stop.

I don’t remember when I changed my to-work walk route, but I do remember why I changed it: my old route included stairs. An old basketball injury has bestowed upon me a bad knee so my idea of hell is actually a never ending flight of stairs with fangs. (My homebound route still involves stairs though – not one, not two, but three underpasses!)

So anyway, as I was walking to work this morning I paused at sprinklers. No, I did not pause in front of them (though that would have been nice, it’s scalding), I just stared at them. I’ve been walking past that park for a few months and only noticed them this morning. I’m not actually sure why: Were those sprinklers installed recently? (I doubt that.) How could I have assumed that the grass, trees, and shrubbery survived on nothing but the drool of squalling brats and great landscapers?

Then I realized that I haven’t actually been to the chapel when I walk by it every day, I haven’t walked around the park on a regular day, I haven’t fed the fish (I don’t know if it’s allowed), and I haven’t checked the giant Easter egg spaceship (yes, it really does look that way) and the other statues in that park up close. Every time, every morning, I’m hurrying to somewhere and I didn’t even stop when yellow flowers were falling from the giant tree and carpeted the walkway across the pond.

Well, note to self Rio: visit said park, look like a damned tourist by taking pictures, sit on the bench and think of nothing.

The Gummy Bear Analogy

Last night, I was having coffee with Chris. At one point, he looked up at me and asked, “So, how do you feel?” Lately, my friends have been asking me the same questions – how I am and how things are going and all that and I always find myself using the yosi analogy. Since Chris is not a smoker, I gave him the Gummy Bear Analogy:

So you’re craving for a gummy bear, so absolutely dying for one that you’ve scoured all the stores within a 10-kilometer radius of your house and your office just to find one single gummy bear. You’ve turned your house upside-down, checked inside bags, and even checked in the “quite impossible” places like the floor of your closet and under your carpets. No gummy bears. Just when you’ve given up the prospect of getting any gummy bears and maybe you’ve even resigned yourself to a gummy bear-less existence, you find a lone gummy bear sitting on the very tip of your nose.

When you find it, it delivers a shock and fries all of your circuits. The initial WTF usually comes with the following questions: Where did this gummy bear come from? How could I have missed that? After you regain your composure (you will never fully regain this, I’m sorry), you stare at it in wonder for a few eons. You stare at it and wonder if it’s just a Phantom Gummy Bear, or one of those gremlin assholes who love disguising themselves as gummy bears, or a Ghost of Gummy Bears Past. You even wonder if it’s a jellybean and not a gummy bear at all. You cautiously approach the gummy bear, making no sudden movements and not making eye contact. If you’ve had previous encounters with extra douche-y gummy bears, by this time you probably own a 10-foot pole specifically for the purpose of poking suspicious gummy bears to discern its intentions.

In the middle of all that thinking, you realize, “But wait, haven’t I been looking for a gummy bear all this freaking time?” You laugh at this, you laugh especially because you’ve been so obtuse not to have seen it. All things said though, you’ve found a gummy bear, and that feeling of AHA! and the joy of finding something great washes over you like a river of rainbows and unicorns and kittens.

Oh, and to answer your question, I’m deliriously happy, thank you very much.