Breaking the First Rule

I have to update and I had a few mediocre ideas on what topics to explore and even where to go within those topics. But I can't remember what they were. Was that today's shower or two showers ago? There should be a compartment for laptops in the shower that makes it waterproof, although I am sure that would drive my water/electric bill sky high and then I would probably complain that there was no place to sit in the shower either and that the screen fogs too much. Sigh. It's that old "If you give a writer a computer in her shower, she's going to want..." cyle. So cliche. There are these, though. Buy them for me.

One thing that has been bouncing around my mind for the duration of the summer has been next year. It happens all summer and then, two weeks before classes begin, the inevitable school-related nightmares start happening. Shortly followed by the dread of going back which trails behind you, never in full vision like a tail, while the faint whispers of unpreparedness and guilt for not working the entire summer on re-imagining your entire approach to pedagogy attaches itself to every activity you decide to do that is not school-related.

In normal professions things like this don't happen because in normal professions there are no yearly two month long vacations. This kind of strange build up can only be shared by other teachers and maybe the unemployed. However, I imagine the unemployed version of this anxiety ride is way scarier because the end of the ride is completely unpredictable while a teacher's, depending on politics in the state, the nation and in the school, are only about 75% unpredictable. At the very least, you know that you might have a job when you go back and students will be involved in some manner. The rest, no matter what they told you on the last day, is completely a surprise. I wish I was exaggerating about that.

So, this year I made my college level students read a book that was recommended by a seasoned teacher as a summer assignment.
The number one rule when assigning books (which is obvious even to the most basic of organisms on the planet) is to read the book before assigning it.

(This next part is going to sound like the set up to a bad horror flick)

I didn't. Or hadn't in a VERY long time. I saw the movie, read snippets of the book here and there on my travels as a mostly-English major and enjoyed what I knew. I liked the statements, the overall philosophical debates within and I knew that it was a big hit with teenagers based on previous recommendations from others.

I am reading the book now and I adore it for its style, for its message, for its balls-outedness. However, I have met some of my darlings for next year and some of them are going to ask questions, questions that require answers that may or may not be easy to answer in a classroom setting. Some of the things in the book are offensive. No, wait. Scratch that - the book is supposed to be offensive - but mostly in the "government is evil", "sexuality is not a crime", "battle of the sexes" and "oh boy, I am cursing a lot" kind of ways. For some reason, getting past these indiscretions in a college-level class is not too difficult. It's the race offense that is the worst. How does a student read a book where the in modern day the slang use is offensive and the perpetrators of harm are also of that race, yet the narrator falls in love with a girl of the same race in a small chapter of the book. Is it still racist? Was it racist at all? Are we just very sensitive to race? Speaking as someone who is sensitive to commentary in classics about my own creed, I am afraid I may have picked poorly for these aspects of the book escaped me when choosing it. However, the book still stands firmly on its feet and the notion that the race of the "perpetrators of harm" is somehow tied to their inclination for it can be shattered due to the narrator's own mental state, for he is unreliable in judgement. Should I approach it like that?

I think the problem is within myself. I can't decide if I think it's truly racist or not. Do I think people will be hurt? Yes. But mostly due to its other brash qualities, which is the point of the book. If anyone should be offended, it should be women in general when reading the book. Maybe asking why is an important discussion point. Perhaps there should be a day of discussion asking "Is it racist?" I have to ask the lady who recommended this how she overcomes this very glaring issue and how my fellow educators have done it in the past. Like I have said, this book has been taught for many years and it is beloved.

I'd prefer to tackle this than to push it under the rug or pretend it isn't there or isn't in the back of everyone's mind as they read the novel. I am also excluding the title from the entry on purpose because this sort of debate arises all the time in the realm of teaching as well as in the cultural atmosphere. Discussion, open and intelligent, is probably the better tactic.

Abrupt Topic Switch

The other day I was talking to a former-student and he told me that  Brave New World was one of the worst books he read in high school. I smiled because I remember thinking the same thing. I remember having read 1984 first, after the middle school Fahrenheit451 (which started my love of dystopian* Literature, Science Fiction and Ray Bradbury), and then reading Brave New World and thinking it was cartoonish and ridiculous. However, I teach it in contrast with 1984 and I teach it because when it comes to the examinations and the essays that the students are required to produce, they can use so much of that book. I told the former student that there is a sort of loathing that I have for saying I love a book for the purpose of an exam or a discussion even though I personally do not like a novel. I guess that is the difference in showing someone how to do something and just talking about what you like, a distinction a lot of people don't think exists in teaching. I will continue to teach Brave New World because it is a great example of a lot of techniques done correctly and it is analytical fodder. I guess I'll say that teaching it a strange reality.

*dystopian in spell-check is corrected to "utopian" - I smell conspiracy!

Draft or Bottled?

Every summer I say I am going to write. Every summer I say I am going to be an artist for the summer. This summer, I started. I hope I can follow through. I think follow-through is harder than starting or ending.

I guess my mantra for the summer is:

 Write where I want to be 

because I would not like my inner self and already atrophied adult being to curl up into a desiccated and stale chunk of what used to resemble human creativity.

I know that's too long to be a mantra, but maybe I'll just repeat the first part, "Write where you want to be". I guess it would be the way out of writer's block for the day. If all comes up dry, write about that. Where would I like to be - physically, mood-wise, career-wise, spiritually, etc. I can go anywhere and it all relates back to the goal, writing every day.


Draft or Bottled?


The first author that ever made me see prose as something gorgeous, the magical Ray Bradbury, described inspiration as one of those things you don't have the luxury of just letting walk on by. You have to take the muse when it comes and just write. Do not wait. The spark will not be there when you get back. The butterfly in the jar will have run out of air. I agree. I once told a friend of mine who wrote every day, all the time, continuously that writing for me was more like an urge to pee. If I felt I had to do it now, I couldn't hold it. I couldn't force it either. Oh, the luxury of being a college student writer. I believed that's how I would write forever. However, once adult life strapped itself to my head, sucked all of my whimsy away and replaced it with functional concerns like work, bills, chores, errands and other petrifying agents, my creative self started to stiffen and become more and more woodlike. 


It has been easy to put the playtime "arting" and crafting and writing to the back when my profession only demands these things of me on rare occasions. It's extremely easy to get lost in the exhaustion excuses or to fill my day with other things - even healthy things like working out or cleaning or cooking, etc. However, for someone like me who had their ships pointed toward writing and creating, to keep veering off and settling at other ports all slowly chips away at something in the back of oneself. It's that part of me that knows I am avoiding the big stuff because I am scared of it working, terrified of my love for it and the lukewarm reception of others and all the other things that come with creativity. Sometimes it's not even what others may think because having the opinions of others is essential to seeing the world from outside of the cranial command center of our egos. Sometimes it's just seeing what is usually inside and even hidden from ourselves in a tangible outside form. Maybe that's what giving birth is really like. Ray Bradbury called his books his children. Well, my self-worth had enough of cowardice ruling the joint and decided it was time to write some children. 


I decided to write for at least two hours every day to start and to blog at least once a week about the process. I had to decide about what I was aiming for. Is it a book? I guess it may be a book. Is it planned out or is it free flow?
Bottle or draft?


I have heard writers explain both. Some authors like to write and see what the characters do on their own. I saw an author speak a while ago about the complicated maps and taped together pieces of paper she creates to chart out her plots before she even begins so she knows the aim of each chapter. It covered an entire wall and collapsed to fit in her pocket so she could unfurl it whenever she got lost along the way.


Because of my affinity for logic puzzles (and I DO LOVE logic puzzles and puzzle games), I am going to hybrid and see where that takes me. I tell my students when they write to first brainstorm. Just let your mind go and put everything you've got onto the table, like idea-vomit. Just purge - no restrictions or self-doubt. Then, pick through it (vomit metaphor not so great). Find what you like. Now, write in that direction. Then we go back and fix and go back and fix and go back and fix if we need to. Once you've got the clay on the table, you can work with it.  I tend to think that in this compromise of the planned versus free tactic you are writing freely, but toward an event or destination or with some kind of development in mind. Like this, you can still add in subplots and other character details and then maintain the thrill of solving your self-made puzzle and do in in a way that will move the reader.


Even though I usually try to work with the hybrid model of draft/bottle, there are exceptions. The other day, I caught a butterfly. An idea came to me after a trail of musings and I held on to it (rare for me and my Memento memory) and I did not take Mr.Bradbury's advice, mainly because I was in the bathroom of Universal Studios theme park at the time, and put that butterfly in a jar. Today I checked to see if it was still alive and it worked enough to get the start of something. Unplanned, but going somewhere. I still have no idea what is going to happen, but as each paragraph unfolds, I find that my subconscious has been writing a story all along, it just hasn't shown me yet. 


I think at the end of it all, planned or unplanned - it's like anything else, doing is better than not doing. Just write.

Creation

This blog has been bubbling in my crock-pot brain now for some time. I feel guilty that I used it for the summer, took it out for some air once this year and have left it to atrophy from lack of views and posts. This blog does that, though. It may be an annual or some other species that comes to flower a few times a year and you always look at it and think, "Oh, wow. I should feed that thing more so that it blooms all the time" and then you walk away, letting it stay barren until some magical mixture of sunlight, rainstorms and random touch it in just the right way to make it open.

I guess that magical circumstance would be my new infatuation: The Nerdist podcast.

I have a 45 minute drive to work and back. Radio was sucking my soul out of my ears and I lacked the time to go "discover" new music. I also don't like new music. My soul was being sapped by "Moves Like Jagger" (or moves like a gay chicken as I like to think of it) and other such nonsense, so I switched to NPR. If you are a worrier like me and worry that you are not current on world events, listen to NPR. It'll make you worry that much more. Once you get the big picture that all throughout the world people are being hurt, oppressed and fucked your worry quotient for the day will be hit before you even step foot into your insane place of employment. This did not do great things for me emotionally and was probably not the kind of thing I should be listening to while I was hurling down a cement water slide in my two ton projectile among thousands of unpredictable people, some of who have a demonstrable sense of immortality.

So, I switched to Podcasts. I liked a few "This American Life" episodes and went a few steps further. I am a geek girl, so I liked the name Nerdist. Then, I pressed play and the main host, Chris Hardwick, uncovered himself from the dust-covered flannel of my middle school years. Oh My God. This guy is still alive and doing stuff? I secretly thought he was the best part of Singled Out. I mean, it was Singled Out and it depressed me that this is what I could expect from my twenties; man-boys and girl-women dripping in so much insecurity they needed to "win" a date on cable to justify their appeal. I watched with an open mouth as they objectified themselves and performed tasks that would never be great relationship indicators. This was reality television as it used to be called: "Game Shows". Only the prize was a date you won with some stranger who was great at nothing that actually mattered in love. It didn't matter. I was young and fascinated by the exploitive properties of all dating series. Plus, the host was hilarious, cute and paradoxically shy-seeming. This was the only reason I knew the name and the prime reason I tried to navigate my way through the Nerdist's John Hamm interview which literally sounds like the most fun, random and insane form of chaos you ever heard. After listening to about 25 Nerdist podcasts, it was clear that you shall never speak of this show to Chris Hardwick's face. I guess it's like calling Mark Wahlberg you know what. I guess the show did do some good things, like help me hang on through the John Hamm interview enough to realize that this podcast is something I would like to hear again. And again because the hosts genuinely and enthusiastically LOVE their craft.

This isn't a blog about The Nerdist (entirely), it's about creativity and the nature of doing what you love despite how terrifying that may be.

Yes, it's terrifying to do what you really, truly live for because if you are by chance bad at it or it goes down awfully, what bastion do you have left? On the podcast there are one to three hosts, one of them always being Chris Hardwick, and aside from having the nerdiest, most awesome guests ever on the podcast, the guys are just ad-libbing, living room style. The formality of a traditional "interview" is gone and that opens the guests up to riffing most of the time. There is a feeling of everyone's just "hanging out". At its most perfect, you'll have an episode like the Bryan Cranston episode where you are laughing your ass off and at its worst, you'll chuckle a few times and get some very deep insights into the darker sides of some of the guests. Either way, the inspiration is there to me. Here they are, just doing everything they love. I think the stand-up backgrounds of the hosts makes it possible to just bare soul to the world. There are constant themes that emerge throughout the podcasts like mechanisms for coping with the rejection of stand-up and how stand-up is not a choice, it's a calling. I'd say that about 70% of the episodes I have heard tackle this issue.

But, you are not a stand-up comic, blogger geek girl, you say.

No, but what I do (secret) is basically the same thing only it comes with certain topics I must cover and my audience changes out every few months. There are days/months/years where I bomb up in front of a very vocal audience and other moments where I kill. Whenever the hosts on the podcast switch to some comedy-related topic, I just think they are talking about my job and it's true what is usually said: Just get up there and keep being yourself. It's the only way it works.

Sometimes there are interviews with writers as well, my other half - the conjoined and half dead fetus type of a "half". I am a coward, writing in a dark box or in my head or only for speeches I have to give in front of authority figures. The compliments come and come and I think that I am OK, but not nurtured. Brad Meltzer spoke in a Nerdist podcast about just sitting down and writing and I felt shame. Shame because that is what I should be fighting myself to do. This blog WAS hilarious in my mind. I took every Saturday to turn out a post and then I let life wash over me and pull me down, away from creating. And truth be told, every time I "publish" a post, I look at it like a random visitor, all posted without the ability to edit and I find mistakes and changes that need to be made and obsess over it for a little. Then I fix it up and re-publish it and wait to see if anyone has seen it. That's when terror hits. I just put my heart in the street and walked away.

My friend Danny had this quote which I can't remember, but it sums up creation for most people. The effect of the quote was something like: the world demands talent and you have to reach belly-button deep, sometimes pinky-toe deep, to emote in a way that translates and if it does, the most that will happen is someone will "like" it and ask for more, expecting that you can just dig pinky-toe deep to entertain a stranger. It's exhausting.

There is something in that sentiment that kills me.

I once wrote with a bunch of other "writers" on a short story collective blog. I LOVED it. I wrote stories, good, bad, ugly, but I always completed them and posted them. Some of the other writers couldn't even do that and they were better than me. By a lot. One writer is a downright genius and in out collective Haiku blog, he slaughtered. Haiku blogs, by the way, just turn into one-liners by the time you do them for a year. Anyway, the short stories stayed on the Internet for months and months, maybe even years and then one night I woke up in a cold sweat thinking that some hack, jerk-face kid was going to lift the stories and pass them off as his own. I took them down immediately.

I had a great inner monologue debate about things like writing blogs after that. I want it to be public so people can see, read and love, but I do not want someone to exploit it or take it as their own. I guess that's the dichotomy of showing what you love to the world. I hid behind that shield for a long time and stopped all together. . . . .

. . . Until the frame of mind shift inspired by a bunch of nerds recording their adoration and goofiness for nobody and for everybody. It's really taken off for them. The site is huge with a million different dorky things to see, read and watch and they've graduated to recording their podcasts live. They prove that people like me can work doing what they love and be as dorky as they need to be. As long as it is genuine, it'll fly.

Jeff Buckley once said "If you do something long enough and often enough, sooner or later the weirdos will show up".

I need to get myself a pack of weirdos.

"Would you look right here for me?" *

Clearing the canvas. A remodel is required and reinvention looming. Will it last? There's no way to know. You just have to birth the newest rendition and hope that it is a better version of you and not a tenth generation a la Multiplicity. To ink or to crayons, let the new writer emerge.


*Men in Black (1997)

Not a Quilt Post. (of course)

This satirical piece is called

Mocking Horse Winner

There's money to be made at the race

to the top.

"There must be more learning gains!"

"There must be more learning gains!"

They were found dead, slumped over their testing packets

Pencils in hands

Their epitaphs bubbled in completely.

~I.G.

..."And now for something completely different"

It's not that I have given up or that I have employed the exacto blade in ways not intended for its use or even that this post is going to be a big blog of excuses, it's just that I had to go back to work this week. Work comes with a 4 am run, an hour commute and overtime. Sometimes it comes with extra work as a means for secondary income.

No worries, though. The thread is still running through my veins. I can't look down at the tile in my classroom and not see mini quilts and block combinations. I even found a stray rectangle of swirled fabric in my purse the other day and looked away longingly with a forlorn smile when I doted upon the summer I spent with the quilt. I have no new pictures of products to show and I have scrolled through the site and found that the pictures are getting boring and repetitive. To breakup some of that here are a series of products I found in Wal-Mart to break up the monotony:

Zote: The Racist Soap!




Who wants prissy dew anyway? Taste the Lightning!


How can we make cheese more healthy?


Baby Granny! I can't wait to change those diapers!


Who says sausages are sexual?



No Comment



So, I have proved that the blog is not dead. Maybe it's a little anemic from neglect, but certainly not dead. As soon as I have a moment to sew, you'll know.

Like toilet paper

So, instead of creating an entirely new blog to "litter the blogosphere" with, I am just going to add my new project to this old vehicle for sarcasm.

The young, bitter blogger has transformed into a elderly cat lady. It seems I have found harmony and have decided to disrupt that calm with the endeavor of quilting.

You may believe that this pastime is reserved for grannies and the feeble-minded, pack-rat hoarders of the backwoods, but I have discovered that this task is the marriage between extreme OCD, architecture, mathematical genius and incredible dexterity.

I thought I knew something about quilting because a while ago, I spent an entire year quilting my uncle's old concert tees together .

As you can see, there is nothing really uniform about the segments - I kind of just sewed everything together and hoped for the best - after backing every single shirt with jersey so they would all stretch the same.
It's been a few years now and the scars have healed over. I thought that a reasonable project I could do was do make the real deal. I was armed with a book my mother bought me and a pattern I liked. There are a lot of rules on quilterschache.com about stealing stuff - so I am telling you now, the block I am using comes from that site - click the link.

The first thing I learned in my journey was that I am still bad at math despite cramming for the GRE many years ago. Figuring out how much fabric I needed was difficult because of the way fabric is sold and because I did not use equations mixed with tangrams to get my numbers. I basically winged it - and had to go back to Jo Ann's three times. The last time I needed more fabric I was so embarrassed that I ordered it online. I don't know how many times I can tell the cutting lady that I suck at this sort of thing. The book AND the site afford you many tools to use to figure out how much you'll need, so of course, I estimated.

Anyway, step 1 was to cut.

After more math and heartbreak, I figured out that I would need 49 blocks to make a queen sized quilt. That meant cutting 98 strips of some fabric - for each color...one of them twice. They keep advising that you are exact, but fabric isn't exactly wood - it stretches and it behaves weird and sometimes I am like 1/8th off and it is no good. This is where the OCD can really be an advantage.

Oh, and before you ask, I am not hand-quilting. As it is, this will take me 6 months. I do know someone who did hand-quilt her own, but she is crazy. I can't tell if it was from quilting or if she was that way before...

So, four days later, I have all my pieces cut. Now comes the sewing. I immediately wasted a few squares on retarded things like sewing them on the wrong side or matching them up incorrectly. Once I got everything straight, it was midnight and I wasn't going to bed until 1 block of 49 was finished.


It was finished ...but disappointing.
As you can clearly see, things are mismatched and not aligned.

The back wasn't looking too hot either.


So,after a good night's rest, a LOT of coffee, a hot iron and my most stubborn qualities all riled up, I tried again.

I did these things differently:

I ironed everything
I cut uneven sides down to match before sewing
I made my 1/4 inch seam as scant as I could (that's craftspeak for I sewed along at a little less than 1/4 inch.)
I ironed, trimmed and measured before assembling the blocks into rows and then again before putting the rows together. The slight puckering you will see below is due to too much ironing and no starch. I will adjust for the next one.
So, here's the 2nd block.

There are still slight misalignments, but not as bad as the one before. This block also has the correct shape overall. (YAY!)
Here is the back:
I decided not to split the seams here. It was easier this way, but I am not sure if it is correct. It may account for the slight puckering. Either way, I am MUCH more pleased with the second block of 49!

At the very end, it should look like this according to quilterscache.com

If you have any tips, please share. I will incorporate them into the next block and you can see your own help hard at work.

See you on the next block.

"Too Much Blood in my Caffeine System"

I made the mistake of taking my brother to breakfast today. It was a botched obligation I traded in for some more time to spend on the couch with my lover. With full intentions of making it up to Scotty by way of Taco Bell, I made the arrangements for feeding him after work. When we got in the car, I, all of a sudden, had a hankering for eggs, bacon and those either burnt or frozen potatoes from The Pancake House around the block. Sure, it's expensive, the service sucks and my brother orders their most expensive meal PLUS extra sides every time be go, but I keep returning for the same reason every one returns there: they simply have the greatest coffee on earth. In fact, they have a banner with a giant golden lion sipping coffee on it. That lion is the caffeine equivalent to the Hypnotoad(all glory to...) One cup in and she offers me another. "Yes", I practically beg her through tears of immediate regret. But, oh, it is so the best thing ever. It also washes down the burnt potatoes quite well.

Fast forward 5 hours later and I am wishing I went for that 3 mile run I meant to get in before it got dark, right before I picked up my mail and spent three hours reading the National Geographic that arrived, and before I started watching Glee. Now it is too late to run, but my mind is springing. I have a fuckTON of reading to do so I don't fudge the details on the novel I am teaching, but I'd much rather kill zombies and behead the conjurer mage who guards the treasure at the back of the cave I am exploring in the game on my xbox I am in love with. I would also love to clean and make things smell pretty while formulating the most innovative and effective method for teaching vocabulary this side of Marzano. Wow. I feel/sound like my sister. Someone needs to make sure my pupils aren't floating in the whites of my eyes because I have strained them too much while explaining these things to you. Someone make sure I am not doing it right now.

Don't call it a comeback...

Today I blogged.

When did "blog" become a bad word? It's not necessarily entirely evil just yet, but it's not what it used to be. Remember when it was new and had that red plastic glow of new toy-ness? I have a blog with pictures that are funny and witticisms that will regale the fleshy walls of even the most crowded spam mailboxes and chain letter massacres. There was an open stage once associated with the word "blog". Now you say "blog" and I think of gobs and blobs of opinions from people like me with the illusion of audiences. Now, "bloggers" only have credibility with news commentary shows who are too lazy to go do actual journalism themselves. Everyone has a blog, but only those who can turn their tiny, ad-bartered piece of cyber real estate into a mecca of self-promotion get anywhere. Journalists posting what other journalists wrote. Is this where journalists go to die? Amateur writers going on missions and documenting their plights or failed novelists hoping for a bite; who are these people and where did their blogs go? To me blogging is the blue fairy at the bottom of the sea, keeping me frozen in a glow of hope, fathoms below a bustling and much more innovative world. I am perfectly content to write for the fish.

I sometimes troll my old blogging haunts, LJ, Wordpress, etc. It's nothing more than broken links and corrupted files. The ghosts of friends I loved in 2005, pictures from parties when everyone was much thinner, and, funny enough, old weight loss diaries and exercise aphorisms go unread.

That's going to change. Right now. I won't let this blog become "Probably Abandoned", as an acquaintance once named his blog when I pressured him to write one because he was so hilarious in real life.

The graveyard of abandoned blogs has one less resident tonight. ME!

AGAIN.

I am reviving...
AGAIN.

Who doesn't love zombies nowadays?


P.S. - Metaphor Coffee is looking for blood donors for its revival. If you like writing short stories and love a good competition and can END A STORY, please give me a shout. We'd love to have your....BRAINS.

Sick Day

It’s Friday. Friday: the bacon-flavored nugget at the end of a week of pure obedience, the giant reward, the sigh of relief. The show, my friends, is at its end for this run. At least that’s what it is supposed to be. Not for me this week. I've been home sick.


A Brief History of Faking It

When I was young, I remember staying home sick as the height of all reprieves from schoolwork, and mean little girls who would pass their secrets to everyone at the table but me. In a tiny one and a half bedroom apartment where five people dwelt, it was paradise to be home sick. Think Home Alone. I could finally live my dream of eating nothing but ramen noodles and watch daytime television. Maybe I’d go to the pool or start a new project (even then I loved projects). Days home sick were the greatest unless you were actually sick, of course.

Like all kids, I bent my acting skills to the limit and as a sibling in a brood of three others, you had to be talented to warrant a day off from my parents. Some nights I’d skip dinner so I could use that evidence as support for my case the next morning. Sometimes I’d even go to sleep super early in order to give the appearance that I’d caught a bug that day and it was going to lay me out for AT LEAST 24 hours. I never went to far as to put the thermometer under the light bulb like the kid in E.T., but it was only because I didn’t think a temperature of 135 degrees would render good results. I think that even Ferris Bueller warns against this method citing that a trip to the ER is never a desired outcome.

But, by far, my most elaborate plan for staying home was also my biggest fail. If you ask my sister, she’ll peel over in laughter to this very day and will probably utter the phrase “whole peanuts” in between exaggerated breathes for air. I used to wish I was an only child. One night I decided I could not possibly face the teacher without my homework or deal with the mini-bitches I shared a table with (I take the Lord of the Flies stance on children and innocence). I had to do something drastic. Mom was not buying the traditional pouty face and refusal to get out of bed. So, I went into the bathroom with some, what I thought were, very well-planned ingredients. I think I had a mustard packet and some peanuts. I opened the packet of mustard and peanuts and started mashing them into the tile of the bathroom floor. The result was a bile-colored pile with whole peanuts in it. It needed more orange, I thought. What was orange? Ah, the conditioner that we used at the time was orange and it smelled like heaven. I added it to my fabulous concoction. A few sound effects later and I emerge with the frown, the fake shivers and a half-bent posture to indicate my severe agony. My sister finds me three steps out of the bathroom.

“Oh, I’m so sick” I tell her. She, being the foil of my entire childhood, replies.

“Oh? Did you puke?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see!!”

I point a frail and slightly trembling finger toward the bathroom floor.

“It smells incredible in here for puke,” she starts, “Oh and what is this? Wow. Whole peanuts! Whole peanuts! You barfed up whole peanuts.”

If I thought I wouldn’t be struck dead by lightning for cursing at that age, I would have had a steady stream of F-bombs going off in my head. They’d never buy it now. I didn’t even have to worry about alerting them either because in her torrent of laughter, my sister belted out for the authorities to come and inspect my latest creation.

“Mom! Mom! Get in here now! Ann’s sick. Look. She’s been barfing up whole peanuts and shampoo.”


The State of Staying Home as an Adult


Nothing could be farther from paradise than staying home sick as adult. For the most part, anything that will warrant more work upon your return or will leave you unable to get essential tasks completed is not dubbed desirable. To add to it, staying home from work is a last resort, meaning you feel so completely mutilated that even sitting up straight for an extended period of time warrants short breathes and a vague prayer for a quick death. Oh, and the hit to the wallet only amplifies those prayers.

Weird Al has a song where he celebrates calling in sick to do absolutely nothing all day. Doing absolutely nothing all day will do to an active mind what the rack did to medieval criminals. It pulls at little doubts you couldn’t afford to entertain in a busy atmosphere; it stabs at tender wounds you never got a chance to lick; and it holds you back from doing anything about them.

And then there are the drugs. When I first got sick, I was looking forward to the days of Nyquil and the nights of Theraflu. This is the closest I can actually get to narcotics in my life, so I welcome those “drowsy syrups”. The doctor put the prescriptions in my hands and told me that my bronchitis would be gone in a few days after starting this inhaler, and to make sure I kept up with the decongestants. Yay. Decongestants mean sleep and fevered dreaming.

Not always, apparently. Imagine my disappointment as I lay in my bed at midnight, the covers to my chin, an idiotic grin pasted across my face and my foot twitching nervously at the end of the bed. The dialogue in my brain was just one long word. okIhavetogotosleepforworktomorrowiamfeelingbetteryay. Inhalers, for those of you who don’t know, puff a small cloud of crack into your lungs. Instant absorption. It’s like shooting a Monster into your heart. Logically, I figured that I could negate these effects with some decongestant magic. Some of you may already be chuckling because you know exactly how decongestants act in certain situations. Like, for instance, if you mix them with a strong upper, they will only heighten the 100-cups-of-coffee reality you are stuck in. One a.m. comes around and cleaning seems like the most perfectly logical cure for all of this. Cleaning ends at five and the sun is coming up and since you’d deprived your body of sleep and replaced its healing time with lemon-scented household cleaners, you are sicker than when you started. Grand. More days home. I don’t know about you, but when I go to sleep when I am sick, I have a slight fear of waking up.

It’s always worse when you wake up.