Ack! I know, it’s been mighty silent around these parts. It just seems that although I deliberately gave myself an easy quarter, class-wise, things just keep piling on and suddenly I have a million irons in the fire, all of which I’m afraid to expose to the internet, for fear of ye olde cyberjinx.
Also, it seems that I no longer have original ideas of which to write. I will work on that, and then I will be back, hopefully more quickly this time.
I upgraded my Wordpress.org installation!
I just upgraded Wordpress, and WHOOO BOY did it suck. For a process that is supposed to be super simple, the whole thing is unutterably irritating every time I have to do it. Anyhow, rest happy, Wordpress upgraded, nothing deleted, life is all good.
And now I will go take a nap, after all that uploading and reuploading. May I never see those files again. (Until like three weeks from now when Wordpress again insists that I update. The bastards.)
Here is a very fuzzy picture of me as a toddler, which I took with my iphone of an actual picture of me. That is not a great sentence, but you’ll just have to deal with that trauma on your own time.
So, imagine that me on the floor pitching a tantrum, because that me is very very cute (modest, too, I know), and you will be more likely to forgive her her youthful tantrum-throwing. Also, hi, look at my dad! Aw, hi, Dad!
Lately, when tempted to have a bit of a mope/throw a tantrum on my floor (because life is So Unfair, and because college is really just a regression back to toddlerhood, only with all the ice cream sandwiches you could ever want) –when I want to do that, the thing I do instead is watch Dylan Moran.
Here you go. Watch it, love it.
When I was in high school, an employee of my father’s had a vasectomy. Now, you may be thinking that this is a strange thing to tell the Internet, but bear with me.
After the surgery, the man in question (let’s call him Fred, shall we?) had a very bad reaction to healing, and somehow managed to end up with chronic nerve pain as a complication. Thereafter, he was essentially unable to work, and while my father kept him on for a while, it eventually became clear that he would have to leave, but he remained for quite a while as a sort of a family friend.
Everyone felt terrible for Fred–after all, he must have been in immense pain–but the CAUSE of his pain was a little odd for us all to deal with. I mean, you don’t exactly want to discuss the man’s junk all the time, right? I was a 14 year old girl, for god’s sake! This was just about at the edge of my tolerance for discussing the reproductive issues of a person my father’s age.
Our collective discomfort/desire to giggle about vasectomy complications (we’re cruel, we’re awful, WE KNOW) was compounded by the fact that Fred had never really glommed on to the idea that “how are you?” is something of a rhetorical question.
When one asks the average acquaintance how he or she is, one expects the answer to be something along the lines of “good,” “not so good,” or “fine.” One does not expect a detailed inventory, and yet, with Fred, this was what one got.
The question became like a sort of minefield. You didn’t want to NOT ask Fred how he was feeling and therefore be rude, but you also REALLY didn’t want to ask how he was and BE TOLD THE LITERAL, DETAILED TRUTH. I will spare you all a horrific example of the details I personally was told, but suffice it to say that we all learned not to ask pretty quickly.
“But Mary,” you ask, “how does all this pertain to your sudden return to blogging?”
Well. It seems to me that the POLITE thing for me to do upon returning would be to tell you all how I’m doing, how life is going…you know, the usual things, but I have been conflicted.
After long deliberation, I have decided that I will learn from Fred and give you an answer off the “acceptable” list, rather than an actual, literal inventory.
I’m fine.
Things are fine. Have they been better? YES. Have they been worse? YES. Will they continue to get better? Gee, I sure hope so.
And I’m going to leave it there.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled posting.
but I think I have bloggers’ block.
In the course of my extensive list making for my vaguely publishing-related job, I have come across a few issues I think you all should work on. For your convenience, I have summarized them here in a handy list format:
SEE? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!
Thanks for playing, come again soon.
Tootles,
Mary–Frustrated GoogleNinja and Publishing Intern Volunteer Extraordinaire
This post will not stick together, but at least it will be a post.
Things that have almost (but not quite) made the blog:
“WOW, that girl ain’t seen no sun!”So…yeah, this is mostly just to get back into the habit of posting regularly. Also, I think the airplane layout is not long for this world, so don’t get too attached. 
I’ve been gone forever! I’m really busy (and also sleepy at the moment), so you’ll have to make do with just a poem. Not mine, but Marie Howe’s, from her 1998 book, What the Living Do, which is very good, but also made me cry. Twice.
Dear Frat House Next Door/Across the Street/Down the Road,
I get it. Really, I do. I mean, of course you throw parties. You’re frat houses. That is like, your primary function–to bring the party to the block, to rock out college-style, to pump your pimpin’ tunes, to assault the neighborhood with the soul of DANCE. It’s what you do, and I respect that.
I also know that it’s summer, and you may not have to be at work or even awake during daylight hours, so it must really be tempting to, how you say…party all night till the break of dawn?
But please, for the love of all that is holy, do you have to do it EVERY night? I mean, you partied Monday, you partied Tuesday, you (shockingly) took a night off on Wednesday, but then back to Special Party Time for Thursday, Friday, Saturday–come ON. You have got to be tired, or at the very least, still hungover from the last one by the time the party bus rolls on in.
I applaud your endurance, your mad mad party skillz, but I ask, for my sake, that I be allowed, bleary eyed and exhausted, to go to sleep at 2am. I was willing to overlook the max volume (this one goes to ELEVEN) rendition of Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” at midnight, and even the equally ear-blasting Soulja Boy at one, but this is just too much. 2 am is quiet time for Mary, ok? Sometimes mommy needs a NAP.
So can we make a deal? You don’t keep me up past, say, 2 o’clock with your wild par-TAY, and I won’t wake you up the next day at 7 am with blaring opera.
Oh, and for tomorrow? Would you like Mozart or Wagner?
See? I can be flexible!
Love and Kisses,
Your Kindly Neighbor
Recommended: Trying Crystal Light.
Not Recommended: Drinking a lot of caffeinated Crystal Light. (Did you know they put caffeine in that shit? THIS is why my grandma always loved it.)
Recommended: Trying it dry, like a super-tangy Pixi Stick.
Not Recommended: Inhaling mid-pixi.
Recommended: Lots of coughing.
Not Recommended: Breathing in sharply between coughs, thereby inhaling MORE powder, which only makes the whole citric acid in the lungs issue MORE apparent, which then creates more coughing, which quickly spirals downward in a whirling dervish of BAD TIMES.