart-shaped box,” she’d tell them laughing. “But hey, at least we’re not red-white-and blue Peeps … born on the 4^th of July. And more importantly, we're not Circus Peanuts.”

The Gingerbread, Peeps, Fruitcakes and Conversation Hearts who contributed to this report wish to remain anonymous. Some have valid reasons for keeping their identities a Top Shelf secret. Others are just ridiculously paranoid. They talked, with the promise of anonymity, for one reason. They want the world to know that the holiday season can be very difficult and that creative strategies for surviving the season are crucial. Several wanted to relay to the general public that Fruitcakes have feelings too.

The Peeps, however, admit that their reputation for being superficial and way too accommodating is well-deserved, but they point out that they don't resort to living in tins because they don't care what people say about them. You can't hurt them, they insist, because they are indestructible. If you don't believe that, click here.

The Peeps are celebrating 10 years of indestructibility in 2008 and have recently revealed that, despite rumors, they're not affiliated with Circus Peanuts, but that they do think fondly of them and think Lydia was harsh in her generalizations about them. When confronted with this accusation, Lydia said she did not recall that statement about the Circus Peanuts and that she thinks it may have been the Jameson's talking. When asked about this, Jameson said that Lydia was an honorable woman and the Peeps were cheap, sleazy and all about the money now and that if they tried to invade his holiday by turning themselves into shamrocks next year, he would "kick their little marshmallow asses."

Lydia is on a little hiatus from the Top Shelf and is in the desk drawer in the ladies room at Total Wine on Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale (That's right, the Gingerbread is in a secret drawer in the ladies room).

Penny's Passion for Matching

2008-11-25T15:49:00.007-05:00

Sometimes Penny Petersen wishes she didn't have to be so color-coordinated. Her shirt always matches her socks, and her purse. Her very big walk-in closet closet is organized by colors, all the blues in one area, the pinks in another, the reds in yet another etc. She tries to never wear the same color twice in one week. She has a lot of rules about clothes, and even has color contacts so her eyes will match her outfits. If her colors don't come together in just the right way, she feels like her whole day is cursed and will go badly.

Sometimes she wishes she wasn't so damned rigid about these things, that she could just mix it all up ... pull different colors from all the sections of her closet and throw them all on together and walk out the door. But it's really hard for Penny to do that, even when she know her rules create boundaries. In fact, sometimes she wonders if she behaves this way because her rules create boundaries ... and somewhere deep inside she's pretty attached to those boundaries.

It's not like people think she's a freak or anything ... at least not much. The women in Penny's office are always praising her ability to put an outfit together, and they're always asking how she finds so many accessories that match her clothes so perfectly. But men, she found, were another story, especially once she got to know them and began discussing her passion for matching. By the time she gave them a tour of her walk-in closet, it was usually all but over. There was only one man who was a constant in her life and that's because George and his boyfriend Al were equally caught up in the matching thing. Not only did they like their clothes to match, but they also liked to match each other.

But they said Penny's closet was way bigger than their closet and that she had more accessories than the two of them put together. They jokingly called her Match.com, which Penny didn't know was a dating site. She found it because she was thinking of starting a blog called Match.com and posting pics of her color-coordinated finds. But she realized the name Match.com was already taken. Fascinated by all the people on there looking for dates, she decided to throw her color-coordinated hat in the ring and be very upfront about her little matching problem. That way she could weed out all the people who just could not tolerate her freaky little ways.

Within months, she met Colorblind Joey, who joked that he'd been looking for someone like Penny all of his life. He said he'd always dreamed of being able to walk out the door every morning knowing that his clothes matched .... of having someone to shop with and tell him what colors he could buy to go with what things. There's nothing Penny loves to do more than that. Penny and Joey hit it off grandly and have much fun shopping together now. In fact, they do most everything together. Penny still can't break her rules, but occasionally, just for fun, she'll tell Joey that none of the clothes she is wearing match, that somehow, despite all those things in her closet, she just couldn't find anything that went together. Joey doesn't know the difference ... he tells her that it's good that she's learned to mix things up a bit.

One day, Penny was a little bit mad at Joey about something, so when he did his usual little spin by her in the morning for color approval, she told him everything matched just perfectly, even though none of it did and he looked kinda ridiculous. She called him at lunch and apologized because she felt guilty but he said that everyone in his meeting just laughed and asked if Penny was out-of-town again.

Somehow, Penny's little oddities are working out OK for her now, and she doesn't feel so guarded about them anymore. She realizes now that if not for her odd little ways, she never would have met Joey. Just like her, he's not perfect, but he's perfect for her. They kinda match.

As for Joey, he matches almost everyday now, except when Penny gets annoyed with him, and then who knows what kind of colors he's going to show up in at work? His coworkers find it all quite amusing.

Penny is at Charlie's Bar-B-Q, a place that boasts that it has "Original Texas Taste," at 1571 S. Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. They sell their secret barbecue sauce by the pint and quart. Penny's in the ladies room, just hanging out, trying to think of what color she's going to wear tomorrow.

M is for Melatonin

2008-11-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

Mick had a decent job writing his widget company’s blog and making YouTube video commercials for the company’s marketing department, but since the massive layoffs, Mick’s had a hell of a lot more work to do. He puts in very long days now, but doesn’t sleep much at night because he’s too worried about losing his job ….His boss is always telling him, "Mick, we have a good widget here. But if no one knows about it, this ship is going down and you have no job ... So try to keep that in mind, Mick." Like Mick had a choice. He lay awake at night wishing he could forget that, if only for a few hours.

Most of his friends are up half the night too because they’re all in their 40s too and once you hit the big 4-0, apparently, sleep trouble settles in. But Mick’s a pretty talented and resourceful guy and he knows how to turn things around, make the best of a bad situation. So while up late one night worrying, he started thinking about what special talents he might employ to change his situation, ‘cause that’s the type of crayon he is ... the purple one. a problem-solver.

Mick’s closest friends were always telling him he was extremely intuitive and tuned in to people, like he’d know what they were thinking before they even told him. But sometimes, even though he knew things, he couldn’t wholeheartedly believe he was right, because despite his charm and talents, he had moments, as we all do, when he was less than confident.

So Mick figured out a way to make the most of his insomnia hours by using his special powers in a way that might help some people, and since he’d make a few bucks in the process, he’d have a secret stash to fall back on if he did lose his job.

He set up a little psychic booth in a very busy area of downtown. His spot was right under a bridge near a sometimes thriving club scene packed with people, many of whom seemed more than a little lost. He was pretty psyched about this venture, and even watched a few old Charlie Brown episodes where Lucy had that little advice booth, for inspiration.

But it wasn’t long before he encountered obstacles. The lost people typically didn’t stray far from the clubs, and he was a whole block away. Sure, he got stragglers and some paid the $25 fee and got useful advice about their lives. But for the most part, the only people who interacted with him were the regular crowd of homeless people who called that area home. Being the kind of guy he is, he’d gladly share his talents with them free of charge, but the people unfortunate enough to be residing near the underside of a bridge, knew better than most about what the future had in store for them. They got a kick out of him, though, and started giving him advice. “Mick,” one older lady who lived under the bridge told him. “What the heck are ya doing out here, when you could be home sleeping, in a real bed in a place that has heat on cold nights and A/C in the summer?” At this, Mick would raised his upturned palms, shrug his shoulders and say, “Bertha, I wish I could enjoy that luxury. But I just can’t sleep for more than 3 hours a night.”

“Mick,” Bertha said. “I’m going to do you a little favor. I don’t typically give my advice away for free, but I like you even if you are a wee bit odd with your crazy ideas. I’m going to say one word to you and it is going to change your life entirely. Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know,” he answered with honesty. “But let’s give it a shot. I've got nothing to lose.”

“Melatonin,” she said.

“Does that mean peace, love and happiness in some foreign language?” he asked.

No, it’s a pill from the drugstore. Go now, buy it and never come back here late at night. I will take over your booth. I need a job anyway, and you, you just need to sleep.”

Mick did as he was told. He went directly to the nearest pharmacy and bought the pills. He went home, took one, laid his head on the pillow in his gigantic bed and off into the wondrous world of sleep he went. Some eight hours later, he awoke, wondering if the whole Bertha thing was just a bizarre dream from the M, as he soon came to call it. But it didn’t really matter. For the first time in ages, he felt completely and utterly refreshed. His little spirit was renewed. People noticed that he was a new man. “Mick, what the heck is going on with you?” they’d ask.

“Sleep,” he’d answer. “I’m sleeping.”

After they got through laughing, they’d jealously inquire, “How? Please tell me, ‘cause I’ve been really stressed and I can’t sleep either. What is the secret?”

It’s M, he’d tell them. I’ve started doing M.

At first they didn’t understand. They heard about kids at those rave parties doing X, but M? Nobody knew what the hell M was. “Is that like X?” they’d ask. “No, no, no!” he said laughing. “Well, maybe. M is like middle-aged X. Kids do X because they want to stay up and party all night, right? But M, that’s for the people who are beyond all that, and they’ve learned that the key to life is not staying up all night. It’s being able to sleep.”

“Can you get me some?” they asked.

“Well, you know …. Sure.”

He never did use the word melatonin, because it sounded very boring and technical, like the sort of thing people couldn’t wrap any real beliefs around. When pushed about what the M stood for, he simply said “Magic, of course. It’s all about the magic. The magic of sleep.”

Word spread quickly off Mick’s endless supply of M, and within the month, people who didn’t even know him were calling him with lines like, “Hey Mick, you don’t know me, but your friend Josie says you got an M supplier and I really need some M. I haven’t slept a solid night in weeks. I can meet you, anywhere you want. I know a lot of 24-hour diners. You name the place.”

Sometimes, the calls would come late at night. But Mick wouldn’t hear them, because he was sleeeeeeping, for a change.

Mick never took advantage of the situation. He didn’t overcharge for M. A bottle of 120 tablets cost about $3.50 and he charged his buyers accordingly. It got to the point where he’d awaken each morning to find his phone mail stuffed with messages. Eventually, he recorded a greeting: “If you’re calling about M, meet me at 6:30 a.m. at the Starlite. I’ll be wearing a blue sweatshirt with a big red letter M on the front. Can’t miss me. Seriously.”

Eventually, there would be a line each day. At first, it was just for the pills but eventually Mick set up a merch booth, selling M shirts and matching nightcaps that also had the big letter M. He thought of himself as Melatonin man, but since most of his customers were not familiar with the word melatonin, they just called him Magic Man. The merch booth really began taking off, and Mick started a Magic Man blog and started doing his own video commercials. Eventually, he quit his draining job. Finally, he was promoting something he truly believed in – the power of sleep, and people were buying it and loving it, and benefiting from it. It was beautiful.

When the big pharmacy chain discovered Mick’s little business, they wanted to figure out a way to cash in and hired some fancy schmantzy New York ad agency to try to take Mick down. They called the local and even national news stations to try to expose Mick. But Mick’s well-rested followers would have none of it. They thought the big pharmaceutical companies were evil, and that nightcaps with the name of a pharmaceutical company on them were not a good substitute.

With all the news exposure, Mick’s little business began thriving in a way that was beyond his wildest dreams, and he had lots of dreams now that he’d begun sleeping regularly. The business got so big that he began hiring some of the nightcap-wearing, well-rested believers to help keep the operation running smoothly. He also hired some of the people he met under the bridge. Bertha became his general manager, and franchised her booth out to Ed. Mick started doing what he does best …. Creating little slogans to make people aware of something he believes in. So far it’s working. New York may be the town that never sleeps, but Pompano is now known as the town that does. Then there’s Mick’s other increasingly infamous slogan: melatonin – the perfect nightcap.

For the record, this story was not funded by a major pharmaceutical company. I would not take their money or their prizes and I think they're inherently evil. Sure they have some helpful products. I just disagree with the way they find all those loopholes to bribe doctors with free televisions, lunches and trips to push their products.

This story is purely a work of fiction, loosely inspired by some real characters melded into the fictional guys now known as of Mick a.k.a. Melatonin Man, a.k.a. Magic Man a.k.a the man who inspired people to figure out what they really care about and pursue it so passionately that they’re able to quit their other life-sucking job.

Sleep well.

Mick's hanging out in a little nook in the men's room at Books & Books in Miami Beach ... It's a big spot for M sales, because people who can't sleep at night tend to read a lot of books. He's just trying to help.

Suzy Donut Knows

2008-11-10T09:35:00.003-05:00

The look on Suzy Donut's disgruntled little face can only mean that Obnoxious Al, a.k.a. Donut Hole, had arrived. Nearly every day, the cranky little suited man struts into into Z Donuts with that darned Bluetooth phone thing in his ear and barking out orders via phone to his secretary, while trying to order donut holes for his staffers. In addition to the donut holes, he always gets himself an apple fritter, a chocolate glazed and a giant latte.

To make matters worse, he consistently addresses Suzy as "Hey, doll" or "sweetie," which makes her cringe. My name, she tells him sternly each day, is Suzy Donut. Much as she despises the little man, Suzy Donut always puts additional munchkins, especially the chocolate glazed ones, in the box for his poor office staffers. She gives Donut Hole the smallest stalest apple fritter she can dig up, because he's such a miserable little man.

Suzy Donut has keen observational skills and a very sharp memory. As such, she knows a lot of things about a lot of people. She knows, for instance, the best bosses to work for in the town. She can tell by the way they order their donuts. Some rush in and demand a dozen of "whatever ya got" and don't even bother to say please or thank you.

Bossman Bill, from the oil change place down on the corner, arrives like clockwork every morning and orders a strawberry sprinkle for Elroy, a jelly donut for Bobby and a cinnamon for Johnny, because those are their favorite donuts ... On Fridays he gets them the big box o' java too. His order never changes because his employers never leave. They like him. Bill's a very good boss.

Then there's Barry, a retiree who arrives every Saturday morning to pick up chocolate donuts and a vanilla latte for his wife Lou Ann. She could tell he was a good man. One Saturday Suzy finally got to meet the pampered Lou Ann ... You know, your husband really loves you, she told Lou Ann, who smiled and laughed and agreed. Suzy enjoys sharing her little insights when she feels like it's the right thing to do.

Another regular, Mr. Joe, has his clients meet him at Z Donuts, as if it were his own personal office. He has his papers spread out all around his laptop ... even has a picture of his kids in a frame. He buys each potential client a cup of coffee and a donut of their choice and then tries to get them to sign on the dotted line of a contract Suzy Donut knows no one in their right mind should sign. She always shoots his clients a look that says just that ... she raises her eyebrows and turns up that one side of her mouth and shakes her head back and forth. (For the full effect, do this while looking into a mirror) .... It works every time. The dishonest Mr. Joe can't understand why no one is falling for his dishonest sales pitches anymore.

Suzy's no barista. Don't call her that or she might slug ya. Not really, but she thinks the term is way too pretentious for a place like Z Donuts. She does take her job seriously. While sharing her insights is her favorite part, Suzy Donuts loves pouring coffee and hawking donuts, which she'll tell you are just as important as the coffee. She knows better than anyone that there's an art to ordering donuts. Some people do it with love and others try to rush through it as though they were filling up their car with gas.

Ordering donuts, she contends, is not something you rush through. It's something you think about long before you arrive in the donut shop, and even then you order the donuts slowly, thoughtfully and intuitively .... The experience cannot be clouded up with barking Donut Holes on cell phones, and anxiety and chaos. During the moment the final donut selections are made, nothing else should matter but that. Suzy Donut's got all the time in the world for that ....

Suzy Donut is in the ladies room at Dunkin Donuts at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale. She's hiding out in there because she had a few too many Donut Holes on cell phones to deal with this morning.

Victor's fiery new beginnings

2008-11-09T13:17:00.003-05:00

Another little tile has made its way out into the world. With the help of two tile-helpers who rescued Victor from the sea of words he was drowning in .... the master wordsmith has carved out a new life .... or at least a very healthy diversion from the matters at hand.

Victor E. had been struggling for a very long time to find a place on his Scrabble board to lay down his seven letter word and score 50 bonus points. It's the same thing that always happened to him in Scrabble ... you get some big really special word and there's no place to put it. But who's going to part with any segment of a seven letter word that you know will get you 50 extra points if you can only find room for it?

Such is the dilemma Victor faced when, after years of word jumbles, crossword puzzles and Boggle, he faced the ultimate word dilemma of Scrabble. Victor had been trying to figure this out for so long that he'd reached the point where he felt like he needed a glass of wine, or two. So (enabler that I apparently am) I slipped him into a drawer in the ladies room at Total Wine in Fort Lauderdale. With 8,000 different kinds of wine there, who knows how much trouble he may have gotten into during the five weeks he lived at this store.

We do know that on Oct. 25, the tile-rescue team of Sherry and Rucci intervened and encouraged the stymied Victor to take a leap from his sea of words and delve into new territory.

In an afterpost, Sherry writes: "Victor decided to give his brain a rest and move on up the highway to try something more physical. He decided to take a big leap and get out of his comfort zone."

Victor joined Sherry at the South Carolina Fire Academy for a course in Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) and she e-mailed loads of pics that tell the tale.

"He stayed in a dorm with other firefighters from other places in the country, where he was exposed to a whole new world other than crossword puzzles and Scrabble," Sherry notes in her e-mail. "Wow, was he surprised at this whole new world exposed to him. Victor worked as part of a team and learned all about air crafts and emergencies involving rescue and fire. He learned how to operate a crash truck designed for aircraft firefighting. This class totally removed Victor from the game of Scrabble. Sometimes it makes sense to stop obsessing on something so difficult, and then when you go back to the 'game' your outlook is fresh and you have a better sense of clarity when trying to put your words together.

"Victor graduated with a certificate and was able to make his way far from the United States to exercise his new
training. Thanks to R and R, Victor found a new home, and will be able to live happy. Besides that, he has become an expert at Scrabble, and has no problem putting the words together anymore."

The firefighters liked the word-happy Victor. "Victor was a lot of fun to have at the academy," writes Sherry. "The firefighters and fire officers that I met welcomed Victor as one of their own. He was welcomed as part of the team and went through a lot of physical and mental training in a 48-hour period. His life has been changed forever."

C-H-A-N-G-E-D, as in seven letter word with 50 bonus points.

Sherry's right. Sometimes people do have to stop obsessing about things and leap out of their comfort zone and see where it takes them. Word has it that Victor is now finding more places for some very fine seven-letter words in his life ... words like gumdrop, firefly, mystery, romance, bubbles, flutter and loopydo. OK, so he sometimes makes words up ... so contest it if you dare. But remember that if it IS a word, you will lose your turn.

Paula's little painting problem

2008-11-01T23:24:00.001-04:00

Sometimes Paula becomes so focused on the little things in her life that she forgets to see the big picture. Other times she believes that she hones in on these tasks so that she can avoid thinking about the big picture. She's a little picture type of person. But she's been in the same little picture for a very long time, and has grown bored with it.

She sees other people make major changes in their life ... just up and change it all ... look for a new job and then just sell their house, pack it all up and move to some new place, start their lives over in a completely different environment ... or just conquer some fear that has taken hold in their life and held them hostage.

But the very thought of all of that, and all it would entail feels incredibly massive ... she keeps trying to somehow make her little picture work for her, to just work around all of her stuff. Instead of making major change, she focuses on small improvements, like planting a garden of cleaning a closet or painting a room or washing every window in her house or ... well, things, like that. She's not sure why, but it makes her feel better to completely engross herself in such projects and to focus on them to the abandonment of any other thought. Sometimes the intense focus backfires, as it did recently when Paula literally painted herself into a corner.

Once she realized what she had done, she panicked, because in that instant she realized she was truly stuck ... not just because she had painted herself into a corner and was now surrounded by wet paint ... but because ultimately none of these things that she did to make herself feel better would make much difference.

Paula knew somewhere deep inside that it wasn't the walls she painted or the gardens she tended that most needed her transformative efforts. It was her fears, and she had no time to go searching for a wizard in Emerald City to provide the courage she needed to make change. She knew the wiz was a bit of a scammer anyway and that everything she needed in this life was already inside of her, just buried beneath layers of self-doubt that she now envisioned chipping away like old paint.

She knew she couldn't paint or garden or clean her way to happiness, yet oddly it was the painting that brought her to this little corner, pinning here there for a solid two hours in which she had nothing to do but look inside of herself and contemplate her life, and the things that brought her to this moment and all that it encompassed.

It's funny how these little yet significant life-altering moments come when you least expect them and in the places where you least expect them to happen .... in the corner of a tiny room surrounded by paint with nothing at all to do but think.

Dropped Paula under the mailbox at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale .... not because she's going postal. She's just thinking.

Dance of the Dark Shadows

2008-10-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

During several months spent working as a Dark Shadow, Sara wore a black suit and was not permitted to communicate verbally. Her job was to travel around town passing out fliers and creating a sense of intrigue while wearing what looked like a black Spandex leotard that covered every inch of her body, including her face. The only thing that wasn't black was the little bright pink flower that Sara wore just above her heart. It was against company policy, but Sara was OK with breaking a rule and just wanted one little thing of her own when she headed out into this new world.

Despite not completely understanding her mission, she took her job very seriously ... as did Xavier, another Dark Shadow. The pair fell hopelessly in love without ever having spoken a word ... They never saw one another's faces ... not even their eyes showed in these suits. But at Dark Shadow meetings, Xavier always found the woman in the pink flower. A few times Sara didn't wear the pink flower, just to see if Xavier would know her without it ... and he did. He always found her. She loved how he could do that.

Initially, Sara wasn't sure why she was drawn to the crazy ad that read Shadow People Wanted ... but she wanted that job badly and decided to listen to her intuition. Because her last job at a PR agency was all about words, trying to convey anything without words was initially awkward ... but eventually it became a beautiful language all it's own, but a language that only another shadow person could truly understand. Xavier got it. They spoke the same language.

They started spending a lot of time together in their shadow suits, hanging out at art shows, bookstores and festivals all over town, not talking, but truly communicating. At first lots of people pointed and laughed and stared ... but eventually they got over it and realized the dark people were OK, even if they were a little odd and very quiet. People around them began to respond warmly, but also without speaking. Those people were truly intrigued, without quite realizing why.

Sara and Xavier were equally intrigued with this new life they had both found. It just worked somehow in a way that nothing else had ever worked before. They felt like their unique little relationship was just too perfect to mess up .... so they decided never to see each other's faces or use any words .... But then the Dark Shadows business just shut down as quickly as it had opened. Sara reported to the office to go to her locker and change into her black attire, but the space was just empty, so Sara lost her job, her black shadow costumes and the most intriguing person she had ever come to know.

She considered posting an ad on Craigslist's Missed Connections or something, because she and Xavier had never exchanged e-mails or phone numbers. What would have been the point since they didn't use words? But the more she thought about trying to continue seeing him ... as a real speaking person who doesn't look like a silhouette ... the more she felt like things could never be the same .... It's the sort of thing that just magically happened ... not the sort of thing you can make happen, so she didn't pursue it.

Sara is on many levels deeply saddened by the loss of her very quiet best friend ... but knows that he will live on in her heart forever. She tells herself that she has moved on, but continues to wear the little bright pink flower in secret hope that one day she will again be found.

Sara is in a little nook on the street in Las Olas .... the nook contains some kind of water pipes or something outside Vencor Hospital in the 1500 block of Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.

While the stories you read on this blog are all just pretty much made up, for the most part, they come from somewhere. And this particular one was inspired by a few very intriguing blog posts I spotted this month, one on The South Florida Daily Blog .. and another on Coconut Grove Grapevine ... about the real working "Shadow People." For the record, I do not know the Shadow People, so this story has nothing to do with the real people in black. .... just an intrigued mind filling in all the little gaps with the sort of fairy-tales I imagine might come true in a world populated with silent silhouettes on a marketing mission.

Lizzy's Secret Hooky Day

2008-10-28T21:00:00.001-04:00

Lizzy typically works Tuesday nights at the factory but when she awoke on Tuesday morning and everything outside looked sparkly, crisp and like autumn had finally arrived, all she could think about was bundling up and getting outside and walking as far as she could. Lizzy loved the first cold day of the year and it only felt right to honor it ... She had plenty of nights that she could work, but only one night that she could walk on the very first chilly night of the year in South Florida.

She'd been waiting all summer for the Fallfest Memorial Strut ... It's not the fall she remembers as a kid, but each year when she puts on her pink coat with the orange buttons and the purple scarf and heads out into the night, it doesn't matter that there are no colorful leaves ... because in her mind the red and yellow and orange leaves are all right there ... swirling.

She know that not everyone sees the swirls, so she's cautious about who she struts with because as a longtime member of the Secret Society of Fallfest Memorial Strutters, she knows the importance of not strutting with people who can't see the swirls and witness the magical effect it has on people. But Lizzy's gotten quite good at determining who can and cannot see the swirls. Not that it's discussed. The first rule about the Swirl Club is that you don't talk about the Swirl Club. It's kinda like the fight club in that way. You just have to wait for a sign that they saw it too.

Lizzy recently recruited a new member of the Secret Society, and much as expected she got her sign ... It the big one. Literally minutes after all the strutting and swirling activities .... she looked up and saw The Great Pumpkin. I know that sounds just too impossible to be true ... but it happened, and if you don't believe it ... you probably have never seen the red, orange and yellow leaves swirling on the first cold night of the year in South Florida.

That's all I can say about that .. because the Secret Society does not permit in-depth discussion of activities surrounding the Fallfest Memorial Strut.

Lizzy is now hanging out in the ladies room at Ats A Pizza Italian Restaurant on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. She's waiting for a swirler to come and rescue her .... Meanwhile she's quite amused by the trick door. People keep coming in there and trying to close it so they can use the facilities ... but it doesn't close ... a trick spring. The management here has such a sense of humor .... It's very, very funny.

Shasta Suites

2008-10-24T14:08:00.000-04:00

When Shasta begins worrying about things over which she has no control, she develops an overwhelming desire to paint little flowers. It takes her mind off troubling things and re-establishes her connection to a better place.

Landlords around the Pompano Beach know about Shasta because of her reputation: She signs a one-year lease convincing a landlord to give her a month's free rent and forego the security deposit based on the improvements she will make to the property. Then, after a month, she packs her very few possessions and moves out in the wee hours - leaving only her flowery masterpiece behind.

Those who own these rundown roachtraps aren't about to fork over money to get the walls painted white again, after only a month ... not to mention the floors and the inside of closets, drawers, etc. Besides, they're finding that the flowery apartments are far easier to rent than the others. They just seem to make people happy in a way that white walls do not. They've even started referring to these apartments as "Shasta Suites."

Shasta's life is getting easier, too. She no longer has to work so hard to convince landlords to let her stay free for a month and forego her security deposit. When she introduces herself as Shasta they seem to go easier on her. Shasta's not sure if that's her vivid imagination, or her new sense of confidence ... and it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that for the first she can remember in a long time, she feels really happy, hopeful and alive, despite having no bank account and few material possessions ... or maybe because of that. She no longer has to worry about paying rent and still has time to paint works that she can sell to buy a few groceries, flower seeds or even an occasional bottle of pinot grigio.

And perhaps, best of all, she recently heard that other artists had been moving into apartments, using the name Shasta to get a months' free rent, and then creating gorgeous masterpieces on the walls and moving out a month later .... Shasta never even dreamed of something this exciting happening.

Sometimes beautiful things emerge from the darkest of places.

Shasta has been dropped in the ladies' room at Dunkin Donuts between Davie Boulevard and 17th Street Causeway on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale ... It's the place that used to be Dippy Donuts ....

The Rising of the Hope

2008-10-18T20:42:00.003-04:00

You know how that big fat glowing orange moon always makes an appearance around October .... the one people refer to as harvest moon ... but the pumpkins who live in the patch know the real story behind that moon, and they simply call it the Rising of the Hope. Pumpkins sometimes lose hope in this life ... because they're up on all the pumpkin news and they know how many pumpkins are being slaughtered this time of year, and made into coffee, ice cream, pies, and even beer now. Recently, in fact, they have become increasingly popular, but no one knows the price of popularity better than pumpkins.

A few find fame ... like those 900-pound pumpkins that get towed around to fairs and make the news, but they meet with their own tragic ends. Ditto for the pumpkins so proudly displayed on porches for all the little candy-hungry trick-or-treaters to enjoy, and are then left to rot. If they manage to survive that holiday without having their stuffings scooped out and their insides lit with fire, they know they must face the daunting holiday of doom known as Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins for obvious reasons do not like Thanksgiving. Two words: Pumpkin pie.

They want more from life, but few of them find it. When the baby pumpkins ask the older ones what life is really about, where they will wind up and what will happen to them, the senior pumpkins tell them the story of the Rising of the Hope and how if they believe hard enough and strong enough, one day they will rise far above this and smile down upon the world.

Fall is their season to do this, and they know this because of the big light in the sky. Each month it grows full and round ... but only during the season of the pumpkin is it so glowing and orange, and this is their sign, their reason to hope, their motivation to believe that they can rise above the pumpkin pies, the slaughtering, the burning, the ice cream and even the pumpkin ale and become one of the shining pumpkins in the sky.

They need hope. Because life, for the pumpkins, is getting very stressful. Recently, Dunkin Donuts has started posting signs all over their shops that say Pumpkin Is Back. It's become downright devastating for the pumpkin population. They are living in a state of constant panic now, but they still continue to hope, fat little pollyannas that they are.

Most people don't believe in the Rising of Hope ... they just prefer to call this phenomenon the Harvest Moon .... Some, like the blanket-carrying Linus, know better. But even he doesn't talk about this much. In fact, it was Linus who said: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: Religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

But we know there are others out there who agree with Linus and we too should unite and rise up for the sake of pumpkins everywhere .... It will be hard to give up the pumpkin consumption, for sure ... but it's important to note that pumpkins are peaceful creatures and despite years of torture from humans, not one pumpkin has ever ordered a people coffee or eaten people pie on a pumpkin family holiday. So remember every year when you see the big harvest moon, know that pumpkins everywhere hoped really hard to make that happen for you.

Dropped the pumpkins at Jaxson's Ice Cream Parlor in Dania .... just under the sink ... not The Kitchen Sink full of ice cream that feeds you and 20 of your friends .... but the little sink in the ladies room. They're hiding in there and they're really, really scared because they heard some lady in the parking lot say she just got the very last of the pumpkin ice cream .... They're hoping really hard that Linus, or one of his crew, comes and rescues them. So hopefully someone with a soft spot for pumpkins will take them home .....

Zoey's bubble zone

2008-10-09T23:00:00.002-04:00

Zoey is one of the few people in the world who is lucky enough to make a living writing limericks. Recently, as the world collapses around us, there has been quite a demand for her limericks, especially since some of the other limerick writers have been forced to close up shop and get jobs at the local BK or pancake house. So for all the wrong reasons, Zoey's business has picked up quite a bit.

Sometimes Zoey's a little too busy. She gets overwhelmed by her growing list of jobs, and they're not the sort of things one can rush through. The only way she can truly become one with her work is to find a way not to think about all those other unfinished tasks on her list ... to abandon all of those worries so that she can be here in this moment ... writing the only limerick that really matters.

When she has trouble arriving at that peaceful place, she imagines herself inside a lava lamp where it's comfortingly warm and little bubbles of color are floating all around her silently. Then she can create something truly meaningful and special. Zoey's a limerick writer in a lava lamp.

Now she is in the parking lot of Southport Shopping Center in 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale. There's a big white recycling bin in the corner of the lot, near the closed down Texaco, and in the back of that bin down low, is a little hiding nook. She's down there right now, in her little creativity zone, working on a limerick. If we get an update from her, maybe we'll post her limerick here later.

Red-Dress Fridays

2008-10-07T13:15:00.001-04:00

Rose is typically all about casual, but there's something that kinda bothered her about mandated casual. That whole "You must dress casual on Friday" routine only made her want to not dress casual, especially anything called "business casual." The very term made her cringe.

So every Friday, Rose wears a lovely red dress. It is, in fact, the only dress she owns. Underneath it, she wears a swimsuit and when her work day is done ... straight to the beach for a very long swim, and then directly home for her own casual Friday dinner: vanilla ice cream and salted pretzels. That's what her great Aunt Ruth has for dinner every Friday and Rose wants to help keep that tradition alive.

Dropped Rose at Lester's on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale in the east ladies room.

Delia & Moth

2008-09-30T20:16:00.001-04:00

Delia is a very odd girl.

She feels connected to the universe when she’s outdoors in the sunlight with the birds and butterflies and hummingbirds. But late at night when she can no longer see her winged friends and darkness settles in, her anxiety and insecurities arrive to haunt her. Each night, she hopes to dream of falling asleep in the sun, in a field filled with wildflowers and the winged creatures who thrive on them. “Where do the butterflies go at night?” she wonders as she closes her eyes.

But Delia’s a big girl, not so much in stature ... just fiercely independent. So come sundown, she assures herself that morning and all that accompanies it will return. In her barren room with the old wood floors, she sips merlot and in the light of a big fat patchouli candle, strums her guitar and makes up songs about things that make her smile, or things that make her sad. If she runs out of words, she goes to the general store and wanders around to find things she needs.

On one such Tuesday, as she returned home from shopping, she realized she was not alone. A winged creature of the night had accompanied her through the back door and into her tiny kitchen. It was one of those little moths that dance around her porch light on summer nights.

But inside her kitchen, the winged creature of the night seemed much larger, and she felt afraid. Logically, she knew she was far bigger than the moth, yet she had an illogical fear of him flying right into her head, and completely freaking her out.

Not wanting to kill him, at least not without considering the options, she stepped outside the kitchen and nervously observed for awhile, wondering what, if anything, to do. She realized eventually that the moth wasn’t as much of a threat as she initially thought. She was not his target. He had but one goal -- flying into the overhead lights, which were very, very hot … again and again and again. Each time he flew there, the heat of the light knocked him back to the counter, or the floor or into a pile of dishes in the drainer, only to emerge again and head straight back into the light that Delia realized might eventually scorch his tortured soul.

But there was nothing she could do to stop this cycle. She understood that cycle, and occasionally participated in similar cycles, but only in very measured ways that she knew would not destroy her. Delia had developed a healthy respect for light and particularly for fire, the most intense form of light. In other words, she knew how awesome it was, yet was keenly aware of its power to destroy her.

Her mother taught her this at a very young age, when Delia became fascinated with the glow of a backyard fire. Delia had never seen anything so beautiful. She wanted to be very close to it, to become one with it. But her very wise mother slapped her hand – probably the only time she had ever done so – and warned “No, no!” and something along the lines of “Hot!” and “Fire!” and “Danger!” Definitely danger. “You can watch it, and appreciate it from over here,” she explained to Delia, “but never, ever get too close to it, or you will get very, very hurt.”

Delia understood, but her attraction to the fire never diminished. As a teen, sitting in a lawn chair at some random KOA campground after most everyone had gone to sleep, Delia recalls listening to the crackle of a gorgeous, heartwarming fire on an otherwise silent night. Even from a distance, as it glowed and flickered and sent embers skyward, it somehow shed meaning on her life and made her feel connected to the universe in ways she didn’t typically feel connected to anything.

She still loves a good fire, as well as the sun, the glow of a living room lamp, the candles she burned through the night, lightning bugs, lava lamps, her year-round holiday tree with the blue fading lights, fireworks … but especially fire, the deepest and brightest of the lights … and the most dangerous. All the other things just represent fire, but what does the fire represent? It is beautiful, for sure, but it consumes and burns and leaves behind only ashes.

Delia gets that now. When she was younger and finally living on her own, she had danced too close to the fire on many occasions, convinced she could withstand the heat, that she was invincible. But she learned that her mom was right. We must retain a healthy respect for fire, keep a safe distance from it. That’s what Delia told herself now ... except on the rare occasions when she became disoriented and forgot about her resolve not to play with fire again. Oddly, it was during those times that she felt most alive. But that very feeling of being so alive reminded her that she now had something to lose, and this made her feel restless and conflicted. That’s when her clarity would return and her resolve to stay away from fire would grow stronger again

But while watching this impassioned moth flying around her little kitchen, so intensely focused on the light, a part of Delia felt jealous about the sheer excitement she knew he must be feeling as he circled in on a light so compelling to him, that in that moment he forgot all else and risked everything just to reach it … Delia admired his courage and devotion yet a part of her wished she could drag him away from the light, talk him down from the craziness that she worried would not end well. But she knew this was a personal journey, one he must take independently in order to gain his own healthy respect for light, and fire.

There was an art to keeping a safe distance from fires and Delia had nearly perfected it now. She still remembers that last cold winter night when she tried to get warm by the fire, but got too close and suffered burns. worse than her previous ones. Fires, on cold nights, always draw you closer. The trick is knowing how close is too close. Now before thinking about taking another step forward, Delia touches her scar and remembers all the reasons not to go there. Danger. She wondered how her moth friend would fare, how many scars or broken wings it might take him to learn life’s harder lessons.

Leaving him to it, she retreated to her front porch, sipped her wine, and strummed her guitar, making up songs about moths, flames, pointless games and wings burned, lessons learned, fear earned … things like that. Eventually, she retreated inside and returned to the kitchen to check on her winged friend. Finding him nowhere, she returned to her spot in the living room, beside her fat candle in a glass, and there he was, gently floating in a sea of hot wax. By the glow of the candle, Delia could see every inch of his wings in a way she could not before. He looked incredibly gorgeous, even prettier than a butterfly. And now he was one with the light he seems to have been struggling to find his entire life.

She quietly strummed for awhile, before leaning towards the candle and looking again at this amazingly perfect spotted creature: “You are so very brave ... much, much braver than most of us,” she whispered. “And I will forever admire you. But please, please, please,” she begged, “can you come back just once to reveal how it feels to completely abandon yourself to the flame?”

If you’ve arrived at the end of this story honestly, please know that no moths were injured in the course of researching this tale. However, there was a flying, intensely buzzing insect that flew repeatedly into the lights in my kitchen on a recent night, and in a moment of sheer panic, I killed him … with a magazine … shortly after he had fallen to the floor for about the fourth time. Despite that he would have killed himself eventually, I deeply regret the incident, and I made up this story later that evening.

Also, for the record, I don’t know how to play guitar, but if I did, I’d probably make up songs about courageous moths. While I have a few friends who are currently risking it all to pursue their various passions in life (partly because they lost their jobs), I tend to take more calculated risks. … But because math is not my strong point, I often have trouble calculating risks and simply avoid them altogether.

But I have calculated a theory (because while my math skills are lacking, I'm pretty good at making stuff up to compensate for what I don't know). My theory is that many people don't risk it all to pursue dreams, because their dreams are so big and so perfect, and reality could never measure up ... when it doesn't, it feels like a failure and kills the dream ... and sometimes keeping a dream alive is more important than reality. In the end, it's the dreams that keep us going, isn't it?

Fortunately for me, my dreams aren't huge. Even if I won the lottery tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t travel much, or buy a fancy car or a big boat … I’d just live in an old farmhouse on a nice plot of land in a town small enough to ride my bike around. I’d hide tiles and write stories and novels, and I’d practice playing guitar and try to learn to sing (in a more tolerable way) ... I’d read good books and grow vegetables and garden and cook and walk a lot … for miles and miles everyday. Sometimes I’d invite other people from around town to come and sit on the front porch and play music, or cards, and maybe drink some wine and eat some food and talk about life. I like to keep it simple.

Dropped Delia and moth at Starbucks at Davie Boulevard and Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale (just south of the tunnel) ... They're in the ladies room.

Janie's Awesome Vacation

2008-09-23T20:15:00.004-04:00

One day, rather than live vicariously through the characters I paint on my tiles ... I may just go to happy hour on a Friday .... and never return. Out of all the characters I've painted over the last two years, the ones that leave town for big adventures were typically only headed out for happy hour, or so they thought ...

A cat with a meandering heart and a taste for tuna landed in Tennessee, a woman terrified of asterisks went to N.C. and now Janie, an office worker who'd been trying to rack up happy hour funds by establishing an "awesome-free zone" and charging co-workers a buck every time they said "awesome," has been dropped in the restroom of Chalet Restaurant pictured above.

Janie also visited the birthplace of dictionary man Noah Webster in West Hartford, CT and the Mark Twain House and Museum, also in Hartford. But that was after her ferry ride, in which she apparently drank a little too much and wound up hanging with "some lazy ferry dude."

But, ya know, I just paint them. I can't protect them forever ... and it turned out that her little incident with ferry dude was harmless. Surely her tour guides, the adventure duo of Sherry and Rucci, wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

Sherry and Rucci are the very couple that took Feisty Fred from a shopping center in Fort Lauderdale to Tennessee ... and they took the asterisk-fearing Roni from Ernie's BBQ in Fort Lauderdale to North Carolina. More recently, they found Janie at CVS Pharmacy in Fort Lauderdale. Apparently, she'd stopped at the pay phone to call friends to meet her for happy hour ... After that, no one really knows exactly what happened.

We do know that months later, she was found in a newspaper box not far from that phone .... and so her adventures began. Here's the story, as told by her hospitable tour guides Sherry and Rucci. Yesterday, they sent this full update via e-mail, along with photos from Janie's lovely vacation.

"M.T.M., Janie had accumulated soooooo many dollars that she decided to skip 'Happy-Hour' and head the hell outta the office and outta town on that particular Friday.

Happy that the ferry arrived on time, feeling altogether WELCOME, she made her way to the lifeboats and the bar where her crazy "Awesome-Free-Zone" came to a screeching halt.

"The ferry bartender took one look at her and exclaimed (without reading the back) AWESOME!!!!! We explained her situation and headed to other parts of the ship. It was enough to drive a girl to drink and some lazy ferry dude as you can see.

"She then headed for some historic places that included Mark Twain's house..(she looks sooooo sweet in his garden) and then to Noah Websters home where he wrote a lil book you may have heard of.........Oh, yeah...THE DICTIONARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"After a sweet vacation, she ended up in The Chalet...a cool little castle like bar/restaurant/lounge in the ladies room... she seemed so happy amongst the stone wall there...Sherry really knew just where she should end up. And ironically.............IT WAS HAPPY-HOUR!!!

"Gee, what a great big silly circle she and us have encountered! Sherry & Rucci "

I love a good story. When Sherry and Rucci hit the road with one of my characters in tow, I always know I can count on a good story. There are more than 200 tiles out there ... Once in while, I get to hear what happened to one them, and I always love that ... Clara, who was hanging out in a parking garage in Coral Gables, also was discovered this week. Photographer and tile finder Carlos Miller tells the story on his blog.

Still others are living quieter lives in their own little places of honor in people's homes, and I've heard about some of those too... Recently a friend encountered Scruffy in Tokyo Sushi place. She wanted Scruffy but did not kidnap her, as she said she looks like she belongs there now. She has an actual place of honor. Next door to that sushi place at Cold Stone Creamery, Sean lives in a glass case. Also in that plaza is a Starbucks where Sara found a home behind the counter. But I noticed that she has disappeared now, so Betty made her way over there recently to investigate. No word on Betty yet.

I like that the tiles that once dully sat in stacks in my dark closet are now out there in the world, living colorful lives of their own, and having awesome adventures. So thanks to all who've adopted them. You all are the very best.

Betty Cooper: Hula Hooper

2008-09-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

Betty's Boss, a narrow-minded power tripper who brown-nosed her way to the top, sent Betty right over the edge some days. That's when Betty would go home and hula hoop like mad until the anger wore off. Now that hula hooping has been declared an Olympic sport, Betty plans to hula hoop her way to fame and fortune.

Left Betty at the Starbucks just east of Southport Shopping Center on 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale ... She's in the ladies room .... propped up under the sink ... against the wall.

Clara's Tuesday Outings

2008-09-17T23:00:00.003-04:00

One Tuesday Clara was feeling sorta down in the dumps, and as she was walking through the park she noticed a lot of older ladies who seemed really happy, even though they were all alone. Some of them were feeding the birds and talking to them as they gathered and the other was sitting at a picnic table surrounded by lots of very happy looking cats. Despite that Cat Lady looked like she didn't really have much in this world, she did have a sack of cat food and a stack of little bowls and a loyal following of feline friends who apparently had her daily routine down and scheduled their lives accordingly.

Clara realized that the difference in mood between her and the ladies in the park pretty much came down to that. While she was just thinking about all the little problems rolling around in her own head, those very independent ladies were thinking of what they could to to contribute to the happiness of some birds, or kitties and maybe people as well.

The park ladies had unknowingly taught her something about life and on Tuesdays, she started picking flowers here and there on her way to the park... She didn't really think of it as stealing since none of those rich downtown businesses would really miss a flower or three .... and the ladies in the park were happy, not just to get whatever Clara had picked for them that day ... They just liked chatting with her ... even though they all thought she was a little weird, and sometimes talked about that among themselves.

One Tuesday, Clara actually heard one of them saying to the other that she wondered what time Weirdo Flower Girl was going to come along. But Clara didn't take it personally. After all, these were ladies who talk to birds in the park and even have names for the birds. She knew if they called her strange, it was only because they liked her, and that they knew she was truly one of them, which she is.

Hid Clara in a stairwell in the City of Coral Gables Museum Parking Garage ... though I'm not sure what museum they mean. But surely someone will find it, as it's in a pretty obvious spot. They might even think it belongs there, and maybe it does.

2008-09-14T18:15:00.004-04:00

Victor loves words … word jumbles, crossword puzzles and especially Boggle, a game where you make words by connecting all the letters on the little cubes.

Despite being a word master there is one game that terrifies Victor. It’s the biggest and most important word game of all – Scrabble. When playing Scrabble, he can find plenty of places to build on existing words. But then, when he finally picks all the right letters for the big one - a 7-letter word that could earn him 50 bonus points, there’s no place on the board for it … no place at all, because by this point in the game, the board is all crowded up with letters, words all over the place. It’s a state of complete and utter chaos.

But, you know, it’s kind of a nice word, so he holds onto it for awhile, even passing up turns in hopes that he might find some place to put those seven tiles down and earn that 50-point reward. But in the end, no space opens up. There’s simply no room and the tiles are slid off the rack and returned to the brown bag from which they magically emerged.

Scrabble is such an emotionally exhausting game sometimes … That’s why Victor typically resigns himself to word jumbles and crossword puzzles. They’re much easier to solve. … And Victor, when it comes right down to it, likes to stick to what he does best. It’s what we all do really, isn’t it? We dream of magical things such as writing a novel, growing the perfect garden, moving to a faraway place or just somehow making one small but significant mark in this world, but when we seriously consider the difficulty of achieving such dreams – it's much like trying to squeeze a big word onto our overcrowded board and it feels too hard so we just stop searching for a place to put all that.

In the end, we throw the letters back into the bag and return to the warm and comfortable place where we feel most secure ... because seven-letter words are fun to think about, but seriously hard to accommodate …. Especially when the board’s all crowded up with the words that have already been put down. It’s not like you can just move them all out of the way and put a new one there. That would be against the official rules of Scrabble.

For those who struggle with breaking the rules, Scrabble’s a very risky game. It’s not for the faint of heart, even when you get all the right letters … especially then.

It’s a hard game for those little letter tiles too. If you don’t believe it, just ask the letter Z, or her freakish buds X, Q and K. Well, actually it’s not that hard for K, ‘cause K knows how to fit in a little better, and you can tell that because she's valued at 5 points, whereas Z, X and Q are considerably more. Apparently, the more unique and harder to accommodate you are, the higher the assigned point value.

Somehow, that all makes sense to me, and given the friends I have … I consider myself a high roller, ‘cause even though I may be breaking official rules by just coming right out and saying this, they’re all worth at least 10 points. And some, a little more. So all things considered, I guess I’m fortunate…. Because even if I can’t find the right letters to make them into words and even if they wind up costing me points, I’m OK being stuck with every last one of them.

Writer’s note: I would like to thank my friends Q, X, K, and also the letter J, who frequently goes unrecognized, for their unknowing yet thoughtful contributions to this soul-searching if somewhat mushy post.

Victor is in the ladies room at Total Wine in the Harbor Shops off Cordova Road ... in the right hand upper drawer of the only cabinet in there. I hope he gets found .... The restroom is not in the most obvious spot there. So here's the guide: Walk in, go all the way to the left and then proceed to the back of the store .... left on aisle 7, and keep going until you see it on the right.

Bon Voyage to Janie

2008-09-12T19:31:00.006-04:00

Rucci the Tile Kidnapper has struck again. Janie, who got so tired of hearing the word "awesome" that she started charging co-workers every time they said it, was dropped at a phone booth at the now-defunct CVS Pharmacy on 17th Street and Andrews Avenue on May 28. By that time, she'd collected so much money in the "awesome" jar that she had hit the streets looking for a happy hour. She started at the phone both, perhaps calling some friends to come and meet her, but she never did make it very far. Rucci just recently discovered her in a red automotive newspaper box not far from the phone at CVS.

Nobody really knows how Janie wound up there. Maybe none of her friends were home that night. Maybe she realized she didn't have any friends. Maybe she was just really, really tired and crawling inside a little red box just seemed like a grand idea. Then again, she could have been looking for a good used car and fell asleep waiting for callbacks. ... and while sleeping perhaps she began to dream of fairies, and then she transitioned directly into another dream ... about a ferry of a different kind.

By the time she woke up, she was feeling a little faded, but apparently her dream was about to become a reality. This e-mail and the above photo arrived in the Tilefortlauderdale e-mail box today.

"Janie decided to skip Friday 'Happy-Hour' and spend her new found "Awesome-Cash" in a different way! She wanted to join her cousins on her OWN magnificent journey! All she knew was, she wanted a secret Ferry-Ride and was going to get one. She would take her jar with her and order strangers to pony-up a buck when she hears 'Awesome!' That should just about cover the cost of the ferry. Ahhhh, another of MTM's offspring leaves the nest to take yet another trip to far off lands. Will keep you updated on her wild time and final destination."

R&R, the team of Rucci and Sherry, thought another recently dropped tile might make good company for Janie, so the next day, they went to Birch Park to search for her too, but the secret-telling Veronica was nowhere to be found. She may have been hiding, or she might have just run off, or maybe she was curled up somewhere in the park, resting up from telling all her secrets night after night.

They did, however, encounter the heart art, and the old train, and Rucci is seemingly a longtime visitor to Birch Park.

This followup e-mail arrived just after the e-mail about Janie's new adventure: "The next day we were hiking in Birch Park and saw the hearts within the hearts you were speaking of and wanted to take Veronica with us also but we think she was discovered as we know that area well and REALLY looked for her. I actually rode that little train long ago ... the part where it would travel over the narrow tressel, the conductor would stop the train and declare "If anyone doesn't like the way I'm driving the train, THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN GET OFF!!!" Too funny! R&R"

R&R have been picking up tiles for some time now and taking them on adventures in places like Tennessee and North Carolina, and then photographing and recording the exploits for this site. Sherry shares the tile adventures with everyone down at the firehouse too.

We'll have to wait and see what become of Janie. As for the aptly named Vulnerable Veronica ... no one knows where she is tonight ... probably beside a little patch of thriving flowers, somewhere out there in a field, whispering about her trip to the trees.

As for Janie, I wish her an awesome bon voyage.

Vulnerable Veronica's Secret Garden

2008-09-07T14:33:00.004-04:00

Veronica dreamed of transforming a corner of the big field behind her home, into a secret garden. She spread soil, she dug in the dirt, and she planted little seeds and watered them all regularly ... She even began burying all of her fruit peels and eggs shells and coffee grounds out here to help the soil. Despite doing all the things gardening experts advised, it wasn't going as she envisioned. While occasional sprouts developed into straggly plants, nothing grew and thrived the way she dreamed it should.

Furthermore, the whole process began to feel like a chore, like something she started and had to finish just because she sometimes heard that little voice going, "Finish what you start." She knew, however, that that little voice was a fibber because the truth is that there are plenty of things that people start and shouldn't finish, and even as she thought about this, she realized how that statement could be taken many different ways, and all of them would be true.

And this is mostly what she loved about spending time in the secret garden space ... Even when things weren't growing, she's just kinda sit around for awhile and thought about stuff ... She'd let all the little idea bubbles in her head float around get to know one another, and then just sit back and listen to their conversations. While doing so, she came to some rather interesting realizations about herself, about life and about this garden and all that this little space meant to her.

One night, after watering and fertilizing and doing all the things people say you should do with gardens, she found herself sitting out there on an upside down metal tub, looking up at the moon and wondering what on earth possessed her to keep returning here. She had a vision that this garden would "burst into life," as she once heard it put in a song on the radio. She envisioned fireflies, ladybugs and flowers dancing in the moonlight to the sound of the frogs and the crickets ... and she wished really hard for her garden to be able to enjoy that sort of life.

On some deeper level, she needed confirmation that envisioning, believing and wishing really hard can help bring about new realities. Once she realized all of this, she spoke these shiny new and honest thoughts aloud to this little piece of earth known as her secret garden and it felt pretty empowering. The next night, she saw that the plants looked healthier and happier. She even spotted a bloom. So she did some more thinking, arrived at new realizations and shared those with her flowers.

One of Veronica's biggest epiphanies turns out to be something she had known all along, but had simply never applied to gardening. The garden took so long to thrive because she approached it the way most people approach it instead of just stopping and listening to her garden, and to her own thoughts. She wasn't feeling her way through things, which has been the only thing that has ever truly worked for her in this life.

Now Veronica understands how to garden, and while it's not the way most people would garden, it's OK, because Veronica's just different. Not that she's a freak or anything. She just processes life a little differently than some people. And her garden, well, it's pretty unique too. Now that they talk, everything is going much better for Veronica, and the garden she continues to fertilize with her secrets

Late every night, Veronica wanders out to her garden and sits on that upside-down metal tub for awhile just thinking and trying to get to the heart of things she doesn't understand, even about herself. It's like the secrets she keeps from herself, about herself, are emerging. When they surface, she whispers those secrets to the flowers. They share with her too ... blooms, fireflies and occasionally, when the wind is just right, all the flowers sway in unison in what looks like a garden ballet. But that doesn't happen very often, so it's truly special when it does.

The garden is thriving now, and Veronica finds herself wondering what will happen when she's completely out of secrets. Will that be the end of her little garden project? Will she long to keep returning to that comfortable space? How long before new secrets emerge? She's decided not to think about these things yet ... mostly because she doesn't have to think about them right now. Instead, Veronica has decided that on the night she has revealed the last of every last secret buried inside of her, she'll curl up right in the middle of her gorgeous flowerbed and sleep for a very long time.
----
Dropped Veronica at Birch Park today, where after years of walking the track, I discovered many hidden trails that apparently have always been there ... yet somehow I never knew they existed. I saw a sign at the end of a path while walking on the main track and wanted to go check it out. Once back there, we learned from a little information board that the park once had a train that went around the perimeter of it and that part of the tracks are still out there.

Also back there was this really long and gorgeous path with plenty of interesting spider webs to check out. I happily did not get tangled up in any. One of the paths was completely covered by a canopy of trees, and someone had been down that path today because as we were walking we encountered a carving in the dirt that was one heart inside of another inside of another. I love finding little temporary art things like that ... But then about 20 or so steps later, there was another and then another. I think we counted like 8 of them. Later when I would pass someone on the track, I'd wondered if it was them who was back there on the secret path, drawing hearts. With the exception of babies in strollers, I didn't spot any kids in the park today, so maybe it was an adult which somehow makes me smile even more.

One of the paths we discovered today led to the secret tree garden where Veronica is now hanging out. You have to go back there in that little tree maze to see her because she is not that easy to find. If you stick to the road and don't travel off the beaten path ... you'll never find her, which seems appropriate. It also means she may not be found , or that by the time she is she'll be weathered and faded.

Come midnight, she may still be out there in that secret tree garden in the pitch darkness There could be rain, thunder, lightning ... creatures hanging out ... But somehow, I think Veronica will know what to do. If there's anything that doesn't scare her ... it's being in a secret garden in the middle of the night.

Roni's Big Adventures

2008-09-02T00:31:00.011-04:00

It's sometimes downright uncanny what happens with tiles ... Yesterday, as I was planning the tile that would ultimately end up in a local ice cream parlor, I received a message about another tile that apparently took it's own trip to a faraway ice cream parlor.

Roni was dropped about a year ago at Ernie's, the famed local BBQ spot that's been on Federal Highway since 1957. It was picked up by the same couple who took Feisty Fred, the mischievous cat on an adventure that landed him in Tennessee and got him into newspapers there. AP apparently picked up the story and news of Feisty Fred eventually came back home and onto the pages of the Miami Herald one Sunday morning.

But this is all about Roni, the woman with a fear of asterisks. When Sherry and Rucci first e-mailed about Roni, whom they spotted behind the bar at Ernie's, they informed me they could not find her on my blog, and though I was convinced I had posted every tile, Roni was not there. Not in my picture file either. So she's mysterious and has apparently found a way to live off the grid and her adventuresome spirit was justly rewarded with a Harley ride to NC.

Yesterday, I received this message from Sherry and Rucci:

"So it seems Roni had quite a trip..After some game play on the slots, she headed up to North Carolina on the Harley.

"After posing with Wild Bill Hickock, a romp in The Pisgah State Forest was in order... she looks so happy among the wild flowers.

"A trip to the oldest soda-shop/pharmacy in Brevard, N.C. and it was off to The Jordan Street Cafe. A very hip, college student type place with good drinks, great bartenders and SWEET POTATO FRENCH FRIES!! What more could a roaming girl want? Ironically, she ended up in the ladies room, where her journey seemed to have begun. We hope to find out what becomes of her. She has come a long way, baby! Sherry & Rucci"

I'm very happy for Roni and her adventures ... Better start having some of my own so I don't become one of those people who has to live vicariously through the tiles they hide on the street ... Everybody's doing that now. But look at her among those wildflowers. The setting looks so peaceful and still, she looks all freaked out. Maybe I felt freaked out when I painted her into existence a year ago. I'm kinda hoping that one of those creative types at the cafe will find Roni and paint a happier little mouth on her, and send that pic too .... 'cause Sherry and Rucci have obviously taken her to all the right places and done all the right things ... They've done all they could for Roni, so maybe she just has stuff to work out.

We all do. We'll see where Roni goes next.

Candy's Meaningful New Life

2008-09-01T18:55:00.003-04:00

The crew down at the factory where Candy worked had been steadily shrinking over the past year. She knew that one day, her position would also be eliminated and she would no longer be able to make those little widgets she loved making. So she'd been surfing local jobs sites for something new and preferably something meaningful to do with her life when she spotted an ad that intrigued her. It read: “Dancing Ice Cream Cone needed at old fashioned ice cream parlor.”

Now, Candy's not much of a dancer, but the little voice inside her squealed with delight when she saw that ad. Not one to ignore her inner voice, Candy called the number in the ad and then drove directly to Jaxson's Ice Cream Parlor to see what this job was about. As it turned out, it was about promoting Jaxson's new hurricane season offering: A 3-flavor Cone of Uncertainty, for those who just cannot make up their mind. The owner of Jaxson’s explained to Candy that with all these recent hurricanes being described with terms such as “disorganized” and “confused” … he felt it was high time South Floridians stepped up to embrace the confusion and celebrate our place in the Cone of Uncertainty. Laughing, almost to himself, he said, “You know what the last straw was for me, Candy? The moment I decided there must be an ice cream cone to celebrate this?”

“What, what was it?” Candy asked in complete interest.

“Well,” he says, “it was the day I read a story about one of those storms ‘bamboozling’ the computer models. I might actually make that a new flavor he says … maybe something with rum raisin … Bamboozled indeed.”

If there's one thing that Candy could work up feelings about. It was Uncertainty. After all, she'd been living in the Cone of Uncertainly, both mentally and physically, for some time now. She felt uncertain about a lot of things, most of the time. She knew she was THE perfect candidate for this job, and that no one on this planet had explored uncertainty to the extent that she had explored it.

She knew competition for this job would be tough, with so many people being out of work and searching for more meaning in their lives. So she gave the interview her all. But the owner didn't want just any dancing ice cream cone. "Can you swirl?" he asked, somewhat challengingly.

"Swirl?" she asked cluelessly, thinking she might have to make fudge ripple ice cream or something.

"Yes, you know, swirl, like a hurricane?" he said, making a swirling motion with his index finger.

"Oh, swirl, of course I can swirl," she lied.

"So give it a swirl then," he says. But I need you do that while holding the two ice cream cones I’m going to make.

Suddenly Candy realized just how ridiculous she was going to feel, putting her whole entire self out there to this extent. She had no swirling experience, and had she known that she would be called upon to swirl, she’d have practiced at home first.

She also realized that she may never again find work as meaningful as this. I mean, imagine what a better place the world might be if we united around our uncertainties, if we all just for a moment stopped pretending that we know everything and realize that in essence, we know very little and we're unsure about a lot. I mean, look at all the things we once thought were true, and maybe some were true at the time, but time changes, life continues and uncertainty, like an old but loyal friend, surfaces again to remind us to let go of what’s no longer true, and maybe never was. It reminds us that at any given moment, life can come along and it can huff and puff and blow your fragile little house of cards down, and when it does, as it inevitably will on occasion, we must be brave enough to keep swirling in new directions, even if the little wind turbines of our minds get stuck or start clanging in the wind and making us crazy.

No longer afraid, and clearly grasping the significance of the moment, Candy bravely rose from her chair, took the cones from the owner's hand, and gracefully swirled out the door of that owner’s office and then all through his ice cream parlor. She did at one point, drop a cone, but quickly recovered by grabbing handfuls of sprinkles then twirling clear out into the parking lot where she showered those sprinkles upon ice cream lovers while gracefully spinning and singing little made-up songs about uncertainty, disorganization and total confusion. But they were happy songs, songs about the empowerment of uncertainty ... because uncertainty comes from a very honest place, whereas absolute certainty is often just about us trying to convince ourselves that something is true, or not true.

If you want to find out what’s really true, swirl in the Cone of Uncertainty and let the ice cream drip where it may. There’s no guarantee it won’t make a sticky little mess. But you can clean it up and move on. Or better yet, toss some sprinkles on that sticky mess and let it serve as a colorful reminder that one of the most real and the most beautiful things in life is pure unabashed uncertainty. Embrace it with all of your might, and swirl. Swirl like there is no tomorrow.

..............................................................................

Dropped Candy at Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor in Dania. She's under the sink in the ladies room, ready to come out swirling …. Since Candy started waving cars into Jaxson’s parking lot from her new post along Federal Highway, a dance craze now known as The Swirl of Uncertainty has been gaining popularity in South Florida clubs and now -- thanks to the Internet (where people are posting videos of themselves swirling) -- across the U.S.

Also ... in an unprecedented move, TV weather people have come forward and confessed that they actually know nothing about where these storms are headed but that they too enjoy a good swirl. The local weather people, however, do predict that Jaxson’s will still be standing in 100 years, and that Candy will be long gone … but that her disciples will continue to celebrate the start of each hurricane season by swirling to music in the parking lot, eating drippy ice cream cones and tossing sprinkles onto sticky puddles of ice cream to symbolize their ongoing respect for uncertainty and all that it symbolizes.

Writer’s note: The story you have just read bears no resemblance to the truth, at least the truth as most people know it. But even after swirling in my Cone of Uncertainty, it all still sounds true to me. : )

MTM

Lobster girl

2008-08-30T23:30:00.000-04:00

Lobster Girl is all about doubles. When she goes out, for instance, she gets two lobster tails. When she rolls the dice, nothing but doubles. Now she's taken up backgammon, and the local backgammon club members are a little worried, not only about her consistent doubles, but now she's whispering into the little dice cup, come on doubles, come on doubles. .... She says she's gonna take those dice on the road. Maybe she'll even play a game of backgammon while eating the twin lobster tails. She's determined now to get a gammon. That's where you win before the loser even gets to take one piece off the board.

She's somewhere whispering to the dice right now, saying "gammon, gammon" ... But herein lies the danger. You will never know of her deep knowledge of the game, at first. You'll think she's an amateur, doesn't even know how to set the darned board up ... at first. But then, within moments, the doubles are rolling and she's like, "Hey, have you ever played Greek Backgammon?" and "Let me tell ya what to do with this little dice" --- you know that one that comes with every backgammon board, and we never really know what to do with it and we think it's optional because it just has a bunch of weird numbers on it? Well, she knows what to do with that. Be on the lookout ... if you see her walking into your place with a backgammon board and ordering doubles of anything and muttering "gammon, gammon," approach carefully. It's kinda like when someone walks into a bar with their own pool stick and says they got it for Christmas but never got to try it out.

Lobster Girl was appropriately dropped at the first meeting of the South Florida Backgammon Club, but certainly not the last ..... Lobster Girl's co-conspirators were pretty good too. One, in fact, is suspected to be a founding member of the backgammon shark club. The other, not so much. Actually, she won no games at all. She kinda just offers the commentary, and cheers everyone on, for now. But we're not certain about her either, because she is the one who walked in with her own board. But she reeked of anchovies and garlic and black pepper .... perhaps her strategy for throwing the other plays off. But, that didn't work. So now she's thinking she might have to have the twin lobster tails, because maybe there's some magic in that.

Kitty Cat Cosmo Party

2008-08-29T22:25:00.001-04:00

Once again, Blackie got cut off at the Kitty-Cat cosmo party. He doesn't mean to get carried away at parties, but after a few cosmos with the girls from the office, he thought it would be a good idea to partake in a bit of catnip. When he started getting a little too frisky, the office women took away his catnip and told him he couldn't have any more cosmos, because boy cats aren't suppose to drink those anyway.

Blackie argued that he should be able to drink more cosmos because he likes to watch Sex in the City too, and he also had a long hard week at the office. But O.C. (Orange Cat) and Brownie Cat weren't buying that. O.C. said, "Blackie dear, I think you have had quite enough of the cosmos."

But Little Gray Cat just started getting a lot more refills on her cosmos and sharing them with Blackie, because she thinks Blackie's kinda fun when he gets nipped and starts telling all of his deepest darkest secrets, and all O.C. and Brownie ever wanna talk about is office politics.

Dropped all the kitties in the southeast corner of the parking lot of Southport Shopping Center at Cordova Road and 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale. Alongside the Texaco in that corner of the parking lot there's this big recycling dumpster and around the back of that is this great cubby hole which is just perfect for hiding - and finding -- a tile. But you know, I think at some point, some big old truck will come along and lift that thing up and the kitties .... well, I don't know if they would survive that. So if you like kitties and cosmos, please go and rescue them.

I dropped this while out on my walk tonight, looking for the real Blackie, who inspired this tile. Last time I looked for him I couldn't find him, but apparently I was on the wrong street, because when I got to the end of one of those lifestyles of the rich and famous streets off Cordova, there he was outside of his big mansion where no one else seems to live. Actually, he was in the neighbor's driveway ... but he's usually at the big house. He didn't run up to me this time, but he came when I called him. We're buddies now and he was very happy to have the little packet of Whiskas I brought in my little backpack for him.

Blackie had a good night.

Hannah and Blackie

2008-08-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

Every time Hannah walks down a certain street, a little black seemingly abandoned cat runs up to her like a little dog. When she squats down to pet the kitty she calls Blackie, he puts his paws up on her leg and puts his head down and closes his eyes, like he has been waiting for this one little warm spot in which to sleep.

Hannah, whose been known to scope out sunny spots on the floor for catnaps, understands completely. Sometimes she takes a whole bunch of blankets and puts them in the dryer just so she can lay in the middle of them all and nap. She and Blackie have a special understanding. She now carries a can of savory salmon in her backpack for the occasions when she encounters him.

Dropped Hannah and Blackie in the rest room at Kilwin's on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale .. Blackie likes vanilla ice cream and Hannah got some of those free fudge samples they were giving away tonight.

Piper Dreams

2008-08-23T22:01:00.001-04:00

Piper was losing her passion for her job. She remembered the early days when the ad agency she worked for was young and struggling and it seemed that anything was possible. The opportunity for creativity was tremendous. But now it's all corporate and bottom-line and it takes committees of people in other states to get things done (but they often don't get anything done). Plus, her bosses are asking her to make every campaign about sex, 'cause you know, sex sells.

But Piper has just grown tired of it all. She didn't get into the business to create the sort of sexy ad campaigns that are an insult to most people's intelligence. Anybody can do that. She got into the business to delve more deeply and be more creative .... And now, she's going to start doing more work on the side, the sort of projects she can take pride in. She's partnering with a frustrated peer from another agency to start creating good campaigns, so they can go up against the very companies that employ them .... Piper's going to keep at this until something breaks for her ... because Piper, like everyone these days, needs hope and something to believe in. And if she can take down the company that has made her life so incredibly hellish in the process, well, that's just an added bonus.

Left the revengeful Piper in the ladies' room of Jalisco Mexican and Spanish Restaurant, 700 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale. It's a smallish and colorfully decorated place with two rooms, a bar and a colorfully-dressed, bow-tied accordion player named Stanley. His music really adds something to the dining experience. It's not too loud, and it gives the place that special something that helps set it apart from many other such places. The food is good, the prices extremely reasonable and the service excellent. It's just a cool local spot that seems to draw a loyal crowd of regulars.

Fish tales

2008-08-22T22:14:00.003-04:00

When Fiona Fish swam away from Fred Fish, her mom told her, "Don't you worry, my little guppy, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. But Fiona never again wanted to shack up in a fishbowl with another fish. She just wasn't cut out for those kind of relationships. So she was very relieved to discover that "otherfish" was her mom's pet name for all the happily single fish swimming around in complete freedom. Fiona was pretty happy to become one of those. She wasn't anti-relationship. She just thought the fishbowl-sharing concept was a definite relationship-killer.

As for my own interesting discovery ... I learned while Googling guppies late last evening that, despite theories that guppies only have three-second memories, a team of scientists have observed that guppies live in complex social networks and select and remember their social partners. Researcher Darren Croft relates the guppy network to the "six degrees of separation" theory that everyone is connected through a chain of a few middle people. I like to think that's true. .... I think.

I'm pretty proud of the fact that I got through painting this tile and then writing about it without once using the phrase "And they call it ... guppy lo-o-o-ove." Well, until now, 'cause for some reason I found myself trying to think of a word that rhymed with guppy, and really where else can you go with that.

The guppies have now been quite appropriately placed on the counter in the ladies' room at 15th Street Fisheries, which is of course on SE 15th Street in Fort Lauderdale. Everyone has comfort zone places, where they just feel completely relaxed and at home, and that place is definitely in my Top 5. In fact, I have probably about 5 that if it were up to me (which it is), I might just visit over and over again. But that's just kinda how I am. If I have a closet full of clothes, I'll always have those 5 items that get worn again and again, or 5 CDs that I always have in rotation, or 5 books that I keep on the shelf.

I guess everybody has that. I guess on some levels, our Top 5 books, CDs, places etc., are what really define us.

Marjorie's Delicate Balancing Act

2008-08-21T20:14:00.007-04:00

On the craziest of days, Marjorie wonders what it is that keeps her going... But then, during a caffeine-inspired moment of clarity, she realized it was a blend of coffee, sheer determination, a and a deep-rooted fear of shattering into a million tiny pieces.

OK, the last part is a wild exaggeration because everyone knows that Marjorie was born with only 500 interlocking pieces, and over the years she's lost a few and misplaced others. She's pretty sure the missing pieces will not make a difference in the long run. After all, Marjorie has been overcompensating her whole life. It's what she does.

Left Marjorie at Hong Kong Chinese Food at 1303 SE 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. She's in the unisex rest room, so let's hope she's rescued before she sees anything she shouldn't. She's also leaning against a wall near the door, so let's also hope she doesn't fall over and shatter into a million pieces, or at least 495.

Fickle Fay

2008-08-19T19:30:00.002-04:00

All things considered, Fickle Fay is actually a pretty powerful woman. Not only is she the top salesperson for several bottled water companies and gas stations (despite working only part of the year) but she's smooth enough to convince big greedy corporations to give their employees a "rain day." That she does all this while under the watchful eye of the media, which tirelessly reports her every move, is impressive. But the thing about Fay is that she sends mixed messages, which tend to confuse people ... so much so that anyone residing anywhere near an area she passes through is said to be living in "the cone of uncertainty" ... deep, deep uncertainty.

Dropped Fay in the ladies room at the Shell Station at Davie Boulevard and Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. She's leaning against the wall just behind the garbage container. Even from there, she can hear the cashier and customers talking about her, calling her names like "no-show" and "a joke" .... She just needs a moment of privacy, a little time to pull herself back together.

Another Tile Adventure Begins

2008-08-18T19:33:00.013-04:00

It's been a while since I posted here about Feisty Fred, the tile featuring a mischievous cat who went out for Friday happy hour ... and perhaps some fish, and was kidnapped and taken on a little adventure that landed him in Tennessee several weeks later. That's where he was discovered by a young artist named Sami who quickly became his friend. His little feline face was featured in the newspaper there and he continues to live happily ever after.

Now, another tile has been kidnapped from it's yearlong location behind the bar at Ernie's, the infamous local BBQ spot established on Fort Lauderdale's Federal Highway in 1957. The character's name is Roni, and she's terrified of asterisks. I dropped Roni in the restroom there about a year ago, and never knew what became of her. Then I received this message from Rucci, the same mosaic tile artist who found Fred:

"As my girlfriend and I were upstairs at Ernie's Rooftop, we noticed yet another MTM tile! The bartender said she found it a year ago. We told her the tale of Feisty Fred and she said to take [Roni] on another adventure! And so we are ... of course since Roni hates asterisks, we can't say where we are are bringing her but she will have a d*** good time and probably make some new friends! We couldn't find her on your blogspot ... where is she? .... Rucci and Sherry"

I told him I was sure she was on the site and would send a link ... but I couldn't find her. Nor was there a photo of her in my photo file. So I think the girl's got some hacking skills and has apparently found a way to be living off the grid for about a year now. So yeah, she was ready for adventure.

Today, I received a message from her finders, with a little update on her adventures thus far ... and I guess there's more to come. Here is their message, and the pics to accompany it:

"OK, so Fred's adventure has come to an end but Roni's it seems is just beginning! She's already had a busy week. As you can see, she's been out and about Fort Lauderdale after her year of hanging out at Ernie's roof-top under the watchful eye of Jamie (who incidentally is one great bartender) she ran off to the beach with Sherry and Rucci to go scuba diving.

"After spending the night with The Haz-Mat crew at Station 55 on The Ft. Lauderdale Executive airport. She went riding all over town with the Division Chief! After weathering tropical storm Fay she hit the road to North Carolina ....

"As of this writing she may be on a Harley-Davidson tooling up I-95 ... more info and pics of Roni's exploits are to follow .... and of course the location and coordinates of her final spot."

Stay tuned for further details about Roni.

Big Strong Bertha

2008-08-17T19:01:00.002-04:00

Every time Bertha heard a woman using one of those poor-little-helpless me-and-only-if-had-a-big-strong-man-to-do-these-things spiels, she cringed ... and then she grew stronger inside. She and her friends jokingly called those women the eyelash batters and the men who fell for their silly lines "the battered."

Of course, Bertha and her buds realize that we all sometimes fantasize about being rescued from our stressful little lives ... but really, isn't it better to learn how to rely on yourself so that you don't have to sit around waiting for some guy to come along and complete you? Shouldn't people already be complete?

Bertha's friends kidded her that the real reason the eyelash batters bothered her was because she didn't know how to bat her own eyelashes OR to ask for help. So just for fun, she tried batting her lashes while saying things like "Could you come change my tire, you big strong guy?" and "I think I'm too fragile to open my own car door ... could you come around and open it for me?" but everyone just ended up laughing really, really hard at how ridiculous she looked and sounded.

Dropped Bertha at a Starbucks at 1615 N. Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. She's in the ladies' room batting her lashes, saying in a ridiculously high-pitched tone, "I think I'm just too, too weak to carry my own grande out to the car," and then laughing hysterically. The people sitting at the tables have probably heard her in there by now .... But don't go in there and try to rescue her, because she can handle things herself. Despite occasional hysteria, she's actually quite stable. If you don't believe it, just ask her.

Patty likes Pies and Purple

2008-08-16T23:59:00.002-04:00

By the end of Saturday, Patty had convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with eating pie for dinner. In fact, she was pretty sure that was a good thing. Yeah, she knows that she says her trip down to Pink Ghost at Riverfront in Fort Lauderdale was all about the art ... and it was, but you know, she couldn't stop thinking about the pies, so she tried a sliver of the blueberry, which was quite tasty, kinda like one might expect to get while spending the summer on your aunt's blueberry farm .... which makes sense since the Purple Pie Company states that "everything comes from hands, not from cans." The pies are made from the freshest available ingredients, the company says, and contain no chemicals, preservatives or trans-fat.

Having spotted nowhere to discreetly leave a purplish tile at PG, I left Patty at the neighboring Haagen-Dazs in the ladies room ... 'cause that's as close as I could get to leaving it at the place I intended anonymously. And pie and ice cream do go together, kinda like milk and cookies. So it was the next best thing.

The art was great as well. Some ever-familiar locals like Pachy Sarmiento, Helena Garcia and Pooka Machine, as well as out-of-towners like the Van Winkle Brothers, who I believe are from L.A. About 20-some artists were represented in this exhibit. Each piece was eight-by-eight inches, which is perfect for that small space back in the corner. The art was also priced, which in my opinion is always a nice plus.

Pink Ghost also has a really nice selection of T-shirts, many of which feature designs by local artists. My favorite was a yellow T-shirt with a robot sadly looking down at his little heart on the ground. They also have lots of artsy books and weird little toys. I'll be going back when I'm in more of a shopping mode ... Rent can't be cheap at Riverfront, but I like this little place. Those who like art and can afford to shop, should consider supporting it before it becomes the distant memory so many other places have become.

Parade Pranks

2008-08-16T00:30:00.001-04:00

When Joy told her friends she was going to the parade, they told her it was a long-standing town tradition to attend the parade in your jammies and big fuzzy slippers. Joy is so naive, downright gullible. She just goes and believes everything her friends tell her, and more often than not she winds up the fool. But it could be worse, I suppose. She could just go around just not trusting anyone. So at least there's that. And besides, she was pretty comfy.

Left Joy in front of some boarded up business that seemed to have construction going on in the 3500 block of Galt Ocean Mile, next door to someplace that used to be an Irish pub. It's a sheltered spot, out of the rain .... And yes, I do know about the faces on this tile. And yes, it is intentional. But no, I'm not exactly sure why ...

Bea

2008-08-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

Even on the darkest of days, Bea was eternally grateful for the feeling that from somewhere, a little light shines down on her, keeping her from harm's way ... so that even when she is completely alone, she never really feels alone.

I left Bea on a bridge at Cordova Road and .... I think, SE 7th or 8th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale. It's a nice peaceful spot.

The tile was inspired by the Beatles song Let It Be. Friends have asked me before if I dream in color or black and white, and even though I recall the words of my dreams pretty vividly some times, I never do remember colors or lack thereof. What I do know is that Let It Be is the only song to have ever appeared in one of my dreams. It actually dominated the entire dream, which was set in an old rundown white farmhouse on a back road ... I was looking out the window ... at my crops, and family (though I didn't know any of them in real life). This song was playing, pretty loudly as I recall, and I was really happy about that. It was an oddly moving dream.

Anyway, in other news, there is a mystery. Apparently, the person who found Feisty Fred and took him on a series of adventures that landed him in Tennessee, spotted another tile featuring a character named Roni, that I hid a year ago at Ernie's, the BBQ spot on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. Roni has apparently been behind the bar at Ernie's and when the Feisty Fred's finder saw her, he told the bartender the story of Feisty Fred, who decided that he should take Roni on tour too.

I remember Roni ... She was afraid of asterisks. But somehow, she never made it onto my blog. She's also not in my picture file. Roni apparently is just as adventurous as Feisty Fred. After all, the girl has been living off the grid for a year now. Maybe Roni's new tour guides will send us a photo, so we can post her here .. and then follow her travels.

The couple who found her say they can't say where they're bringing her just yet, but they say she will have a d*** good time and that she will probably make new friends. Oh no, asterisks. They used asterisks!

Crazy Gracie

2008-08-12T00:07:00.003-04:00

Ann looked all prim and proper which made her secret night gig as Crazy Gracie the Roller Derby Queen a lot more fun. Her co-workers would have no idea, at least until the day she finally got outed for her nighttime ventures. But since most of them weren't all that in tune, she figured she still had a pretty good haul ahead before that would happen ... if she was careful between now and then, and her friends kept her secrets. But since she chooses friends very carefully, she wasn't too worried.

Dropped Ann down at Brew, a coffeehouse in Himmarshee Village, on a shiny round table in the ladies room. Ann is, believe or not, the 200th tile I have posted. There are also a few floating around that I didn't post.

This being a minor milestone of sorts, I'd like to say more about Ann, and about this project, but you know, it's late, and I don't want to rush through that kinda thing. I already have to rush through so much in the course of a day ... that's not what I want other things in my life to be about. When it comes to my life outside of work, I like to take things slow and easy, to appreciate the tiny moments that ultimately make up my life, the tiny moments that define all of our lives.

I guess that's kind of how I consider my tiles ... like small yet significant moments worth remembering, tiny epiphanies that eventually lead to larger revelations. And I know I just said that I wanted to say more about this project, but I realized that I've just said it all, at least for now ... I think tiny epiphanies pretty much sums it all up.

Tom's Monday

2008-08-10T22:12:00.001-04:00

Sometimes Tom started wearing his Monday face as early as Sunday morning. That's when he started thinking to himself, "Tomorrow at this time I'll be back in the cubicle." If only his cube had a window ... just a little window ...

This tile was inspired by a song by Miami indie-pop band Baby Calendar. It's called Cubicle No Window ... I heard it for the first time today and even though I've never met these musicians, I'm sure they must have written this song just for me. I actually liked all of the songs they've posted, but especially this one. Other cubers wishing for windows can hear this song here. Cubicle No Window is apparently from the band's album Gingerbread Dog which was released on Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records.

Dropped Tommy at Maggie Moo's at 2422 N. Federal Hiighway in Fort Lauderdale ... where they have some very delicious ice cream.

Ivy's utter devastation

2008-08-10T01:30:00.002-04:00

Ivy was safely and bravely deposited under the seat of a Ford Focus where she will eventually be discovered, probably months from now, maybe longer. But hopefully, she will bring a smile to whoever finds her because she just feels that despite the heaviness of life, people should still strive to find some happiness. And really, she's just kinda kidding about the wine and cheese, because as we well know, life is really about the art and the conversation, because if we don't keep talking, how can we possibly be expected to solve anything?

Cube Workers Unite!

2008-08-08T00:29:00.000-04:00

Fed up with their minimum wage jobs and unpaid overtime, three of the cube workers took a stand and others soon followed ... except for Robert, who was busy Twittering about the cube ladies.

Dropped the Cubers at a Dunkin Donuts late this evening at NE16th and Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale ... in the ladies' room by the sink, on my way home. While driving on Federal pretty late at night, I saw a woman in a business suit dragging a little briefcase on wheels behind her. She must've just gotten off the bus ... way late. Or perhaps she was walking home from the office. Maybe she was a cube worker ... maybe she was a lawyer ... maybe she was a lawyer in a cube. Maybe she has a car, or maybe she is just trying to be more environmentally conscious by taking public transport.

I don't know. I simply know that everybody's working hard these days .... all trying to at least maintain their footing on that very slippery slope.

Distant Davy

2008-08-05T20:59:00.001-04:00

Davy never puts his feelings out there until he is certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there's no risk of rejection. In other words, Davy just never puts his feelings out there ... at least not anymore, and he never gets rejected, which is kinda the plan. It's like having a perfect record, really -- zero risk, zero rejection -- and on most days that feels like enough. But on some days that perfect record doesn't feel so perfect. Sometimes he secretly wishes he was one of those people who could just throw their feelings out there, come what may, and deal with the consequences later ... but usually, not so much. I believe there's a wee bit of Davy in every last one of us.

Davy's now in a nearly empty newsbox at the old CVS on 17th Street Causeway and Andrews Avenue ... just dropped him there after an un-great marathon day. I don't wanna say it sucked, but it did .... Not only was it ridiculously long and seriously lacking in redeeming qualities, but it is SO not over. So I'm gonna go try to re-work the minor attitude that set in late this afternoon and get with the program, because that's the only way I will ever get through a week that is shaping up to be overwhelming.

I think people once got through days like this by telling themselves that it's only temporary, and it was. But now, so many of the uglier things don't seem temporary ... Instead they feel like part of a slippery slope into a steeper downward slide. But gotta keep holding onto that little piece of rail on the side and trying to inch ourselves back up ... 'Cause, really, what the hell else are we all gonna do? Tomorrow's a brand new day. Keep on saying it. Keep on believing it.

Top Secret Tile Mission

2008-08-04T23:59:00.002-04:00

Alex knows how to get what she wants ... from Polly Pockets and piercings to acting roles ranging from rave dancer to Eleanor Roosevelt. Now she will conquer the world of marine biology, and then the big time --- That's right. One day she will own that smooth machine known as the DC15 Dyson Ball ... That's Dyson as in Dyson. James Dyson ... Mr. Vacuum. She could convince you that your life really isn't complete without a Dyson ....

Alex was hiding under the sink at Dough Boys for a few days last week before being found by another of Dyson's converts .... I didn't take a photo of this tile, either because I forgot ... or because it was part of some kind of Top Secret mission that had something to do with Dyson ... James Dyson. But a photo was later taken and sent to me.
....

Anyway, this tile has now been transported to another state, where it is awaiting proper placement, and that's all I can say about that at this time.

Gang of 3

2008-08-03T21:15:00.002-04:00

Sick of hearing about crime, Lori, Meg and Rita started a gang of their own. They wanted to take back the streets and feel safe again walking after dark. Together, they felt brave and one night after much walking and a few drinks they got downright giddy and decided to write their gang name under the Andrews Avenue Bridge in nail polish. They were all laughing hysterically as Meg wrote "New River Ladies" on the concrete, but then a cop approached and the trio knew they were in trouble from the way he said "Good evening ladies." Meg was scared and thought she might actually get arrested but the cop let her off with a stern warning. As he walked off, Meg saw him shaking his head and heard him laughing to himself. She was pretty sure the New River Ladies' antics would be discussed at some local diner that night.

Dropped the New River Ladies along the New River on a bench east of the Andrews Avenue Bridge out there by the water near some weird little building ... across from the Downtowner. I think I forgot to put the sticker that has this Web site on it ... so they'd have to Google to even find this post.

Em Believes

2008-08-03T00:34:00.009-04:00

Em believes in the seemingly magical powers of flowers. She thinks that if she believes in her plants, they'll flourish and bloom, and I kinda agree.

I remember when I was younger people discussed the concept of talking to plants to get them to grow and thrive. I also remember that other people thought those people were just crazy. What I didn't know until more recently is that all of that was happening around the time a book called The Secret Life of Plants was released about polygraph expert Cleve Backster's experiments with plants. Basically, he attached polygraph equipment to plants and through a series of experiments, surmised that plants "perceive" human emotions and respond accordingly. While his findings have been discounted by some, it makes for fascinating reading and I'm not convinced there isn't something to this.

I mean, when you read how plants know which ants will steal their nectar and close up when those ants are around ... or how some plants will grasp at a fly ... or change in some way to attract insects they need to survive ... The more I read, the more logical it all seems to me that plants are in tune with each other and anything or anyone that becomes a threat -- and that they'll do whatever it takes to try to survive.

Case in point: I've been thinking a lot about my yard lately, in a nice way, and everything that can bloom is blooming. I had these two huge plants, actually they're more like bushes, I guess, that get these incredible yellow blooms (I'll insert the name later). One blew down in a storm last month and I had to uproot it and carry it to the curb. The other was looking ragged even before the storm, as usually happens with these after awhile. They drop all their seeds and then at some point, begin the downhill slide and more new ones come up.

I was thinking that I should uproot that remaining one too, and drag it to the curb. I actually never even planted it in that spot ... It just popped up there, right in the middle of the yard. But about the time I was thinking of pulling it out by the roots one part of it started blooming like crazy and growing toward the window of my little dining nook at a faster pace than normal. It's as if the part with the flowers is trying to reach my favorite window and show me its gorgeous blooms .... So I'm gonna keep it around. The idea that this plants are trying to show me what they're capable of may seem like craziness to some ... but it's been awhile since anyone's accused me of being normal.

I'm including pics here (upper left) of the side of the plant that's blooming towards my window, as well as a shot below that was taken from the backside that I don't see quite as much (not so many blooms).

Meanwhile, after a very long walk by the river tonight, I dropped Em on a bridge at Southeast 9th Avenue and Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale .... I put her there a few hours ago, but then I got caught up in reading about plants, gearing up for morning, and looking at DragonFly Garden, a local gardening blog that inspires me.

And this last pic is a very cool insect I plan to investigate. They're in my yard around these flowers a lot. It's like a big green fly/beetle-type thing that seems to have hummingbird-like capabilities. It's a metalic greenish blue and goes from one flower to the next ... it goes inside those little holes in the flowers and disappears for awhile and then comes back out, but while it's scoping out the flower, it just hovers mid-air. That's what it was doing when I took this pic. It took much hanging around to get this shot.

It's only in posting these pics that I have begun to see what a little jungle my yard really is ... but I do love my little jungle. It makes me happy.

Trouble With Sixes

2008-08-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

Sixes Jones a.k.a. Pop-O-Matic plays a mean game of Trouble. There isn't a man, woman or child in the whole state of Florida who can beat Pop-O-Matic. That man is made of sixes, and he's been known to take his guys all the way home, before anyone else can even pop that first six to get out of the gate. Of course, since he always wins he gets to choose what color he wants to be. Yellow. Always yellow. Yellow and sixes. That's what Pop-O-Matic is all about. Some say he looks a little mean, but he's not really. He's just very serious about the game of Trouble and has to focus really hard to keep those sixes coming.

Dropped Sixes over at Tropical Smoothies Cafe in the Harbor Shops at 1800 Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale, which is the perfect places for him because Sixes is smooth. Sixes is now hiding behind a trash receptacle in the ladies room. While I was over that way, I noticed that Camille's Sidewalk Cafe was closed, which they apparently usually are on Saturdays ... but a closer look revealed big bright pink stickers on each door that said Federal Bankruptcy Court. Another places that sold wraps is now vacant as well. And I'm still mourning the loss of Moondoggies which had, in my opinion, some of the best coffee in town for the best prices and was just a great place all around.

Glenda's Guilt

2008-08-02T01:30:00.000-04:00

Glenda recalled feeling angry when she read about some Palm Beacher who spent $180,000 on some ridiculously unnecessary thing when so many people couldn't even buy food or gas to get to work. But a few days later, as she sipped from her $7 restaurant glass of pinot noir about an hour after driving past yet another worn-down looking person with a Will Work for Food sign, Glenda was forced to reconsider her own values.

Dropped Glenda on a park bench in a tiny little park at Rio Vista and SE 9th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale after hearing the most amazing impromptu jam session at a house party ever ... It was my first time hearing a harmonium ... ever. I could go on, but I'm sleepy ... so I won't, except to say that a good time was had by all .. and fried pumpkin leaves from a garden are among the tastiest treats I have ever experienced.

Woman's best friend

2008-07-31T21:26:00.000-04:00

Scruffy knows all of Polly's secrets and still loves her enough to keep all those pesky blue jays and cardinals from hanging out in her yard. Scruffy never asked for much in return ... just some Little Friskies, savory salmon in the can, cat milk, occasional catnip and a warm comfortable spot in which to curl up and sleep. Scruffy rules.

Left Polly and Scruffy on the counter in the ladies' room at Tokyo Sushi which is around the 1500 block of SE 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. Sushi makes Scruffy's little heart happy ... Polly likes it too.

So Not Guilty

2008-07-30T22:26:00.001-04:00

You can ask as many times as you want and Courtney is still going to give you the same answer. She did not hang those little pink fuzzy craft store balls on the back of her idiot boss's black Hummer from a string. She had nothing to do with it. She swears it wasn't her, and so what if she just happened to be at Pearl the previous day. She goes to Pearl a lot but it doesn't mean she was buying little pink fuzzy craft store balls and yarn. No sirreeee. Courtney is not that kinda girl.

Dropped Courtney at the Shell Station at Federal Highway and NE 18th Street in Fort Lauderdale. She's by the pay phone, getting ready to call her lawyer about these false accusations people keep making ... 'cause, you know, she didn't do it.

Maggie's shell game

2008-07-29T22:33:00.001-04:00

Maggie felt like a hermit crab forced out of her too-tight shell but still searching for that bigger shell that offers more growing room. Meanwhile, it's more complicated than she imagined out here (and brighter too), so she's constantly having to regroup and figure out new ways to deal with things .... But the truth is that sometimes Maggie longs to return to her simpler life, to hide again in the comfort of her small but smoothly worn shell -- her armor.

Dropped Maggie a little while ago at the restroom by the big public parking lot on Fort Lauderdale beach. Once there, I realized how long it's been since I sat on the beach at night and just how therapeutic it is to do that and to hear the waves gently lapping, as they have been doing for much longer than I have been on this planet. I'm not religious, so when anxiety sets in, I don't really have that out of looking for someone bigger than me to provide answers or calmness -- that feeling that all will continue to be OK with this world, and the people and animals that continue to try to survive here.

Like many, I've begun to rely more on denial as a coping mechanism. I realize it's a little lame in the long run, but it's also one of the most underrated short term coping mechanisms ever. It's got a bad rep, but in the end it's what sometimes gets us through the day, with a little less damage. Having said all that, however, I guess nature is my religion. It's way bigger than me, and far more powerful, and when I need it, it's just nice to know that it's still out there, waiting. I like to think that trend will continue.

So Maggie's still down there and from the looks of Fort Lauderdale beach this time of night, I'd venture to say that anyone wandering into a restroom down there right now might be in need of a nice little surprise. Once again, I tried every little trick I could think of with my camera (short of actually reading the lengthy small-print manual) and it appears night shots are not in the cards, not that they ever do moments like that justice anyway. You just have to be there on the beach to experience it.

Not like the other library ladies

2008-07-27T11:28:00.001-04:00

Lilith isn't like the other library ladies, at least not the ones in her workplace. For starters she dresses snazzier, adores graphic novels and frequents low-brow art shows. She also writes bizarre little haikus and inserts them into the middle of some of the most popular books on library shelves. Library Lilith is also a podcast star ... she does a program about behind-the-scenes gossip from libraries all around the U.S. ...

And boy, does she get the dirt. Of course, she uses her special library lady voice and goes by another name so she won't lose her job. Her fellow librarians, who are regular listeners, have no idea who's behind the podcast.

Dropped Lilith at Lester's Diner in Fort Lauderdale .... where they're always coming up with new ways to entertain people. Today, they had some kind of disco theme, where the lights go on and off, courtesy of Superfly, who created quite a buzz.

Jo's bad bad news

2008-07-26T20:11:00.006-04:00

Jo kept her eye on the news, awaiting word of which stores would close .. hoping and praying that the place where she went each morning for her white chocolate mocha frappucino would not forever close its doors and abandon her the way other coffee shops did.

She had finally found a barista who knew exactly what she wanted and what time she'd be rushing in there for it each morning. She really liked him too, and she would always tell him that he was her favorite barista. He pretended to get mad when she called him a barista. He said that word was too highfalutin. "I'm a coffeemaker," he'd say, and then he'd do this crazy little move in which he appeared to be percolating.

Yeah, it wasn't just the coffee that Jo would miss. It was the whole experience.

But then Jo found the map of the closings, and her store was on it. She was utterly inconsolable .... losing her favorite coffeemaker and her white chocolate mocha frappucino was simply more than Jo could bear.

Dropped Jo at the Starbucks at 1100 W. Broward Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale ... which is reportedly among those stores scheduled to close. She's leaning against the wall by the sink, in a state of utter devastation.

Secret Umbrella Society

2008-07-24T07:28:00.001-04:00

Fact #1 -- People are always leaving umbrellas behind at restaurants and never returning for them.

Fact #2 -- People who own umbrellas never have them when they need them ... Like when they're out walking or running to catch a bus.

After considering these facts, Robin created a solution she hopes will catch on. Whenever she goes to a restaurant, she asks whether a black umbrella she left there a few weeks ago was in the lost and found and of course, there are always several. Robin stockpiles the umbrellas in her car and when she seems someone walking in the rain, or running with a newspaper atop their head, she gives them an umbrella and asks them to return it to the umbrella universe by doing the same favor for someone else one day. She tells them that they are now a member of the Secret Umbrella Society and gives them a little membership card she made herself. She can hardly believe how happy this makes people.

Robin secretly hopes that one day when she's walking and it begins to rain ... someone will offer her one of those black umbrellas. Then, at least for that one shining moment, she will feel like all is right with the world. ... 'cause even though a little rain must fall into everyone's life, sometimes we need a secret umbrella.

This tile was inspired by a friend who believes that if she loses her black umbrella she can get another from the umbrella universe (i.e. any restaurant). Robin just took it a step further. Left Robin at the Dunkin Donuts at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale, as she needed a nice cup of coffee.

In other news, Feisty Little Fred, the cat-on-a-tile who went out for happy hour on a Friday and then had a series of adventures that landed him Tennessee six weeks later, made headlines earlier this week in The Leaf Chronicle. Now he is safely settled in at the home of a young artist named Sami.

Runaway Rain Car

2008-07-20T22:23:00.003-04:00

During rainy season, Rona skipped all of her yoga classes because she found a new and cheaper way to work in her meditation. When the seasonal afternoon thunderstorms arrived, Rona slipped out of the office and into the backseat of her car until it was over. The sound of rain hitting metal made her feel totally mesmerized, and in a deep state of relaxation ... and she didn't have to waste any gas or get stressed out in traffic to get there. And now that she started using Rain-X, she really likes the way the water beads on the windows. It's quite beautiful, really.

Ironically, Rona's at a gas station right now -- the Texaco at the corner of 17th Street Causeway and Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale. She's at the pay phone, one that actually works. She already checked the slot, but there were no quarters in there.

Lou Loves Lesters

2008-07-20T10:46:00.001-04:00

Lavender-haired Lou has been coming to Lester's Diner (the one on 84) since there were little jukeboxes on every table ... and she still likes to come here and people watch, especially in the wee hours. If she's really hungry, she'll partake in a patty melt ... She and her mom had many happy lunches here, so there's that too. Lavender-haired Lou Loves Lester's, and many other things that begin with the letter L, such as Lemon meringue pie, Leonard Cohen, Lava Lamps and Lounging around with her mean old cat listening to NPR while painting.

Left Lou on the counter in the Ladies room after a breakfast filled with much chit-chat, Laughter and the giant cup of coffee for which Lester's is famous. So that was fun.