A Green Blog

I was skimming through someone else’s blog tonight, and began feeling a little green that their blog has this unreachable sense of irony/humor, has fairly regular commenters (who all try to mimick that humor when they comment) (I’m guilty, too), apparently has an author who is confident with one life-time blog background, and most intimidating of all the guy puts in at least 20 -25 posts every month!

I stopped by to admire my own blog, and it just didn’t have the same shine it had before. Now the numbers beside each month in my blog-log looks pitiful and sickly. Granted, the blog that made me feel inferior has been going strong for 2 years now - so I shouldn’t hold myself to such standards. Still, I felt I should write this post, just so I could have one more number next to ‘July’.

You looked like you needed something to do anyway.

The Recipe for making a woman hate you

I just ran across some old recipe cards of mine. I hate it when someone begs me to please write down my recipe for them because obviously I made something to-die-for, and then when I painstakingly hand-write the whole recipe time after time, I can't remember who asked for the recipe in the first place. Or, if I do remember the person, they look at me funny when I hand it to them and go, "What's this? Oh... right. Thanks..." like they really didn't want the recipe after all.

I'd say this is just a woman thing, but they say some of the best chefs in the world are men....

Really, with a title like the one I chose, I could really make this article more interesting. Yes, I could take a lot of liberties. I don't even know if I want to. Hmm... Maybe I'll sleep on it. I tend to be more on a man-hating binge in the morning.

I slept on it. Twice, in fact. So if you're a guy, you'll probably want to perk up at what I'm about to tell you. Now, I'm not ALL women, so I can't speak for every freak of nature, but for the most part, my annoyances with men involve universal feelings. Please note: This is not because men in general are stupid or lazy. It just means that men and women are different, and most men don't understand this.

So, if you don't want to get a woman to despise you - like literally hate seeing your face, here are some things you never say:

"Please don't talk right now."

You know, honestly, I can't think of anything else! I'm either experiencing writers block or I really don't have a bitter soliloquoy for men. Maybe that comes later in life, eh? Hmm. So I'm told. So I guess I'll revise this articel later in life. There. I feel much better now.

Only Acting - The Unfinished Novel

I need to know if I have some genuine characters here. My greatest struggle in writing fiction stories, is that I have no feedback from other people to tell me if my characters, my plot, my expressions are GOOD.... genuine. If anybody has a chance, am I headed in the right direction with this? I am tortured as to whether this is worth my time.



Today was not to be like all days. Normally Greta would not be walking down by the river with her Poppa ‘just for fun’. Greta stopped walking and stared out over the Paris Seine River as though she were looking for something to jump out of the twilight distance. She stood unusually tall for her age next to Gerard Depardieu, her Poppa. There was a gap of awkwardness between them.
A thin man and a woman with a pretty smile sat on a bridge not far away. The man said a lot of things to make the woman smile.
Greta tore her eyes from them and reached down and picked up a small pebble. She made a face. “It is ugly, see it, Poppa?”
Gerard glanced at the rock with little interest. She was not like typical children. Most often she was cynical. When picking out pebbles on a river bend, she picked out ugly ones. Why she picked out ugly things when she could single out the beautiful, perplexed both Gerard and the people who met his outspoken little girl. Maybe it was because she herself had beautiful raven black hair and she knew it. Was that enough beauty, perhaps? Or could it be that she knew her own face was not beautiful, so she looked for other ugly things to keep her from looking in the mirror at her plain, unattractive face. Regardless, Gerard was the only one who knew how very much Greta resembled her missing mother. The child was not beautiful now, but she would be one day.
“It is a very ugly rock, isn’t it.” She did not ask this as a question. She stated this and then threw the rock into the river with all of her might. She was apparently unsatisfied with her throw.
“It did not skip!” she accused with dismay. Bending, she scooped up a handful of sand and pebbles. “Make one skip, won‘t you?” she demanded of Gerard with the authority of a 12 year old.
The man with her may have looked old, but he was only 43 (which he reminded himself of daily). His mustache and goatee hid grieved frown lines from most people, but Greta had a way of getting beneath the mustache and turning those frowns into smiles. Maybe it was the way she would glare until she got her way, or the saucy pout of her lip when she was only momentarily without something she wanted.
Finally, his lips curled into a gruff laugh and he assured, “All right, my little Grete. I will see.”
The man rubbed a leathery-hand across his scruffy chin and took a sandy stone from the child’s palm. He held it carefully, and then with a gentle flick of his 43-year-old wrist, the stone went sailing across the water and -
“Four skips!” She crowed gleefully. Then she looked up at her Poppa and begged, “Teach me!”
Normally, this was how it would go. “Eh…no. See, you must be older.” So, there was to be an honest benefit to age.
They would go on to banter a bit, in which Greta‘s banter was mainly alarmed. “As old as you?”
“That’s not very old, really.”
“I have to wait that long?!”
“No, no. Just… a little longer. Then your wrist will be grown long enough to… eh, you’ll see when the time comes.”
“When will the time come, Poppa?”
“Just a little longer, Grete.” After all, Gerard Depardieu still needed something to impress his daughter with when all else failed.
But today was to be different.
“You hold the rock like this,” he said, pretending that the placing of the rock within the hand was magical and had to be done perfectly. “Now, when you release the rock, you must flick your wrist, just so… See how it is done?”
Greta tried it. The rock fell into the river with a dull plop. “Nope. The ugly rock failed.”
The man laughed, “Heh, no, Grete. It was not the ugly rock, but YOU that failed. Come. Try again.”
It took her three more tries of doing it exactly as he had showed her, and then, “I - it skipped! Did you see that? Only twice, but - oo, let me do it again.”
This is what Gerard had been waiting for. This was the moment he always waited for when he was trying to teach something. The actors he had been working with for the past 5 stage-houses had been pathetic. He had once been the star in Cyrano de Bergerac and his supporting actress had knocked his nose off in a flair of un-predestinated drama. Hadn’t he repeatedly told her that she must exhibit full control while acting, or her acting would overcome her in a most ridiculous fashion? But perhaps, as the young supporting actress had claimed, Gerard was too harsh. He was hard to listen to, because once he had his mind set, he could not hear anything else. Maybe he should not have knelt so close to a maddening diva, they had mocked. Well, let them find another star, then.
Most people when they first met Gerard wouldn’t think of him as young and full of potential, but many of them would remark on one thing.
“Are you an actor? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before?” And, no, he hadn’t been on WANTED posters before, so it wasn’t as though innocent citizens were experiencing pamphlet de-ja-vu. He simply had that aura.
Unfortunately, along with this aura came a certain amount of deception. Greta would often comment on this.“Is that suit expensive? How did you have money to buy it? Why do you only wear it whenever we go to visit stage-houses? Why do you never smoke those big cigars unless you’re with your ugly friends?” Greta was a very perceptive little girl, much to Gerard’s chagrin. Often Greta’s inquisitive, out-spoken words would anger Gerard, and he would scold her to shut her mouth. Greta would glower at him and then scream that she hated him and that he never listened. When he looked like he was about to strike her, she would suddenly melt into a smile.
“I’m only acting, Poppa.” Gerard would let it go at that. Greta seemed to sense instinctively that, although Gerard’s fame was growing, his money seemed to be spent faster than it was made. And Gerard, as angry as he could get with his daughters’ frankness, loved her with an exasperated, unending love.
Now they walked along the beach and Gerard was about to tell Greta some news that would be very ugly.
“Grete?”
“Wait, Poppa. I’m looking at the sky. Why, when we’re in the city, are there so few stars, but when we went to visit Grandma Sharon’s house that one time in the country, there were TONS of stars?”
Gerard hesitated, and then glanced up. “I don’t guess there’s less stars up there now than there were at…your Grandma Sharon’s.”
“Then, why?”
“Do you always need to know why?”
“Yes,” she said stubbornly.
“Fine. Here in Paris there are so many street lights, that they blot out the lights in the sky.”“Street lights can do that?”
“Kind of. Grete, I need to talk with you.”Greta skipped around him with a devilish smile. “What, Poppa?”
“Can you sit down, while we talk?”
“Is it serious?”
“You could say that.”
Greta sat.
“Nobody knows about you.”
Greta rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through this before. Nobody knows I’m your daughter, because you had an affair with my mother 12 years ago and then she ran off and left you with me and now you’re stuck with an illegitimate child. I know. And I’m not to say anything to your acting friends about me being your daughter, because then they might ask where my mother is, and that would just open a can of worms.”
“Right. Great memory. But there’s something more.”
She looked up at him curiously, and he sank heavily into the sand beside her.
She could smell the sweat of the river and the man beside her. “I have cancer,” he blurted out.
That meant nothing to her. “And?”
“And I am not expected to live much longer.”
“So what does that mean?” Gerard sighed. Trust his Grete to want to know exactly what everything means… even the meaning of death.
“That means that I’m sending you to live with your Grandma Sharon.”“Until when?”
“Until… I get better.”
“But you just said you’re not getting better. You said you’re going to die. The doctors said that, didn’t they? What doctors did you go to? -Because you know, Dr. Stanton doesn’t like me very much, so he may have said that just because-”
“Greta, stop. I’m not planning on dieing. I mean, look at me. I’m only 43! I have my whole life ahead of me! I could even go to America!”
“Then come with me! Grandma Sharon lives in America!” Gerard felt a certain sense of relief that at least the child was going to grieve him some. So all was not hard within the heart of Greta Depardieu.
“I simply can’t, Grete.” Gerard shrugged.
Greta’s eyes glowered and then she suddenly spit out, “No. I’m not going. I hate Grandma Sharon. She smells like soap.”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing for you to smell like.”
“She smells like OLD people soap!” Greta clarified passionately. “And she’s mean.”
“True, she is mean,” Gerard reflected. “But think of it this way. You’re-” Greta cut him off by throwing sand in his face and yelling, “I don’t want to think of it!” right before she ran down the beach and up the grass to his motorcycle.
Gerard sighed. “You’re going to America,” he finished, and then stood, dusted off his pants and headed up the hill after Greta. His steps seemed a little lighter, as though he were greatly relieved.
------- -------- -------
“I told you, I refuse to go!” Greta insisted angrily, and was visited upon by the stony face of the woman before her.
“Gerard!” The plump woman with all the makeup on her face twisted around and went stomping down the stairs as she bellowed for assistance. Greta watched her go, and then listened through the floor-boards as the woman reached Gerard and spoke quite animatedly to him in the little kitchen beneath Greta’s room.
“That girl you’ve been so nice to - is intolerable! I don’t know how you’ve put up with her all this time!”
“She has great-”
“Yes, I know you said she has great acting talent, but I’ve yet to see it! The only acting she can do starts between her eyebrows and her lips when she’s furrowing them like a she-devil!”
“Roxanne… don’t you think you’re getting a LITTLE over-heated?”
“A little! I’m trying to help the little vixen pack! Why don’t you try doing that without getting all steamed up? It’s a wonder your ornery old mother will even take the girl!”
Greta practiced to keep her face solemn without betraying any emotion.
“Goodness knows why my mother agreed, but she has and that’s all there is to it. I may not have much time at all here, Roxie. I need your help.”
The ample-bosomed woman immediately melted and became all sympathy. “Oh, I know Gere, and it breaks my heart to think of it.”“Cut the act, Roxanne,” Gerard said very simply. Greta could see the woman’s shock through the floor-boards.
“That’s what they call a verbal slap,” she remembered one of her Poppa’s friends’ telling her once.
“That’s why the old man never married,” others would remark reverently.
The woman called Roxanne left the room slowly and ascended the stairs heavily. When she reached the top of the stairs, she looked as if she had been slapped once more.
“Grete - you spoiled…” Her voice trailed off in fury, and then she hissed, “Pick up all of these clothes and put them back into the suitcase or so help me, I will make sure you’re like the rest of us decent people and never get to see the sorry face of Lady Liberty!”
It was somewhere between the moment that the blood-red lips of Roxanne spit those words into Greta’s face, and the moment that Roxanne pinched her arm until she began picking up clothes, that Greta suddenly felt a desire to go to America. If this witch thought the face of the Lady Liberty was ugly, well, Greta had determined she was going to like Lady Liberty… ugly face or not.
------- -------- -------
“Stop! Let go of me!”
Greta was watching a little boy whose hand was being forced to hold the hand of a nun.
“Just go with her,” his mother was saying tearfully.
“I don’t blame him,” Greta said, turning to her seat-mate. The train was just about to take off. She could feel it by the way the floor trembled in excitement.
“Don’t blame who?” the stern-face woman opposite her asked without interest.
“That little boy.”
“I take it you mean the screaming one being grasped by the hand.”
“Sure. That one,” Greta pointed.
“And why don’t you blame the boy?”
“He’s scared and the nun is ugly.”
“That’s no reason to show such violent outbursts in a public arena,” the woman sniffed primly.
“Is there ever a good reason to show violent outbursts?” Greta asked innocently.
“The cheek!”, Greta expected her to say, but the woman merely sniffed. Even better, Greta decided. The woman was going to take the position of a staunch chaperone, enduring as a persecuted public servant.
“All Aboard!” The conductor’s voice sounded hoarse from yelling too much.
The land began to slowly chug-chug by.
“Wave to your guardian, Greta,” the woman issued.
Greta turned to the window and stared at her father. There he was. Didn’t look a bit sick, if anybody asked Greta. She put a hand to the window and the man waved at her, the charmed face of an actor wrinkled in goodbyes.
“Forever goodbyes,” Greta whispered to herself. That’s what her Poppa had called it last night when he had tucked her into bed. A forever goodbye. It had been forever since her Poppa had tucked her into bed.
“Well, show some emotion,” the woman prodded. “You’re going to America!”
Greta practiced keeping her face solemn, and showing no emotion. When she was sure the woman wasn’t looking, though, she winced. There was her emotion.
The woman huffed, and the city began to drift behind the train in equally powerful huff-huffs. The busy sound of traffic, and the rev of her Poppa’s motorcycle engine became like fog in Greta’s mind.
“How did you know my…Poppa?” Greta was about to catch herself from saying Poppa, but then ended up saying it anyway. Who was to care on a train in the middle of nowhere?
The woman, apparently cared. She looked quite indignant, in fact. “Your Poppa?” She scoffed, “The very idea! Gerard Depardieu is a prominent actor, known all over the cinema of Paris. He has made it very clear that he has been a generous guardian to you, but you care little for him at all. You made that very clear in your pathetic goodbye to him. Poppa, indeed! Hardly!”
“I was only acting,” Greta remarked sullenly.
“Well, apparently he didn’t care for your acting, or he wouldn’t be sending you to be the help for his nearly deceased mother.”
Greta glared at her. “He apparently told you nothing.”
The woman’s back straightened, and she gathered her tall bag (Greta noted it was ugly) closer to herself. “And you are how old? 10?” That was meant to be demeaning, Greta gathered.
“12,” Greta said evenly. “What has that to do with anything?”
“Why would he tell a little 12 year old girl the truth, if he thought she was going to throw a bratty tantrum?”
“I threw one with a lie anyway, so that means he wasn’t avoiding himself much. He didn’t tell you he was ill, did he?”
The woman laughed. Greta looked in her mouth when she laughed. The display produced an unavoidable grimace from Greta. “Gerard Depardieu sick? All of Paris would know, little Grete. And you, his child? Another well kept secret.”
Greta disliked her very much right then. So much in fact that she wanted to run away… far away. But how could one run away when one was on a fast-moving train? Where to go?
“Where am I to live?” Greta asked responsibly.
“Well, certainly not with Sharon Depardieu as her granddaughter. But, I have been instructed to deliver you to her as a help for her in her old age.”
Greta and the woman both laughed. They looked at each other, realizing they were laughing for different reasons.
“Me, helping…her.” Greta smirked.
“Depardieu with a grand-daughter,” the woman wrinkled her thin nose in equally unattractive humor.
Several hundred more miles passed before the two spoke again. They shared a sack lunch, in which Greta was not offered a sandwich without the crusts.
“Eat your apple,” were the next words that were to transpire.
There was a pause of a few more miles, and then the woman repeated, “Eat your apple,” to Greta.
Greta looked at the thing dismissingly, and announced, “It’s severely bruised.”
“God made both the bruised and the well,” the woman remarked, as though there was special significance between the apple and Greta’s “Poppa”. Greta made a face and crunched into the apple, making sure that soggy brown pieces flecked onto the woman’s blue-serge suit (which was surprisingly hard to do).
As Greta watched another large city fall into the back-drop of the scenery, she felt the need to talk to this woman for whatever reason, and they lapsed into their third unpleasant conversation. (Fourth if you might count their awkward introduction to each other, during which Greta refused to speak.)
“Why would my Poppa lie to me?”
“You’re really going to need to call him Mr. Depardieu now, Grete. No more of this make-believe, all right then?”
“Fine. If it will make you answer my question faster. Why would,” she mocked, “Mr. Depardieu lie to me?”
“Well, I really don’t know,” the woman said, apparently not wanting to fabricate a theory. Then she seemed to change her mind, and she added rather rebukingly, “Maybe he was just acting.”
There was a numbing pause that the woman seemed to take satisfaction from. Greta sniffed, but it was far from a sniff of emotion.
“You never did say how you knew my… Mr. Depardieu.”
“Well, I acted in one of his plays once.”
Greta wrinkled her nose. “What? You?”
The woman looked down at Greta severely. “I was quite a good actor, I’ll have you know. Gerard was quite fond of me.” Her eyes got far away, apparently seeing something far more interesting.
Greta looked at her in un-amused disgust, “What play did you act with him?”
The woman answered with a raptured expression, “ A one of a kind! Cyrano de Bergerac!”
Greta looked at her suspiciously. “Were you-”
“Supporting actress!” she cried.
For the first time all day, Greta felt a genuine shiver.


Greta couldn’t sleep. She remembered looking at the train the night before, directly before she and - what was that woman’s name again? - boarded. The number of box-cars had seemed to stretch on and on… without end. Now, she bitterly compared the train with her journey. The journey she was embarking on seemed to have the same quality; endless.
“Are we almost there?” she whined - not unlike other little children that she could hear a box over.
“No! Stop asking!” the woman snapped and she shut her deceptively owlish eyes once more. Greta sneered at her sleeping form. When she had first met the woman, she had taken one look at those large owl eyes and the stiff set of her chin and had thought, “A book worm. A teacher. A governess. A nanny.” All of those assumptions had proved to be wrong. And yet, she was still rather predictable, because Greta had expected her to be boring and useless on the trip, and so far the woman had been just that. It annoyed her that the woman was sleeping, though. She looked so peaceful with her scarf relaxed around her, and her stiff chin looking soft and dimpled.
Greta found herself wondering what it would be like if the woman before her died. What if… what if that scarf tightened around her neck? What if she didn’t deliver Greta to her destination after all? What if she mysteriously disappeared? There was the door to the train car, just a few feet away. If someone was shoved out that door, they would be nearly unrecognizable after the wheels of the train had finished with them.
A few minutes later, Greta felt sick to her stomach. She had moved to a different seat The seat before her was empty, as though it would erase the memories of there ever being an old, stern woman. Greta didn’t even remember doing it. They said she killed the poor late actress. Well, Greta knew they had no way to prove it.

A Picture for my Thoughts

I need pictures to inspire me right now.
I need to see a caved-in barnyard, surrounded by fields of knee-high corn. Hmm...
A hawk diving down right on the water-falls edge.
A mother sternly clasping the hand of her 4 yr. old as the two cross a busy New York street.
A democrat with mouth open wide in worship as Obama raises a fist to the heavens and proclaims, "If Obama can be President, Anybody can!!!" (I just had to get that in)
A young girl reading 'The Onion' at a coffee shop with wide eyes. (I just discovered 'The Onion'is a fake newspaper today!! The headline was 'Queen Elizabeth 2 announces she is expecting!'. I was like - what? That can't be right! She's like old! Is it a surrogate thing?' - lol. When I realized the paper was all sarcasm, I couldn't stop reading and laughing crazily! - literally)
A milk-shake with two straws.
Let's see... what else should I reveal about myself in these imaginative pictures...
I have writers block this month...
A typewriter, the cobwebs surrounding it cascaded by sunlight, on a dirty wooden table.
A childs chubby fingers reaching up and touching the keys of a Steinway piano.
The stethescope swinging from a doctors neck.
Horses in the tall grass, unanimously congregating to slap flies with their tails.
Grandparents writing out birthday cards for their grand-kids together.
The expression on the faces of four young boys jumping in a cold lake for the first time all year.
A middle-aged woman in her living room crazily swatting at a huge horse-fly with a fly-swatter.
A girl watching her hair be cut too-short in a mirror.
Dirty little bare feet on a sandy road.
Enough. You know what I'm picturing? Summer... I'm so glad it's summer. If summer were a hot buiscut with homeade raspberry jam on it, I would eat it. If it were a person, I would make it my friend. Now that you are officially picturing that and getting freaked out, I will grin and bid you good night.

My Sure Escape

Right. So the days have been hectic, so don't judge me for like not writing.... more than five articles this month.

I have few complaints. (Note: I did not say NO complaints - proves I'm still human). Work at PotBelly has been going rather well, but like any job it has both severe negatives and soaring positives. My manager has taken to yelling at me a lot, and I wince at the customers and wish I had the nerve to say, "He's always like that."

My greatest fault is that if I notice a need, my first instinct is to run and meet the need (which leaves my own station unattended) (thus the yelling). I'm still getting the whole highly useful 'assembly line' thing down. I preferr to banter with the fun loving customers and hand them a hot steamy sandwich made with love. (As opposed to briskly handing them a dry sandwich and shooing them towards the cash register). I have since learned that many people don't know how to experience things AS THEY GO. They can't walk slowly through the crowd. Such people care very little for a sandwich made with love, and that is one of the most disgusting type of people I have to make sandwiches for.

Back to my problems. I have one particularly loud-mouthed co-worker who often likes to point out my countless faults in front of customers. Here's a good example. I'm talking to a customer and then she comes up to me and saucily tells me, "Less lip, more grip." I was like, "What? That doesn't even make sense." According to her, I talk too much. Okay, but that was a horribly lame way to say it.

Otherwise, I have learned to generally keep to myself. I did allow myself one huge religious/political debate involving myself, a gay guy, and a guy who studied to be a Rabbi. That got rather heated and I kept laughing because it got so absurdly funny. You'll be glad to know the gay guy and the Rabbi found it amusing as well, so as far as I know I wasn't written up. Otherwise, most people I come into contact with are politically dull and too busy and important to have opinions and share them with a low-life PotBelly sandwich attendant. Admittedly, I have run into a Lowes manager who had a lively political debate with me, but it was almost dissapointing because he agreed with me too much. I like to disagree vehemently and see if they have as good an argument for their beliefs as I hope I have for mine.

Anyways, I'm going to share a poem thingy that I wrote a long time ago that pretty much defines how I'm feeling right now. This summer is stretching on and on.... Admitedly I'm normally not a basket-case when it comes to new things, but this waiting thing is about to kill me! Let the moment I step on my college campus be here! Let people stop telling me how nice it will be for me down there, and how successful I will be in life! I am willing to wager that the summer before one launches out on ones own, is THE longest feeling 3 months one will ever experience. I am pretty confident in saying this, because adults wiser and much older than myself have been telling me that 'once I begin college, life will fly by'. I wanted to say, "Thank you, that was significantly pessimistic, but may I say I am more than ever ready to launch off into the unknown."

Right now, the 'unknown' consists of 'what cheap, adorable, yet durable laptop can I find?', and 'should I splurge and buy school books?' The future and God alone know the answers.

I am stuck here.
In this long day,
With the irrepressible urge to find a bathroom,
And yet not willing to risk
Missing the very minute my ride arrives.
I have watched the road silently,
Sipping my cold ice water,
And longing for relief from
Strange surroundings.
I need to see something familiar,
Something I can kick and call home.
I need to see our little tan Prism,
Or our big hulky blue van,
Rolling towards me with
A familiar knight in shining armor at the wheel.
I want my car to be red,
So that car rolling towards me now,
Will be mine.
My sure escape.

Really, though, if you think about it... If a car were to come pick me up and take me away from all of my problems, I would just find myself in another situation that contains problems. Difficult situations are unavoidable, I suppose, so that means that one has to find the answers to ones internal problems instead of always dragging them along in some kind of pathetic version of a getaway car. Am I right?

Unavoidable Hazards of the Kitchen

-The first fatal session with boiling water
-Trying to jam a cupboard closed and having all the pans tumble out upon oneself
-Piling the dishes so high in the rack that one can’t touch, much less seek to dry them
-Getting just a LITTLE egg yolk in the egg whites
-Stains on white outfits
-Dishwater splashing up like a reversed water-fall when one tries to dump it down the sink
-Too much garlic
-Getting a phone call and forgetting about the delicacies in the oven
-Bad berries in a berry cobbler
-The occasional hair clinging to the muffin
-Making morning coffee taste like weak tea
-Smoke setting off the fire-alarm
-Making a dish meant for a purpose other than the male members of ones family

My Highway Complex

I have to admit. The highway is a terrifying place. I never realized it until my brother began driving and was crawling onto it with my Dad saying in high-pitches, “You have to go faster! We’re never going to make it!” Now it’s my turn to learn how to drive, and I can’t stop gripping the wheel and jerking it whenever I’m not centered in my lane. Tonight was like the third (?) time that I’ve been on the high way, and it was horrible. I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was in a horrible video game. I always lost those video games you know, where you’re supposed to race through strange terrain, while managing to stay in your lane and turn at break-neck speeds. I ALWAYS lost (but it was still fun). Well, suddenly as I was gripping the wheel and my back was bent over the wheel at a far from 90-degree angle, I realized that it was a real-life situation and I was ALIVE and I wanted to stay that way. My Dad didn’t help matters when he said quietly, “We almost lost control of the vehicle back there. Do you realize that? Tell me, Andria, what does it mean to ‘lose control’?” I was like, “Umm, I don’t know. I’m trying to drive here.” He continued to ask me, “What does it mean to ‘lose control’?” And it was all I could do to keep from looking down at my white knuckles and to keep my back straightened out against the seat. Anyways, so my Dad defined it for me by telling me about an accident that he had been in, “…I jerked the wheel, and then my vehicle slid sideways and it slid and slid and I had no control.” So I tried to keep the wheel straight, and then we came on a curve, and my Dad's like, “What are you DOING? There's a curve and we're going straight!” Needless to say, my father is a very brave man. I am the last of his four children and he’s a good sport about the whole “I have more gray hair because of you” thing.

I’ve had dreams about these things. For the longest time as a kid, it was always a given that when I dreamed I suddenly had the power to do amazing things. I could fly without any equipment, I could tell people off, I could walk around wearing questionable garments, and I could drive a car. But have you ever dreamed that you were supposed to go in reverse really fast and when you punched the gas you realized you were in drive? That’s a horrible feeling when you hear the crunch of metal and you don't wake up right away.

Anyways, that’s just something I’m going through right now. Thought I’d share the love.
But hey, I thought up a great quote. Sometimes you have to experience the potholes in life before you can appreciate the highway.

Brilliant! Yes, thank you.

You know that whole ‘My way or the Highway’? Totally lame. Now you have a good new highway quote.

Substitutes for Slightly Offensive Words

Have you ever looked at someone and said something in passing, and then suddenly you realized by their expression that it was the wrong thing to say? It's like, "What? What did I say?" and they won't answer you or help you out, because you should KNOW what you said. (If you're a guy you may be really relating at this point). Anyways, a lot of times silly disputes occur because a misunderstanding of communication occurs. Sometimes a word that means nothing degrading to YOU may be totally degrading to the person you're speaking to. So here's a small list (excluding profanity and all that) of words that can come off a little rude, and can be tactfully altered. Remember (Men especially), if you're always treating the person you're talking to with respect, and you use words that are dripping with sympathy (not accusation), you will lead a very charmed life.

Negative -----------------------Positive
Weird ----------------------------Different
Abnormal ------------------------Unique
Strange --------------------------Unusual
Freaky ---------------------------Unexpected
Odd ------------------------------Special
Paranoid -------------------------Stressed
Corny ----------------------------Not sure... just maybe sit this one out
Sappy ----------------------------Heartfelt
Unoriginal ------------------------A Popular thing to do
Common -------------------------Expected

Sometimes it's better to say nothing.

A Parade of Faces

You know, it’s interesting what you can see when you are looking. I got off work early today due to the lackage of holiday sandwich eaters. In other words, work was excruciatingly slow. My protests were quite weak when my manager asked me if I’d like to get off work early. In all truth, I wanted to join my little family for a little parade in my sister and brother-in-laws little neighborhood. This is because I haven’t been to a parade in years (the last time I went I had a little bucket and bobbed around looking for candy on the street).

I should add here that parades are the only time when it is socially acceptable to eat things off the road.

Another reason why I like Fourth of July parades is because the streets are filled with people that consider it cool to wear red, white, and blue. For the little bit of time I was at work today, I was severely disheartened by those who wore green, and other completely unpatriotic colors. I made sure I wore my blue Pot Belly shirt and a little red apron and I looked down my nose at people who didn’t. Today is the only day out of the 365.25 days in the year that I allow myself to judge.

Another nice thing about parads is that people freely yell, “Happy Fourth of July!” and have big smiles on their face that one can’t help smiling back at. I tried that at work. Know what I got in return?

“Yeah, I’d like lettuce, mayo, and a little hot peppers on that.”

Then if I had the guts to try again with, “Have any exciting plans for today?”

My customer would add dismissively, “I’ll take that to go.”

Wow. Some plans. Unfortunately for them, customers like that bring out the sarcasm in me. I attempted to bring out their patriotic spirit, and well, it was deemed non-existent. There were a couple gems in the bunch, but mostly I felt like the only fiercely patriotic person there. Thus is why the parade was cute and exciting for me. I ended up getting lots of candy thrown my way because I happened to sit in a children-free zone. I must have looked youthful as I took the peoples‘ pictures, because I often had to duck from 80 mph tootsie rolls thrown at me.

Actually, I don’t know if you guys know this, but the Declaration of Independence was written and signed on July 2nd, and was only copied on July 4th. This wasn’t announced until July 6th. That’s just an interesting fact for you.

No Fourth of July article is complete without patriotic pictures (the ones I took today). That’s a fact. So I, the neutral party, observed all the different faces of patriotism at the parade I attended. And, I can say without bias that the pictures capture the essence of patriotism. The faces you are about to see, are characters that represent a pride in the land I live in.
The pictured essence represents diversity; young and old, politician and farmer, suburban wife and Harley girlfriend, the child throwing candy and the child collecting candy, the emasculated Scottish men and the uniformed firemen, the woman sprawled out in the lawn chair with a coke and the woman reliving the glory days of twirling a baton for the band…. This represents all of us Americans, leading different lives but uniting all down the blocks of little neighborhoods across the country to celebrate this fourth of July.

My Enchanting College Application

As a child, I was always creating things. I was never handy with wood or art, but I would set my mind on fire with things I could do with the little scraps of paper and secret club-meetings I had. Words became a way to create things beyond my imagination. I wrote my first poem around age 6, and my brother told me it was ‘pretty good’. After that, whether it was writing contests, journaling, poetry, or just descriptions of people I observed, I couldn’t stop writing.

Around age 14, I became avidly interested in the things of the world going on around me. I listened as the whole network of talk radio came alive with fury over the 10 day starvation of Terri Schindler Schaivo. I, too, caught the fire and began listening to real things about others that I had never cared to tune into before. I realize now that the issue of life-support is a controversial and painful issue, but it was that vegetable of a soul that opened my mind to the injustices of politics, our court systems, and the twist of the law in favor of death.

While my interests ranged widely from singing, to photography, to playing piano, one of my greatest loves was just observing people. Some people say I think too deeply about what I see beneath the surface, but I believe that what is beneath the surface is who we are. As I grew to love being with people more than anything, I found myself passionate about telling them what I believe, and wanting to write it all down.

And yet, there’s something missing. I had gotten saved around the age of 10 when a preacher preached about fire, brimstone, and the sure way of salvation. For a while I had more of a fear of God, than a desire to serve Him, love Him, and do His will. I was busy debating politics, holding staunchly to what I believed to be right, and writing down everything that crossed my path and influenced me to think about something deeper than I had before.

So God got a hold of my attention by moving my best friend away, taking my brother off to college, and making me feel more alone and lost than I ever had in my life. Yet, I learned that the things He observes are far better than what I could ever see on my own. At the age of 17, He got me a job at a little gift shop, and there I met person after person who had a great job but really didn’t have any purpose or pleasure in their career. I found myself enjoying discussions of religion and politics - but God became more real to me as I realized that no career could ever make me happy. I realized one day while I was trying to tell a man what God meant to me, that God isn’t just a religion one can debate. He is a personal, all-knowing, all-powerful God. If I am to fight and write, He is whom I will fight and write for.

Wherever God leads me in life, I know that college is just a stepping stone. I plan to do a lot of things in life, but for once I believe I’ll let Him do the planning. I feel He is leading me to college to major in Print Journalism, and minor in my second love - music with a voice proficiency. I have no idea how He’ll use it, but I’m excited to think of all the ways I can grow along the way. After all, it’s not my career I’m living for. It’s right now where God has placed me. I hope you’ll consider your college to be the best place for God to grow me this next fall.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Andria