Then I read my way around, and flip through the links and it's like that old movie where the people are traveling in a miniature submarine through this guy's liver and kidneys and whatever.

It's just so pink.

Chickenloaf would love it!

Did the men like it? Yes. There was enough comedy (and enough attention paid to women's panties) to keep them entertained for the whole 134 minutes.

When you read through raspberry world you'll start to see things through curiously pink lenses -- not rose-colored by any means, but raspberry-colored. You might want to molest Ziggy, who is actually Pia and vice versa (they're the same cat; we point to common files). When you see the yard in Connecticut with the dogwood buds emerging as little points, you likely could end up feeling sad. Later, you'll get scared by Hello Kitty.

Then last weekend I looked out the window as we were painting the dining room, and noticed that the tulips looked much shorter. Actually, they looked like they’d been kidnapped.

Let's revisit the liver and kidneys metaphor for just a moment. Susie is better at writing about what's going on inside her than I am about what's going on inside me (unless perhaps it's the digestion of a good dinner). I'm not comfortable at it, and whenever I revisit my writings on this subject I start making horrific hacking sounds in the effort to puke up a large hairball. This is why I really appreciate reading journals like Susie's, where there's deft honesty. Like the Anger installment. You read it, and you say yup, yup, yup, yup.

So, I found these crumpets, see? I went to Everybody’s market in Cheshire, Connecticut, and they had crumpets in the bread aisle. They are excellent! Now my life is all about crumpets.

Good writing, like a fun person, provides little surprises along the way. Not big whomping startlers like a bubblegum pink grand piano autographed by Elton John gliding in out of nowhere on its own casters, or a fire engine-red vintage telephone booth floating down from the clouds under a parachute with a Scotsman playing war pipes behind the glass. Not like that.

Rather, the batik snippets of irony that spiff up your recollections -- like little international stamps on an envelope that appear normal until you take a closer look and realize they say things like Republico El Stupido, or Taxus. Or a scratchy faraway-sounding chant pulled off cylinder recording from the early 1900s that sounds too familiar and then you realize it's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Or a sticker depicting various types of delicious-looking cheeses with this subtle caption: "What a friend we have in cheeses."

I’m looking down at the keyboard and thinking, "grape jellybeans." I’m getting hungry. Yesterday it was gold dust. Last week, green bean.

I’m talking nails. Not the fake ones, though they’re fine too. Just your regular, standard, action-length-or-shorter, garden-variety fingernails.

Reading a good on-line journal can be like driving home late at night and you're the only one on the highway and you finally relax enough to shake off thoughts of work and you realize that the fields all along each side of the macadem are twinkling with fireflies.

Susie, she's a champ at this stuff.