A brief bit of brevity.

It always freaks me out when friends of mine and I have that weird moment of psychic connection. You know those moments where a friend tells you they were thinking about you at such-and-such a time and you realize that is exactly when you were thinking about *them*. That just happened to me and my friend Jen.

About two days ago, she had a weird dream that someone got struck by lightening. Ironically (or not), it was during a big storm. At or around the same time, I was walking into my house. I noted the strange weather and the live oak in my front yard. For some strange reason, I felt an urgency to run into the house and hide because -- you guessed it -- I had a fear that the tree was about to be struck by lightening. As if the Universe were playing some cruel trick to remind me of codependence, the tree didn't get struck.

But the connection remains.

Just a bit of "things to make you go hmmmm..." before I tuck myself into bed tonight.

Not seeing in a seeing world...

We take a lot of little things for granted in life. Toilets that flush and a McDonalds on every other corner aside, what about the really important things that go neglected throughout our daily lives. Forget for a moment the person you wake up next to every night or the car in the garage. Start your day *before* that. You're barely conscious, lying in the warm embrace of a matress and comforter, a pillow or two tucked under an arm. You yawn, stretch, roll over and there they are. Your eyes are lying on the nightstand, waiting to be hooked over your ears.

Tonight, on my way into the restaurant, I suddenly couldn't see. I heard a pop, reached up and was just in time to catch my glasses as they tumbled from my face. Can you imagine what it is like to be virtually blind and navigating tables in a cramped room? Carrying food trays was quite the adventure. Luckily, tonight was slow and I ducked out early, rushing home to try and find my spare glasses. No luck yet.

The drive home was quite an adventure, let me assure. But broken glasses got me to thinking. We take a lot of things for granted. Maybe it's someone you wake up next to every day for thirty years or the weekly phone call from your mother. Maybe it's a friend who has feelings too. Sometimes, those things most important to you are the things you think the least about.

New Year's Resolution #2: Make sure that I know what's important to me and do what is necessary to make sure it doesn't get bunged up.

Things you discover...

...hidden in closets can be disturbing. Stashed away, in dark corners of forgotten recesses, are the darnedest things. We've all heard stories about the discovery of old pictures stuck to a baseboard or a Mickey Mantle rookie card in a hole under a loose board. But what about those things hidden in closets we *don't* necessarily want to find?

What about the ancient bird cage or kitty litter box, forgotten behind two boxes of wrapping paper and a stack of air conditioner filters? Or the dead lizard in the garage store room? People have these little closet spaces. And like their real-world counterparts, these closets can contain hidden treasures and dark surprises. I'm always shocked when I find these kinds of hidden parts of a person's psyche. After all, I'm someone with no secrets. I'm a writer -- which means my life is, literally, an open book. This isn't true for the vast majority of people, though.

For every secret smile or quiet inside joke, there is a horribly tragic or devastatingly dark bit of the sinister waiting to rear its ugly head. I think, maybe, the world needs a "closet cleaning" day. A day of accountability where everyone lets those bad parts out for good and brings the good parts out to play.

But then again, maybe not. For most people, our secrets are what make us who we are. So until the day when people proclaim their lives fair fodder, I'll just have to deal with being the only one without a closet.