I Pissed In Your Rice

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For years I've been eating Chinese food - whenever I open the fortune cookie I think of the old Gary Shandling show and his joke, in front of a large group of people. Reading his fortune, he said, "It says, 'I pissed in your rice,' and it's hand-written."

Yeah, I'm sick. I think of that every time and I use the joke whenever I open a fortune cookie with another person near me.

Tonight, I opened the cookie by myself. I pissed in your rice, I thought.

What I read instead was, Work hard to accept what you can't change and your life will be better.

Pretty powerful at this time in my life, I suppose. Another one of those coincidences, but I must tell Confucius or whoever penned it, that those wise words are certainly easier said than done.

I pissed in your rice would have been easier to take.

Yet there are people all around, holding me up, or at least trying. My friends in Pittsburgh at Sterlinghouse continue to check in, trying hard to help me find some peace. My buddies are always there. And God knows that my co-workers have tried to buoy me. My friends at the Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo are also holding me up.

And family, you ask? My brothers John and Jim are planning a Springsteen-Yankee trip that might just work. My sisters -fughedaboutit - they're the best. My parents? Jeff's family - there's love all around us. My wife and my kids are just plain solid as well.

But accept what I can't change? Not there. May never get there.

Still feeling as if someone pissed on everything.

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