Request

When you work in a retail environment, you get the chance to people-watch extensively.  Since I am a people-watcher anyway, and since my overactive imagination likes to draw obscure conclusions, I have noticed something about the way children ask for candy.

If you've ever watched House, you know that there are five psychological stages a person passes through on his way to death.  You begin with Denial,  transition into Anger, cycle into Bargaining, fall into Depression, and then finally make your way to Acceptance.

House has all the answers.

What I have come to realize is that, when a child asks for candy, he goes through those stages.  In reverse.  I shall explain.

The last stage of death is Acceptance.  Basically, the child starts out dead, following his mom around the grocery store while she gets all the boring things that she has to cook before they are edible.  But when he enters this first/last stage, he wakes up from his stupor and accepts the following facts: 1) he is a child, 2) there is candy nearby, and 3) the combination of candy and child would be superhero-making.

The child will then exclaim, "Mommy, I want a Butterfinger!"

Normal moms will probably ignore this petition, which triggers the transition into the next stage: Depression.  The child can see the candy, and reach the candy, and touch the candy, but he cannot have the candy.  This causes whining, which stems out of the child's depression and is designed to cause depression in others.

The child will then wail, "Please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease can I have a Butterfinger?"

If, at that point, the mother has not capitulated, a seamless switch into Bargaining occurs.  The child begins to barter with whatever is at his disposal.  Does he have a younger sibling?  Why yes, yes he does.  Does that younger sibling belong to him?  Why yes, yes he does.  Little brother = bargaining chip.

The child will then offer magnanimously, "I'll share it with Barrett, Mommy!  I'll share my Butterfinger with Barrett, if you get it for me!"

Hopefully, most moms acknowledge the child's generosity in offering.  However, if they still refuse to purchase the treat, the child will grow frustrated, which leads directly into Anger.  At first, the only way the child can express this anger is to pull a sour face, stomp his feet, and growl.  But once that phase has passed, he decides a threat will represent his anger well enough.

The child will then proclaim, "I won't stop asking you until you get me a Butterfinger!  Get me a Butterfinger!  Please, please, please, get me a Butterfinger!"

By this time, the mom usually has the excuse of having finished the transaction, thereby making it all a moot point.  She will most likely reprimand the child for his petulance, while gently explaining that it's time to go, and maybe he can get a treat next time if he behaves.  In order to process this acute rejection, the child slowly reaches the final/first stage of Denial.  He blocks the incident from his memory.

The child will then take his mother's hand and sigh, "I didn't really want a Butterfinger anyway."

The moral of the story is: Candy raises children from the dead.

Children can't live without candy.

That's a bunch of psycho-babble anyway--candy is a child's crystal meth.

Taking candy from a baby is as good as abortion.

There is no moral.  I'm just insane.

A Mighty Few

When I was in high school, I was on the newspaper staff.  It was a tiny little newspaper, powered entirely by its student members.  We designed the layouts, wrote the cheesy headlines, took the grainy pictures, cropped them to fit, spent hours searching for just the right piece of appropriate and amusing ClipArt... and yes, we wrote the articles.

In my first year as a member, my junior year, we were made aware of a significant event.  A previous alum, a Marine, had been given the Bronze Star after seeing combat in Afghanistan.

It just so happened that I knew The Marine, not through high school, but rather through church.  I had known him for years in that our-parents-run-in-the-same-circles way.

I could remember being over at their house when the boys (The Marine and his twin brother) were still in high school.  I can't remember why we were there or what I was doing.  But I do remember that the twin was on the computer, listening to The Marine, who was talking even then about his plans to join the military.  He even showed me how to do a real push-up.

Because of that connection, hearing about this high honor being conferred upon him made me ridiculously proud.

The time came to decide which of us would write the article, and although part of me really wanted to write it, the other part of me was scared to death of screwing it up.  But no one else felt up to the task, either; this was the most serious, most important news article we had ever written.  Eventually, I bit the bullet, and volunteered.

Other than an installment of the fictional story I was writing with PurpleFriend for the issue, the article about The Marine was my only other writing responsibility.

I won't lie.  I procrastinated.  Which is something I am very good at.

But I knew I had to write it.  I wanted to write it, and write it well.  So I got my mom involved.

My Superhero Mom got me The Marine's phone number by way of His Awesome Mom.  I sat next to the phone for two hours writing and re-writing my questions for him.  I was less-than-thrilled about talking on the phone, but for this purpose it seemed not only necessary, but also worthwhile.  I picked up the phone and dialed.

For the next 45 minutes or so, The Marine patiently answered my questions and explained the events leading up to his award.  I was overwhelmed.  The situation he was describing was far too intense for me to imagine, but you can bet my imagination did its best.  I was scared for my friend, so much so that my mouth went dry, and the pencil I used to record his words shook in my hand.

"I could feel the prayers," he told me near the end of the interview.  "There was no way I could have survived that without God... I was convinced those prayers were saving me."

Only a few minutes later, I hung up the phone, and cried.

The next day, I set about composing the article.  It began with The Marine's childhood dreams, and what followed was gunfire.  The story I wrote then was unique to my repertoire, being the only such story I'd ever set to paper that wasn't fictional.  The Marine, brave in a way I would never fully understand, put his own life in danger, while his fellow soldiers fell back to cover, to call in the coordinates for air support.  His efforts led to victory.

That ridiculous pride only grew stronger as I put the finishing touches on the article and cropped the picture of the ceremony provided by His Awesome Mom.  That article remains one of the best things I have ever written, merely because of the subject -- the character and courage of the subject.

A few weeks later, The Marine was actually in town.  He came to church with His Awesome Mom, who wanted to put the two of us face-to-face after our phone conversation and the article.  I just remember being nervous as all get-out, standing there in front of this person.  I'd known him for years, sure, but now he was a Marine, and a hero to boot!  I couldn't speak.  I just smiled like an idiot.

He held out his hand for a handshake.

It is pertinent to tell you at this juncture in the story, that The Marine was not very tall.  I think I was 5'7"ish as a junior in high school, and height-wise, he didn't top me by much.

But good Lord, did that boy have muscles.

He held out that hand to shake mine, and I could feel my eyes going wide.  I was sure his bicep was as big as I was.  I was also sure he could crush my hand by accident.  But I swallowed, took that hand, and shook it as firmly as I could.  (I am absolutely certain he was not fooled in any way.  The Marine definitely knew I was a wimp).

I think after that, we exchanged a few words about life, the article, and tattoos, but my memory of the conversation is honestly a little fuzzy.  I was half-focused on his words and half-focused on the color rising into my face.

Our paths crossed a few more times, but for the most part, my knowledge of The Marine after that was indirect.

I knew when he got married.  And my parents helped him out quite a bit when he moved.  And through his twin brother, to whom I was and am much closer, I was fortunate enough to hear about him, his wife, his two adorable little girls.  I knew him that way, and loved him because of it.

I am just a wanna-be writer, with extra words tucked into every corner of my head.  Those words could never be enough to describe the kind of person he was, the amount of love and prayers that surrounded him daily, the pride he incited just by being what he was born to be.  But I wouldn't have felt right if I didn't at least try.

God rest you, Kevin Balduf.  You were more than a hero to me.

Diplomatic

In honor of my blog's redesign, I hereby confer upon you a new post.

You're welcome.

Let's begin with a story from my childhood.  Yes, that's right.  Another one.  Let's face it, folks-- I had a long and eventful childhood, and I retain useless memories like Arnold Schwarzenneger retains a very good lawyer: just in case.

This particular gem has stuck with me through the years because it was a realization that was relevant to my daily life.  You see, at my little elementary school, we got an hour of recess every day.  As a child, I utilized every moment of my time outside, as you may remember from previous posts.

One day, I was playing with a group of similarly adventurous children, when we decided to go past the boundary.  This was a big no-no.  But all the teachers were occupied watching the littlest kids struggle with the monkey bars, and all the high grass looked like a huge adventure waiting to happen.  So, like the intrepid explorers of olde, we stepped over the log benches and into the unknown.

We frolicked around in the grass for almost the entire hour of recess, until a teacher realized that half the first grade class was missing, and came to find us.  For most of my classmates, it was too late.

Don't worry-- nobody dies in this blog post.  They just get really bad boo-boos.

You see, the next morning, when everyone arrived at school, they had all these welts and red spots all over them.  Our teacher took one look and diagnosed it as poison ivy.  But I, who had been the forerunner of them all (no, literally, we played Follow-the-Leader, and the Leader was moi), did not have a single spot to show for my midday romp through the forbidden grass.

Later on in life, I learned that through an accident of genetics, no one in my family is allergic to poison ivy, unlike the majority of the human species.  But at the time, I was SuperGirl.

This is where I change the subject in a way that seems completely random, but which will eventually circle back around to the original story, thereby making this a (somewhat) coherent blog post.

I got pulled over tonight.  By a cop.  With blue flashy lights and everything.  Also, I was five feet away from the gate to my apartment complex.

Somehow, I have only been pulled over four times in my life.  That may seem like a lot for a 22-year-old, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I break traffic laws.  Like a lot.  Particularly speeding.  Sometimes I run lights late at night.  And sometimes I roll right on through stop signs (like I did tonight).  But usually, I don't get caught.

Incident #1: The first time I got pulled over, I was speeding over the Interstate in Monteagle, a little podunk town where everybody, but everybody, speeds over the Interstate.  At least 50 (in a 35).  Anyway, I was going 50, and I got pulled over.  BrownFriend was in the car with me, so it was super-embarrassing that I got pulled over for the first time with someone there to witness my shame.  However, at the time, I was not too concerned about it.

I had just found out that my mother had breast cancer.  Again.  So you can imagine my distress.  BrownFriend and I were actually on the way to the CVS so that I could buy pink hair dye, to show my solidarity.  I was crying.  I probably shouldn't have been driving while I was crying, but... oh, well.

So the cop pulls me over, tells me how fast I was going, sees that I am incredibly upset, and takes pity on me.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #2: Same place, about a year later.  Remember how everybody speeds over the Interstate?  Still true.  And I was following one such everybody to a Retirement Home.  I had never had occasion to visit the Old Folks' Home before now, so I had to keep up with this OneSuchEverybody.  We go 50 in a 35.  Blue lights hit my rear view mirror.

In my car with me are three very scared little freshmen, members of my a capella choir (which is going to perform at the Old Folks' Home).  They sit timidly and make themselves as small as possible as -- yes-- the very same cop who had previously pardoned me strolled up to the window.

I believe I squeaked out something along the lines of, "Evening, officer."  I was just proud that I wasn't crying this time.

I explain the situation, that I would be lost with OneSuchEverybody, and he laughingly admits that it was a "crapshoot between which of [us] [he] was going to pull over," since OneSuch was not only speeding, but also had a tail light out.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #3: We'll be back in the Music City for this one.  There is a spot on one of our main roads where it is really easy to speed, since the stretch of road is levelling out from a rather substantial little hill.  Unless you ride your brake on the way down, you'll probably be speeding by the time you reach this little patch of highway.  Naturally, I am not one who is often inclined to ride her brake.  Also, it was 3am.  So I was speeding.

Blue lights.  Little siren blip.  I pull over, shut my engine off.

A red-haired cop with braces -- braces!  And he was at least 30... -- comes to my window.  I hand him all the usual documents and cards.  We had a very simple conversation that went something like:

Officer: Do you know how fast you were going?

Me: Yep.  55.  [In a 45.]

Officer: Oh.  Um... do you have any medical or other reason to be going so fast?

Me: Nope.

Officer: Oh.  Uh, okay.  Wait here.

He runs my license through his little whatever-they-have-that-runs-those-things.  He comes back.

Officer: You've never gotten a ticket before, have you?

Me: Nope.

Officer: You'd like to keep it that way, I'll bet, wouldn't you?

Me: Uhhhhh, yeah!

Officer: Slow down, okay?

He handed me my license back.

End Result: No Ticket.

Incident #4: Tonight, after getting off work at 11pm, having slipped magnificently (flying shoes and all) and hurt my tailbone rather badly, I was in a little bit of a hurry getting home.  Normally I am quite careful on the road I take to my apartment complex.  It's a speed trap, and PurpleFriend can attest to the fact that police cars often camp out by the one stop sign along the road just to ticket innocent people who maybe roll a little bit instead of fully stopping.

I rolled through that stop sign like it was a yield sign that was just pretending.

Blue lights, all that jazz.

I pulled over, turned off my engine, got out my license.  However, he asked for my registration also, and when I opened my glove compartment to get it, my whole glove compartment fell off the dashboard.  I fished my registration out of the wreckage and handed it to the police officer, who explained that I really ought to stop at the stop sign.

When he returned two moments later, he handed me my license, my registration, asked me if I knew which stop sign he was talking about, and upon hearing that I did, bid me a good night.

End Result: No Ticket.

I wish a cop would give me a ticket.  I deserve a ticket.  I feel pretty guilty about the fact that I have gotten away with this four times.

But, in the end, I guess it's not just poison ivy I'm immune to.

Huh

I kind of suck at this blogging thing.

Whispers

I think my air conditioning can tell on me.

Where have I been, you ask?  Oh, losing a job, finishing a novel, experiencing the numb faces of dentistry... Basically, life happened and it sort of caught me off guard.  But that's not why I am writing today.

I am writing because my A/C is a tattle-tale.

As far as I knew, my air conditioning and I were getting along just fine.  Sure, there was a little rattling sometimes.  And yeah, it's definitely been hotter than I'd like in my apartment of late.  But overall, I thought our relationship was pretty good.  If not good, definitely functional.

Apparently I was wrong.  While I was slumbering the morning away, peacefully and deeply, my air conditioner must have been complaining to a higher power.  I know it was telling on me, because I was awakened fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off by some fairly persistent pounding on my front door.

By the time the pounding finally broke through my dreams and propelled me out of bed, my cats were extremely curious about my visitors.  I lured them away from the door before cracking it open.  Outside were two guys with toolboxes.

"Hi there," they greet me, and the one closest to me clearly has a laugh in his voice.  I can't really blame him.  I was wearing penguin pajamas.

Squinting in the spring sunlight, I clear my throat and say something like, "Hi.  Can I help you?"

LaughingGuy squints back at me.  "Yeah, we're here to fix the air conditioner."  He says it with authority.  I frown in confusion.  "What's it doing?" he asks me, all solicitation and concern.

I make some hems and some haws.

"Nothing, huh?" he laughs.  He seems to like to do that.

"Nothing that I know of," I agree.  After a moment of hesitation, I figure these guys look pretty legit.  "Come on in," I offer, and open the door.

The next few minutes saw me trying to get my cats into a different room (they were quite uncooperative), and saw the toolbox guys taking apart my air conditioner (they were quite unconcerned about my cats).  But they needed a tool from the truck, so while they went to get that, I got my cats into my room and changed into regular clothing.  Well, as regular as ever, anyway.

And then five minutes later, they had fixed whatever I didn't know was wrong.

LaughingGuy wipes his hands on his jeans.  "You keep an eye on your filter, huh?"

I just repeat that last word back, "Huh?"

"Your filter.  It's really clean."

"Oh, yeah."  I don't know anything about that filter.  The fact that it was clean was pure dumb luck.

LaughingGuy nods in approval.  "Most of these people don't even know they have a filter."

Little does he know that I am one such "most people."

"It's kind of scary."  LaughingGuy jokes around with OtherGuy as they leave, and then they are out the door.  My morning interruption is over before my alarm has even gone off.

Vaguely, I wonder if they made up the thing about the A/C and the loose connection just to get a look at what they can steal later, but then I remember that they've seen my vicious guard cats, so they probably won't try anything.

I suppose it is possible it was making some kind of ungodly racket that only my neighbors could hear.
Still, though, I don't know how they knew to come.  Unless Big Brother's name is Lee.

I'm going to be a lot more guarded with my air conditioner now that I know it's got a big mouth.  And a filter.

Monstroffity

I have finally figured out what I should do with my life!

I have discovered a product with huge potential, as yet overlooked by most marketing agencies.  There are a few independent chains, mostly headed up by moms, but in the market at large, it remains quite obscure.  This product is going to sweep the parental demographic.  This product is going to make me millions!

This product was invented by my grandmother.

When I was a child, I was relentlessly pursued and harrassed by a veritable phalanx of monsters.  These monsters were masters of disguise, friends of darkness.  They hid in my closets, under my bed, in my drawers, under my pillow, in the faucet of the kitchen sink, beneath the living room carpet... everywhere.

Thankfully, these monsters had one weakness, that I knew of: light.  Sleeping with a night-light on left me completely unplagued by the photophobic creatures.  Also, I could make shadow puppets on the wall to protect me.  I had bodyguards of the llama, dog, butterfly, and giraffe variety, but no monster was a match for my shadow brachiosaurus.

This was all very well and good when I was at home, but on the rare occasion that I would spend the night with my grandmother, I had no choice but to sleep without a night-light.  I did my best to be brave.  I had a habit of growling softly until I fell asleep, and then growling some more anytime I happened to wake up for a few minutes during the night.  I thought that would be at least a little intimidating for any potential attackers.

Even as a child, I had extremely vivid, realistic dreams.  I remember them very clearly, and there are even some dreams that have repeated themselves since I was a child, popping up every now and then.  Trying to run away from wolves/coyotes is one such dream.  Another is getting a glass of water, only to realize that your return path to your room is littered with red-eyed crocodiles.  I also have a strange tendency to dream about post-apocalyptic worlds.

But when I was little, my dreams were simpler.  They were brighter.  They were scarier.

I remember one night, in particular, when I was staying with Grandmother.  We had both gone to bed early, and I had been sick not long before, so my rest came in fits and spurts.  After one such fit, I woke from a nightmare, thinking I was about to be devoured by some heinous creature.

I ran screaming for Grandmother, who was of course more than a match for any monster merely because she was too awesome for words.  Obviously.

This was not the first time I had panicked.  Grandmother had lots of experience calming me down and keeping monsters at bay.  But on this particular evening, for some reason, she decided I should sleep in my own bed.  So, she got out of the bed, slipped her feet into her blue houseshoes, and went to the kitchen.

She returned with a spray can.  Showing it to me, she told me she was getting tired of all the monsters in her house.  The last time I had been there, she said, she realized what a big problem it was.  So she had gone out and gotten some 'Monster-Spray.'

Awed, I listened as she explained that this Monster-Spray would chase away all the monsters, ghouls, ghosts, creatures, and thingamajigs in the whole house.  Not one evil thing could withstand the spray's deadly aerosol formula.

I padded around behind my grandmother as she sprayed every nook and cranny in her house.  We must have been monster-proofing for at least an hour or two, but Grandmother was very thorough.  She even let me spray it sometimes.  And after we were done, I drifted off into blissful sleep, confident that the only non-human creature still present in the house was my Grandmother's cat, Shasta, whom Grandmother assured me was immune to Monster-Spray.

I have invented my own brand, based off of that experience.  It is sure to be a hit with all the little children facing similar problems to those of my young days.

Castle in Ireland, here I come!

Thanks, Grandmother.

Dig

When I was six years old, I told my grandmother I was going to be an archaeologist.  For at least two years before that, I had been set on being a paleontologist.  But after a trip to Arizona, during which we visited the great Mesa Verde ruins, I was now convinced that I liked Native Americans way more than dinosaurs.

The movie Jurassic Park had inspired my initial interest in dinosaurs.  The first time I tried to watch the movie, I admittedly couldn't make it past the T-Rex escaping and terrorizing the Jeeps.  But my grandmother insisted I would love the movie, and as a four-year old, I trusted my grandmother completely.

We watched it again.  I covered my eyes during the scary scenes, and sat fascinated for the rest.  The brachiosauri, the triceratops, the gallimimus, and even the dilophosaurus caught my imagination, and although I was quite terrified of the tyrannosaur, I thought he was pretty awesome too.

We won't talk about the velociraptors.

From then on, I became that nerdy kid.  I was the kid with the dinosaur books, and not the fun ones where some little boy has a dinosaur as a pet, but boring ones with hardly any pictures.  At five years of age, I could discourse intelligently on several different theories of the dinosaurs' sudden extinction.  When I was in kindergarten, the second grade teacher asked me to come in and teach the lesson about dinosaurs.

I knew all the most common dinosaurs, what periods they would have lived in, what they ate, their social behaviors... I was a dinosaur encyclopedia in miniature, fun-sized for your convenience.  I maintain much of this knowledge even today -- I can't begin to tell you my dismay when they announced that the brontosaurus was a hoax.

Pluto isn't a planet.  Tomatoes aren't a vegetable.  Indigo isn't a color.  And brontosauri never existed.  Our modern world is a killjoy.

You can imagine, since I displayed such devotion to my paleontological pursuits, that the experience I had at Mesa Verde was quite powerful.  It caused me to rethink my life plan.  Whereas most little six-year-old girls wanted to be princesses or supermodels or the first female president, I was now absolutely certain I would be an archaeologist.

As my fascination with history grew, I spread a wide net.  I took in American history, world history, prehistoric theories, myths and legends of prominent cultures.  But my real passion was for Native Americans, particularly those of the nomadic and puebloan southwest.

Very soon after declaring my archaeological ambitions, I developed a healthy fascination for a southwestern Native American symbol: Kokopelli.  His legend permeates most of the western region of the United States, and goes as far south as the Mayans in Central America.  Legend has it that an actual, wandering flute player travelled around the region's trade routes, playing his wooden flute and trading trinkets (mostly jewelry and precious materials like turquoise, obsidian, and shells).  This paragraph actually has nothing to do with anything -- I just wanted to tell you about Kokopelli.

My family and friends were all very supportive of my career choice.  When I was in middle school, my mother even enrolled me in an archaeology program at the Belle Meade plantation.  I was thrilled.  Over the span of two summers, I spent about a month digging stuff up.

I learned how to grid a dig area, how to dig by level, how you ought to sift the dirt to make sure you aren't missing anything.  I got pretty frustrated with the number of buttons and nails we uncovered our first summer, when we dug at the site of an old tool shed.  But even more frustrating was when we found a complete hinge, rusted through, and had to continue to dig by level around it, rather than simply pulling it out triumphantly.

I learned (with less enthusiasm), how to catalogue, label, and describe each and every item you unearthed, no matter how modern or boring or small some of those items happened to be.  In my second summer, I bagged and recorded everything from pig bones to a bottle cap from an old school, 20-oz. glass bottle of Coca-Cola.

I learned how to research your area in relation to your finds, so as to form an educated and plausible theory about what you have uncovered.  We were fortunate when we dug at the tool shed to already have historical records indicating its location on the plantation.  We were less fortunate with our information during the second summer, when we were the first to dig on newly reacquired land.

We knew the land had once belonged to the plantation, that it had been sold sometime in the early 1900s, and that it had been mostly farm and pastureland.  So you can imagine our surprise when we dug to only Level 3 (not very deep at all) and uncovered a layer of rocks, clearly man-made.

We speculated about its usage, trying to justify it with the smaller artifacts we had already gathered.  Nails, bones, and bottlecaps aside, there wasn't much to give us clues.  Perhaps a farm road, or the foundation of a small cabin?  But afer much speculation and digging an entire four-square grid of next-to-nothing, we found our answer in the photographical archives of the plantation -- a barbecue pit.  It was invigorating.  (I'm sure that longwinded explanation wasn't boring for you at all).

I remained glued to my dreams of working in the dirt all the way until my freshman year of college.  As it often does with people far more motivated than myself, college changed me.  I realized I had a penchant for languages, and a serious weakness about homework.

I quickly understood that an anthropology major would be a lot of hard work, and also kind of awful.  My first and only anthropology class was taught by a professor who officially turned me off to the entire department.  Within a month, she had informed us that we knew nothing about Scotland, and we were stupid if we thought we did.  She also succeeded in teaching me that, according to gender stereotypes, I should have been a guy.  I loathed that class, and all its stereotypes.

So I changed my tune.  Yet I still found myself connected to certain quirks I had developed as a budding archaeologist.  Two, in particular, stick with me even now.

1- Trash.  I have a thing about trash.  Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by litter on the roads, or by what my apartment neighbors throw out.  You can learn a lot about people from their trash.  Thousands of years from now, when our civilization is just dust, future archaeologists will be conducting major digs in our land fills.

2- Journals.  Although they can be rather unreliable, journals are a huge historical resource.  They are often very informative without even intending to be.  Because of this conviction, I decided that I ought to keep journals myself, for the benefit of the future historians and archaeologists.  My journals are completely wacky, but I do throw in tidbits about the news of the day sometimes.  If you can sift through the crazy, you'll find some historical gems, I think.

Similarly, I wrote letters during college, since many records can be traced back to an exchange of letters.  This has faded over time, but I still wish that snail mail was the most common communication method.  I like it way better than email, and infinitely more than the phone.  But it's not, so this paragraph is a moot point.  I'm just full of useless paragraphs today.

Now that I've dropped out of college and started paying off my Exorbitant Money-Sucking Loans, I find myself coming full circle.  I still want to be an archaeologist.  That childhood dream is not dead.  It's fitting, in a way.  When I declared a Russian major, I considered my archaeological aspirations to be ancient history, and here I am discovering them all over again.

I guess what I'm saying is, we have to chase our dreams while we're still young.  Responsible Adult Limbo sucks in so, so many ways, but the only way out is up.  We're allowed to use this time to figure out what we're doing.  We can make mistakes, we can learn, we can still be growing up.  This is the time for adventures.

My adventure started in a barbecue pit.  Who knows where that road will take me?