Apples! Apples! Eat them night and day!

I have had a couple of phone calls lately from those of you who read the non-comedic horrors of Document 12 and are worried I am lying out on the cold ice like a haddock, gazing sightlessly at the forbidding sky. Nay, friends, I am alive!

In fact, the revelation that I am about to share with you is that I feel weird almost ALL THE TIME. At least during the month of February. I just don't talk about it much. So you needn't worry; I'm just as mentally savaged by the cruelties of waking life as I ever was. I still want to be in the Little Crawl Hole under the basement stairs, stroking the last remnants of fur off Fuzzy Bunny. Yet you see me walking about, wearing this nice frock and with my hair all brushed and such. (Well, since I had that Brazilian Blowout treatment it seems like I brushed it, even though I sat and stared listlessly into the mirror, the brush lying in my slack hand.)

I even eat food and go about my business and have conference calls with important people. I still know how to tie my shoes. I can uncork a bottle of wine with all the pep and verve of a mentally well individual! And when I play Checkers or Chess with my seven-year-old, I scheme endlessly as to how I will defeat the evil child at his own game. So do not worry a lick about me.

I recently had a talk with a nice and marvelous doctor who explained that my dizziness and shakiness were caused by some problems with blood sugar, and a few simple imbalances that can be corrected by supplements...and the right foods.

"What kind of foods?" says I. "I need more pork products, perhaps?"

"No, vegetable products."

"Not bacon? I do not feel I get enough bacon, and I might be suffering as a result."

"I mean Swiss Chard, Kale, those kind of things. Veggies that are dark and rich in color."

And then he told me to eat a lot of apples. Apples! Those damned things are supposed to keep the doctor away! Or so I have been informed over the years.

Gee, I'm sorry I've been so grumpy, but it really is all your fault

It has come to the attention of The Party Pony that some of my recent posts have been a touch, shall we say, mean-spirited? Perhaps a bit dark, obsessive, and madly brooding on ways in which to drive my enemies weeping and naked into the nearest body of water? Mayhap a titch too drenched in ire and ill-humor, and lacking that G-rated buoyancy which has at times--in the quite distant past--been my trademark?

Yes, all of these accusations and more are true. The Party Pony has been in a foul humor, but how can I possibly be blamed, besieged as I am by the malignant and stoopid Proletariat of the world? How I can I be even one iota at fault when, in fact, my sunny disposition has been marred by the existence of a lumplike creature who, when apple-picking, tosses a receipt, an empty Gatorade bottle, and a woman's flip-flop 'neath the tree? You would gnash your teeth, too.

We did go apple-picking today, and it was lovely (despite the disgusting record-breaking heat). The boys couldn't reach a single apple, but they loaded up the bag like champs. We got a whole 1/2 peck of apples or something in that vicinity. I have no idea how to eat all these apples, but what I really want to discuss is the deep, inner compulsion that drives someone to litter wantonly while picking apples in a serene, pastoral setting. I try to think of the best of humanity: Yes, when they were reaching high to pluck apples, some refuse just "spilled" out of their pockets onto the ground below! Or maybe, they were picking apples on their way to the dump and, attacked by an errant bird of prey, fled in terror with their garbage cascading out across the hillside as they went! An even more remote, yet possible theory: the garbage fell out of a small Cessna passing overhead, and scattered in small, neat pockets under each apple tree.

Sadly, after several experiments and much stealthy observation, I have determined that none of these possiblities can be true. I don't care HOW unedumacated you may be, there is simply no excuse for this type of nonsense. If I catch you at it, I'm going to pull out all the stops from Level 1 of my Self-Help course in Human Loathing. You will be beaten with plastic offal, besides.

All that aside, wasn't it a fine Sunday? (Yes, little one upstairs, there is no need to weep over the fact that your sippy cup has tilted over and that the sticker you stuck on it has unstuck itself and furled up.) The sky was blue, and there was a lithe wind over the apple downs. The smell of hot, roasting turkey legs drifted up from the parking lot of Outhouse Orchards (named after its founder, Johnny M. Outhouse), and crowds of happy harvesters clambered astride pumpkins. Doughnuts dropped into burbling, hot grease. Bees swarmed over fallen, trompled apples, and children shrieked and swung their arms to ward off the insects. The cars came onward, in a steady stream of insatiable pickers and hay-riders, all grinding gravel and kicking up clouds of dust.

Don't tell anyone, but I broke the rules today and climbed an apple tree. Climbing trees is the best darned kind of fun you can have. I didn't stay up long, just enough to feel that slippery, hand-scratching, unsurefootedness and then the drop down atop a pile of ankle-turning windfall apples. Next time, I will go higher.