Today's fortune: May 11, 2011

Today's fortune: Any doubts you may have will disappear early this month.

And good timing, too. After yesterday's fortune-less day, I was beginning to doubt the existence of the fortune cookie gods.

But sure enough, when I cracked open a fresh cookie today, I not only heard the snap of wheat flour, water, sugar, patrially hydrogenated soybean oil, egg, salt, sodium bicarbonate, natural and artificial flavor and FD&C yellow #5 & #6 (the ingredient list for this most recent batch of cookies), but I also heard the rustle of the paper fortune inside.

The doubts I had about the consistency of the Shang Pin Fortune Cookie company have not quite disappeared, but they have diminished a bit.

Let's examine this fortune: "Any doubts you may have will disappear early this month." First, I'll address the timeline: "early this month." It's already the 11th day of the current month. May has 31 days, my knuckles tell me, so I'm going to assume that "early this month" means on or before the 15th. "Late this month" would mean the 17th through the 31st. The middle of the month is the 16th. Essentially, that means doubts should disappear within the next four days.

That being said, this fortune, unlike so many others, doesn't presuppose that I have doubts. It says, "Any doubts you may have." I get two out-words there: "any and "may."

I could wrap this one up by saying I don't have any doubts, therefore this fortune is already fulfilled.

But that would not be true.

Of course I have doubts. I'm human. I have doubts about my writing ability. Doubts about whether I'm a good husband. Don't get me started on my doubts about work. Sometimes I'm surprised they still pay me.

Doubts are natural. And it would be freaking awesome if they ceased to exist in four days. But they won't. That's one thing I have no doubt about.

But maybe this fortune isn't saying that. The fortune says my doubts will "disappear." Dictionary.com says "disappear" means "to cease to be seen; vanish from sight."

Perhaps I'll stop focusing on my doubts. They'll still be there, in the junk heap that is the back of my mind, but I won't see them. Maybe it's like a magic trick. Now you see 'em, now you don't.

At work, I feel like I'm getting closer every day to being good at this job. My doubts are, slowly but surely, disappearing.

And I realized something today. Jamie and I are on financial lockdown in an effort to save money. We made a vow to spend money on nothing but food, groceries and bills. I was hoping we could keep it up for at least a week or two, but I seriously doubted we actually could.

But Jamie and I are kicking butt. Over the past three days, we haven't spent a dime on non-essentials. My doubts about lasting two weeks, and maybe much longer, have completely vanished.