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I decided to try something new. Usually I'm frustrated that I come up with all kinds of things to write about during the day, but when I actually sit down to write I can't remember what they were. Since I'm just hanging around the house as much as possible this week, I'm just gonna leave this document open and record things as the urge strikes.
Yesterday I forgot to mention that during my long hot shower I discovered that the back to one of my diamond earrings was lost. It's always a fear of mine that I'll get in the shower, scrub away, and reach up to work on my ear lobes to find that the entire earring is gone. I guess I just shouldn't wear them in the shower. Oddly, when I went to remove the earring it was stuck in the hole pretty well. I actually had to yank pretty hard to get it out. Hmm. That's a good thing. So, I don't know when the back was lost. Maybe it came off in bed or while I was walking around somewhere. Or maybe it slipped down the drain. *shrug*
Dave reminded me that this incident is the second such lucky save with those earrings. The first was in 1992, when Dave and I first met. It was our first weekend away together, on a Sunday morning as we were driving casually to the ferry at Anacortes from Whidbey Island. In a flash I remembered I had left my earrings on the night stand in the hotel room in Oak (joke) Harbor. We turned around, sped back, and found the earrings where I'd left them. Nope, the cleaning person didn't have a windfall that day. We even made the ferry too.
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Yikes! It's cold outside. I was all bundled up except for my head so that all of me was toasty except that my face hurt from the cold by the time I came back inside. Glad that my North Face mega jacket isn't letting me down. :)
You know I used to write a lot as kid. Did you too? I know Dave did. Anyway, I wrote stories and in my mind I was always thinking up new ones and formulating them fantastically before I could ever get them down on paper, which was, in those days, a long task since I wrote sloppily and slowly with pencil on college-lined notebook sheets. I think that when I was 10 I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But what I really remember is having that hope shattered by my 5th grade teacher. Shame on her.
See, I had been working on this story in my head for a long time. We were doing a bunch of writing in that grade, so we had maybe one paper a week. Always there were some topic restrictions that ruled out the story percolating in my head. So I just waited until the day that we could write about whatever we wanted, continuing to develop the story mentally.
It was about cow rustling/wrastling/hustling?/tipping? - no not that one/stealing/whatever it is called when you steal someone's cows. I was a farmgirl, see, and so this was on my mind…. I thought about how I would describe the potholed pattern left behind in a muddy creek bed after a herd of cattle had passed. Or how a campfire silhouetted the wranglers and trees blocking its light. This was a big deal and when the time finally came I wrote with a rush of confidence, knowing that I would get the highest grade.
But I didn't.
I got a C - a freakin' C! My whole heart poured into that thing and the stupid teacher gave me an average grade. No comments about the originality of the topic, just notations pointing out errors. I was crushed and then I hated Jennifer Achilles because she had gotten an A. Wonder what she's up to now? Last I heard she was a - what are those people called who work in law offices? - Legal Aid or something like that. In California.
Now that I think about it, my teacher wasn't that great. I totally looked up to her too. She seemed so interesting, so wild, and I wanted to be that when I grew up. But maybe she was more narcissistic. I mean, what kind of teacher sits in front of her class telling stories about herself? We knew all kinds of crap, like, that her sister was married to one of the Seattle Seahawks. We knew she drove a beater Porsche (yeah, it can happen) but traded it in for a new Camaro. We knew she drooled over Tom Selleck and that she liked to play baseball. And this is just the stuff I can remember! I can't remember anything else about my other teachers. Geez. What a self-serving jerk! She probably sucks the life out of all her students. Maybe we're all under-achieving because of her.
Maybe I'm just finally angry at her for not recognizing how much I needed to be validated.
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Been trying to work on some small maintenance things on this massive growth generally recognized as my web page. I think I really need to update my resume. The computer stuff is just plain outdated - like it's from the 80's or something. And I've already found dead links, which is always a drag. Gotta handle those someday.
Ooo - time to make pizza! Looking back on my day of writing, I can see that trying to jot bits and pieces was really not much different than usual. Hmmm....
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