It is a young man’s decision to follow his love...and an old man’s satisfaction to discover it was the best decision of his life.

Boy with cat meets girl from outer-space.

The dentist offers his thoughts on the meaningful life versus the meaning of life.

The past two years of covid alerts, lockdowns and toilet paper shortages have given me plenty of practice in responding in all the wrong ways to Life’s stressors. Quite without intention, I have raised worry to a fine art. Now, by virtue of that art, I am inextricably bound by my own masterpiece. It is too strong. My grip is weakening.

And then I see him.

My one-cat calvary…

“As for Toby,” Telly says, bringing us back to the cat in the story. “I don’t know that you can undo Mother Nature. Killer instincts are still part of what makes a cat a cat. You can’t eradicate centuries of development in a few months. But…” His brow begins to wrinkle, and I suspect a thought brewing. I wait for the bottle of White-Out to appear. “Maybe you can add to them.”

“That’s still undermining evolution,” John says.

“I’m not talking about making all cats and mice across the board friendly toward each other. That would be as unnatural as both sides of the house and senate working together. But maybe one can rise above their instincts…to be better than their kind.”

“I have the right to be something other than a duck,” the girl says with her usual larger-than-eight-year-old attitude.

The cat returns holding a plastic-sealed mask in his mouth. Tabby takes the mask and holds it up for inspection.

“YES!” she roars, scaring the birds outside into the air. She tears open the plastic and dons a mask with prehistoric snout and teeth. “Do I look like T-Rex?” she asks hopefully.

On a guys day out, I am reminded that the best way to keep my calm is not to impose my will on another.

When Santa visits the wrong house: “No…no…no.”

Putting your best Christmas side forward.

Hurtling through space and time to holidays past in the Royale Deluxe Hibernator II.