These are the texts messages I sent my wife in a recent conversation:

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Me: Just watered my plant.

Me: No.

Me: No, you’re wrong. The plant is doing great.

Me: I’m really going to look after it.

Me: I am going to be a money tree ninja.

Me: One hundred dollar bills are going to be growing on that fucker!

Me: And each bill will blossom into the exact change for the laundry!

Me: Really?

Me: Well, why do they call it a money tree if it doesn’t grow money?

Me: Marketing?

Me: The fuckers.

Me: Fake news is everywhere! It’s getting hard to know how to navigate this world!

Me: Oh, you think a job would help?

Me: You’d be wrong! Just like you are about my plant’s chances for survival!

Me: It’s way better than 15%!

Me: That plant has at least a 50-50 shot. Easily.

Me: I bought a spray bottle for that plant! It’s getting the five star Murray treatment!

Me: That’s what you’re worried about. Ha-ha.

Me: So very clever.

Me: But listen, not everybody needs a job in order to be fulfilled.

Me: Criminals, for instance.

Me: Oh.

Me: Yeah, I guess they do make license plates and stuff.

Me: Okay.

Me: Deer.

Me: Deer don’t have jobs. They don’t even respect the law, man!

Me: Crush the system!

Me: Look, I will eventually get a job.

Me: I will.

Me: I just need to finish the designs for my cryptozoology tarot cards and then I can open up shop and start reading fortunes!!

Me: I was told I could set up a table at Snakes and Lattes.

Me: Well, yes.

Me: I would have to pay a small rental, but that would come out of my fantasy baseball investment portfolio.

Me: Are you serious???

Me: Really???

Me: Fuck!

Me: I can’t believe somebody else already came up with the idea for cryptozoology tarot cards!

Me: Damn it!

Me: I was really looking forward to going on Dragon’s Den, too.

Me: Oh well, back to the drawing board! Fall six times, get up seven, that’s my motto.

Me: “More like fall six million times?”

Me: Good one, Petal.

Me: It’s true, you are a very funny and talented woman who doesn’t drink too much!

Me: No, I don’t know what you’re doing with me either.

Me: Really does seem an uneven match.

Me: Jones?

Me: Yeah, I think he’s around somewhere.

Me: Oh there he is! Standing up on the wobbly chair right by the window and a bunch of dangerous ledges!

Me: He’s fine, having some quality dad time!

Me: Oh you and your elite mothering!

Me: Fine!

Me: He’s down now, playing with a little brown ball on the floor.

Me: Oh.

Me: It’s actually a peeled apple.

Me: Gross.

Me: Listen I’m going to tell you something.

Me: When he hides, I ALWAYS see him.

Me: He’s just not as smart as he thinks he is.

Me: Fine.

Me: Fine. I will perpetuate the peek-a-boo myth if you insist, and throw out the dirt apple, but I am sure as hell not going back to that job at the Box Factory!

Me: Okay, see you at 5:30! xox

What a beautiful couple we were. Really, you could have put us on an album cover. That album? It would have sold millions and millions and millions of copies. Best selling album in history. Captain and Tennille? Forget about ’em. We would have blown them out of the water. Losers.

That thing Ivana is wearing on her head?

Not a swim cap.
Not cancer.

Very European. Very classy. VERY expensive.

What do you think the thread count is on those sheets? 500? 800? Maybe 1000?

1200.
That’s right, 1200.
Egyptian cotton.
The finest in the world.

Ivanka is such a beautiful woman. So very talented. Have you seen her ski? Amazing. Could have been an Olympian if she wanted. But the truth is that she was never very good at art. Always used to hire other kids to do her drawings in school. This one was done by some Chinese. Ivanka, such a smart businesswoman. Her IQ might even be as high as mine. Such an improvement on her mother.

I was asked to do Playgirl. Many, many times. So many times I can’t even count. And the amount of money they offered me? You would not believe. The most ever. It was like the same amount they would have paid Jesus. Never did it, though. Didn’t like the idea of fruits getting off on me. Just disgusting, that. Anyway fruits, I guess today is your lucky day.

I get people to shave my chest now.

Bannon took me to that party a few years ago.

So much quality ass.

The ladies there had the best skin in the world. They were just as smooth as a bunch of billiard balls. Probably all used French moisturizers. I had sex with many, many of the girls that night– some with the masks, some without. It was hard work to stay hydrated.

Met Jamie Lee Curtis at a Planet Hollywood back in the 80’s.

Went on a date with her. Very uneventful, but let me tell you, those rumours of her having, you know, both sexes? Not true. All woman.

This is a more recent photo. Here I’m just roaming the White House late at night exploring. The place is really third rate. Desperately needs an update. If it was a contestant in a beauty contest? Boob, nose, eye job and liposuction just for starters. Reminds me. Walked in on one of the cleaning ladies changing the other day. You can do that when you’re President.

You think Obama didn’t?

C’mon!

Me: Feeling good today, very confident!

Me: You’re right, my Mindful Meditation session did go really well!

Me: Meditated the shit out of it! I was fucking Deerpark Chopra!

Me: No, I think it is Deerpark.

Me: Really?

Me: Deepak? That doesn’t sound like a name at all, more like a company that makes boxes or something.

Me: I don’t believe you.

Me: I’m going to look it up.

Me: Okay.

Me: Yes.

Me: I guess it is kind of amusing that I could get the last name right but still butcher the first name in such a “child-like” and “ challenged” way.

Me: I’m still going to call him Deerpark though.

Me: No, not stubborn, whimsical and playful. Like an otter.

Me: I also went to my first lymphatic massage session!

Me: Well, they tap your face.

Me: And yeah, that drains your lymph glands. Yes, by tapping.

Me: $200

Me: No, they didn’t wear diamond-encrusted gloves while doing the tapping.

Me: No, it wasn’t a topless lymphatic massage, either.

Me: Well, the happy ending is that my lymph glands are draining!

Me: I thought your insurance covered it!

Me: Fuck.

Me: Well, there are only 7 more sessions.

Me: Look, having drained lymph glands is important.

Me: At least as important as your “Power Skating” classes with Pierre. I mean, 3 times a week??

Me: I don’t trust Pierre, don’t believe he played in the NHL.

Me: Also don’t like the way you laugh around him.

Me: No, of course I trust you, my love.

Me: I’m at the Dark Horse Café now.

Me: Decaffeinated green tea, gangster style.

Me: Nowhere to sit in here.

Me: Woman says she’s holding last chair for a friend.

Me: Says she will be there in 5 minutes.

Me: Dazzling smile. Entirely distracting. Have forgotten why I was talking to her.

Me: I wish she did lymphatic massage.

Me: I’ll send you a picture.

Me: Really? Creepy and inappropriate?

Me:  On every level? Really?

Me: You’re really weird, you know that?

Me: Okay, 12 minutes have passed now and her friend still hasn’t shown up. I’m going to say something.

Me: I wonder if she’s a model?

Me: Okay, it’s been over 20 minutes! I’m going to give her a piece of my mind!

Me: Her beauty doesn’t entitle her to anything!

Me: You’re right, she is exactly like that Leprechaun guy on the TTC!!

Me: Only radiant and if the Leprechaun were made out of sunlight.

Me: Like Pierre, you said he’s made of light, and what did you say, “thigh muscles,” didn’t you?

Me: I WILL SAY SOMETHING!

Me: I AM NOT A SLAVE TO BEAUTY!

Me: (Except yours, my love)

Me: Ok, here I go.

Me: Losing my resolve. Think it’s melting. Standing with tea is fine.

Me: Hemingway wrote standing up.

Me: Her laptop bag deserves seat in crowded coffee shop.

Me: Laptop bag like a holy relic.

Me: Friend just floated in like a beautiful perfume.

Me: Think Pierre emerging from a spray of ice chips.

Me: Such beauty, should be a cover charge here.

Me: They are now talking together, as angels do.

Me: All is sunlight.

Heidi, our dog:

Our eight-year old Miniature Dachshund has a mysterious marking that looks a little bit like a scar on her nose. When we asked the breeder about this she became very nervous and evasive, worrying the Rosary Beads she had around her neck. She told us it was a “bee sting,” but then begged us not to ask any more questions, knocking $50 off the price for Heidi, “Just take her now, please!!”

Since we took her, we did some research and found out that she was rejected by a previous family. The dog, apparently excited, jumped on the family’s three-year old daughter, knocking her over onto a coffee table. The girl hit her head and was rendered unconscious. The family found her probably about ten minutes after the encounter, with Heidi licking the blood off her head so that it was all over her muzzle. The family was utterly traumatized.  The girl fell into a coma, and although she survived, she now has an imaginary friend named Heidi who makes her do bad things. The family returned Heidi, our dog, to the breeder immediately after the incident. It was the fourth time Heidi had been returned to the breeder by frightened families.

Heidi has knocked me down on at least seven different occasions.

The Crying Boy:

This print, by the Italian artist, Bruno Amadio, was “given” to us by a friend who said he no longer had space for it as he had moved. The painting is huge, perhaps seven feet by five feet, and it looms massively above our living room sofa. Wherever you are, the crying boy is staring at you. We have had the painting for 1 year, and in that time I have been fired from 6 jobs, got shingles and assaulted 4 people. The painting is cursed. I tried to burn it once, but it was impervious to flames.

Heidi’s toy, Belial:

The breeder hastily shoved this toy into Heidi’s crate just as we were about to drive away, “It’s named Belial,” she shouted, “ it is of your dog!” We thought it was a pretty weird thing to say, but whatever. As it turns out, this squeak toy is indestructible. I have thrown it out at least a dozen times and even gone so far as to bury it in the backyard, but it always returns, lying at the end of our bed, staring at us with it’s dead, demon eyes.

Sometimes, when Heidi is playing with it and there’s a frenzy of squeaking in the apartment, Rachelle and I can sometimes hear recognizable phrases forming amidst the cacophony. ” Four-eyes must die,” “Drown him in blood,” “Eat all his food,” “His fear feeds you.” Once, I woke up from a nightmare*(see next entry) to see Belial in the chandelier above our bed just staring down at me. It was the most chilling thing I have ever felt.

Squirrel Pelt Blanket:

When we first got this blanket as a gift, we kept it at the foot of our bed, but both Rachelle and I were plagued by horrible dreams about being a squirrel and getting hunted down and skinned by an old, West Pennsylvania Mountain Man. The same dream, again and again and again. They were utterly terrifying and we’d both wake up screaming, the dog shrieking, too. When we moved the blanket and put it on a radiator in the living room, the nightmares stopped, although squirrels, baleful and lost, often mass on the fire escape outside the window and just stare in at it, as if in silent, foreboding judgment.

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I figured this out, too little, too late, but I figured it out. And so we stopped communicating, and it was in those spaces that I imagined her, and then she just appeared, as if conjured. Her grandmother’s ring on her left hand, the powder blue jacket that was bunched in the middle, her hair not quite the way she meant it to be for a Saturday night. She saw me sitting there in the corner of the bar and she did not know what to do. A current ran through her body and she panicked, I think. I called out her name and she looked at me like I was a ghost. I was a ghost. She wanted movement, she wanted to be running through a field or diving off a cliff, she wanted the plane to be landing in a new city, and the guy she was with, gesturing to the open table just a few over from where I was seated, he had no idea who I was or what my presence might mean for his unfolding evening.