Times like these, you’ve gotta grab your moments of bliss wherever and whenever you can. For example, take this lovely image above. Clearly something captured at the precise moment of perfect light, after hunching on haunches in the increasingly dewy grass, with high-end camera and proper lens, for hours. The National Geographic adventure photographer sporting obligatory khaki vest and dusty brown boots, training priceless lens on the elusive Serengeti antelope. I suspect there’s no such thing as “Serengeti antelope,” but you get the idea. Just go with it. 

Nah. 

Instead, it’s just me, paused awkwardly in the Prius, trying to avoid swerving into the bumper of a parked car, annoyed commuters honking behind me, illegally and one-handedly fumbling for my iPhone’s camera app while effectively ghost riding up Broderick. Probably late to the bus stop pickup, to boot. And then of course the filters applied at the next stop light around the corner (also illegal). Because God forbid I post something exactly as it is. Who would ever show the world in its authentically imperfect state? Apparently, not I. 

In my defense, I’m a sucker for San Francisco sunsets. And the Palace of Fine Arts is indeed purdy in the evening, sunset or no. Still, it ain’t exactly reality. 

Or is it?

And so, I’ll take it. A much-deserved, albeit arguably inauthentic moment of bliss. In an ongoing mélange of, well, the opposite of bliss. Maybe we should just call that what it is — “reality.”

And “reality” at the moment is melancholia and orthodontia. Or to apply yet another filter so as to portray things a little better-sounding than they actually are: Melancholia et Orthodontia. Insert an erudite-looking crest here. Yeah. Hammered in marble. Yeah yeah. Throw in a few wreaths, maybe an eagle with oversized talons. Uh huh. Perhaps a gargoyle or two. And voilá! I have my very own Trump University! Now accepting applications! Step right up, folks!

But I digress. (Seems that’s pretty much all I do: I digress.)

I’ll be making my 6th or 7th recent trip to the Orthodontist today. Yet another component of one of my kids’ Medieval teeth torture contraptions has shit the bed. Tempting though it may be to reach for my rusty needle nose pliers, this is better left to the professionals. Their needle nose pliers are probably more sterile and hygienic than the ones I used most recently to reconnect the toilet flusher mechanism in the toilet reservoir. Reservoir?

So this morning will feature receptionist phonetag and my inability to honor the busted thingamajig by identifying its proper medical name: “I dunno, gosh, it’s the little tiny piece that sits on top of or sort of in front of the other little things there over there on the side….” And this afternoon I will slide into my usual seat in the waiting room, boning up on whether exactly Brad and Angelina are truly, and finally, forevermore, kaput. 

But maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll capture a moment where everything at least, looks, perfect. 

Thanks for reading.