Dedicated to my good friend Sara Consuela Luke

Since my camera is in Puerto Rico, I turned to my trusty Photo Booth.

Here's the front:


Here's the back:


You may send flowers in lieu of letters of condolence.

Reader's Corner

It has been months since I have read for "fun". Some of you may say that reading and fun do not fit together. If this is you, do not continue reading--this does not pertain to you. For those of you who are enlightened, you may wish to continue reading as it may benefit your home library. Yesterday, I drove into the booming metropolis which is Jackson and visited one of the most wonderful places on earth: a bookstore. As I was saying, it has been months since I bought a book with the intention of sitting down and reading it. This would mean I have free time, which I do not. However, I picked up a book yesterday and was immediately brought to hysterics. Not of the screaming variety, because that would be weird, but of the laughing variety.
The book's name: I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!) by Stephen Colbert.
Here is an excerpt from a chapter entitled "Animals":

"I went to the zoo once: Not impressed. The animals were lazy. If I want to see a monkey sleeping, I'll tranquilize one. But what do you expect from today's modern zoos? If I went to see a play and all the actors were asleep, I'd get a refund. I say we put all the animals into one big enclosure and let them battle it out."

This is only a glimpse into the hilarity that is this book. I recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor similar to my own, otherwise you won't laugh at all.

P.S. I got my hair cut short yesterday. I will not be posting pictures because a.) i don't like it and b.) my camera is somewhere in Puerto Rico.

I sold a little piece of my heart

At 5:30 p.m., eastern standard time, Holly the Honda ceased to be a member of our family. It was a bittersweet moment as I cleaned out all of my junk, knowing that I would never smell the moldy interior of that worn down car ever again. We put the car in the paper yesterday, thinking it would take a miracle to sell. Today, Ben got dozens of calls on it and by 5:30 p.m., she was out of our lives.

I don't know why I feel sad about it; it is an inanimate object. We went through a lot together, though. She moved me from my dorm, to Ben's and my first house together, and to our current residence. She hit countless curbs as I tried to park her on the streets of Jackson when I worked at Marcoux Allen. She endured dusty, pot-hole roads at Somerset. She carried me safely to Hillsdale for the last couple months. Sure she was ugly as sin and never had a properly working air conditioning system. Yes, she made a clicking sound every time she turned left. And yes, she smelled like death b/c her owner littered her interior with water bottles that eventually broke and leaked all over the carpet, but she bore it like no other car could have bore it.

I will miss you, Holly. Godspeed to you and your new owners.

Picture Day

Today was picture day at school and I was confronted again with an event I used to dread every Fall. When I was in school, picture day was just another painful reminder that I was awkward looking. Every year I would tell myself that this picture would be different from the previous years. My smile would not be crooked, my eyes would not be half shut, my freckles would magically disappear, and the frizzy mop that sits atop my head would lay perfectly. Every year, however, a new deformity of which I had been previously unaware would announce itself in my school picture.

My freshman year of high school, I had not yet been introduced to tweezers and so it appeared as if two catepillars had set up camp above my eyes. My sophomore year, I had been plucking my eyebrows, however one of them was all askew in the picture and so it looked as if I had glued two new eyebrows on my face...in the dark. My junior year was the year of the bangs, the awful, awful bangs. My senior year was the year I sported the pixie cut AND was laughing in my picture, so it appeared as if I was having a seizure in the picture. Actually, it looked like my brother was having a seizure, b/c I looked like a boy. These pictures were a true attesment to the fact that modeling was not in my future...or television...or the presidency.

Adding salt to the already oozing wound, my parents would always display these pictures in a location where I could daily be reminded that I would forever have to get friends with just my charming personality.

Dream come true...

Today as I was driving home from work, I had a truck with a trailer pull out in front of me. My first reaction was frustration, b/c I could tell the vehicle was moving slowly. Upon closer inspection of the trailer on the vehicle, however, I discovered that the driver was hauling....hundreds of Hostess desserts. True story. There were literally hundreds of Hostess boxes in this open trailer. I prayed that the truck would stop short, and I would be thrown into the back of this trailer...but no such luck. I thought about following the vehicle, but lost my nerve at the last minute. Oh mysterious hostess driver...will we ever cross paths again? I hope the answer is yes.

We only appreciate you this week.

I passed a small grocery store on my way home today which had a small sign outside of it that read:
CUSTOMER APPRECIATION WEEK!
WE APRECIATE YOU!

Just this week, though. Next week, its back to mediocre service without a smile.

Tales of flatulence

Note: I'm hoping the title of this blog will deter the easily-offended from reading any further. However, since my mom is one of the only people who reads this blog, and since she is the one who instilled in me a love for bathroom humor, I know I am not in danger of offending my readers. Futhermore, I am compelled to write and dedicate this to my husband--probably the biggest fan of flatulents and the humor they illicit.

I have read somewhere that the average person excretes gas 15 times a day. I have to say that when I read this statistic, I became somewhat alarmed for my health as I exceed this number before breakfast. I would definitely describe myself as a gasey person. Usually my flatulants are of the sbd (silent but deadly) variety, and I have been known to clear a three bedroom home after a particularly greasy meal. I usually save the loud ones for when I am alone or with people I know won't judge me--namely my husband and my mother.

I usually have problems of the gaseous variety after meals, which I'm sure is typical of any normal functioning human. In high school (the land of self-esteem issues), this posed a problem as I would usually be stricken with a case of severe sbdf right after lunch (figure out the acronym on your own). I must say that what I'm about to reveal is not what I count as the finest hour of my life, but definitely a wonderful case of ingenuity. My sophomore year, I had chemistry right after lunch. In this class I sat at a table with a friend of mine--a friend who was unaware of my record setting gas. However, since this class was after lunch, my intestinal activity became somewhat active during this class. Several times I was uanble to hold back the sulfuric stench and I could tell my table partner was noticing the noxious fumes that seemed to always congregate around our table. At one point, I let out a particularly rank brand of stink. I could see that my friend was gasping for air, so to save face I made a decision. I leaned over and said "Isn't it gross how (name has been removed to protect the innocent) farts all the time in this class? I think she has a problem." That's right. I blamed the poor, introverted student in front of me and it worked--my friend believed me. It even became a topic about which we would joke from time to time. From that day forward, I could flatulate free from persecution. Jane Doe student had unknowingly taken the fall for me.

Fast forward to my adult (I use the term loosely) life. I am once again back in the classroom environment, this time as a professional. Again, I am faced with the dilemma of keeping my overly gaseous system in check. Since school has started, I have had a couple close calls where the stink could have been linked to me, but I somehow have escaped blame. In the back of my mind I knew that someday, though, my sins would catch up with me and I would be called upon to pay for my inexcusable behavior in high school. That day, my friends, was last week. I had just finished a rather greasy treat at lunch and I could feel the effets of it start to rumble in my stomach during my study hall period. In my sixth hour class, as I was up front lecturing, I could sense something terrible was about to happen. As I turned around to write on the board, it happened. I had an escapee. Not a silent one, either. This one was a loud one. I farted. In front of my students. Farted. In front of my high school students. I was mortified. I tried to play it off as my shoe rubbing against the carpet in a weird way, but I knew they knew. As I turned around, I was preparing myself to face a class in uproar. Through the grace of God, however, there were only a few snickers. I quickly moved on and prayed that I would be spared any unflattering nicknames, such as Mrs. Farts-a-lot.

It was not a proud day, but I learned a good lesson: the farts you blame on the innocent will come back to haunt you when you are in front of a class of 20 adolescent students. Let that be a lesson to all of you.