Life in the Slow Lane

Apparently there is a great host of people hoping that I will manage to meet my goal of 200 posts for the year 2006. A great host, in this case, refers to two people. I began a post over a month ago, that I have worked on intermittently since then, and while it is not yet fit for gracing this public page, I will excerpt a small portion of it to make my quota: I know that's cheating, but it's almost midnight. And really, what better way to start the New Year than with a hug? So Happy New Year!

According to my long standing tradition, here are some New Year's Resolutions for all of my dear readers to accomplish during 2007: 1) Take on a secret identity to be nice to at least one person. (It's no coincidence that this is the year of 007, is it?) 2) Invent a contraption that looks normal but has all sorts of snazzy features. (Perhaps a coffee cup that also warms socks... or a toothbrush that doubles as a painting instrument.) 3) Build a bridge with q-tips. 4) Clean the popcorn out from under the seat in your car. (Hey, doesn't everyone have this problem?) 5) Comment on my blog. (Just once fulfills this resolution, but don't let that stop you. As a matter of fact, additional comments on my blog makes up for any failures in accomplishing the others. Don't let this great opportunity pass you by.) 6) Spend some time contemplating the construction of a spider web. 7) Create a time capsule for you to open on the next rainy day.

When I was in school, I would start every semester with a long list of wonderful habits. Usually, they lasted until the week before midterms. But I knew not to panic too much, because I would just work on getting the urgent things done, and when the semester was over, I could catch up on the things that got left behind, and re- strategize for the next semester. That worked okay for things like flossing my teeth and cleaning my room, and not quite so well for things like eating well and keeping track of where I spent my money. But that is what college life is like for everyone, so I didn't let it worry me. But about a month and a half ago, all of the good habits I began when I first moved out on my own started deteriorating. Meals were only complete if I used a loose definition of the term. Keeping track of my expenses consisted of throwing whatever receipts I found at the pile on my bookshelf. And that is when I started looking forward to my semester break. But I seem to have ...

During the summer of 2003 I had one day off. I spent it defrosting the wall air conditioning unit. By the next day it had frozen again, and the day after that we were asked to change rooms. While I had hoped that prying the ice off of the coils would leave me a lasting feeling of accomplishment (as well as diminish the amount of water that dripped continuously , leaving my half of the room soggy) what left me feeling most accomplished was a) I was able to put the unit back together again and b) I had a band-aid on hand for when I sliced my fingers on the coils. Needless to say, no one received a post card detailing my day's activities. As I come to the end of another similarly spent vacation (more accomplishment in this one, though, I hope... no band-aids on my fingers, only "Clear Day" paint) I am reminded of the tradition of co-workers bringing back a little lembrancinha from their vacation. I have received a sea anemone key chain, a matching pen and nail file with...

When I was still a school-going child and happened to be sick, I would watch the clock all day long. At 9:52 I would imagine the rest of my classmates discussing Steinbeck, wondering what strange non-existent lessons they were pulling out. At 10:23 I would snuggle warmly in my bed, pleased that I was sick and not dressing out for PE like I would be on a normal day. At 11:34 I would agonize about the quiz I was missing in math and whether I'd be allowed to make it up or not. (Hey, grades were important.) At 12:31 I would wander to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of Sprite and grab a few crackers, glad that I didn't have to eat a mushed pb&j with eau de sandwich bag. And so I spent my sick days, thinking about where I "should" be. (I never would have enjoyed ditching class.) And now there is this weird thing called vacation but it is radically different than the vacation I used to know (also called Summer or Christmas vacation). For that kind of vacation, ...

Recently I watched nearly 20 minutes of a new film release while driving through LA. I wasn't able to hear any of it, and the size of the screen made it difficult to be able to catch all of the nuances of the film, but I was beginning to feel like I was able to follow the plot line. That is until some little sedan cut me off and made me lose my almost front row seat to the SUV movie theater.

Today a little boy stood at my knee, crying and saying "More food, more food." Talk about a heart breaking picture, especially so soon after Christmas. How could I possibly turn him away and ignore his plaintive cry? Answer: By remembering that he had just gotten in trouble for dropping tuna fish on the floor and then spitting. But really, after taking a look at this picture , you can't really blame the poor kid for trying, can you?