Category Archives: Just for Fun

I would learn how to free-climb, only super free climb, like super-humanly. I have always wanted to know what it would feel like to climb up the side of a building with the cars honking beneath me in the middle of rush hour. I imagine people as small as the cliched ant looking up at me and pointing while the news cameras roll and wondering sometimes out loud, who is that woman who is scaling the side of the Hancock Building, and why is she doing it? “I am doing this because I couldn’t fail!” I would scream.

Or what it would feel like to cling to the face of a sheer cliff as the wind blew past and the birds circled. I wouldn’t think twice about scaling up the front of Half Dome and hanging by one hand, swinging like a chimp from a tire in the zoo. Only I would scream, “I did it because I couldn’t fail!” I would grin to myself like a small child, because my hands would stick like Spiderma’s to the rocky surface of the gigantic cliff.

Perhaps the most exhilarating feeling of all would be climbing the thick trunks of trees to the top of the rain forest canopy. I am not sure this can be done, but since I can’t fail at what I have chosen to do, I will climb those trees and then sleep in the branches high above the screeching animals below. I would gaze out over the lush green carpet, and count my blessings by tens. There wouldn’t be anyone else around so I wouldn’t have to explain that I only did it because I couldn’t fail.

Today was another day. I didn’t find a dollar, and I can’t find the ten dollars that I took out of the account to purchase coffee with Lyn the other day. I put it back in my pocket or something and now it isn’t there. The part that sucks is I didn’t even need it because Lyn bought my coffee for me. It was actually hot chocolate and it was good, too. I remember it well. I had a great time today with the students who stay after for Write On! Huh? (as they’ve taken to calling it because they didn’t get the Write On! reference). This group of students is amazingly talented, and I am so excited to see how this literary magazine turns out. I have high hopes for it, and I hope it is even more amazing than I imagine. I have a feeling it will be, knowing this group of students.

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Exercise: walked the dogs three miles, ran three miles, rode my bike to SBUX then to Burris then home

Breakfast: banana, oatmeal, juice, milk
Lunch: Clif bar, apple, decaf Americano with honey and cream
Dinner: Pasta with mushrooms, parmesan, broccoli, and olive oil; two pieces of bread
Snacks: 1 oz. of cheese, spinach salad with poppyseed dressing and sunflower seeds

I need to get more protein. Any creative suggestions?

a time when you were reluctant to go home.

When I was in middle school, I took the Lord’s name in vain because big, fat loud-mouthed Laura, whose locker was next to mine, yelled into my ear. I had yet another case of strep throat, my head was already throbbing, and my ears ached from the drainage. She literally put her mouth next to my head and yelled down the hall to her boyfriend, tall, skinny, loser-boy Ivan-Covered-With-Hickies. So I turned to her and screamed in her face, “Jesus Christ, Laura. Shut up!”

My school had just started cracking down on “cursing” with Joey L. being the first victim. He straight-faced told our principal to fuck off. He got paddled. And never shed a tear. I had to sign the referral and made the Amazon on my cheeks. I cried so hard the neck of my sweater got wet.

I know it seems like a ridiculous thing to be afraid of going home because I took the Lord’s name in vain, but I was. I was afraid because of one simple phrase repeatedly uttered by my mother, and sometimes agreed upon by my father: “If you get in trouble at school, you better know you will get in just as much trouble at home. Maybe more.” I was terrified of the maybe more. I wasn’t even sure what punishment the school would dole out to me, but I knew whatever they could possibly come up with wouldn’t compare to the punishment in store for me from my parents.

The next day, I got called down to the office. I have always had a knack for unfortunate timing, and this was no exception. A few Sundays before had been confirmation Sunday at my church. This detail wouldn’t even matter where it not for the fact that my principal happened to go to Grace United Methodist Church as well.

“Young lady,” I loved it when adults called me young lady, “Can you tell me why you are here?” So much like a police officer, my principal looked down his long dumb face at me.

“Well, I said Jesus Christ in the hallway upstairs.” I had never been one to mince words. I did it. I admit it.

“You didn’t just say Jesus Christ, you screamed it.” He sat there smugly tapping his finger tips together. “Weren’t you just confirmed a couple fo Sundays ago?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t see—”

“That has everything to do with this,” he bellowed, “What do you think He would think of this?”

“He would forgive me?” I countered.

“Are you sassing me?”

“No, I just thought Jesus was about grace. I already prayed about it. I think he forgives me.” I think saying this was a two-fold device: I could potentially get out of trouble, and I could slyly let the principal know that whatever punishment he could give to me would not compare to my own mental and spiritual anguish. I think it was more of the former.

“Well, nonetheless, you will serve one day of in-school suspension. You serve on Friday.”

EDIT: This is the beginning of the draft. I will write more later.

I have been told that many people read this blog, which is true. I can tell by the number of hits it receives. Apparently, I need to correct a few things I have said and one big idea that some people misinterpreted from my blog because they have been taken incorrectly by the people I have said them to, or who have read them.

1. Do not simply study twelve texts for your comprehensive exams; however, you will only use twelve on the actual test. You should study several from each time period and be intimately involved with at least three or four from each time period outside of your own. By intimately involved I mean that you should know everything you possibly can about them, writing down what questions you could use them for would be helpful. Hopefully, the rest of your education will fill in the gaps that are left. This is risky, so make sure you are well-rounded in your knowledge to start with.
2. Make sure you study the periods, movements, genres, forms, and other general information. This is the key to success. You don’t want your oral exams committee to wonder if you really know about Modernism because you have to stumble over yourself, cobbling together the main tenets of that particular literary movement.
3. I did study, but I wish I would have studied more. I wish I would have studied more thoroughly and smarter. I wish I wouldn’t have had to paint my house, remodel my house, go on two separate week-long vacations, have people staying at my house, and most importantly, I wish I could have majored in English in my undergrad so I would have had a better foundation for all of this. My insecurity in passing my exams lies in the fact that I am afraid: one day will everyone discover that I am a fraud?

Having said all of that, I wish adult life could be less similar to middle school. I wish we could stop talking about each other and telling stories about others to make ourselves feel better. I wish we could each be secure enough in our attributes to recognize the beauty in each other rather than exploiting the shortcomings.