Whatever We Deny Or Embrace

Today, I took a vacation day from work because despite the fact that I have the best job I could ever hope for in the most pleasant office I've ever heard of, being sentenced to a country club hooskow and not a super-max prison still means you're on someone else's clock. My life is pretty good. My job has purpose. Do I have a great desire to spring from my bed and sashay into my office, brighten everyone's day with my sunny countenance and disturb everyone with my warbling as birds land on my fingertips?

No. I want to stay in bed until 10, throw open windows and curtains and hope the birds outside don't go all Hitchcock on my lazy rump. What I need is a month alone, fresh fruits and vegetables, fragrant banana and date breads, crispy grilled fish and long, sun-drenched afternoons of reading and repose. But hey, I've got dental! A person of my startling vanity needs dental like lightly carbonated bottled Italian water - which is to say: desperately.