Straight No Chaser

Just Shoot Me

not a reference to the show. please do, if you find the means.

katrina hates her job; krystle hates her classes; very impressive but haha!! not to be outdone, shannon does them one better by actually hating her whole life. in its miserable entirety. a new development but a significant one.

when i was in elementary school i had this ritual where i'd spend every unsupervised moment compulsively scraping the pollen from the pods that fell from the trees behind the playground. there was something so satisfying about it, stripping the little cylinders of all texture until they were completely and perfectly smooth, stacking the gorgeous pollen-free pods on little stone pedestals, whispering a nostalgic goodbye just before running back to class. i was a lonely kid, the type who showed up on the first day with a "does not socialize well" note for the teacher, but that's not why this was such an appealing activity. it was something about freeing the pods from their imperfections, watching the icky little pollen balls float away on the wind; my wired little eight-year-old brain (which always went just a notch too fast for kickball/hopscotch/what-have-you) regarded these as real accomplishments.

eventually, i took to doing the same thing with my face, mainly when i was reading or watching tv; the quintessential unbreakable stress habit. i picked at pimples before i even had any, rubbed my cheeks totally red whenever i had a free hand, and eventually destroyed both of my eyebrows.

parents and friends eventually talked me out of the face games, but the eyebrow thing stuck, and materialized every time i felt even remotely out of control. i was a freak for years, and then i stopped just in time for high school. and started again in time for my first round of exams. and stopped again in time for some party. and started again when classes got rough. and stopped in time for graduation. and started the summer before college. and stopped the day before college.

and didn't do it for a year and a half.

and started again this week. damn it.

all this is to say, of course, that this has been a rough week. i want to write something; any ideas? i've had my two bursts of creativity for this decade and i may have maxed out.

ps: katrina, i'm really sorry you hate your job. you can have mine; how 'bout it?