How Things Are Now

Hectic. I am almost always tired it seems. Besides the wedding (which is now only a month away!) and heavy deadlines at work, I am also moving. Now that I've thought about it, it's not so out-of-the-ordinary. I suppose many, if not most, people move when a marriage commences. I've just never put the two together.

But moving I am, so I am once again throwing things out. I did this only nine months ago, but there is still so much to get rid of. Such sweet sadness -- the martini glass that I've kept for 11 years from some night in some bar in the distant past. Gone tonight. That martini glass won't haunt my shelves any longer.

As I am writing I am remembering more about that night. Out with friends, two of them about to be married, the same two who would a couple years later split up and call it quits, for reasons I still don't really understand. The bartender was an old man, tough but generous in his words. We ordered martinis. He taught us how to order the drink with only a hand signal, a "Y" made from the two index fingeres. We drank them, thought they tasted like cologne, felt cool for trying them. To remember the night, I took the glass, which was small, much smaller than the average martini glass.

And so I've moved four times since that night and through each move that glass has managed to avoid extinction, to hitch a ride every time. I don't know why, except that I like physical objects that remind me of significant experiences. For example, I keep a small box of rocks that I have gathered from all over the globe. They are each in plastic bags with small paper tags with them to note where and when I picked them up.

But the fifth times the charm, or something like that, and that martini glass right now is broken in pieces in a box by the door waiting for its last trip down to the dumpster in front of my apartment

This might represent something significant or it might just mean that I'm a little too tired to be sentimental. In any case, if you need a few decent glasses and some odd pots and pans with no lids, some mismatched tupperware, check by the dumpster in front of my house tomorrow morning.