Turtles don't just end up on fence posts.

I awoke from a nap a few minutes ago. I looked around my room, the blaring symbol for my head. There are papers and clothes everywhere. No order whatsoever. A fitted sheet, size full, lies crumpled in the middle of my queen sized bed.

Three weeks ago I asked Franz "When am I going to clean my room?"

To this he replied, "One day you'll wake up and it'll just be the right time."

I put on some shoes and I walked outside. There's a tree outside my apartment where all the neighborhood dogs pee. At the base of the tree was a bullet -- a tiny plastic single serving dose -- of Albuterol. For those of you who don't know yet, this is the same drug that I mistakenly gave to a kid intravenously last week. It should never be given this way. The drug is intended to be given via inhalation. It helps asthmatics breath better. Given intravenously it can stop a heart.

I couldn't believe the coincidence of there being Albuterol under the pee tree outside my apartment. Even more of a coincidence was that it was in bullet form. Over the past week I've been thinking: if the hospital where I was working had it in this form, I would have never made that drug error (bullets don't fit into IV tubing). Seeing it under the tree made me think it was there to send me a message.

Piss on the Albuterol.

Move on.


I go into the corner store to get a Diet Coke. This is what I do most afternoons, especially after a nap. I walk to the counter. Joe, the owner, isn't around. His teenage son is there instead. He's on the last few pages of Catcher in the Rye.


And I just saw another turtle on a fence post. I've been thinking about this book incessantly for the past several months.


"That's a good book." I say.

I put down seventy-five cents in mostly nickels and dimes.

"Are you reading it for a class or for pleasure?"

"I'm reading it for a class, but I would really like to read it for myself sometime. Have you read it?"

"I read it for class, then I read it for myself, and then I lived it."


Now I'm cleaning my room.