Thursday.

I show up to Jackie's tea party with a box of Mae Wests under my arm.

"I guess with PETA having made its crackdown," I say, "it's now up to us humans to reclaim the tea party from circus chimpanzees."

"PETA wouldn't let you serve this crap to a monkey," she says, taking the snack cakes and chucking them onto the kitchen counter. The guests' children ransack them and run upstairs.

Kids are lucky. They get to explore the whole house and find out what the hosts are really about. They tear through drawers and search under beds, while we poor adults are chained to the living room with only the occasional trip to the bathroom for a quick rummage through the medicine cabinet to learn what's what.

I sit on the couch, eavesdropping on a conversation about annuities, and wishing I had a Mae West.

Friday.

I call up Henry to tell him Saturday's picnic is on.

"The weather's going to be gorgeous," I say.

"Spoiler alert!" Henry yells. "When giving away what's going to happen, have the decency to first say 'spoiler alert.' "

"I thought that was only for movie plots," I say. "Not the weather."

"From now on I want to keep everything a surprise," he says. "I don't want to live my life with one foot in the future, because that'll mean having only one foot in the present."

"And that would leave you without a foot in the nut house?" I ask.

"I'm so committed to this," he says, unimpeded, "that I'm not even going to use the future tense."

"You just did."

"Did I?" he asks. "Well, maybe I don't know what the future tense is."

"Good luck with it," I say. "I have to go shopping for the picnic, so I'll see you later."

"Please," he says before hanging up, "don't tell me that!"

Personally, I love thinking about the future. I don't think I've ever thrown out a single fortune cookie fortune. I don't go so far as to fold them into my wallet (okay, I might...) but I do usually hang on to them in some way, maybe tossing them into a sock drawer or placing them in the pages of a book I'm reading. There's something about throwing one out that feels like an act of bad faith, because all prophecies about the future should be taken seriously - even if they're prophecies that come in cookies at the end of a meal of moo goo gai pan.

I also love the idea of serendipitously re-discovering these predictions of the future, in the future - holding them in my hands and thinking about what once could have been, but never was, yet might, one day, still be. The future often feels larger, more boundless, than the past, or the present. Perhaps it needs to be because it is where we store our hopes.
At the grocery store, the first thing I throw into my cart is a box of Mae Wests. The second is a bag of fortune cookies.

"Spoiler alerts ahead," I'll tell Henry, slipping a few into his hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwryFOYTKac <--- ***Listen while reading!***

Saturday, 9:40 a.m. In the workout room, I hear the opening strains of Chicago's "Saturday in the Park". I figure it's just a sample and am braced for the beats and rapping to kick in - lyrics about the easy joy of public copulation, gun play and drinking grain alcohol in the park, but I'm happily surprised to realize it is the original song.

Invigorated, I drop to the floor and perform 50 spontaneous push-ups. At home I can never break 40, but the adrenalin (brought on by thinking people are judging me for doing such an archaic exercise in a room full of expensive nautilus equipment) fuels me. The imagined judgment of others always brings out the best in me.

12:45 p.m. Trevor phones. "I spent the last three hours cleaning," he says. "Deleting stuff from your computer desktop counts as cleaning, right?"

Trevor tells me that he's expecting an old friend he hasn't seen in years and he's trying to bring his apartment up to snuff. Evidently, this involves putting out plastic fruit to make the place more colorful and leaving cash lying around so it looks like he's doing well.

"You might want to be doing push-ups when he walks through the front door," I say. "Right out the gate, you'll establish your alpha male-hood."

"Or establish my heart attack," Trevor says.

2:50 p.m. My neighbor's kids, Christina and Kayla, are building a tree house in their backyard. I stop by to see how it's coming along. Their mom suggests I grab some tools and make myself useful. I explain that I'm visiting in more of a supervising capacity.

"I'll really come alive during the interior designing process," I say. "I've got some Picasso prints, plastic fruit arrangements and shag carpeting samples all picked out."

"You're a real hero," she says.

"If you want to see heroism, wait until their first tree house dinner party. One of the few ways I have of demonstrating heroism is through overeating."

In fact, eating too much in a tree house constructed by children is even more heroic, as there's the added danger of falling through the floor during the main course.

3:45 p.m. Just like the old song, it's Saturday and I'm in the park. But unlike the song, it's a dog park and I'm arguing with my buddy Henry.

"Fancy poodles are not born with naked legs and puffy tails," I yell. "They're groomed to look like that."

This may not be where it is at, but it is where I am at. It is also where Henry is at. And together, we make do.

I love a good Ben & Jerry's...

Does it love me back though?

Ooo! Here's a though.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. As is ice cream...coincidence?

I think not.

Can I devote myself to someone I don't love. Definite no.

It is very telling...someone's level of devotion.

What a great concept. And you're right. I respect a lot of people that I don't necessarily have 'love' for. I mean, in the conventional sense. I love just about everyone I meet.

Love is easily given, but respect is earned!

What a great concept. And you're right. I respect a lot of people that I don't necessarily have 'love' for. I mean, in the conventional sense. I love just about everyone I meet.

Love is easily given, but respect is earned!

Right on the money, yet again! Do you think that love is a byproduct of devotion, or that devotion is a byproduct of love?

Thanks so much for expanding on your thoughts! I love this! What better way to represent your love than through your love of your children! That's the most important kind of love. It's the love from my parents that shaped me into the person I am today.

Well said! True love is selfless. I think that two people can definitely feel that way at the same time. I'll agree that it's probably not possible for it to be the exact same degree. But that's okay - everyone is different. I think we do love catching those moments where things just 'click'.

Agreed! It's refreshing to hear someone else say it! In a way, we're all taught some 'right way' that may not necessarily be the same to some else. And too often, we spend a lot of our time trying to convince other people that our way is the only right way. My feelings on love are just that. And I welcome any additional thoughts, perspective, and insight, because...well...quite frankly, I don't know everything.

The only time and place that they 'bug' me (oh, the puns...) is when I'm in the bathroom and there's a spider crawling about. I could be completely misguided, but I think that it stems from that movie 'Arachnophobia'...saw it when I was a kid and it terrified me.

Now that you mention it...

Agreed.

I enjoyed the read...thank you for sharing!

Loving love is a lovely thing indeed!

I agree with you on the first part. When we don't know what else to call something, we might call it 'love', when it's actually just lust. But...you could also replace the word 'lust' though with a myriad of words...such as 'hate' or 'infatuation'...or when we settle for something less than what we should.

I think though, that the second part, about love being a discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in that, is pretty innocent. Please share though, if you think that it could be seen as something else.

Well, Dr. Phil may have a Dr. in front of his name, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's correct.

I think that that might be stereotyping, or at least, categorizing men and women in these little boxes that they don't exist in. While I agree that *some* men think this way and *some* women might too, it's not fair to say that's the norm.

I'm not looking for sex when I tell someone I love them. And I know I'm not alone in that regard.

Thank you for your thoughts on this though!

Very true! I know that by just reading these comments that love means different things to different people. And you know what? I think that's pretty awesome!

I'm studying the concept of language through organizational communication. Like love, everyone's interpretations of language will vary slightly due to their life experiences. How would we accomplish anything without language or at the very least, nonverbal communication? We wouldn't be able to communicate ideas, hopes, feelings, and dreams.

I'm glad you stopped by the topic.

I must say I rather enjoy the word elephantine.

And I appreciate your thoughts and your reply to my topic, red_lace.

I couldn't have said it better myself.