tonight, lynn and i went to eat at "lucky belly", a ramen sort of place (but upscale, and, what's the word, haute couture, only with regards to eating and restaurants).  it's on smith street in downtown chinatown...  back in the day, when i used to have an office and residence on bishop street, lynn and i used to frequent a lot of these restaurants in town.  of course, we left before the whole renewal of the chinatown area, what with all the galleries and first fridays and such.  so there are a lot of new chic restaurants to try out now (not that we ever really get a chance to go)...

i ordered the "beast bowl".  it was good.  (i'm not going to pretend to be some kind of connoisure (sp!?) and give you the run down of what exactly i ate, and struggle to describe the precise flavoring, etc., like everyone nowadays seems to do.  not to be cynical [which means precisely to be cynical], but i can't stand it when i see people break out their iphones to take pictures of their food.  just eat the damn thing!  yet another reason why i chose to leave facebook [for a time?].  i can't stand being a voyeur at people's dinner tables.  and i hate that tendency to catalogue everything in my life in me...  huh.  exactly what i'm doing here, huh?  but at least here, i can PRETEND it's just a journal.  :P)

afterwards, with lynn slightly tipsy from the wine, we went over to ala moana to do a bit of christmas shopping.  went to coach, whereupon i sat and stared unobtrusively at mirrors, hands "akimbo" across my chest.  man, they have a lot of workers standing around and doing nothing!  after that, we went over to crazy shirts, for another drop-off of cash...

and home again.

***

my wife is my best and perhaps only real friend.

i know she doesn't like to hear me be negative, which i have been lately.  i like to tell her i'm just "venting" or "processing" things, and that i don't do that with anyone else (wow, such a privilege...).  but bottom line is, she doesn't like to hear it.  i know she goes through a lot of stress in her own day, so she deserves something better.

it's funny, though, that i don't have anything on my mind other than this current issue...  but then, when i'm with her, it's okay.  things kind of float into consciousness, and i mention them.  and we laugh about it, or whatever.  and underneath it all, she reaches for my hand, or i reach for hers, and there is this connection that i can believe in...

i know i'm lucky in this.  i never ever forget that.  i know i'm a hard person to get to know, or to be friends with (evidenced by my lack of friends :) ).  so my wife was a godsend...  is a godsend every day and every night.  to understand, even or especially as i forget (just as i forget the wonder of my own hand being connected to my own self) that there is someone in this world that chooses to be bound to me and my destiny...  it's truly wonderful...

in fact, while i'm here...  there was a moment last night, when we were all lying down in the art room (my wife, my kids and i) and laughing.  it was a spontaneous thing, but it was clear to me, and to all parties involved, that for the four of us, there was nowhere else to be, and no one else that we loved more than each other.

i am thankful for my family.

***

i know the choice to deactivate my facebook account was a double-edged sword.  there really are a lot of wonderful people out there.  despite my cynicism, i do like every one of my fb friends.  but i needed time off from that distraction, from the incessant pull of other timelines, and the minutiae of other lives.  and also, i needed time to just get some stuff off my chest, and it was a lot of stuff that wasn't appropriate for that medium, so i needed to remove the temptation...  the temptation of writing vague, self-pitying remarks that would only solicit comments like, "is everything ok?" so i would (pseudo-reluctantly) begin my soliloquy about my pathetique situation...  at least here, i feel i can write whatever the hell i want.

i can write specific self-pitying remarks, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

***

going back to sleep.

g'night.