1) A current situation is very much like one of the fairy tales I remember reading as a child in The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales, and last night after some diligent research, I found it. It's "The Three Wishes," in which a young man is walking in the forest near nightfall and discovers a little girl crying by a blackberry bush. Her mother will beat her if she comes home with an empty basket, but now all the berries are too high and/or deep in the bushes for her to reach. The young man helpfully begins picking berries, working as quickly as he can in the fading light, scratching his hands on the brambles while the little girl not only urges him anxiously to keep going but begins eating great handfuls of the berries. The young man is rewarded for his patience (see illustration); I fear I no longer have any patience to reward.
2) There comes a time in the life of every favorite T-shirt when a small eye-shaped hole appears somewhere around the shoulders. It announces the Beginning of the End; the material is aging. As one continues to wear it, holes grow in size and number, eventually rendering the shirt Unwearable Except at the Beach and Maybe Not Even There. In the past two weeks I've noticed that hole appear in two favorite T-shirts: one from my memorable Caribbean vacation of 2001, another from Provincetown.
3) Oh no, I will not be arriving late for today's breakfast meeting!