Things that made me laugh so hard today I almost hurt myself

1. Jerry on Big Brother staring up at a message in the sky and walking straight into the pool. I had to rewind my DVR to hear him say "I hurt my ass", which sent me into a subsequent gale of laughter for a good five minutes.

2. Hippy-dippy stats prof introduced me to GraphJam tonight. Strolling along, I came across this:


more graph humor and song chart memes

And I'm still laughing. Really.

The weekend was so big I need to break it up into parts...

Taking my last final on Thursday morning at 8am (ended up with an A, thank you!) started a four day frenzy of activity that I won't be recovered from for at least a few more days. Thursday and Friday I cleaned the house and got set up for my "social reincarnation soiree"--a party to celebrate my finishing summer classes and getting back in touch with all of the friends I've neglected for too long.

The party got going at around 6:30 when Erica showed up, followed shortly after by Jessie and Brian. Then Jodi arrived, and my parents came to take the dog and things got going. The highlight of the night was the opening of the Olympics, where everyone who isn't a smoker was glued from 7-11pm. It was really cool to see friends from drastically different areas of my life meet together and get along with one another. At one point I looked at Yoga Molly and said "this is the most eclectic group of people that could possibly be in a room together." The die-hards stayed up until about 2am and then we retired for the night.

It was a lot smaller gathering than I had planned, but enough people who were there promised me it was "intimate" rather than "totally lame" so I'm happy. It did remind me, though, why I have parties so infrequently. As an introvert, it's really strange for me to have a whole lot of people in my space. I love to have people over, but I'm really a lot happier with 4-5 people than I am with 30.

The next day Jessie, Brian, Rocket and I went to breakfast at the Teepee on the Rez, and the breakfast was so fucking good it was the only thing I ate all day without realizing it until the next morning when I woke up starving. I love the Teepee.

Stick a fork in me...

I'm done with summer classes.

I'm sitting here in the Great Red Chair of Sleep with the entire day spread out before me. Gatsby needs to go to the vet and I need to go to the chiropractor, but other than that, the day is mine. I do not need to go to chemistry, take a quiz online, study flashcards, go to lab, or think of Normandale in any way, shape or form.

Bliss.

Tomorrow night is the Social Reincarnation Soiree---about 20 people coming to my house to hang and celebrate my doneness. I guess maybe I should spend part of this day of doing nothing cleaning the house. Hmmm..... or maybe I'll just curl up with Leif Enger's amazing Peace Like a River. Decisions, decisions.

Things so beautiful they make us weep

The other night I was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and talking with Jodi. I mentioned how the scene where Charlie finds the ticket in his candy bar always makes me cry. She asked why, and I said that it's such a beautiful thing--for a deserving person to get exactly what they want. Not to have to work for it always, but for all the stars to align for a good person who deserves a bit of luck and it just happens. It's magic, I think, and that's what always makes me tear up at that moment. That, followed up by his grumpy grandpa saying "There's lots of money. They're printing more every day." And he tells Charlie to use the ticket rather than sell it.

Jodi said that what had made her cry from beauty was Where the Hell is Matt?. I clicked to it, and I haven't really been the same since. I watched it, and though Matt's dancing didn't make me cry (I did appreciate the profound message of it), what moved me, and continues to move me, was the song he dances to.

I downloaded the song and have listened to it almost non-stop for three days. I mean that. I've listened to it almost a hundred times at home on itunes and it's the only song I play in my car. I heard it in my head during my bio test and it got me through it. This has been a tough week--a tough five weeks, really--and this song overwhelms me with the feeling that absolutely anything is possible. The combination of strings and piano with the singer's incredible voice is beyond the pale. It's the sort of beautiful music that makes my chest hurt because I can't breathe for the wonder of it. It makes me smile, it makes me cry, it makes me feel like the moment I'm in is the most exquisite moment of my life.

So, it's a good song.

The song is called Praan, and I've wondered non-stop about who the singer is. I assumed she was an Indian woman hanging out in India (mostly because the words of the song aren't a language I recognize--I sound like a braying donkey when I try to sing along.) I googled her, googled the song, googled everything I could think of.

Come to find out thanks to channel 9, the singer, whose voice has filled my soul with a joy and wonder I haven't felt in a long time, is a 17 year old girl from Minneapolis. Her name is Palbasha Siddique, and the song is in Bengali. I wish I could call her up and tell her how much this song has moved me. She was paid $1000 for the song, which is akin in my mind to Edgar Allan Poe's $12 for The Raven.

Beautiful things that make us weep should be celebrated. The feeling of joy that swells within and threatens to burst out all on its own is so rare and, well, beautiful. Whatever its source, weeping for joy and love and beauty is a thing to be treasured.

Paging Dr. Nash...

What have I done all weekend?

Math.

Literally, ONLY math. I ate a little, and by eating I mean I ingested and digested rational expressions, imaginary numbers, and the square of the hypotenuse. I did 54 pages of problems--front and back (54 of my pages, not the book. God only knows how many book pages I did). Oh, and I snuck in some yoga. Hey, I had to do *something* to clear my head of numbers, numbers, numbers.

The next time I decide to forgo math in place of going out and partying like it's my birthday, smack me. Seriously. As much fun as the week was, this weekend was sheer fucking hell. But I needed to do all eight sections in preparation for tomorrow morning's exam.

Okay, on to Biology. Quiz tomorrow on cell reproduction and then exam on Tuesday on photosynthesis, cell reproduction, and aerobic respiration. Funsies.

Closing out of Birthday 2008

Last night Yoga Molly took me out for dinner and drinks to celebrate my birthday. We went to Bonfire and ate pizza and drank Mojitos. It was fantastic--great conversation, great company, great food---a terrific way to close out my birthday week. I'm so glad that I met Molly and that we've become friends; she is absolutely fantastic.

Today I worked for two hours and then, theoretically, had the rest of the day to work. My body had other plans, though. I got home from school at around 10am, and then proceeded to lounge in the great red chair of sleep until, well, pretty much right now. I took a nap, ate some lunch, ate some dinner, graded a few grammar packets, but on the whole this day has been one of total mental release. I didn't realize how exhausted I was this week. Every week at this time, I guess. It's probably why I'm getting so freakishly emotional on Thursday nights and into Friday mornings. Or, maybe it's just that I'm a freakishly emotional person. Whichever.

I have to take 8 math quizzes this weekend to make up for celebrating my birthday in place of doing math all week. I have to do that so that I can take the chapter 10 test on Monday morning and go to yoga on Monday night. At least there's a nice reward at the end of it. I also have to study for bio, clean the house, and grade summer school work. What's most important, though, is that I utilize tonight to the max that I can. I always feel like I throw away Friday nights and end up stressing on Sunday nights. Hopefully I can do a lot of work tonight and then not be so crazy on Sunday.

We'll see.

Simple pleasures, the bad with the good, the silver lining, fate stepping in (aka my 32nd birthday)

The fates are really trying. They're gathering around, totally rallied, working together to try to outwit the badness (karma?) and make my birthday the best possible day. Here is the yin and yang that has been my first fourteen hours of 32:

+ Going out for fabulous drinks at my only official "party" which wasn't really official
-- I sometimes feel when I'm with the people that I was with that I'm a total outsider and kind of like they just let me tag along (I know all of the aforementioned people read this and we all know it's me and my brain and not you at all so don't flip out *grin*) and like I don't really know anything about books or music or any of the important things in life.
-- When I got to my car there was a glowing ticket there for $105. Thanks for the birthday gift, Hennepin County.

-- This morning I woke up crabby and hot and angry.
+ When I let Gatsby out there was a marvelous breeze that cooled me down (on all levels)

-- Had to teach summer school rather than sleeping in, and the kids talked non-stop
+ I had a great conversation with three kids and when I was walking out of school with my bag and my coffee I felt every inch of 32 in the best way possible: professional, together, needed.

+I studied for my bio quiz and felt like I knew everything there is to know about photosynthesis
-- I got a C on the bio test I took on Tuesday

+ I did not get an F on the bio test I took on Tuesday
-- I definitely failed the quiz on photosynthesis, which I had trouble seeing since I was literally wiping away my tears from the C on the test.

--I went to the vending machines between bio class and lab and realized I was 20 cents short of affording anything.
+ I dug deeply in every crevice of my purse and bag and found a quarter

-- I put all the money into the machine and found out everything in the machine is mislabled and I was five cents short. No food.
+ As the tears were threatening again 'Stay' by Lisa Loeb and the Nine Stories came on the radio. My karaoke song.

See what I mean?

My birthday has been a day of enjoying simple pleasures. It could have very, very easily have been a bad day. There was a time when I would have made it a bad day. But, the fates seem insistent that for every bad that happens there is a good right along with it, and I'm totally willing to go along with them on that. I stopped at picked up some chinese food on the way home from lab, and now I'm crashed out on the couch reading a shitload of messages from people who love me and don't mind telling me so on my special day. One of the realizations that comes with being older is realizing that a person has to pave their own way in this world, and that includes their happiness. I can dwell on the Cs and the failures and the expensive ticket, or I can be loved, eat Chinese food, pick up fresh dry cleaning, enjoy the gorgeous 78 degree, cloudless sunny day, and read the summer Tin House.

Happy birthday to me---here's to another year of learning, growing, and loving my friends and family. In the last calendar year I've met new people, some of whom are becoming very dear to me. I've also had some pretty staunch reminders that we aren't guaranteed anything but this present moment and it's important to make that moment special and surrounded by people I care about. Thirty-two years is thirty-one, -two, -three longer than a lot of other people get, so I'm incredibly thankful.

Is it Friday yet?

Today in biology I tried so damn hard to stay awake--I really did. And I was successful, but there was a small problem. I was concentrating so hard on staying awake that most of what my prof was saying missed me almost entirely. I got all the notes and I think I mostly get what's going on, but it was brutal. The most brutal part being, of course, that just making it through class isn't enough; I also had to make it through a three hour lab where we measured shit in milliliters. Oi.

Fridays have significant meaning to me these days, since they are the only day of the week I don't have class. Mondays are five hour bio class and math, Tuesdays are usually exam days and now fiction class, Wednesdays are five hour bio class and math, Thursdays are the beginning of the descent--two hour class, math, yoga (yay!)....and then blissful Friday. Those first three days of the week, though, man, Dude. TGIF.

Now, of course, I have to study for biology. The test tomorrow is on bacteria, intro to metabolism, and membranes. Oh, and archaea. Whatever those are. HA!

Huh...this pressure cooker thingy has a lid...

Last night I took my bio final. I won't speak of it beyond that I only needed seven points to hold an A in the class (50 point test) and I'm really hopeful (but not positive) that I got seven right. I have my accounting final on Tuesday and my Death and Dying final on Wednesday and then I'm done.

And a funny thing happened when I woke up this morning. At 1pm. The sac of stress I've been floating in since January broke open during the night and I felt a level of calm that I don't remember feeling in months. I definitely prefer to work harder during the term so that finals don't matter quite as much (opposed to the girl in my bio class who didn't even show up for the final because there's no way she can get a C in the class even with a perfect score so she has to retake the class anyway).

Today is my day to sit and enjoy. To read my book. Practice yoga. Play games on the computer. Yeah, I need to clean and do laundry too, but that's cool, I can do that. Later I'll go to the grocery store and get some beans, mushrooms, veggies, to match up with my new food plan. I'm excited for today.

In a tad more than three weeks I start the summer term: cellular biology and intermediate algebra. I have bio for 14 hours a week. Yeech. The learning for that class will be intense: both fast and hard. But, I can do it. In three weeks.

Taking a break

So I decided yesterday that I needed to take a break. No a five minute break or a half-hour hiatus, but a full-on real live break. No tests next week, the end of the trimester at work, so yesterday I put all obligations on hold and spent the day doing absolutely nothing. I played games on Facebook, I took a nap, I read my book, I watched movies and Seinfeld. In short, I went back to my old life. It was fabulous.

Today it's back to the grind--accounting and biology and planning out classes for next term and grading finals. But it's okay, I guess.

Coming to you live from 1954...

In Psych of Death and Dying tonight we did an ethics activity where one dialysis machine was available and five people needed it. I've done the activity before in other contexts so I knew what the basic idea was. In groups, we needed to decide on the best, most deserving person to use the machine knowing that the others would die as a result of not being chosen. We are given some information about each candidate, and then once we decide we are given more information about each candidate that is designed to call our original choice into question.

The point of the exercise is really no point at all: all lives are significant and there is no "right" answer. Done. I picked the 42 year old man who was on the brink of discovering the cure for cancer. To me, that seemed like a no-brainer.

What shocked the hell out of me was the way that the class eliminated the women from the group. There were three men and two women. The majority of the class chose Dave, a 19 year old male. Gone was Edna, a single 34 year old woman. Why? Because she didn't have kids. No one depended on her. Gone, also, was Coda, a 28 year old mother of four. Why? Trick question. Some people had originally chosen her, but with the additional information that it was actually her mother that did most of the caretaking for the children, off the list she went. Because the kids had someone that would raise them. Both women were young and firmly established either in a career or as a housewife. Yet they were not considered "worthy" of life as much as....

The 19 year old boy. Who is, I may add, childless, but apparently that's not a measure of value for men, only for women. Think of the potential this young man has! they proclaimed. As opposed to the 34 year old professional businesswoman who may as well drop dead for all she's contributing to society in the way of offspring.

I'm really surprised how much this is bothering me; it's a class exercise. It's a class exercise designed to show that no one's choice is correct. Done, end of story. But the people in my class were so dead set against these two women--saw no value in them whatsoever--and I kept sitting there thinking "This is me. I am Edna. And if these people are, God forbid, in charge of my life (which someday they may be--they're all younger than I am by about 10 years), I'll be shut down not because of something I've done, but because of what I *haven't* done." I haven't had children. I don't know that I ever will. I may never get married. And I left class tonight feeling like my worth as a person had been called into question. It was such a huge reminder that though I am surrounded by single women friends and married women friends who have decided not to have children and they love me and support me, the world is still uncomfortable with single, childless women.

I know, I'm going overboard with it. But, hey, as a single woman I guess I need to stick my voice out there and be heard. Who knows when someone will point the finger at me and decide that my value is less than--not equal too--that of a 19 year old boy.

How I did:

Gary asked how I did on my list from yesterday. Because I decided to make it a weekend endeavor, I waited until tonight to post the results. Please note that tonight is not done, and I'm still plugging away on a few of the list elements. I think that I did okay--not great--on my projects.

1. clean the house
Result: I cleaned the kitchen and unearthed roughly half of the dining room table.

2. walk the dog
Result: Done. We went for a lovely walk and then Gats got a lovely "undercarriage" bath.

3. study for histology lab test
Result: Failed miserably here. I didn't touch it. 20 point quiz on Wednesday...yikes.

4. finish death/dying project
Result: I did 3/4 of the project. I need to proofread my responses to the essay questions and fill out my funeral planning questionnaire. Maybe I'll save that until I take that damn histology quiz--I'll need a funeral plan for that.

5. take chapter 3-4 accounting test
Result: Done. Scored a 92%.

6. do chapter 5 accounting work
Result: I read the chapter and started on the assignment. I'll be doing more work on this one tonight.

7. grade CPC Poe essays
Result: Didn't touch them. Well, that's a lie: I moved them from my gym bag to my school bag to bring back with me tomorrow.

8. Run 4 miles
Result: Didn't do it. Plain and simple. Are you surprised?

9. do laundry
Result: Still accomplishing this one. It will be done before I go to bed.

10. go grocery shopping for next week
Result: Yep!

11. mail books for bookmooch
Result: Yep!

12. go to school and print histology slides
Result: Decided that tomorrow would be soon enough to print out the slides. God forbid I'd make the trip and then have to actually study for the quiz.

What I did instead:
1. Watched six hours of Big Brother.
2. Had a thai massage and hit up a Yoga class
3. Waited and waited and waited for an email from a friend. Still waiting.
4. Read a few chapters in Eat, Pray, Love
5. Cooked some fabulous jalapeño chicken
6. Stood in my kitchen and did the twist while waiting for the chicken


All in all, I'd say I accomplished quite a bit!

Not going to waste today!

I have a lot of stuff that I need to get done this weekend. So much so that I think I need a schedule in order to accomplish it all, rather than realize at 10pm tomorrow night that I didn't really accomplish anything.

Here is a quick-and-dirty list of what needs to be done:

1. clean the house
2. walk the dog
3. study for histology lab test
4. finish death/dying project
5. take chapter 3-4 accounting test
6. do chapter 5 accounting work
7. grade CPC Poe essays
8. Run 4 miles
9. do laundry
10. go grocery shopping for next week
11. mail books for bookmooch
12. go to school and print histology slides

Dang. It's worse than I thought. And, I have the feeling I'm forgetting some things. I'm trying really hard to not feel guilty over not going to lab today, the last day the histology slides are available. I can do most of the work online and I know it'll be packed in there today. I've spent about 6 hours in there, I think, for this lab.

Okay, a schedule is definitely in order.

Captain Procrastination called---

He wants his title back.

I have the biggest test of my known life coming up this Wednesday. Have I studied? Not one single bit. I've got a study schedule, I've got all my materials, I've got everything I could ever need.

Except motivation.

I'm in the process, now, of cleaning the house. This is an age-old, tested and true procrastination technique of mine perfected in my college days. During finals, I had the cleanest dorm room on campus. All other times--it was a war zone.

I'm heading out to lunch in an hour and then after that I MUST study. No more messing around. No more cleaning, surfing channels, snuggling the dog, reading, or napping. From when I get home on through Monday morning, I will eat, drink, sleep, live and breathe Biology chapters 1, 3, 5 and 8.

Taking my nose out of my biology book to update y'all on my life

A huge biology test this upcoming Wednesday has forced me into a deep cavern of studying. This, following my first major psych-death-dying test. I've not really been home before nine pm any time this week, and the only thing I have to say is "Hey, I was studying."

But, people have been checking in to see if I'm alive, so I wanted to let the world know I still exist. And I'm getting smarter with all this studying. Yippee. This weekend I'm going to the lab (big surprise) and then out to lunch with a former student, then shopping with Erica. And studying. Lots and lots of studying.

Salvaging Sunday

So I sat in my crabby pants pretty much all day and then decided that the best way to salvage what should have been a perfectly wonderful Sunday (blasphemy to waste them, friends) would be to make myself crabcakes for dinner.

I'm not going to lie--I make the best damn crabcakes this side of Maine. Thought I guess they'd probably make lobstercakes. Whatever--you get my drift. And it seems to be working. Though I am still put out a bit by the overall structure of the class, I'm not so pissed off that I can't savor every bite of my yummy dinner. And, though it's 7:20 and I teach in 12 hours, I'm okay with that.
I do have a huge test on Wednesday, a quiz tomorrow, and another huge test a week from Wednesday, but I will survive all of them. I need a study schedule, but I'll survive them. You bet yer sweet crabcakes I will.

A sunday afternoon rant

I hate my accounting class more than I've ever hated anything in my life. And, as many of you know, I've hated some things pretty deeply from time to time.
I'll spare you the details and summarize my issue thusly:

I hate spending three hours on an accounting problem that's worth one point. I hate that while working the problem, I can only see half the screen at a time, even when it's in full screen mode and everything is pushed out as far as it can go. I hate that, while I get three chances to do a problem, the numbers change each time so it's really never the same problem. Finally, I hate that when all is said and done, and I've worked the problem four times over three hours, I end up with 0.99 out of 1 because the final number I entered was 5,500 instead of 5,550.

I am not a fan of online classes. I'm not enjoying the fact that my professor is getting paid when it's the computer assigns the problems, corrects them, and gives me a grade. I had no idea how important it was for me to connect an instructor's face with a class. I'm going to ignore the completely snippy email she sent out that she didn't even sign her name to or put any type of a salutation, even though that's how we in polite society work things. That won't be hard, considering that though there are opportunities for her to put comments in each of our assignments, she has written nothing for the 55 problems I've done. Not so much as a "good job" for the 54.99 points I've earned out of those 55 problems.

So, I'll keep working on this stuff, but I'm not going to like it, even though I've always loved accounting. I refuse to like it this time. So there.

Please take your quill, dear poet, and jam it in my eye

There has never been a time in my life that I have despaired my future as a writer like I do right now. Between poetry and fiction, I don't know which end is up, and I feel like I'm clinging to a life raft with a huge hole in it.

When I started fiction, I didn't have any concept of how much I didn't know. I assumed I was a brilliant writer, and as I learned steadily, my understanding of how hard the craft is and how small my place is in it began to grow. Through all of it, though, I've never considered writing to be "too hard."

Poetry is where I started. Years and year ago, before I met anyone that I know now, I was a poet. I stopped writing for several years, and when I went back, I went back to fiction. But, the idea of poetry, the movement of it, the language, has always drawn me. But, sitting in poetry class and not having that innocent naivete I brought to fiction is gut wrenching. I know where my poetry stands in relation to my fiction.

I could handle struggling in poetry, but it has combined with a current struggle on the hardest story I've ever written. Heather, my amazing friend and writing partner, says that it's my strongest and most complex story she's ever seen from me, and I believe her. I think it's so hard because I'm pushing beyond my comfort zone and where I've written before. It's not a one level story, as all of my others have been. I believe it may be the first story I'll publish, whenever the hell I finish it.

So why despair? There are so many things changing for me right now. Operation: DBH is consuming me, as is trying to balance teaching and writing and accomplishing everything I want to accomplish. There's just so much to do, and I don't feel like I have enough time. Not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the week, not enough months in the year to get it all done. I'm not willing to sacrifice anything, so I'm sacrificing a little part of all of it.

I'm frustrated. And the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get. Is it Friday yet? Please?

If I wrote as much as I planned to write.....

And by that I mean, if I wrote as often as I a) bought books on writing, b) talked to other writers about writing, c) planned a writing schedule, d) organized my writing, and e) complained about how I never have time to write,

I'd have won the Pulitzer. Twice. And probably the Nobel Prize in Literature as well.

Novel workshop, poetry, memoir...all but the beloved short story

This weekend I spent twelve hours at part two of the "how to plan, write and publish your novel." I spent twelve hours at part one earlier in May, but since it was May I didn't bother to write about it. This weekend was awesome because not only did I get some great headway made on my novel, but I also met Swati, a fiction writer and all around totally cool chick. She is one of the fiction mentees this year along with my friend Heather, and though we had been introduced, we'd never really had the opportunity to talk. We have some interesting things in common, and when we went to lunch yesterday it was fantastic.

Outside of working on the novel, I've been writing poetry like freakin' Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. I've been studying Jude Nutter's amazing poems, and reading books that analyze poetry and talk about how to write it. As part of a challange with some of my Zoetrope writing friends, I've written five poems in the last five days. Overall the poems aren't great, but there are some sparkles of possibility in them.

This is all well and good and is certainly enhancing my writing abilities.........but I miss the short story. I miss revising, I miss putting the first word down. I miss cutting up a twenty page manuscript and laying it all out on the dining room table, sorting out scenes and mashing it all back together in a form better than it used to be.

This summer was to be my summer of challanging my writing safety zones--I wanted to reach beyond my comfort levels. I've done that, sure, but along with it I've also discovered that there's absolutely nothing in writing quite like the short story.