List Six

Responses I Have Given When Asked "WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN HAPPY?"

• It's raining.
• It's not raining.
• All the glitter belongs to me now.
• It's called dissociative amnesia, thank you very much.
• It's not Tuesday.
• I am married to the most courageous and wonderful man, who's touch makes my heart leap from my chest. He just texted me an onomatopoeia of fart noises.
• Would you like me to (dramatic pause) ...dail it back?

List Five

A Few Things Which, It Turns Out, Are Remarkably Difficult to Do 

While Taking Cyclobenzaprine Three Times Daily For Three Days, For Moderate to Severe Muscle Spasm In The Lower Back 

• Hold a conversation in real time and not, as it turns out, five minutes after everyone else.
• Concurrently blink both eyes.
• Put on my socks without falling over.
• Speak with my employer in a professional manner on the phone. I may have called my boss, the Division Coordinator, "a totally rad chick."
• Prevent myself, based on the above, from time-slipping into a different decade.
• Successfully manipulate a doorknob by the third attempt.
• Make toast using the fridge, apparently. For, like, at least 15 minutes. Lucky I didn't burn the place down.

List Four

 Since I am constrained by both the amount of data I can upload, 

and by my half-hour lunch, 

here are just a few words I use to describe Tuesday

• Repellent
• Wretched
• Abhorrent
• Vile 
• Odious
• Obnoxious
• Miserable
• Lamentable
• Heinous
• Accursed
• Flagitious (and my personal favourite) 

List Three

Happiness

• is a new book, spine uncracked, pages unruffled, cover smooth and slick beneath my fingers...
• the first sip of hot coffee in the morning, bitter and sweet, curling into my belly...
• a good stretch without pain...
• the sound of purring next to my head while I read...
• memorizing the constellations of freckles on your shoulder, early in the morning, while the house still sighs along with sleepy bodies...
• and homecoming days, when the distance between us is finally small and manageable and still much too much too much too far, so snuggling is really the only option.

List Two

Things I Aggressively Refuse To Commit To Memory, Despite Increasing Social Shaming, Which We All Know Simply Does Not Have 

Even The Slightest Effect On My, For Want Of A Better Word, Conscience

1. Phone numbers.
2. Author's names.
3. Movie plots.
4. Birthdays and anniversaries.
5. The names of people I don't want to know, or may be forced to know for only a brief time before they drift out of my frame of reference, never to be heard from again, until that one day when they see me across a crowded room and, as the violins swell, they rush towards me, clasping me tight, even though I am obviously inside my bubble, and I simply say, "And you are.....?"
6. How to spell "definitely" on the first go.

List One

Things I Have Only Quite Recently Remembered, Sort of Just, 

You Know, Randomly Like

1. That Canada has a Baffin Island.
2. That I did the "Coke Experiment" in public school. You know, the one where you dissolve a T-Bone in a pie pan filled with Coke? That one. I recalled it while drinking what turns out to be my last Coke ever. So. There's that.
3. That I know the recipe for the worlds worst margarita.
4. That the reason I hate cake is that I can't actually bake them, they all turn out burned. So really, every cake I eat, I am mentally wincing and expecting the gross taste of burned cake. It's a crippling affliction.
5. That March is List Month and I am so glad I remembered in time.