Bouts of dizziness and instability.

A rose made of icing so full of sugar it made my eyes water at the first bite. Pumpkin picking. A pumpkin the size of a whale penis. Pumpkin carving. Lost. A new timing-belt. Car repairs. Halloween and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Haunted house V.I.P. treatment. How it’s scarier when people aren’t there jumping out and scaring you. The picture I took of her in front of that red-bricked wall where she’s smiling and perfect. Her grabbing my arm so tightly I could feel nothing else. A wedding party gathered around the Rocky sculpture. The old couple we met who directed us to the best hamburger in the city. The ride home with her asleep and me singing to myself a song about elbows. A woot-off. A missed random bag of crap. A new TV. A new bed. The butt-shelf. Ikea hotdog meals: two dogs, fries and a drink. Swedish meatballs and Italian spaghettios. The Great Furniture Search of 2006. A new TV-stand. Riding Ikea carts down warehouse isles. A new wall-shelf. Tea lights. Bamboo rocks. Getting rid of old things and making room for new. Redecorating together. Selling things on craigslist. Dropping the word “pwnd” on a “straight.” Clandestine lunch breaks. Referring to her as “The Mrs.” and being called a fag. Buying a stuffed animal/monster for a dollar and knowing it will be worth more than that to her. Fighting about things that don’t matter. Surprise powdered Donettes at work. Fingers pressing plastic buttons on a toy guitar in the basement of an old friend's house. Forgiving. Forgetting. Silhouetted in the illuminant phosphors of a cathode-ray-tube. Fingers pressing plastic buttons in a new friends apartment, rocking out trying to compete not against each other but against lag compensation. Taking a new way home. Crying on the way to work. Feeling like I’m losing touch with people. Growing old. Growing up. Growing new hair, losing old hair. Getting out of debt. Working on the new website. Face scrubies. Helping my mom clean out and get rid of my old darkroom. Being told that my job description has evolved but not supplying me with a raise or the tools that have evolved it. A sushi reunion we thought would never happen. Eating and smiling and laughing over a Boston-Roll or two. Playing videogames in bed. Co-op Lego Star Wars! Boba Fett's Lego Jets! My indoctrination into Xbox Live. Feeling really, really, really colorblind trying to play Hexic. Turning the tides in a war against the locust horde for an afternoon, back to back with someone I haven’t seen in forever and will always call my brother. Reuniting. Sending FedEx packages to places twenty minutes away. New friends. A woot-off. A missed random bag of crap. Clandestine lunch breaks. Reno 911. Early Thanksgiving and shopping with my grandmother, my mom, and my girlfriend. My grandmother’s confession to my girlfriend that she knows she’s being naïve in thinking she’ll live forever. Being ninety-one and wanting an HDTV and a DVD player. The looks you get when you’re sitting in someone else’s wheelchair. A trip to the grocery store for “soft” things. Sitting in the waiting room of an oral surgeon’s office where I brushed with greatness, humbled and meek I met the real-life Dr. Tran. Blood on the breath. Feeling helpless. Bouts of dizziness and instability. Playing Gears on the projector split screen. Watching my roommate die 3,784 times on the Rainbow 6 demo. A busted headlight. A passed emissions test. The pros and cons of kids, vs. no kids. Mouthy ouchies. The possibility of leaving early on Thanksgiving eve. Feeling a strange feeling I haven’t felt in a long time: Actually looking forward to a holiday. Accidentally typing a “g” on the end of pumpkin. Pumpking.