My Point...And I Do Have One

book. I was kind of hoping that elves would come in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and write a best-seller for me; the psychic told me that though this wasn’t impossible (she claimed one or two of Danielle Steel’s books were written this way) in my case it was highly unlikely. Bummer.
    Then she took out her tarot cards. She wasn’t able to get a very good reading, so then she took out a deck of regular cards. An hour and a half later she had won $150 off of me playing gin rummy. So you can see, she’s a very good psychic, even though what she really wants to do is deal blackjack in Vegas.
    The good psychic would pick up the phone before it rang. Of course, it’s possible there was nobody on the other line. Once she said, “God bless you.” I said, “I didn’t sneeze.” She looked deep into my eyes and said, “You will, eventually.” And, damn if she wasn’t right. Two days later I sneezed. It felt eerie. Not the sneeze, just that she predicted it.
    It sounds like a real L.A. thing to do, going to a psychic. I was thinking this as I drove away from her home in my Mercedes convertible on my way to pick up my dog from his personal trainer. What’s great about this trainer is that she also does my dog’s colors. It turns out my dog is an Autumn, which explains why he looks so good in an olive green sweater.
    Well, as I was driving, the phone rang. This was weird in itself, because the psychic had predicted that I would get a phone call later in the day. As it turned out, it was my psychic calling. While we were chatting, I got a fax reminding me to call my bird psychiatrist.
    Now a bird psychiatrist isn’t an actual bird; that would be ridiculous. He’s a human psychiatrist that deals with my bird’s problems. You just call him up on the phone, tell him what’s bothering your bird, and he tells you how to deal with it. He’s a bit cheaper than an actual psychiatrist—no pun intended—so sometimes I call him up with one of my problems and pretend that it’s one of my bird’s problems. Actually, I don’t even own a bird.
    “Well my bird is thinking about starting a new relationship. The problem is that this other bird reminds him of somebody else, somebody who had hurt him in a previousrelationship. My bird had been rejected and didn’t take it well. He drank a lot of fermented seed juice and didn’t go out much for a long time. And when he did, he took out his pain on other birds.
    “Also, my bird, Paco, who has a sitcom that’s called
Paco
(he’s a very funny bird), is worried about a book he’s supposed to write. So, he’s not sure this is the best time to start a relationship.
    “Paco had an interesting dream recently. I sensed the dream. I know him well enough to pick up the dreams, but not well enough to actually help him. That’s why I called you. He had this dream that he was being held upside down and dipped into a dish of hot mustard sauce …
    “Oh, I see, he probably was a spring roll in a past life.”
    I put on the answering machine, so I wouldn’t get any more phone calls as I drove. I felt content. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a good feeling about this book. That’s what you asked, right?

how to
explain sex to
a child
or

where there’s a corn chip, there’s
bound to he hot sauce

    H ey, Debbie, this is Ellen. That’s a real cute phone message. You sounded just like Elmer Fudd. Geez, I hope you were trying to sound like Elmer Fudd. If you weren’t, I’m terribly sorry. Thanks for saying that you’d watch my house while I’m gone next week on vacation to the Luxembourg Soft Cheese and Jazz Festival. I know you said you would water the plants, bring in the mail, and turn some lights on so that it looks like somebody is home. But if it’s not too much of an imposition, could you also make sure that the mobile over the crib isn’t tangled? Otherwise, the baby is just going to get bored. I never knew having a kid was so much responsibility! Bye bye
.
    I’m just joking. I don’t have a baby. I do, however, have a mobile and a crib. I enjoy those things, so I have them. And, even though I don’t have a baby, I have hired a nanny. In case I decide to have a baby, it’s nice to know that Bok Choy is there. (To keep him in practice, I have him read me a bedtime story every night and occasionally I let him burp me.)
    I want to have a child. I really do. I think about it every day—and every day I change my mind: I want one