Since you asked ...

You asked me today if I looked askance at your doll-making because it wasn't a more practical hobby. Thinking of "hobby" as "an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one's leisure time," I replied "no."

Having considered, however, that your dolls could be displayed or even sold, I've since decided that, as an avocation, doll-making runs the risk of being disgracefully practical. Therefore, I have come up with a list of new hobbies for you to pursue, each is which is more useless than a solar-powered flashlight:

• Collecting ecstasy pills
• Knitting woolen breasts
• Yodeling with your mouth closed
• Memorizing songs backwards
• Vomit photography
• Nerf jousting
• Frog breeding
• Making mud balls
• Off-road shopping cart racing
• Woodworking

You looked disappointed

When you asked, "What are you doing out here (in the infernal region), the bookcase is done?" and I replied that I was reassembling my old bench for storage purposes.

I'm actually reassembling my old bench because I need it to resume work on your sewing cabinet. I want to have it done by your birthday. (It's not your birthday gift, I should mention.) I vaguely had a notion of it being a sort of surprise, until I realized that you'd see me putting it together.

I'm not very smart.

Now that I think of it

Random titles from your collection: The Time Traveler's Wife; Memoirs of a Geisha; Jonathan Livingston Seagull; A Cat Abroad; Homeopathic Medicine at Home.

Random titles from my collection: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist; Why the North Won the Civil War; Beyond Objectivism and Relativism; Hitler's Generals; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

I'm confused ...

What do you mean you don't want to borrow The Coming of the Third Reich? How is that possible?

The Parallax View

How did I end up with so much Zizek? Oh, that's right. I have a master's degree. In English. Why didn't you stop me?

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways. I put all of the Bloom County in "your" area.

I promised you a bookcase; I didn't say it wouldn't be a photo of a bookcase

It's 3:06 am, I'm sitting on the catio next to our cat who eats baby food. He's eating baby food. It's actually turkey mashed up into something he probably thinks is baby food. I'm not smoking, I'm eating lightly steamed wheat germ and alfalfa sprouts while doing yoga. I'm on a stairmaster listening to affirmation CDs. I'm drinking a rhubarb omega 50 power shake, while popping B12 capsules.

Anyway, due to the awkward shape of the puzzle box bookcase, it has to be carried in through the front door. Noise, commotion, conniption, cantankerousness. Languid, flea-infested neighborhood cats lounging in my path. So, in lieu of the actual bookcase, I'm offering you this grainy, noise-addled cell phone camera photo of the puzzle bookcase, replete with shitty resolution and color distortion.