Wood You Even Know
Rings, Pounds, and Bachelor Panic
Snuggles pointed a camera at a freshly cut log and made something genuinely beautiful. The rings fanned out in perfect, patient arcs, two knots staring back like a face that had seen some things. Which, fair enough. A tree that old has earned the right to look a little worn out.
I stared at that photo for a while. Wood you? W-O-O-D you? The pun had been rattling around for days, waiting for a landing strip. It finally found one.
The days leading up to that moment, though, were less poetic. Computer issues collided with work issues and the whole pile landed directly on my nervous system. I called in sick. Slept. Tried to reset. The kind of day where even brushing your teeth feels like a decision you have to negotiate.
And then there’s the weight thing. I fasted for a full week, which is not nothing. Snuggles and I rewarded ourselves with sushi downtown, our favorite, the good kind, the kind worth the walk. Two days later the scale was up a pound. Not down. Up. The body, apparently, has its own ideas about what counts as a reward.
Here’s the thing about growth rings, though. They don’t lie. Every hard year is in there, right alongside the good ones, compressed and indistinguishable from the outside. You only see the full picture after the cut.
I’m trying to hold onto that. A ride is on the schedule. The room swap might actually happen. And I’m about to become a bachelor for two weeks with zero blueprint and a very optimistic attitude about figuring it out.
March 10th Strikes Again
Twenty-four years of March 10ths, and the pattern's pretty clear... this date has it out for me. Read More!