Wait Until It Stops Kicking and Blowing Air Bubbles

There are epiphanies in life. Some are as apparent as the girl you meet in the restaurant that you know you'll never see again after dinner. Of your choosing or of hers. Depends.

If she's doing the discarding, you smile as you recognize her from her on-line picture or description by a friend or whatever. She in turn recognizes you and kind of rolls her eyes or gives a slight sneer and you turn around because you KNOW it's because you're being followed by Osama Bin Laden. I mean, why else would she sneer?

If you're the discarder, its because you recognize her and realize there's been some stretching of the .com truth. As a matter of fact, if the truth were a rubber band, you could pretty much slingshot Venus with it by now. Body style: "Curvy" means fat. "A few extra pounds" means the door jambs at home get slathered in Crisco so she can get out to the grocery store. You on the other hand have been as honest as the day is long and it's not your fault that the closest descriptor of your hair color is "salt and pepper" because "flesh colored" was not an option.

Other epiphanies sort of catch you long after they've passed from the moment. Uncle Dave belonged to a lot of sports clubs and never really had a steady girlfriend because...

Your high school principal did not have persistent morning headaches and bloodshot eyes because of alergies. Particularly not in winter.

And then there are the epiphanies you slip into like a warm bath. The ones that you see coming from afar, the water is running and you slip out of your robe. "Curvy" is perhaps an update you need to load onto your internet description runs through your mind. You pull back the curtain and step into the tub and envelop yourself in the latest "oh boy!" realization that things are going to change for you again...

Big time.

Thanksgiving is just ending and the ghost of the turkey has not yet begun to haunt my ass cheeks. The inflatable jack o' lanterns have been replaced with the inflatable turkeys and they now are succumbing to inflatable santas, snowmen, strange plastic balls that bombard toy trains with merciless torrents of petroleum-based snow. In some neighborhoods, the inflatable menorrahs are coming out, a new candle filled with air each day for eight days to celebrate the miracle of the temple not being re-zoned for a Wal-Mart super center. I can't wait for Martin Luther King's birthday to mature to see what lawn ornament gets trotted out for that one.

This Thanksgiving was quite pleasant in that the bird was juicy, the company well-behaved and the sweet potatoes did not self-immolate in the mother of all grease fires. But I was ill-equipped for the holiday and had to go shopping for a turkey roasting pan a few days ago. These roasting pans account for about seven percent of global steel consumption annually in their sheer size. They are either big enough to roast an average size bird or a humvee. Whichever you prefer and don't kid yourself that you use them any more than once a year. After the Thanksgiving feast you clean out a garage bay for the thing to stay in or bury it in the hole that used to house your swimming pool or rent a commercial airplane hangar from which you can pick up up from next year.

I bought my pan this year along with an oven thermometer along with a spatula. The thermometer was to be scape-goated if anything went wrong with the turkey. The spatula was for something else entirely.

A few months ago Thumper, the woman I'm dating, burned a spatula at her mother's. It was red. The spatula, not Thumper, although I can't speak for her mother having only been ignored by her once in our relationship to date. Mother has re-decorated the kitchen in a red impliment motif. Lord knows why but it being the middle part of a middle state perhaps this is what passes for excitement out there when Aunty Lou isn't being sucked out of her trailer by the latest tornado. At any rate, Thumper promised to replace the red spatula and casually mentioned it to me who has been poking around various gourmet food stores. And there it was in Bed and Bath and Beyond and Then Some or Ladies Home Depot or whatever the place is called. In addition to toting around my roasting pan I was now holding a red spatula high above me like an enemie's head impaled on a tenderizing hammer. A friend called me on the phone because he was bored and while I was explaining to him what I was doing and why I was doing it and what I had bought and why the warm bath was drawn and I gleefully got in.

Bachelorhood as I know it, seems to be over for me. Like an old friend drowning I am standing idle at the shore watching it slip beneath the waves, whacking it on the forehead from time to time with a red spatula if it seems to be gaining a grip on the shore. In my indifference to its fate, I don't think it has much of a chance.

Sure I'm still keeping an eye open now and then. We chanced across a realtor a few weeks ago as we were looking for a new house together (glug!) We had met her before at another venue while we were looking for investment properties. She remembered us (glug) and after the open house I noted that she was, um, er, a kind of attractive woman.

Thumper said she was and was glad I had noticed. It wouldn't be normal not to. Of course, further demonstrations of my heterosexuality were unnecessary.

But basically my second solo act is drawing to a close. Not in a hurry. There are a few things to be taken care of but just as slowly and surely as you approach a red wine hangover after the fourth dead Syrah soldier I seem to be heading for this altered state.

In the meantime there's still time for a little play and we do have a new red spatula. True to our word, we'll give it to her mother as a replacement but suggest that she wash it thoroughly before she flips her first short stack.

Bunny on.