Tuesday, July 24, 2007

I knew I had red hair for a reason...




You're Anne of Green Gables!

by L.M. Montgomery

Bright, chipper, vivid, but with the emotional fortitude of cottage
cheese, you make quite an impression on everyone you meet. You're impulsive, rash,
honest, and probably don't have a great relationship with your parents. People hurt
your feelings constantly, but your brazen honestly doesn't exactly treat others with
kid gloves. Ultimately, though, you win the hearts and minds of everyone that matters.
You spell your name with an E and you want everyone to know about it.



Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Revenge of the Nite Bite


The basement freezer has always been a rank dungeon which houses the oddities and outcasts of the food world. Freezer burned dinner rolls, untouched, uncooked, and ill-assorted meats of all kinds flank the wire baskets lying within this big white casket for frozen food. Occasionally, however, a sweet treat can be found in the very deepest corners of this particular freezer.
It is here that I first discovered the Nite Bite.

They came as gifts from the diabetes camp management. Innocently wrapped in bright blue plastic with pink letters, they were the only colorful object in the freezer's grasp. Designed to keep little diabetics from getting midnight low downs, the colorful candies appeared to be delightful as well as tasty. Chocolaty brown with a texture similar to a tootsie roll, I unraveled my first Nite Bite with delight and sank my teeth into its frozen surface.

The first words that can possibly describe the sensation of eating a Nite Bite are a combination between chocolate, chalk, and mud. The Bite is thick, glutenous, and filled with the powdery sensation of protein packed grossness. Overwhelmingly sweet and undesirably preservable, the half-thawed goop sticks to the roof of my mouth, throat, esophogaus, and stomach.

In other words...

Bees sting,
Flies bite.
I just wanted
A Nite Bite...
But I learned my lesson the hard way.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Anecdotes of a Bereaved Flood Victim


My Grandma Dolli said that bad things always happen in sets of three.
Grandma's theory always worked. As pessimistic human beings searching for all the wrongs that have been done to us, it is easy to find two companions for every minor tragedy that marches in our direction. But early this morning I learned that every once in a while a real catastrophe occurs-- one that would be dimmed in comparison to any other problem, and whose terribleness cannot be classified in any category. My ability to complain over minor incidents has been demolished along with my bedroom ceiling; it is resting peacefully somewhere in a sea of broken drywall and scattered insulation.

I did not notice the watermark. It was a thin gray line, sneakily curved and just long enough to be mistaken for the shadow of the lavender that wrapped around the canopy of my bed. For days it had been growing, amassing and accumulating dirty water above my ceiling until it severed a tiny hole above my sleeping place. I was awakened early in the morning by the gentle drip, drip, drip of the hideous water as it fell from that tiny hole and onto my pillow. I sleepily squinted at the dark spot above, trying to register what exactly was happening. I grabbed a teacup from my nightstand and let it catch the drip.
The water was definitely yellow.
By the time I arrived back in my room with my mother and a more adequate container to catch the flow, the hole had stretched into an enormous and immensely ugly gash, now streaming water and bulging with more liquid. I froze, eyeing my room-- my beautiful room with the gently twisting wrought iron bed, the fluffy white down comforter, plants, flowers, perfume... the silver picture frames with yellow water dripping down their fronts--and began to cry.
We salvaged as much as we could before the ceiling broke. The black lines were spreading and impregnating themselves with water, and at last they split with a mighty crack. Wetness and gray insulation piled itself on top of my mattress, my carpet, and my little, curly, white nightstand and chair ensemble I had so lovingly developed. I stood in the middle of the floor and gazed forlornly into my attic through a four-foot long hole in my ceiling.
I sat down on several inches of dirty, gray fluff and cried.

And so I will spend the rest of today shoveling insulation and plaster into garbage bags. I will vacuum up what remains, let the plumber fix the leak, and sleep in the room across the hall until the hole in my ceiling is repaired. The gaping fissure doesn't rip at my heart as much as it initially did. I've safely moved my things away from the water, and draped the too heavy furniture with plastic for protection against further damage. All is well, and the fact that I have not been rendered unconscious by a falling piece of drywall makes me grateful indeed.

Bad things irrevocably come in threes. For every little snag I find, I will easily be able to summon two more with my pessimistic imagination.
But catastrophes need no exaggeration. They unalterably come in their full glory and terror-- completely and utterly alone.