dear life,

I would like a few days off, please. I'd love a few weeks, but a few days would be fabulous.

I know I have to attend to you, but I would really prefer sitting on my ass right now doing nothing and staring at the green leaves on the trees. Not thinking about work. Or laundry. Or bills. Or slush pile reading. Or flute. Or how I should visit my neice, or write my friend DDD, or call my mom, or sweep the accumulated cat hair, or wash the dishes, or attend to my non-profit volunteer work. Or feeling guilty about not doing all these things.

Perhaps just saying it is just as well. It's all I've got to go on right now.

A real capitalist

Trotsky murder weapon may have been found

"Looking at it objectively, this is a piece of history," Volkov [Trotsky's grandson] said in an interview at the home in the leafy Mexico City district of Coyoacán, where Trotsky was killed, just blocks from where Salas, the ice pick owner, also spoke to The Associated Press. "It should be in the museum."

Volkov, 79, has offered to give a sample of his own DNA for comparison to whatever material can be recovered from the pick, but only on the condition that Salas donate the artifact to the Trotsky museum in Mexico City.

"If it is for commercial purposes, I refuse to participate in this kind of thing," Volkov said with a disdain echoed in the volumes of Trotsky's revolutionary writings on display in the museum's library.

Salas, 50, refuses to consider such a donation, saying people value only the things they pay for.