Tuesday, January 27, 2009

1990 Poetic Attempt

I think it's really funny to read a poem that you wrote in 1990 - one that your parents had proudly saved and then mailed to you randomly some 18 years later. (Thanks, Mom, I got a kick out of this). I actually kind of remember writing this poem and remember being very pleased with myself. Of course, reading it now I can't help but chuckle at my attempt:

What Is Blue?

Blue is the sky,
blue is the waves,
blue is the color of crystal in caves.
blue is the oceans,
blue is the seas,
blue is the bluebird who sings in the trees.

Blue is the color of butterfly wings,
blue is the color of beautiful things.

Blue is a color of our Texas flag.

Blue is the color of balloons in a bundle,
blue is the color of ooze in a bottle.

Blue is a name of music, as I hear it,
the sound drifts away, in beauty.

Wow. Grammatical errors aside, did you know that the word "bundle", when you're a 9-year-old, rhymes with the word "bottle"? And that the inclusion of the Texas flag in ANY poem adds a certain je ne sais quoi? Also, I'm not sure WHAT in the world I was imagining with regard to the "ooze in a bottle". I mean, we had some pretty interesting Girl Scouts experiments but I don't recall glowing blue ooze in a bottle. Maybe its radioactivity brainwashed my childhood memories. How about the quasi-delusional idea that there is, somewhere out there, a cave filled with lovely blue crystals? I sure would love to visit such a place. Maybe next time I'm in Narnia I could check that out.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Mighty Q-tip

Something kind of funny happened this morning. I was cleaning out my ears with Q-tips, same thing I have done every day for the last 15 or so years. This time, however, as I improperly inserted the Q-tip into my inner ear canal, something I have also done every day for the last 15 years, the Q-tip end stayed inside my inner ear canal upon Q-tip extraction. I stared dumbly at the naked end of the Q-tip for a moment, contemplating the embarrassment of explaining to the staff in the E.R. that an incompetent 27-year old has just jammed a Q-tip into her ear and was unable to get it out. It's one thing if you're a quirky 5-year old child who is experimenting with the number of peas that can be inserted into various bodily orifices, but quite another to be a (quasi-)functional adult doing the same. Not that I was shoving Q-tips anywhere else but my ears, of course. Hey, this is a g-rated blog, people!

Anyway, I walked around my apartment for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. When I moved my jaw around, there was a kind of a muffled squish sensation in my left ear and I heard everything through more of a fuzz than usual. I was suddenly really glad that I had health insurance in case the doctors discovered that I had jammed the Q-tip right into my brain. And then I would have cotton fuzz floating around in my cerebral cortex! And then the surgeons had to perform a risky brain surgery to save my life! No, seriously though, it was kind of funny. I propped up one mirror to another mirror to see if the Q-tip was visible in my ear - to no avail. It had disappeared into the chasm.

Suddenly, I thought of my tweezers! I made a bargain with myself. ONE TRY, and if I couldn't get it out, Chris and I would grab a couple of good books and spend a long, pleasurable afternoon waiting in the E.R. while the doctors first attended to those with real emergencies. I carefully inserted the tweezers into my inner ear canal (when will I ever learn?? 'Cause when you jam one thing into your ear, the perfect solution is to jam another thing into your ear to get the first thing out.)

So, dearest reader, I am sure you're on the edge of your seat with excited anticipation, awaiting the climax of the story. Can I have a drum rollllll please?

SUCCESS! E.R. trip avoided! Embarrassment saved! Q-tip lesson learned! All this without one single second of panic. I feel endlessly wiser than I did pre-Q-tip-insertion.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Typical.

A nice family photo, made better by a certain someone's insanity.
It must be contagious, because the next pic I snapped looked like this: