Bugger

I have decided that random itching always has a cause.  You know -- overactive imagination = complex explanation, all that jazz.

Simple explanation: I have done quite a bit of Internet research on random itching.  Apparently it can be caused by anything from microscopic bacteria burrowing under your skin, to blood circulation issues, to stress making your nerve endings prickle.  It is very common, completely unpredictable, and (so far as anyone can tell) completely unrelated to psychological phenomena.

My explanation: Invisible Psycho-Projected Mosquitoes.

In this case, my explanation is almost shorter!  Except that you probably have no idea what I mean by "Invisible Psycho-Projected Mosquitoes," so I am going to have to explain my explanation.  Considering just how thoroughly developed this theory is, that will make my explanation longer.  So I'll just shrug and get on with it.

I want you to know that this theory is backed up by Science.  It might not be good science, and it's definitely not Bill Nye Science.  (Bill Nye Science is widely considered to be the best Science around, followed at a respectable second by MythBusters Science.)  I am pretty sure that the Science I attempt fulfills the equal-and-opposite-reaction rule.  Because if there is a climax of Science, I am probably the antithesis of that climax.  I am the Anti-Bill-Nye.  Like the Anti-Christ, except not nearly as pernicious (or apocalyptic).

It is this Anti-Bill-Nye Science that supports my hypothesis.  You can decide if that is a good thing, or if it actually hurts my case to admit this to you.

Invisible Psycho-Projected Mosquitoes (hereafter referred to as "IPPMs," because I am too lazy to type that multiple times) are what happens any time one humanoid thinks about another humanoid in a certain way.  You have heard of sending someone mind bullets, or glaring daggers at someone?  The IPPMs are very similar to those concepts.  They are like microscopic target-seeking torpedoes, armed and very dangerous, random-itch-wise.

As a living, breathing humanoid, you are automatically equipped with several types of IPPMs.  It's like having several different species of bothersome bugs (like gnats, horseflies, gallinappers, tsetse flies, etc.), except that psycho-projected insects are all of the invisible mosquito genus.  Each of these different IPPMs has a specific target, and are caused by certain psychic stimuli.

Allow me to give you several examples.

Mens-Anopheles Nasum (or the Nasal IPPM):  This IPPM is activated whenever someone is thinking of you.  They head straight for your nose, and make it unbearably itchy, often culminating in a sneeze.  This is an age-old myth, an old wives' tale, and a Hindi belief.  It is probably the most widely recognized IPPM (except nobody thinks of it as invisible mosquitoes flying up your nose -- only I am that odd).  Another explanation for your nose itching might be simply that you have to sneeze.

Mens-Anopheles Auriculum (or the Ear-Type IPPM):  If your ears itch or burn, you have most likely been the victim of an Ear-Type IPPM.  These are activated when someone has gone past the cognitive stage and is actually talking about you.  Again, this phenomenon has been widely associated with its cause by many in European history.  Another explanation for your ears burning might be that you are blushing.  Another explanation for your ears itching might be that you have eczema.  But these cases are few and far between; more often, somebody is talking about you.

Mens-Anopheles Retrum (or the Impossible-To-Reach-Place IPPM): Whenever your back itches in that impossible-to-reach place, this IPPM has been to visit.  Triggered when someone gossips about you, these itches are incredibly difficult to scratch and even worse to get rid of.  It would probably be easier to find whoever is gossiping about you and stand awkwardly close to them, so they'll be afraid to continue and change the subject quickly.  Another explanation might be that you are wearing wool.  Why you would ever wear garments of 100% wool is beyond me, but hey, it's your skin.

Mens-Anopheles Manum (or the Handy IPPM): Anytime your hands itch, this is undoubtedly the result of someone planning something involving you.  Someone experiencing itchy hands should be on the lookout for last-minute invitations, surprise parties, and/or cheap practical jokes.  Because of how often this happens to me, I am on the lookout for all those things, and also some IPPM repellant.  If you see any (or develop any), do let me know.  Another explanation for itchy hands might be that you have touched something icky -- I recommend washing your hands repeatedly before assigning blame to Handy IPPMs.

Mens-Anopheles Genum (or the Kneeful IPPM): An itching knee usually indicates that someone has just envisioned what your kids would look like.  Hopefully a person sending out Kneeful IPPMs is your significant other, best friend, or parent, and not just some random person you passed on the street.  Another explanation for itching knees is that you need to shave (or you have dry skin).

My ears are itching.  Stop talking about me!

Mens-Anopheles Pedum (or the Barefoot IPPM): Itchy feet are a bad sign.  Run!  If your feet are itching, you have been attacked by Barefoot IPPMs, which are harbingers for anyone who means you harm.  Don't wait to find out what kind of harm, just get somewhere safe, check all closets/bathtubs/dark spaces for serial killers, and lock yourself in until the itching stops.  Another explanation for itchy feet might be that you have Athlete's Foot.

Mens-Anopheles Supra-Pedum (or the WTF? IPPM): WTF? IPPMs are incredibly rare.  They target the top of the foot, and are exceptionally annoying.  These perplexing IPPMs are the heralds of true love, as they are triggered by someone having just fallen in love with you.  Enjoy it (that is, if it is possible to enjoy the constant prickling and tingling of itchy tops of your feet...)!  There is no other explanation for this phenomenon.

Mens-Anopheles Ulnum (or the Elbowesque IPPM): As it is supposed to be impossible for your elbows to itch, if you find yourself a victim of itchy elbows, you have most certainly been plagued by the Elbowesque IPPMs, which are triggered by someone wondering if it is possible for elbows to itch.

The above examples are not the only IPPMs out there.  Since there are innumerable ways to think about a person, there are innumerable types of psycho-projected mosquitoes resulting from those thoughts.  This should be a good basic guide however.  In the meantime, I will continue to work on Psycho-Projected Bugspray.  One day, we will be free of these pesky random itches, if it's the last thing I do!

Somewhere, an Invisible Psycho-Projected Mosquito's foot just itched.

Haystack

Today is an Exasperation Day.  I have these periodically.  Usually they happen towards the end of a week.  Usually they happen because I haven't gotten a lot of sleep.  And usually they happen when I can't express my exasperation without losing self-respect, dignity, or my job.

The sole characterization of an Exasperation Day is one very simple thing: all day long, at every moment, for no real reason at all, you feel completely, overwhelmingly, and unbearably annoyed.

The things that cause this buzzing annoyance are things that happen every day.  But for some reason, on Exasperation Days, they don't slip off your shoulders like they normally do.  They build up.  They resonate.  They linger.  They fester.

Normally, it doesn't hit me that I'm having an Exasperation Day until around lunchtime.  That's about when I realize that all the festering annoyance has been eating a hole in my stomach, and now I won't have enough lunch to fill it, and isn't that just one more annoying thing to top it all off?

But I knew as soon as I woke up today.  The second my phone woke itself up to vibrate angrily and blare the cheesy ringtone I use for my alarm, I thought, "I am already annoyed.  Uh-oh."

I lay there for as long as humanly possible before throwing off the covers and getting ready for work.  I glanced at the clock, did a double-take, and then remembered that I had to go into work offensively early today to make up some time.

(Did you know there is a Spanish word for 'offensively early?'  A different word than just early, I mean.  I'm talking about offensively early, so early you feel personally affronted that such an hour even exists.  There is a Spanish word for that: madrugada).

As you may have guessed from that long parenthetical rant, I am not a morning person.

Still, there is nothing to be done about the fact that this is a day.  There is also nothing to be done about the fact that this is a work day, which means I have to go out in public on this day.  There is also nothing to be done about the fact that this is a winter work day, which means I have to go out in public on a cold day.  I hate the cold.  Cold is my arch-enemy (as opposed to snow, which is my mortal enemy -- believe me, there is a difference).

As I said, there is nothing to be done about any of those things, so I put on gloves, a coat, and my brave face, and head out the front door to my ostentatiously bright yellow car.  There is frost on the windshield.  It refuses to be erased by my windshield wipers.  Heavy sigh.  Grudging obligation.  Scraper.  Cold.

On my way to work, I get stuck behind OldManCadillac.  This is one of those impossibly wide Cadillacs from the 80s.  And in the driver's seat is one of those impossibly old men in his 80s.  OldManCadillac won't stop dancing on his brakes.  Don't get me wrong, pal, I'm thrilled that you're still feeling footloose in your old age, but couldn't we move those fancy toes to the right just a few inches?

Once I get past the cold and into work at last, the annoyances start to come more quickly, one on the heels of another.  The first one is my stupid hair and its stupid frizz and the stupid fact that it won't stay in its stupid ponytail.  And then my stupid computer wants me to reboot it so it can install some stupid updates.  And the stupid applications give me stupid papercuts on my stupid fingers.  And I can't stop thinking the word stupid!

Cue the laugh.  There is this man I work with.  Well, I don't really work with him... it would be more accurate to say: There is this man I work near.  Ignoring the fact that I just ended two sentences in prepositions, let's talk about this NearNeighbor of mine.  NearNeighbor has one of those laughs.  It's a laugh that hardly sounds like a laugh at all.  It almost sounds like he knows he should be making some sort of sound that resembles laughter, but he can't muster up enough enthusiasm for the idea.  His laugh sounds like this: "Ngh ngh ngh."

It ends in a period.  Not an exclamation point.  And it is always three times.  And he doesn't ever open his mouth to laugh.  It is always that "ngh" sound in the back of his throat.  It is quite possibly the most annoying laugh that has ever been heard on this planet (and there have been some really annoying laughs before it -- just talk to Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory, or Gertie from Oklahoma!).

Stupid hair!  Stay in the stupid ponytail!

ABWUHHOO!

Good Lord.  Was that a sneeze?

ABWAAAAHU!

Yes.  Someone is definitely sneezing.  Loudly.

UUBAAHH!

This sneezing person might possibly have some species of troll in their family tree.

Great.  My iPod just died.  That means I will have to use my crappy Pandora account.  Pandora isn't psychic like my iPod.  Pandora will make me listen to stuff I don't want to listen to.  I just wanted to listen to Plain White T's.

My Gatorade bottle is entirely too large.  How am I stupposed to grip it properly?

BAHOOEY!

Bless you, I think.

Is that... Is it getting sunny outside?  Yes, it most definitely is!  That is a beautiful blue sky, hardly a cloud in sight!  It's sunny!  Oh my goodness, finally!  Hooray!  I... Wait.  I'm inside.  Expletive.

Ngh, ngh, ngh.

I can't forget I have a date with Llena de Amor at 6 tonight.  Oh, man, my show is going to be so intense tonight.  Marianela and Gretel are talking like they might finally reveal their true identities.  I can't miss that.  But... it's Friday, so my exercise place is closing by 7.  Crap.  Exercise, or telenovela?

HABAHOO!

Geez, did the cubicles just shake?

I need to exercise tonight.  I haven't gotten a star on my New Year's Resolution Chart in a few days.  I should really exercise tonight.  Exercise is more important than a Spanish soap opera.  But what if the rapist pees his pants again?  I will cry if I miss that.

Ngh ngh ngh.

Wait a second, who's this joker they've put in my ear?  Kris Allen?  "Kris" is the way a girl spells that name.  You're not a girl.  And why are you trying to combine fluffy pop with rap?  It's like audible vomit.  Ew.  Pandora, did you get this guy out of that box of yours?  You know you're not supposed to open that thing.

Oh.  Thank you very much, you evil cloud.  If you hadn't momentarily moved over the sun and dimmed the lighting in the whole building, I might have succeeded in forgetting that it is beautiful outside while I am stuck in a cramped office building.  Lovely.

This.  Gatorade.  Bottle.  Is.  TOO.  EFFING.  BIG.

I guess I can miss my show just for tonight.  After all, I can always catch up.  And it will feel good to exercise.  I like endorphins.  After all, it's not like much ever happens on that show that they don't recount for you like eight times in the next episode, right?  Except for that one show where they spanned two years in a two-minute montage...  But they would only do that once, right?  Right?

Ngh ngh ngh.

What in the... Paramore?!  Pandora, you really do not know me at all.  Why can't you just play me Plain White T's?

NYABAHROOM!

That sneeze sounded almost like an over-enthusiastic cheer for the restroom facilities.  YEAH, BATHROOM!

It's... so... sunny.  Maybe I could hop out there for my break really quick?  No, we're not allowed to go outside the building for our breaks unless we're going somewhere for lunch.  Maybe I'll go to McDonald's, just to get outside for a bit.  But I can't.  I swore off McDonald's until I get more numbers.  Grumble.

Hair.  Ponytail.  Now.

I am going to have to go exercise tonight.  I will hate myself more tomorrow if I don't exercise than if I don't watch my show.  My show will survive without me.

Ngh ngh ngh.

What is so freakin' funny?!

Oh.  I'm hungry.  I think it's lunch time.  And it's an Exasperation Day, so you know I didn't bring enough lunch to fill the new holes my acidic annoyance has created by now.

Ngh ngh ngh.

Seriously, what is so funny?!?!

I refuse to take a sip of this Gatorade, as the bottle is much too big and I am tired of lifting it to my mouth.

I could be frolicking through Crockett Park in twenty minutes if I left right now.

Ow!  Stupid applications!  Papercuts are lethal pain in tiny doses!

GABRAGHT!

Was that German, or are you still sneezing?  Would you like some Sudafed?  Some Claritin, perhaps?  Or maybe you could use some Go-Home-If-You're-Sick.

Oh my word, Pandora.  Are you really forcing me to listen to Forever the Sickest Kids?  No.  I hereby unplug my headphones from your "personalized" radio station.

I really want a sip of this Gatorade.  But it's so friggin' bulky!

Ngh ngh ngh.

He must be talking to a clown, or something.  Why else would you laugh that much at work?

I need food.  It's lunch time.  I should eat.  I should drink some of this Gatorade.  I should throw away this ponytail holder because it is obviously way to stretchy to hold my hair up anymore.

MWUMBAHU!

That sounds like a city in Africa.

-----

I could go on like that forever, but I have better things to do, and so do you.  I may have exaggerated some things a little bit, like the debate between exercise and my telenovela.  The sneeze onomatopoeia was all accurate, however.

Just so you know, I'm waiting for that final straw.  The one that broke the camel's back (or should I say giraffe?).  You'll know when it comes.  I'll implode on myself, and this blog will slowly self-destruct as a result.

Maybe if I could go outside, the sunny afternoon breezes would blow some of the straw away before I reached the breaking point.  I guess we'll never know, will we?

Ngh ngh ngh.

Architecture

I have thought of another analogy for my predicament with BlueEyes.  I know it's lame to write about your love life (or, in my case, lack thereof), on your blog.  But I will remind you that this is my blog, and I can use it to write about whatever strikes my fancy, so that new analogy is the main topic of today's post.

But before we get to that, let's take a trip down Memory Lane.  We're going back to pre-school.

Pre-school!  Remember those days?  Pre-school was awesome, dude.  Things were simpler back then.  Pre-school was playtime, all day, every day!  Boys were gross, and girls had cooties.  Roger picked his nose, and Debbie sucked her thumb, and tag was the best game ever invented, unless you were playing hide-n-seek.  You could make a friend by telling a kid you liked his hat.  You could make an enemy by pulling a girl's hair.  And your idea of a date was protecting the fortress on top of the monkey bars for the entirety of recess (that still sounds like a good date to me).

In pre-school, it was an earth-shattering disaster if you fell and scraped your knee, and if it started bleeding?!  Oh, lawdy, the world was ending.

In pre-school, your coolness factor was directly proportional to how much mud was on your clothes.  'Shut up' and 'poop' were bad words.  And the worst social disaster you could possibly endure was to refuse a dare.  Such an infraction of pre-school social etiquette would earn you the shameful title of 'chicken' for a whole week.

In pre-school, we had no fear.  Heights?  The higher the better!  Tight spaces?  Perfect hide-outs.  And let's not forget that nothing was inedible.  Worms, dirt, grass, pebbles, and yesterday's Skittle that fell on the floor -- all fair game.

In pre-school, our plans for our lives were huge.  The sky was the limit!  We were going to be firemen by day, astronauts by night, and paleontologists in our spare time.  Our parents were superheroes (they still are), our siblings were annoying (they still are), and nothing mattered more than what flavor of pudding was in your lunchbox.

Those were the days.

I don't know about you kids, but when I was in pre-school, my favorite indoor activity was Legos.  I loved me some Legos.  As an only child for the first four years of my life, I was really good at playing by myself.  My parents couldn't even use the typical go-to-your-room punishment, because it wasn't a punishment for me at all.  There were toys in my room.  Why would that be a bad thing?

Every day when I went to pre-school, I would claim the entire bucket of Legos as soon as I was through the door, to make sure no other child could infringe on my playtime.  If any of my classmates beat me to the Legos bucket, I could only find the energy to walk in endless circles around the room, my arms hanging listlessly at my sides, my eyes filled with lost, confused tears.

I created masterpieces with my Legos.  I made towers as tall as I was.  I made sprawling mansions, complete with perimeter walls and an entrance gate.  I made castles, with turrets and battlements and tiny little paper flags.  I could make a house with hardly any effort at all, complete with separate rooms, furniture, doors and windows, a garage, a car for the garage, stairs, gardens, a driveway, sidewalks, whatever I could think up!

I probably ought to mention that, since I was so self-sustaining, I did have "imaginary friends."  Mine were not the typical imaginary friends of lonely little girls, however.  I didn't play tea-party or dress-up with my imaginary friends.  They didn't have stupid names like "Mrs. Pollocolips" or "Nanny Friarbutt."  My imaginary friends were not just my friends.  They were my children.

My Children were about two inches tall, and there were hundreds of them.  Although I knew each child individually, they were usually referred to in the plural just for the sake of simplicity.  They were a huge part of my life.  After My Children were born, nothing was ever my fault anymore.  If something was broken, it was My Children.  If something was missing, it was My Children.  If I told you I didn't have to go to the bathroom, but you made me go anyway, and you heard someone peeing, that was My Children, too. 

Whenever Mom describes the importance of My Children in my life, she talks about that day in the car.  Mom was driving me somewhere, and this somewhere involved getting on the Interstate.  Not unusual.  I was talking and singing to myself.  Also not unusual.  But, quite suddenly and without warning, I started screaming hysterically.  That was very unusual, indeed.

My poor startled Mom tried to ask me what was wrong, and in my panicked state, I managed to yell at her to pull over, which she did.  As soon as the car had stopped, I rolled down the window and leaned out, looking back several yards behind the car.  I probably called out a few unintelligible things, but Mom doesn't remember.  She does remember that just a few moments later, I rolled up the window, faced forward again, and told her it was okay to go.

When she asked what happened, I very calmly explained that My Children had fallen out of the car.  But they were back inside now, and everything was fine.

Clearly, My Children were very important to me.  And as you can imagine, My Children also accompanied me to school.  And when I constructed those beautiful, wondrous castles and houses and buildings, who do you suppose peopled them?  You guessed it: My Children.

Enter villain: Travis. *hiss*  I don't remember Travis's last name.  I don't think there were last names in pre-school.  But I remember Travis.  Travis was big, tall, and mean.  He was a bully, with a copper-blonde mullet.  Travis liked to pick on me, especially, which Mom always said was because he liked me.  I could only respond to that with one word: Ew.

Travis was the destroyer of Lego masterpieces.  I would spend so much time carefully building each little room and terrace of a cavernous villa, watching My Children move in, and before I knew what happened it would be smashed under Travis's big feet.  So much work and time, now a fallen rainbow of despair!  Thankfully, My Children were virtually indestructible, as most imaginary beings are.

But even when I was in pre-school, I had OCD tendencies.  When something was destroyed, I would recreate it.  I would build a mansion. CRASH!  I would build a house.  CRUSH!  I would build a castle.  BAM!  I would build a tower.  CRUNCH!  You couldn't even give the guy points for creativity.  He always just roared in for a few moments, mangled my carefully-constructed miniature buildings with kicking and stomping, and roared away again.  It turns out, it didn't matter what kind of building you made, they were all just as easily destroyed.

My relationship with BlueEyes is like that.

For months now, I have been trying to simply forget that I have a crush on the boy.  And when I'm away from him for extended periods of time, that approach works spectacularly well.  I can build an I-don't-really-like-him-anymore house without breaking a sweat.  But then, I'll go to a party, and he'll be there.  BOOM!  In an incredibly ironic move, he completely crushes that house I slaved over for weeks.

But I regroup.  I build a no-seriously-I-don't-like-him-anymore mansion, and people it with good logic and hopelessness.  Then I see him at church, and he actually talks to me, or waves at me, or acknowledges my existence in some tiny way.  BANG!  Mansion terminated.  Just like this song I know, I built a castle made of paper decks that never stood a chance.

CrazyAunt has this quote she likes to throw at me sometimes.  She says, "Do you know what the definition of insanity is?  Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result."  But it's CrazyAunt.  What does she know?

So I start over again.  This time, I build an I-am-so-over-him-it-is-not-even-funny fortress, and fortify it with cannons of derision, troops of distractions, and walls of I'm-ignoring-you.  Then I go to Brother's basketball game, and we joke with each other by way of an intermediary, and I hear it, that distant SPLOOPH of my fortress imploding.

And I remember that quote CrazyAunt slung at me.  And I think, "I must be insane."

It turns out, it doesn't matter what kind of building you make, they are all just as easily destroyed.

Just in Case

I like to prepare extensively for things that people say will never happen.  I know most people like to comfort themselves with the idea that a particular disaster could never occur.  And most people don't think about what their life would really be like if their wildest dreams ever came true.  But I am of a different mind.  I like to be prepared for every possibility, no matter how remote.

Here, I'll tell you something embarrassing about me: I am an avid fan of telenovelas.  That's right.  I watch Spanish soap operas.  I like to pretend like there's a point to watching these Spanish soap operas, and there sort of is.  They do keep me in practice with my Spanish-speaking skills.  However, if I am being totally honest, I have to own up to the fact that I actually crave the ridiculous drama of these soap operas.

I mean, come on.  No matter how bad my life gets, at least I don't have to worry about an evil twin coming into town and screwing up my life.  And even when my selective memory rears its ugly head, at least I haven't been beaten half to death so that I now have amnesia.  And I know for a fact that Brother is my real brother.  Telenovelas, by simple comparison, make it startlingly clear just how great it is to only have to deal with normal drama.

Although, I have to say, it would be kind of nice to have the romantic theme music play when you meet the person you're supposed to end up with.  Then, no matter how wrong things go in the middle, you know you get a happy ending with lots of kisses and probably like a quadruple wedding.

Like most obsessions, my intimacy with telenovelas leaks out into my everyday life.  When I find myself angry or sad, without much of an outlet, I tend to talk out loud to myself in Spanish.  This penchant for having an inner monologue out loud is an age-old tool -- in addition to telenovelas, even Shakespeare had his characters recite asides!  My life is full of Hispanic asides.

Even better, for Christmas a few years ago, I wrote a synopsis for a telenovela based on BrownFriend's first year of college, which I try to update as things progress.  BrownFriend has the unfortunate quality of attracting awkwardness.  It's never her fault, but she's so gorgeous and so genuinely good that she seems to be constantly surrounded by male hopefuls.  Many times, these hopefuls swarm at the same moment, creating all kinds of fun drama for BrownFriend.  Well, it's not exactly fun for BrownFriend, but I always get a kick out of it.  These ridiculous moments are perfect telenovela material.  BrownFriend and I are hoping that we can eventually get our show optioned to appear on Univision.

The past few paragraphs were the scenic route leading to this drop-off view: I am totally ready to be scouted for a role in an Univision telenovela.  In an ideal world, I would be the leading lady, an American or European immigrant to a Spanish-speaking country (probably Mexico, since it's Univision).  And in a very ideal world, I would be acting opposite Jose Luis Resendez, who is by far my favorite soap star.

If you think I'm kidding, take the following into consideration.  In preparation for this eventual role, I have practiced speaking Spanish with several different accents, both subtle and outlandish: American (including Yankee, Midwest, and Southern), British, French, and German.  I have even practiced speaking Spanish with that stupid Castellano lisp they use in Spain.  And I've practiced the Puerto-Rican accent, where they cut most of their words in half and talk faster than a speeding bullet (Super-Tongues!).  And the Argentinian 'j' sounds, too.

What?  Am I getting too detailed?  Sorry about that...

Anyway, you can laugh, if you'd like.  I told you at the beginning of the post that I prepare for unlikely events.  But if, by some miracle, I get the opportunity, I'll be quite the interesting persona.  They rarely choose non-Hispanic actors for their telenovelas, even when the character in question is supposed to be American.  So we'll see who's laughing when I'm being interviewed on Don Fransisco Presenta after my starring role in the most-watched telenovela of the season!

Here's something else that's slightly embarrassing: Movies have always been a somewhat problematic addiction of mine.  I love movies.  I could watch movies back to back all day long for weeks on end, if my schedule and finances would permit it.  When I moved into my apartment, I was thrilled, because the two large bookshelves I had bought would finally allow me to display all my movies with room to spare (something that hadn't been achieved since my freshman year of college).

I tell you that to tell you this: I have seen several movies of the sci-fi, overcoming-the-government/machines/aliens type movies.  There are some quality films in that genre, like V for Vendetta, Matrix, iRobot, Minority Report, Independence Day, Eagle Eye, Mars Attacks!, etc.  However, these movies have one thing in common... The Big Brother Factor.

For those of you unfamiliar with the reference, I do not blame you.  1984 is a terrible book, in which (spoiler alert!) the bad guy wins.  The bad guy should never, ever win.

But I shouldn't say it's a terrible book, because as far as sci-fi stories go, it's actually very compelling.  The creepiest part about it is the villain of the piece.  In this futuristic world, Big Brother is everywhere.  Big Brother is supposed to be your protector.  He can watch you through your television screen because he wants to keep you safe, not because he's a creeper.  He's in your vehicle, your paintings, your workplace, the pubs and bars, the sportsplexes, everywhere!  Never doubt it -- Big Brother is watching you.

The Big Brother Factor has been a huge sci-fi storyline staple ever since.  And for good reason!  How do you fight something that is everywhere, controlling everything?  And how do you fight the ideologies that keep it in power?  It's the perfect antagonist.  And the best thing about it is how plausible it is.

Of course, with my overactive imagination, I take these movies and stories far too seriously.  What if Big Brother ever did come into existence?  We wouldn't call it that, of course.  It would be called something seemingly professional and seemingly harmless, like the Federal Liability & Intelligence Electronic System (FLIES on the wall), when actually a more accurate name would be the Government Stalker of Death.

It isn't completely out in left field, especially as the fight against domestic terrorism intensifies.  Justifications abound, with my personal favorite being, "If you haven't done anything wrong, there's no reason to be upset about invasions of privacy."  Yeah.  Did you notice the word 'invasions' in there?  Because I did.  And 'invasions' is rarely a word that gives me warm-fuzzies.  I mean, I wouldn't ever put it on a greeting card, if you catch my drift.  But maybe that's just me.

I tell you that to tell you this: I feel strongly that I should be prepared for the inevitability of a real-life Big Brother.  I work diligently to improve upon the part of my brain that I feel will be of most use to me during this eventuality: my propensity for languages.  If it ever comes down to it, I could flee to Central or South America (excepting Brazil), or Spain.  If those countries were out of the question, I could travel to any of the French-speaking countries.  And if even those countries couldn't be considered, I could probably survive on the Russian I know.

However, considering how much I hate change, and how I tend to revert to Meh Mode so often, my guess is that I won't be moving until my life is actively threatened.  Therefore, in preparation for my time under a Big Brother regime, I have been practicing codes.  These codes include a number code and a symbol code of my own devising, in addition to the ability to write in Runes.  I am learning morse code, and diagram codes, and I am becoming extremely skilled with anagrams.

But perhaps the most important thing I am practicing is a language I invented with BlueFriend in seventh grade.  BlueFriend and I invented this language in order to pass notes without fear. With this code, no teacher was able to read what we confided to each other on paper.

We might be a little out of practice, but BlueFriend and I still use this language today.  We later taught it to PurpleFriend, although she has, for the most part, forgotten it.  I even attempted to teach it to GreenFriend while we were on Wilderness Trek in our high school days.  GreenFriend has a less-than-fabulous memory, by her own admission, so she, too, has forgotten the language.

The language is called TAC, and I believe firmly that, when spoken using several phonetic rules I have invented (somewhat arbitrarily), it will be difficult to crack, even though when written, it would be exceedingly simple to decipher.  I practice speaking TAC every day, and I am very nearly fluent.  I plan to teach it to my loved ones in the event that my Big Brother fears become real.  I dare Big Brother to learn TAC.

Now, here's the big one: A couple of months ago, I woke up from a vivid dream, thoroughly creeped out.  All night long, I had wrestled with one very long dream, taking place during the Zombie Apocalypse.

This was no normal Zombie Apocalypse dream (those are normal, right?), in that the undead weren't as inhibited as they are when commonly portrayed in movies and books.  The reanimated corpses in my dream could sense and seek out any human who had consumed sugar.  They were as physically able as ever, and although they were significantly diminished in their mental capacities, they still had the ability to set traps.

Accompanying me in my dream were PurpleFriend, who features prominently in several of my dreams simply because she is my other half, and FoxyFriend, who featured in this dream specifically, because she and I have had a plan for exactly this type of situation for years.

When we were in high school, PurpleFriend, FoxyFriend, and I were a dynamic lunch-eating trio.  We all shared a lunch period, we all hated the cafeteria, and we were all quirky, witty characters.  Because of these things, we had several memorable conversations.  For example, in one conversation regarding krakens and underwater castles, this phrase was uttered, and was repeated for years to come: "Well, slap my seahorse and paint a monkey green!"

But our conversations did/do not always center around silly turns of phrase.  A perfect example of our more enlightened conversations occurred the day that FoxyFriend and I formed the Zombie Apocalypse Protection Unit (ZAP).  Along with Father Bobo, who lived on the roof of the school, she and I would use our high school building as a protective fortress.

Studies have shown that the best place to be during a Zombie Uprising is a complex building, like a mall.  The school is the perfect strategic location in the event of an invasion of the rising dead (there's that word 'invasion' again, still as unpleasant as ever).  Although members of ZAP would be familiar with the layout, any mentally deficient zombie would have trouble with the school's grid of maze-like hallways, the number of lockable doors, and the multiple floor levels connected by staircases.  (There is one elevator, but it would be easily dispatched).

Even in my dream, when faced with the mortal peril of having our flesh eaten mercilessly by hypoglycemic zombies, FoxyFriend, PurpleFriend and I remained completely unphased.  We even took two little girls under our protection.  Our first hide-out was the roof of an apartment building, our second a belfry, both very effective.  And you'll be pleased to know that, with the help of The Rock, we all made it out alive.

So you see, I am fully prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.  You will find I am generous with my knowledge, and vigilant in my defense training.  So when those Inferi come moaning at your door, just remember that the ZAP Unit is waiting for you to join the resistance.

Horizontally

I am going to start this blog post by writing about hugs.  The way I see it, there are three basic types of hugs: frontal hugs, sideways hugs, and group hugs.  You know what I'm talking about.

A frontal hug has many different sub-categories.  One common frontal hug is the Man Hug, in which two male humanoids approach one another, shake hands, pull into a quick hug, slap each other on the back a couple of times, and part.

Another is the Great-Aunt Bertha Hug, in which the smaller and weaker humanoid is swiftly and forcibly squished into the breast of the larger party, held there until almost smothered, and then released.

There's also the Glomp, which begins with a sneak attack, hits the climax when one humanoid jumps into the other's arms, and can be characterized by the possibility that one or both people might end up on the ground by the time the hug is over.

My personal favorite is the Bear Hug, in which two humanoids of any size, gender, or hair color approach one another, hug powerfully, growl/laugh/squeal, and then part.  Sometimes a person involved in a Bear Hug might even lose their footing for a moment or two.

Sideways hugs of all varieties can be described with one word: awkward.  It could be the Hesitant Hug, where you think you maybe should hug someone, but you can't quite decide, so what ends up happening can be anything from a regular sideways hug to using the other person's shoulder for an armrest.  Awkward.

There's also the Yikes Hug, when a person wants to hug you, but you really don't want to hug them, so you turn sideways at the last second so they can't really get a full hug in on you.  It's the hug equivalent of cheeking someone when they try to kiss you.  Awkward.

My favorite sideways hug is the Boy/Girl Friendship Hug.  This hug occurs when two people who don't happen to be the same gender do happen to be friends, and to see each other in a social situation.  Usually when this hug appears, it is because there is some gray fuzz on the definition of the relationship, and neither party is willing to dust it off just yet.  So they go with the sideways hug so there's no awkwardness.  Except, guess what?  It's still awkward.

Group hugs are the best category.  They are always chaotic, usually messy, and never fail to cause uproarious laughter.  There's The Sandwich, in which one person becomes the meat, and two or three other people become the bread.  This is very amusing for the bread people and the spectators, although it can be rather unpleasant for the one in the middle...

A similar hug is The Squish.  This is usually reserved for a special occasion, like an engagement or a birthday.  Like The Sandwich, one person is the victi-- I mean, the center of attention.  Once they are surrounded, everyone moves inward until the main character of this hug can no longer breathe properly.  Again, this is a crowd favorite, but can be a little disconcerting for the monkey in the middle.

The best group hug is The Blob.  Everyone hugs everyone, and then everyone keeps hugging everyone, and soon it's just a giant hug-fest of peace and love and rainbows.  Also, like the horror movie with the same name, this hug is almost impossible to avoid and/or escape.

Now I will ask the question you are undoubtedly thinking by now: Why in the world am I writing in deep, superfluous detail about hugs?

Well, I'll tell you.  Although I plan to spend more paragraphs on the topic, the explanation can be summed up in three dreaded words:  There's this boy.

You see, it occurred to me recently that a lot of social interactions can be contrasted with the hug system I have described for you.  This idea occurred to me because that dreaded boy I mentioned above causes me to overanalyze social situations even more than I already do.  His mere presence ups the social ante until it's almost too much to risk.  A big reason for this is my completely unavoidable attraction to him.  But usually I blame it on his complex, distractingly blue eyes.

With most of my friends, including the guys, frontal hug interaction is no problem at all.  A one-on-one greeting followed by a friendly conversation is as easy as breathing.  I have known most of my current social group for my whole life (hence the ease of the situation -- new people make me clam up and reveal my socially challenged-ness).  When you've known people since the pimples and greasy hair of high school, or in some cases, since the poopy diapers and runny noses of toddlerhood, the social rules don't really exist anymore.

As you can imagine, BlueEyes is an exception to that generality.  I sure know how to pick 'em -- BlueEyes is just as socially challenged as I am, at least when it comes to interacting with me.  I have known BlueEyes since I was just a weird little tomboy, still fascinated with roly-polies and positive that I was going to be a paleontologist when I grew up.  So we know how to have a conversation.  But lately, we choose not to go there.  We choose to casually ignore one another.  I think you can infer that this approach is getting frustrating.

Here comes the kicker.  BlueEyes and I are forced into the same social situations more often than is comfortable.  You see, our group hug interactions tend to overlap one another.  He's friends with a lot of my friends, I'm friends with a lot of his friends, and these friends all tend to have parties sometimes.  Not to mention his friendship with Brother, and the fact that we've gone to the same church since infancy.  That's a lot of times to casually ignore each other.

Usually, our group hug interactions are virtually painless.  Groups make everything easier, since there's the built-in buffer of too many people talking at once about the same topics.  And our group hug interactions are definitely of The Blob persuasion.  It was the sideways hug interactions that first got me thinking about these classifications for relationships.

There's no denying that BlueEyes and I have a sideways hug relationship.  We must have a buffer at all times, a medium if you will, through which we can direct our social interaction.  If it appears that we are both speaking with that neutral party, while still kind of talking to each other, then we can project the illusion of having a frontal hug relationship, when really our relationship would be easier without any hugging at all.

Typically after a night of sideways hug interactions, I just feel ridiculous and goofy for over-thinking every little thing, down to the minutest details.  I also feel ridiculous for being incapable of simply stepping past that sideways barrier and going for the normal, pleasant frontal hug conversation.  And it feels silly that BlueEyes can't get past the sideways force field either.

When these feelings overwhelm me, it leaves me with the very real fear that BlueEyes and I are going to be stuck in the accidental armrest phase forever.  Conversation-wise and hug-wise, sideways is just awkward.

I don't know if any of this makes sense.  I guess hugs are a weird way to categorize this whole thing.  Still, I wish that we could all have frontal hug relationships, where you could speak your mind or give someone a Bear Hug without worrying that they'll hate you, or that you'll break them.  I wish you could say exactly what you were thinking in a given situation, without having those newly spoken thoughts backfire on you, wreaking havoc on your life through pesky social repercussions.

I guess what I'm saying is: I want life to make sense.

Yeah.  That's not gonna happen.

... Group hug?

Improbable

Remember that overactive imagination I mentioned before?  That overactive imagination is an unavoidable side-effect of being me.  And because of it, my life is about ten times more complicated than it needs to be.  Because when you have an overactive imagination, no event gets a simple explanation.

In some cases, this can actually be helpful.  I'm like a mental Boy Scout -- always prepared.  For instance, no serial killer will ever fool me by hiding in the backseat of my car.  Before I even open my driver's side door, I check through the windows for backseat lurkers.  Sometimes, I even check my trunk, just in case a passing serial killer needed a place to stash a potential victim, and my trunk was handy.

But most of the time, the complex situations I invent are more a vague entertainment than a helpful preparation.  Please allow me to give you some example situations, taking place in and around my apartment complex.

Situation #1: Every week when I take my trash down to the pick-up bins, I notice an empty, gallon-sized glass bottle of Merlot.  Since the trash is emptied every Tuesday, this means that every week, someone in my apartment building is drinking an entire gallon of Merlot.  Therefore, this person drinks Merlot like I drink milk.

Simple Explanation: The woman in Apt. #2 likes Merlot, and is kind of an alcoholic.

My Explanation: The woman in Apt. #2 met her first husband on her travels in France.  He was a young US soldier, she a naive university student.  With each passing day, the two of them fell deeper and deeper in love.  But cruel circumstances sought to part them; she had to return home to finish her studies, and he would transfer to a new European military base.  On the eve of their separation, they stole away from their respective obligations and met at a tiny little café, where they drank a bottle of Merlot beneath the sparkling moonlight.

Although they were parted in the coming months, they always had Merlot and moonlight.  In the years that followed, after they had been married, they celebrated each anniversary with a bottle of Merlot.  But now that he has passed, and she has found love again in a new man, she still can't forget their old love, and toasts him every evening, in the moonlight, with a glass of Merlot.

Situation #2: All the dogs in the neighborhood spontaneously erupt into raucous, long-lasting fits of barking.  They do this once every two weeks or so, creating a very eerie soundtrack for my bedtime preparations.

Simple explanation: One of them started barking, and the others thought it was a really good idea.

-OR-

There was a coyote, and they were afraid.

-OR-

Someone walked by.

My Explanation: There is a ghost in the neighborhood, which appears every two weeks.  This ghost is the ghost of a Confederate soldier, who, during the Battle of Nashville, was waiting in a very good hiding place to ambush any Union soldiers that happened by.  That was before the dogs found him, and started to bark and howl, betraying his position to the Union Troops.  Needless to say, his hiding place wasn't very good anymore.

Now, he returns every two weeks to punish the species that caused his demise.  He rattles their cage doors, pulls their tails, and stands just beyond leash range, torturing all the dogs in the neighborhood.  I call this ghost the Confederate Canine Poltergeist (or CCP), and am almost positive that he really exists.

~On a completely unrelated note, I think I am going to start saying "saving numbers" instead of "saving money."  I don't really feel like I save money, since I use my debit card waaaaaaaaay too often.  I'm really just saving numbers on my computer screen.  And now, back to the regularly scheduled program.~

Situation #3: Sometimes, after the gates to the complex have closed, my friends come over for some kind of get-together or shindig I happen to be hosting.  My apartment is literally right in front of the gates, so how this usually goes down is: 1.) They drive up to the gates. 2.) They call me.  3.) I pick up my remote for the gates, pull back my balcony curtains, and open the gate from my living room.

But sometimes, especially when PinkFriend is involved, something magical happens.  The gates mysteriously open without any prompting from me, without any impatient residents waiting behind her, and without any pedestrians visible.

Simple Explanation: The gate got confused and opened due to a proximity sensor of some kind.

My Explanation: One of the residents in Building B sits at his window, remote in the ready position, watching for anyone getting stuck at the gate.  When he sees this happening, he uses the powers given him by a higher being, and allows them entrance to the apartment complex.  This gives him a strange feeling of benevolent omnipotence, an emotion to which he is now addicted.

(*Note: This is a really bad idea, Building B Power-Trip Man.  What if you admit a serial killer to the complex?!  But perhaps he's thought of that, since he usually only lets PinkFriend in.  Even I can't imagine a serial killer driving a little white PT Cruiser).

-OR-

PinkFriend uses her Disney magic to send a signal to the gate.  Since all technology can be trumped by Disney magic, the gate opens magically for her, and her alone.

I should get me some of that Disney magic.  But it'd probably cost too many numbers...

There is actually another explanation for the gate thing having to do with a hobgoblin, what lives in the signal box.  He likes PinkFriend a lot.  He is also a cousin to the monster in the ice-maker of my parents' refrigerator, and his brother is the whatsit that lives in the lint trap of the dryer and steals socks.

But those will be stories for a different blog post, because I'm tired of writing and I can't think of a good conclusion for this desultory collection of anecdotes.  Yet, do not fear, good readers!  For every good writer knows, when in doubt about a conclusion, just use the old stand-by:

-THE END.-

Spite

All right, you know that when Beethoven was first starting out as a musician, people were having conversations like this:

Townsperson 1: Good day.

Townsperson 2: It is, isn't it?

T1: I say, did you hear that Beethoven is composing his fifth symphony?

T2: Beethoven?  You mean Ludwig von?

T1: The very same!

T2: Umm...

T1: What's wrong?

T2: Well, I'm afraid what you're saying is quite impossible.

T1: And why is that?

T2: Dude, Ludwig von Beethoven is deaf.

And yet, he was making beautiful music that we still know today!  Isn't that incredible?

Of course, every time I picture Beethoven... Well, before I tell you what I picture, let me give you a little background.  Then you can decide whether you want to read what I picture or not.  It isn't exactly a pleasant image.

When I was in fourth grade, we all had to give a report on someone of significance in history.  This was a Montessori School, so the word "significance" was interpreted widely.  I did my report on Chester Alan Arthur's wife, Ellen.  I thought she was pretty.  But GenericName did her report on Ludwig von Beethoven.  A few of the key points she brought up were as follows: 1.) He was deaf.  2.) He broke the legs off his piano so he could feel the vibrations in the floor.  3.) He often practiced in the nude, with the curtains wide open.

Okay, my little fourth grade self had the same overactive imagination as I do today.  As that fourth grade girl with a detail-oriented mind, I added a couple of elements to the picture GenericName had drawn for us.  I figured he had to be old.  And I figured he was probably drunk a lot (because who in their right mind would go naked with the curtains open?).

***If you don't want to read about the conclusionary mental image created by these aforementioned elements of my limited knowledge, skip the next paragraph entirely.*** 

So, when I picture Beethoven, this is what I see: I see an overweight, old man with a ridiculously huge, curly gray wig.  He's completely nude, holding a glass of vodka, and sitting spreadeagled on the floor in front of his broken piano, shaking the whole house with his thunderous melodies.  Isn't that lovely?

Don't worry, this paragraph is safe to read.  In a way, I find my unconventional picture of Beethoven to be... sort of inspiring.  Because that dude was written off by everyone.  You know he was.  People would walk by his house shielding their eyes, muttering about the crazy deaf guy who lived there.  They only muttered because he had money, otherwise they would have yelled about it.  He would have been slandered openly all over the streets.

And when he went deaf and continued to write music, well... you know he was laughed at.  Heck.  I would have laughed at him.  Wouldn't you?  I mean, before you'd heard his music.  If you just heard the rumor on the street, or read it in the paper, wouldn't you be skeptical?  A deaf lunatic, writing symphonies!  What has the musical world come to these days?

But I think there's a lesson buried in Beethoven's towering powdered wig.  I think we ought to take a note out of Beethoven's symphonies.  We really ought to be Beethoven.

I mean, if Thing 2 scratched my right hand, and it became gangrenous and they had to amputate it, would I learn to write with my left hand so I could continue to write my stories?  Would I type one-handed, knowing I would be ten times slower that way?

Let's say I did.  Then let's say, I got locked out of my apartment on a freezing cold night, and I got frostbite on my left hand.  Now that hand's gone, too.  Would I go to the effort of getting some kind of voice recognition software?  Would I try to dictate my stories?  Or would I just give up?  Because I can tell you, if I went deaf, I would not be trying to write music.  I would be sitting in a corner bemoaning my fate.

But not Beethoven.  He could have chosen to give up, to succumb to what the world was telling him.  His ears were trying to force him out of something he loved.  But did he surrender?  No, good ol' Ludwig put the wig back on, poured the vodka and said, "Screw you, hatahs!"  And kept writing his music.  And I'm so glad he did!  The world would be a darker place without the Ode to Joy.

Beethoven was definitely crazy.  But I am of the opinion that crazy people are blessed above all others.  I think they've figured out something we haven't.  And I want to try to find that.  Sometimes you have to play raucous melodies on the broken piano in the buff.  Sometimes you have to spite all the naysayers just for the fun of it.  Sometimes you have to shock people.

I'm not gonna lie -- you'll never see me get naked in public.  Not even close.  But I'll definitely be rocking the Beethoven way, with my own personal twist.  And maybe (just maybe!) when I die, people will look at my tombstone, smile softly, and say, "That girl was an absolute loon."

I would love that.

Ding

Hi.  Guess what?  I hate my job.

One of the worst things about Responsible Adult Limbo is the fear.  The Fear.  The only one.  It's the fear that I will be stuck like this forever.

Don't get me wrong -- I am actually in a fantastic place, life-wise!  I have an apartment, two cats, a working car, a loving family, crazy friends, health, and (usually) enough money to get by.  That is a pretty kick-awesome setup right there.

But it's also sort of the root of the problem.  You see, in order to keep most of those things, I must maintain a steady income.  The way I maintain a steady income is through my terrible job.  If I lose my terrible job, or relinquish it for any reason, my income will vanish, and all those things will follow my income.  Well, most of those things.  I hope my family and friends are not sticking around because of my money.  That would suck.  Also, it wouldn't make sense.  But more than being nonsensical, it would really suck.  A lot.

I guess I should clarify a couple of things.  My job is actually a pretty sweet gig, if you're looking from the outside in.  I am a full-time temp at a corporation that manages prisons, which always makes for interesting conversation starters.  I get paid a very respectable hourly wage, with a regular full-time schedule, which also makes for interesting conversation bulk.  However, what I am doing for forty hours every week is pretty much the most boring thing it is possible to do in this business: I process paperwork, which makes for a perfect conversation killer.

Specifically, I process applications.  Applications for prisoners who want to come to our prisons, you may ask?  No.  That would be interesting and kind of entertaining.  I process applications for employment with the various prisons we run across the country.  I make sure that each applicant applying in a 'Correctional Officer' job code has completed a scored InSight.  If so, do we have a copy of said InSight?  If so, do we have the pass code and numerical score marked on the checklist?  If so, were they interviewed?  If not, why not?  If a person indicates on their resume that they helped to raise two horses recovered from abusive homes, is that relevant?  If not, why in the world did they include that on their resume?  Blah blah blah blah blah, you are so bored, I know it.

But there are more reasons not to like it than just that it is boring.  While that is a hefty percentage of the reason I don't like it, there are other factors that apply.  One of those things is the whole office setting.  Dude, if I could work from home, this job would still be boring, but way less stressful.  People in an office setting clearly have nothing to do but create drama in the workplace.

Take for example, all my troubles with Coworker.  Now that Supervisor is back, I haven't had a single blip on that radar screen, but how long will that last?  Do I arm myself for defensive purposes, or will that be perceived as preparation for attack?  Do I have any allies?  Working in an office is like being involved in an ongoing, life-sized game of Risk.  Except you don't get any back-moves at the end of your turn.

Also, establishing a reputation as a diligent employee, while beneficial in the long-run, can be incredibly annoying in the short term.  I am way too observant, and also OCD.  So a job like this one, where attention to details is what gets you ahead, is perfect for me.  I apparently excelled within my first several weeks.  In addition to the fact that their last temp had been a real bust, I picked up all the duties in the job description very quickly.

So, when they ran out of normal jobs for me to do, they started busying me with the jobs no one else would do.  It started with simple things like archiving, labeling, etc.  But it ended with the fiasco of Adams: a new facility no one else had yet processed, with so many errors that it took me two weeks to get through just one month of applications (as opposed to the two days it takes to do a normal facility).  After I had spent most of my employment processing this pathetic batch of applications, I was told that my efforts had made it clear that Adams needed more help than we could give them.  Therefore, they would be sending all the applications back to the facility, for processing there.  But thanks for your time.

Those are just a few of the reasons that this job is killing me slowly.  If I was the victim in a game of Clue, I could give you the solution right now: It was the job, in the office, with the figurative strichnine.

Experience has taught me that languishing away in a job you hate is like making the downward spiral a water-slide.  When it looks fun and it feels fun, it must actually be fun!  And it will be fun all the way until you hit the rocks at the bottom.  Except now, not only is your bum smarting, but you're also kind of drowning.  Should have had a little foresight.

Now that I am on an upward climb, I am thinking about other jobs I might pursue, whenever I decide I am in a position to do that safely.  Since I am still paying off my EMSLs, going back to school isn't really an option, unless someone wants to throw money at me to do it (and considering my GPA, that isn't likely to happen).  So these jobs I think up are going to have to require nothing more than a high school diploma.

Other than my dream jobs -- archaeology, linguist, and best-selling author -- I haven't ever given much thought to another job I might like.  So when I sat down to think about it, the first job I thought of was to be a Flight Attendant.

I love to fly and I love to travel.  I have pretty much accepted that any job I take is going to require that I interact with people somehow (boo...), so I was willing to casually ignore the little bit about the service industry.

I started doing research.  You don't need any education beyond a high school degree.  Any specialized training they want to give you would come during a 3 to 6-week training session after you've been hired.  An average flight attendant flies for two days, and then gets a rest period of three or more days.  There are height guidelines, but at 5'9", I fit snugly in the middle.  And they give special consideration to people, like me, who speak multiple languages fluently.

Now I was excited about the idea.  I sent out a Tweet: "What if... I became a flight attendant?  Discuss."

Amazingly, my friends were not as certain of my career choice as I had been.  GreenFriend reminded me of that point I had brushed off -- being stuck on a plane with people who don't love to travel as much as I do.  Grumble.  But she was just one friend.  Surely my other friends would back me up.

However, BlueFriend and PurpleFriend shared GreenFriend's opinion.  PurpleFriend brought up the hours I would be working, mentioning that even the most die-hard travelers had trouble with a flight attendant's heavy schedule.  BlueFriend made me realize that I might have to work from a different base city, especially if I was going to be doing a lot of international flights.  And then Mom pointed out that I would have to do something with my cats whenever I was gone.

My happy little balloon deflated.  Being a flight attendant was no longer an option.

I decided that I should just find a better job, which would leave me with enough time and money to travel whenever I want to.  Then I could fly and travel in the luxury and comfort of a regular passenger, without the worries of taking care of other people, some of whom shouldn't be allowed to travel at all.

Of course, that pretty much leaves my dream jobs -- archaeologist, linguist, or best-selling author.  I am working on a few projects regarding the best-selling author one.  But I need a back-up.  I need something to cover my expenses until I hit paydirt with my Great American Novel, which will be poignant yet comical, will span generations, and will be used as a subject in future English classes.

I am keeping my options open.  Until I finish that amazing future classic, the dreams of living in a lighthouse and/or castle with GreenFriend doing nothing but reading, writing, and having a blast until the end of my days will have to be put on hold.  For now, I still have to find a job that would be an acceptable replacement for this one.  One which would not poison me slowly.

But until I find that job, all flights out of Responsible Adult Limbo have been cancelled due to storms.

Pressganged

I think I might have been tricked into being a Baptist.

I can't be sure -- it's all so confusing!  But let me back up.  I'll tell you how this happened to me, and you can decide for yourself.

Recently, I realized that I am completely out of shape.  I may be skinny and give off the illusion of being healthy, but trust me, I am very, very out of shape.  In high school, I played hardcore sports, including soccer, basketball, and Ultimate Frisbee.  As a result of these recreational activities, I was quite nimble and rather strong for my measly, almost unhealthy 110 pounds.

Then came college.  Ahhhh, college.  You know the Freshman Fifteen?  Well, a steady diet of all the dairy and cheeseburgers I could eat got me up to the Freshman Twenty-Five.  I was finally at a healthy weight for my 5'9" frame, and I didn't care if it was all mostly collected in my butt.

Still, I maintained some exercise in my college life.  Since we lived on a sprawling campus, it was easy to keep my soccer legs just by walking or biking to class, if I went to class.  I very nearly got lost hiking on the myriad nature trails available to students.  And for two semesters, I was enrolled in Wado-Ru karate.  I thought I was taking an easy PE credit, but it turned out to be way more legitimate and muscle-building than I anticipated.

Fast-forward to December, 2010.  The most daily exercise I was getting was walking from my apartment to my car, from my car into work, and back again.  The rest of the day was spent sitting in some kind of cushiony seat, usually staring at a computer or TV screen, with a Dr Pepper in hand.  You can see how my soccer legs had been slowly losing strength.  I had come to the nasty realization that anytime I tried to play a sport which involves running, I was lagging behind with the proverbial stitch in my side after only ten minutes.

That is simply unacceptable.

With a newfound zeal for the belief that being skinny is no excuse for being a couch potato, I immediately set out in search of a place to work out.  And when I say 'I set out,' what I mean is, I sat on the couch and pulled up Google on my computer...

I hadn't worked out since I played soccer formally for my high school, six years ago.  But I was sure I could get back into the swing of things.  My internet search yielded several options in my area.  Well, it listed several high-priced exercise venues in my area, anyway, which weren't exactly options after all.

Dejected, I explained my Out of Shape Woes to my superhero Mom, who suggested a brilliant solution, as usual.  She suggested the Rec Center most kids in the neighborhood used for pick-up basketball games.  Apparently they had a walking track and work-out room in addition to the gym full of high school boys.  They also happened to be located in and run by a Baptist church.  But the best was yet to come: only $75 per year!  This was a deal I could not pass up.

I took PurpleFriend, PinkFriend, and GreenFriend along on the tour, hosted by CuteBoy (age unknown).  CuteBoy was a good tour guide, leading us to the different exercise areas with quiet tolerance of our loud, inside-jokey interactions.  Once back in the lobby, CuteBoy explained that there were two types of members-- walking track members (only $45 a year), and full members (who got access to everything, including the racquetball courts!).  And at the end of the night, I purchased a year's membership to the whole building.

When I came back a week or so later, I'll admit to being a little disappointed that CuteBoy wasn't manning the desk.  Instead, I met ElderlyGuy.  I asked ElderlyGuy for my membership number (86), as I had been instructed to do.  Quite without warning, ElderlyGuy started asking me questions, which was unexpected.  But I was feeling righteous and fierce because I was about to exercise!  So I ignored the socially challenged alarm bells and did my best impression of chatting with the fellow.

New member?  Easy one.  Yes.  Yes, I am a new member.  I am a new member who's about to get spectacularly toned on that elliptical you've got upstairs.

Walking track member?  That's one a little tougher.  I get to use more than the walking track.  I get to use the elliptical.  So no.  The answer is no.  I am an everything member?

A church member?  Oh.  I don't think that's what I signed up for.  Maybe it's just the name they call it?  Or do they make people pay to be a member of their church?  Oh, dear.  Did I pay to be a church member just to get access to their gym?  Do I have to take communion before I can use the elliptical?!  Am I a phony?  Am I going to Hell?!

By the time I had asked myself these questions, I had already gotten my card and a locker, and I had started my warm-up on the walking track.  I was walking behind two Latina women, who were speaking rapid Spanish without realizing I could understand every word of it.

But I was too distracted by the question of my denominational status to be listening to them.  It was in the midst of this existential crisis that I passed the two Latina walkers, who had stopped for a stretch.  It was unavoidable now.  I had to eavesdrop.

"She has the legs of a soccer player," said the younger woman, watching me walk past.

The older woman, undoubtedly the younger one's mother, responded with, "She has the legs of a giraffe."

GIRAFFE LEGS?!

I cast a shocked glance at my legs.  They are skinny, and disproportionately long.  You'll hear no argument from me about that.  But, giraffe legs?!  Do I really have giraffe legs?

I'm still not sure if this church is trying to trick people into buying memberships to heaven's gym, but I am pretty sure you can't be a Baptist against your will.  I signed up to get ripped using their elliptical, and I intend to do just that!

As long as that surprise helping of Salvation comes with a side dish of No Giraffe Legs, I say, "Amen, Brother!  Shanghai away."

Pong: Part 2

Memory #2: When I was 10 years old, I went to visit CrazyAunt in Arizona all by myself.  I was thrilled.  CrazyAunt was by far my favorite person in the world, especially since Grandmother had died a few months ago.  CrazyAunt always reminded me of Grandmother.

CrazyAunt lived in the mountains of Arizona, which provided a perfect launch point for all kinds of tourist destinations, like the Grand Canyon, the Sonora Desert Museum, and Four Corners.  On this particular trip, however, I spent most of my time climbing all over the awesome rocks leading down to a creek in CrazyAunt's very own backyard.  Believe me, to a 10-year-old tomboy, that was/is the best backyard that ever existed.

But CrazyAunt had a big surprise for me.  She knew how much I loved the outdoors, and it was plain that I loved rocks of all shapes and sizes.  Consequently, CrazyAunt planned a trip to Rock Hound State Park.  That place is a very cool place.  It's a place where people who like rocks can go and admire all the really cool rocks that are collected in that one patch of desert.  I realize that that description sounds lame, but I was jumping out of my skin to go.

Now, I was only ten, so I can't be sure.  But I am pretty sure that even if you are a rock hound, you aren't allowed to take anything from a state park.  Like a rock.  Or, in our case, a bucket of rocks.  But CrazyAunt assured me it would be fine, and I should take whatever rocks I wanted.  Therefore, I gamboled around, picking up really huge, really awesome rocks with really cool colors in them, listening for the satisfying thonk! when I dropped one into my bucket.

CrazyAunt followed at a slower pace, picking up tiny little rocks and turning them over and over in her hand.  Every now and then, she would hold one to her mouth, and then drop it into her bucket.  Her rocks always made a wimpy little chink! when they hit the bottom.

Naturally curious, I asked CrazyAunt why she was only picking small ones, and why she kept holding the ones she wanted to her mouth.  CrazyAunt explained that since I was friends with all the big ones, she was making sure the small ones weren't getting their feelings hurt.  Then she answered the second part of my question by explaining that if you wanted to take a rock home, you should ask it if it wants to go.  Some of these rocks, she explained, might be very happy here in the Rock Hound State Park, and if they wanted to stay, that was their choice.

And then CrazyAunt walked slowly on, continuing her rock hunt.  Horrified, I plonked down in the sand and immediately started pulling out all of my rocks, carefully asking each one if it wanted to go home with me.  But there was a problem.  They weren't answering me.

Quite distraught by now, I raced after CrazyAunt and asked her how I would know if the rocks wanted to go or not.  "Oh, they don't talk," CrazyAunt told me.  "They'll tell you with their feelings.  You just have to close your eyes and feel what they are feeling.  That's how they'll tell you."

So I went back to my pile and started asking and feeling, feeling and asking.  Probably because I have an overactive imagination, I actually ended up discarding several, keeping a few, and carrying a few along in my shirt because they weren't sure yet.  I was super-nice to every single rock I picked up, trying to make sure they weren't afraid of me, so they would want to come home with me.

You may notice I haven't done any grown-up-girl analyzation on this memory.  That isn't because I believe rocks really do have feelings (necessarily).  It's just that, in the memory with my father, I could guess at his motives, because I realized when I got older that they were probably not the motives I had gathered as a five-year-old.  But with CrazyAunt, things are different.  I am now 22 years old, and CrazyAunt still tells me that rocks have feelings.  I think CrazyAunt really believed what she was telling me that day.

And I did get mind bullets from those rocks.  Some of them were angry with me for not asking in the first place.  Some were afraid of me.  Some were simply hesitant to leave.  Some were eager to go, some tacitly compliant, while others were uncertain, but open to the idea.

That was twelve years ago, and I don't know if I assigned those feelings to those rocks.  But I do know that I still ask rocks' permission if I want to take them home.  And although I don't ask their permission, I do at least give them some warning if I am going to throw them.

So you can see where I learned to think that all inanimate objects have feelings.  This belief manifests itself in other ways, too.  I apologize when I bump into things.  I say 'ow' when things fall and hit the floor.  I avoid stepping on things, and am horrified if I do it by accident.

But there are less ridiculous side-effects too.  By my logic, animate creatures must have at least double the amount of feelings as inanimate objects.  Therefore, I don't step on ants, I move turtles out of roads, and I never squash a bug (unless it's a mosquito -- I'm sorry, I just don't care if I hurt a mosquito's feelings).  This belief has also led to a firm recycling policy.  Metals, papers, plastics, it doesn't matter.  I feel like something has died to give me a small useful thing, so I give back to it as much as I can.

But before these more adult-like symptoms of my belief had surfaced, I was six years old and playing Pong.  That poor little dot!  I hated that little dot, and loved it at the same time.  Whenever it bounced past my bar, I hated that I had lost, but simultaneously loved that the dot was free (for now).

But in the meantime, every time that little dot ricocheted off of the wall, or a sidebar (including mine!), I imagined what a sad, sad life that little dot must lead.  Wouldn't it have a headache all the time?  Wouldn't it get tired of sliding back and forth like that?  Wouldn't it get dizzy?

Eventually, my imagined empathy with the Pong dot became too much for me to bear.  I stopped playing the game, and, because I am fond of overkill, asked my mother to delete the game from our computer.  I went back to playing math games (which is an oxymoron) and LodeRunner, proud to have liberated the dot.

Now that I am older, I think I understand a little bit more about my feelings concerning that dot.  You see, sometimes I go through these weird periods of time in my life.  Most people call them roller coaster times, but I don't call them that.  I don't call them anything.

These times in my life usually begin with a downward spiral, which ends with me at rock bottom, curled up in the corner under a red plaid blanket, downing a Dr Pepper with one hand, watching NetFlix streaming with the other.  If anyone dares to get near, I hiss, snarl, blatantly ignore, or otherwise offend the encroacher.

After I have hit this point, as I did recently, I wallow in self-pity, self-loathing, and any/all other bad emotions directed at my own pitiful self.  After I have wallowed for a bit, I start to think, "This is stupid."  Then I start to think, "Yeah, it's really stupid!  What is wrong with me?  Why can't I just grow up?!"  And that is when the upward climb begins.

The upward climb is always way more difficult and time-consuming than the downward spiral, especially since it's easy to slip and fall back to the red-plaid-cave-in-the-corner phase.  But the upward climb isn't all bad.  I get into what I call "efficiency modes," in which I clean, organize, and schedule to my little heart's desire.  I feel awake and alert and happy.  These "efficiency modes" often have the added bonus of making me a little more observant than I already am, leading to random and inexplicable moments of complete, all-encompassing happiness.

One such moment occurred a couple of days ago, when I began Part 1 of this post.  I had gotten up early, in accordance with my New Year's resolutions, which left me feeling very accomplished and confident and proud of myself.  So I exited my apartment, full of breakfast, ready to tackle the day.  But when I reached my car, it was evident that I was going to have to remain in the 15 degree wind chill to scrape the frost off my windshield.  On any other day, this would have depressed me.  But not today!  I merely reached into the car, pulled out my scraper, and began the task.

As I scraped and shoved, I noticed that this frost was no ordinary frost.  This wasn't the cover-all blanket frost that normally mocked me from my windshield.  This was a beautiful, intricate frost.  Branching out in all directions, this frost was like feathers.  This frost was like feathers on feathers on feathers.  The closer you looked the more you saw.  In fact, I was so taken with this beautiful frost that I almost stopped scraping it away.  That was before I noticed that the same frost skated across my passenger windows and my back windshield, so I continued to clear a pathway for my vision without further guilt.

When I stepped into my car and curled my fingers around the ice-cold steering wheel, I glanced at the feathery frost on my window happily.  I kept thinking about it the whole time I was driving to work, until I decided that there was no other explanation except that I had been visited by ice fairies.

The visions of the ice fairies figure skating over my windows, leaving their feathery trails behind for my gazing wonder, danced in my head all day.  And even though I am perfectly aware that my overactive imagination is at it again, I can't shake the image of those perfect little fairies, creating a masterpiece that most people scraped off the windows without appreciating.  It makes me happy to remember the beautiful designs in the cold.

So I wonder about that dot.  Did every moment of victory, when it finally bounced past the sidebar to freedom, perhaps feel like these rare moments in my upward climbs?  Were we actually more alike than I thought?  Because even though I sometimes hate these cycles in my life, these roller coaster times, these levels of Pong, I like my life.  I always think the rock bottoms are worth the upward climb moments.  I savor the joys, and learn from the bad times.

And now I'm just a little bit happier.  Because maybe that dot didn't have it so bad after all.

Pong: Part 1

When I was a very young child, still learning about video games, my dad introduced me to the game of Pong.  I didn't play it on the old Atari (I wasn't that cool), but we had a version for our MS-DOS computer, and I tried it a few times on that.  I grew to hate that game.

Part of the reason I hated it, I will admit, is because I genuinely sucked at Pong.  My little 6-year-old fingers couldn't keep up with that infernal little dot, which would always seem to evade my predictions of its bounce by just the right distance.  But that completely logical reason to hate a game did not occur to me until I gained a few years.  When I was six, I believed I hated it for a different reason entirely.

I felt sorry for the dot.

I feel the need to tell you that when I was six years old, I believed everything, from rocks to trees to computer animations, had feelings.  I believed that I could hurt those feelings.  And I believed that, quite often, I did hurt those feelings.  I can trace these feelings back to two specific memories from my childhood.

Memory #1: When I was four or five years old, I had been out in the backyard all day with Dad, who was building a swingset for me to play on (ah, sweet rapture!). But Dad got tired and hungry, and went in for a snack.  Since my swingset wasn't finished yet, and since I never went inside willingly for the first seven years of my life, I thought it might be fun to build something, like Dad.

He'd left his hammer.  He'd left some nails.  In my five-year-old mind, hammering a nail into something was exactly the definition of building something!  So I took up the hammer, and I took up a nail, and I hammered the nail into a nearby cedar tree.

I remember that it was cedar, just as I remember its exact triangulated location between the garage, the firewood pile, and the half-constructed swingset, because this was the day I learned that trees could bleed.  I had barely swung the hammer three times before the nail lodged securely in the tree, and before the third swing, I noticed that something was oozing from below the nail.  It was sap.  I knew that it was sap.  But it was still gross, and I stopped hammering.

I don't have a very clear grasp on the next few minutes -- probably I was just frolicking aimlessly around the backyard singing to myself (this activity constituted most of my childhood playtime).  But I remember when my father came out.  I probably adjusted my frolicking to revolve around him, since I remember being very close to him when he realized he couldn't find his hammer.  He turned to me to ask where it was.

At this point, I didn't know for sure that I was in trouble, but I could guess that I was.  So my frolicking turned into cautious innocence, and I led him to the foot of the cedar tree, where I had left the hammer and two other nails.  It didn't take Dad very long to spot the new addition to the tree.

In retrospect, I think my father was just trying to make sure I stayed away from his tools, in case I got it into my head to damage something that would have cost money to repair.  But at five years old, you don't realize these things.  Dad pointed to the nail, hunkered down to my level, and asked me very seriously, "Did you do that?"

Whenever Dad got his serious voice on, my immediate impulses were to run and hide shamefully in my closet, or stare at him wordlessly with guilty tears in my eyes.  Once again, my complete inability to enter a dwelling of my own free will made my decision for me.  I stared at my father wordlessly, nodded once, and felt my lower lip begin to tremble.

"Look very carefully at the nail," he told me.  I obeyed.  "What do you see?"

Dad always made me talk when I was guilty.  He knew I would rather run and hide than face any wrong thing I may or may not have done.  I decided to go with ignorance on this one, so I described what I saw.  "That's where I nailed it in the tree.  And there's sap underneath."

"That's right.  And do you know what sap is?"

I shook my head.  I knew what sap looked like, but I had no clue as to its function in the tree.  This is the conversation that followed:

Dad: Rose, you made this tree bleed.

Me: You mean I hurt it?!

Dad: Yes, and you hurt its feelings too.  Imagine if a little log had come along and started hammering a nail into you.

Me: I don't want any nails in me!

Dad: Well, neither did the tree.

...

Me: Should I apologize?

Dad: Couldn't hurt.

Me: I'm sorry, tree! *hugs cedar*

Dad: Now, you're never going to make a tree bleed again, are you?

Me: *wails* Noooooooooo!

After that exchange, I was horrified.  I wasn't sure if I should ever climb a tree ever again.  Would that hurt its feelings?  Could I hide behind a tree, or would that make it feel fat?  Would the cedar tell all of its friends what I had done, so I could never be friends with any of the trees ever again?!

This last thought was the most distressing, and I actually knocked on the kitchen window and asked my mother to bring me a bandaid.  When she did, I used the bandaid to cover the sap beneath the nail, apologizing again and again.  I wanted to put Neosporin on the bandaid, but my mother assured me that trees didn't need Neosporin.

Eventually, I did climb trees again.  And I am a big believer in the usefulness of trees during hide-n-seek.  But I never did anything that would pierce the bark of a tree ever again, terrified of making a tree bleed.

Litter

I have an overactive imagination.  I know you're shocked, but I just couldn't hide it anymore.  I hope this doesn't affect our friendship...

Having an overactive imagination is not a curse, though many people would try to tell you it is.  I mean, sometimes it can be a little disruptive, particularly when you start daydreaming at an inopportune moment.  And sometimes it can be a little disturbing, like when you just know there's a serial killer in your closet.  And since I should have been a boy, sometimes my overactive imagination is a little disgusting, like the incident this morning regarding road kill, which I refuse to explain in more detail.

But for the most part, I believe an overactive imagination is actually a blessing.  It makes life so much more interesting when everything you see gets a story.  What's more, when you're constantly looking for stories in life, you become a much more observant person.  Nothing and no one can escape the constant soap opera taking place in your noggin.

All right, I admit it.  Some of the stories I assign to things are grisly, weird, and/or downright gross.  For instance, almost every time I see a large, black trash bag beside the road, I immediately assume there is a dead body in it.  I'm not sure why this idea haunts me, other than that it makes perfect sense.  Too many people gather up leaves or trash in those scary black bags, and then just leave them wherever they drop them.  So why wouldn't a killer leave the remains of his latest victim in plain sight, where no one would think to investigate it for who knows how long?!?!

Maybe I should have warned you that this was going to be a gross entry.  I'll move on to happier things.  Or different things, at least.

My parents live in a rather old, upstanding neighborhood, which is populated largely by old people.  Ergo, that neighborhood is a rather quiet one.  But one day, when I was visiting from college, I decided to go to McDonald's.  This is not an unusual decision for me.  I hopped in my car and began the familiar journey.

What was special about this last-second trip to McDonald's was the perfect ammunition provided for my hyperactive brain.  As I was driving out of my neighborhood, I got stuck behind a huge, 80's Lincoln.  This is also not unusual -- old people, remember?  That's what I assumed, anyway, since the Lincoln was definitely going about 22 miles per hour.  About the time I had dismissed the whole affair as a nuisance that was keeping me from the salty goodness of piping hot McD's fries, the Lincoln creeped to a halt.  It just stopped.  In the middle of the road.

My immediate thought was that someone in the car must be having a heart attack.  Don't ask me why my logic leaps the way it does-- even I don't understand it.  But that's what I assumed.  So I was patting my pockets, looking for my phone, when I noticed movement.  Someone opened the door on the driver's side.

Now my thoughts were gearing towards whether or not I was about to get mugged by an 80-year-old man who hated little gold Saturns tailgating him.  But no one got out of the car, and I relaxed.

As I watched, a hand appeared, holding a white plastic bag from Food Lion.  This hand placed the bag gently in the middle of the road.  Then, the driver's side door closed, and the Lincoln drove away, going about 40 mph now.

Out of instinct, I followed the car, choosing to investigate the bag later.  You see, I could think of only two reasons to gently place a bag in the middle of the road: abandoning a kitten, or dropping off some drugs.  Either thing required that I get the Lincoln's license plate number, to give to the police when I made the report.

You may think I am crazy, but I did follow that Lincoln until I got their tag numbers.  I wrote them down on the back of a Walgreen's receipt.  And then I went to McDonald's, because why should crime keep me from cheap, delicious fast food?

But on my way back, I stopped at that place on the road.  I stepped out of my car and retrieved the bag, putting it on my passenger seat with a growing sense of importance.  I was about to catch criminals red-handed.  There was no doubt about it.

I waited until I got home to open the bag, sure that I would find something to substantiate my well-thought-out theories.  But there was no helpless kitten, and no suspicious powders or herbs.  There was just... trash.

The overwhelming disappointment I felt at this anticlimactic discovery is impossible to explain.  But to this day, I still believe that someone took the drugs from the bag before I got there.  I even kept the Walgreen's receipt, in case any new evidence came to light.  I still have it somewhere.

For those of you who are aspiring to grow an overactive imagination like mine, don't worry.  The stories don't always have to be so elaborate.  In fact, the event that inspired this whole, long post occurred just this morning, and was about three seconds long.

There was a measuring tape crumpled up in a pile on the road, along with what I think was a pair of scissors.  The way my brain chose to explain this odd litter was to imagine this scene:

The day is sunny and warm, even though it's winter in Tennessee.  They're in a classic Chevy pick-up, she and the man she loves.  The windows are cracked, and she can feel the wind in her face, feel it whipping away all the hours she'd spent slaving over other people's clothing.  They'd taken the joy out of sewing.  She is a seamstress no more!  Gathering up the measuring tape from the floor, she tosses it out the open window, never caring for the scissors caught up in the mess.  And sharing a carefree laugh, they drive away into the sunset.

And yes, I imagined that in the space of three seconds.

I think that was brought on by PinkFriend.  She used to sew all the time, all kinds of wonderful dresses and such.  But now she works in alterations for brides, and not only does she limit her sewing to work, but now she also despises the wedding industry.  She needs to throw her measuring tape out the window of her cute little PT Cruiser.

Due to the fact that I have talked about just about everything I wanted to talk about, it is now time to close this post.  I'm not sure why the stories I've told you today all have to do with litter on roads.  Who can explain the imagination?

But if you ever notice that I haven't been posting, and you suspect that I might be dead, promise you'll pull over and check those black bags beside the road.  I would hate it if someone just assumed my dead body was leaves.