Not again.

This does not bode well for the immediate future of my writing habit. I am notorious (among myself) for the reverse binge-and-purge of good deeds.

But I could not stop myself.

In another requisite end-of-year reflection, I am forced to recognize how quickly this year has passed. The What Significant Things Happened in 2008? Game was played by my mom and me on Christmas Day as I drowsily drove home from my sister's house. It was meant to keep me awake, as the game Cows was not cutting it.

This year passed with such swiftness, I believe, because of how compartmentalized it was. This is how I think of it: Post-Graduation/Pre-Honduras, Honduras, Post-Honduras/Holly's Wedding/Pre-Teaching, and Teaching. For each segment of time, I was oblivious to anything but my immediate physical and mental surroundings and the tasks at hand. Each chapter, if you will, flowed neatly into the next one in such a way that, without my notice, I graduated college one day and finished my first semester as a real teacher the next -- with a whole year gone in the process.

Perhaps the most surprising realization of all (maybe I exaggerate) was the inspiration for this entry. Looking at my links (almost unfamiliar from the lack of seeing them regularly), I saw the one to my Flickr photos. I knew before I clicked it what I would find: My premium account has expired. The year passed and I did not make my payment. What was more than a thousand photographs and several nifty albums dividing them up has been reduced to 200 pictures, being less than half of my Honduras album. I have not yet decided whether or not to upgrade and save the account. Its practicality has, too, expired for me.

It seems strange to me that silly little bits like this mark the passage of time.

Decision-making and the art of lawncare.

Last weekend, after a week at school that made me actually love my job, I decided that it was time to start looking for a place closer to school. After all, if I'm going to be keeping my teaching post for at least two years, I should be looking for a more reasonable dwelling with a commute time of fewer than 45 minutes each way. Thusly began the hunt.

It was frustrating -- not because I wasn't coming up with any information. I was. My word-of-mouth and school-wide email inquiries were turning up results faster than I could sort through them. But I was frustrated because this week had me chained to my desk until well after dark, long after the hour it is advisable to track down uncharted rental property. Plus, I was just too tired to do the sifting.

Thank goodness for this week. No, it didn't make me love my job quite as well as last week did, but it did give me some time to think. I still haven't followed up on any of those leads. Freeish-time is only now peeking around the corner. Who knows? Maybe I'll go apartment hunting. Maybe I won't. Yes, being closer to school would be nice, but maybe I'm just conning myself with all those glittering pros on my pro-con list. With gas prices going down and with home getting more homey by the minute, I'm not sure if sleeping with a shotgun beside my bed is really what I want right now.

Here's what I've decided:

The grass is no greener anywhere else than it is where I stand at any given moment. I should tend it and cultivate it. I should water it and be grateful for it. I should choose to see the tender shoots of green beside my feet, instead of tromping them down. And if anyone else's lawn looks more lush and velvety green than my own, it is because that person chose to make it that way, and if that same lawn doesn't stay that way after the previous owner leaves and I set up camp, it is because that person took his or her attitude with him or her, I've brought mine along, and it's the same attitude that kept my little patch of grass brown and brittle before. And I can't forget that every place goes through seasons. Nowhere -- short of Narnia -- is grass really perpetually green. But it is almost always certain to come back if I wait long enough.

If I live here or if I live there, life is life. Good or bad. I can choose to run, or I can choose to change myself. Running seems easier, but it's only temporary.

The Dad Chronicles continue.

Maybe I'm just swept up in the fever of the fad, but I'm trying to be green. Ish. I'm buying all the canvas totes at WalMart and IGA so that I don't use any more plastic bags. Of course, I love that the bags are cute and under two dollars, and I keeping carrying my knitting in them instead of groceries. Oops. Anyway, I'm also attempting to compile a compost heap, which so far only consists of a lot green onions, a smattering of eggshells, and one ground-filled coffee filter. Oh, and I'm trying to garden. Trying.

My first feeble attempt is this "egg" plant I have in my bedroom window. I'm trying to get a pansy seedling to pop up in a pre-fab eggshell. Easter marketing, go figure. Still no sign of green despite the daily sunshine and water that I make sure it gets.

And right outside that window, our garden is visible. I can see the tomato plants Dad set last week. I was going to help with that, but I'm still working on my priorities. Last night, however, I did not miss out on the sowing of the carrot and radish seeds. Dad raked out the first trench for the carrot seeds, sprinkled them along, and pushed the soil back over top of them. I dropped the tiny carrot seeds in the second row. Then, I dug, dropped, and threw dirt over a row of future radishes -- hopefully.

Dad's always been the star gardener, and now we're going to see what I can come up with. I'll be watching.

Johnny's

We went fishing yesterday, Dad and I, at a dead man's lake. It was almost eerie standing, fishing rod in hand, in the short grass of his lawn, well-maintained by his son over a year after the accident, while Dad sorted out lures in the tackle box and lit a cigarette, explaining that we'd need the yellow rope called a stringer to bring the caught fish home. I almost felt like we were trespassing.

But I also felt welcome there. I knew the man. I had been at this same house many years ago for a Christmas party. This was the guy who, in front of the gas station/bus stop, gave me the first fig I'd ever eaten that wasn't in a Fig Newton. He had fished with Dad in his lake just days before the accident, had told him to come whenever he wanted and take as many fish with him as he could. After, his son had renewed the offer. So off we took yesterday, in Dad's white third-hand pickup bouncing down the backroads, which I recognized from my old bus route when I was in high school.

There in the yard, I held my rod and reel, fishing line already prepped with hook and neon pink rubber worm wiggling in the breeze, and I watched Dad, cigarette dangling, hunkered over the telescoping box with its three tiers reaching up, offering every type of sure-fire lure imaginable: worms, crickets, minnows, centipedes. All species, all colors, all synthetic materials represented. He selected his first bait of choice, a white underdeveloped-looking grub, and clicked it onto the line, and together, we headed for the weeds. The grass around the bank of the water had not, apparently, been a landscaping priority for the son, as it had been for the father.

As we tromped around the lake's perimeter, looking for a nice starting point, I just followed Dad and watched my feet as they lay down little walls of weeds with each step, like how one cable television show that I once saw described the making of crop circles. We saw a mud turtle, making her own crop cirlces, apparently laying her eggs, Dad said. I wouldn't know. We found a spot that was close enough to some cattails -- "structure is good," he explained -- and far enough away from the shallow edge so that I wouldn't spend the afternoon dragging up hookful after hookful of algae.

Now, I'm no angler, but it seems to me that I go fishing to cast the line and that Dad goes fishing to change the lures. Essentially, I have no idea what I'm doing, but if I have any theory at all about the catching of fish, it is to stay in the same spot, to use the same lure, and to throw it out there over and over. Let the fish come to me if they want to be caught. If I don't get a bite after three casts, no problem. Keep casting until something happens. Wait and see, as foolish as it might be, works for me.

Not Dad, though. I think he used fifteen different lures in the two hours we were there. He was, of course, just trying to figure out what the fish wanted. I, on the other hand, am able to convince myself that if I keep giving my set-up second chances, it'll work out. Either that, or I'm just too lazy to try new things. That's more likely. But let me put it this way, I caught four fish, two of them just as we were giving up on our spot, two of them while Dad was picking out a new spinny, shiny contraption to tempt the fish with, all four of them with that unrealistically pink version of an earthworm. Dad caught one. We threw all of them back and watched as each one happily wove itself back into the lake water.

Right after my fourth bass, Mom called to see if we wanted to meet her and Wade and Day to eat. I told her yeah, that I was getting tired of catching fish. Dad laughed and told me not to tell anyone that I put a hurt on him. He threw out three more casts just in case, and I wished that he'd get something. He didn't, but I knew he was as happy for me as if he'd caught a hundred himself.

We went back through the weeds and up the hill, and I let him put my fishing rod, with the half-eaten worm with the Eagle Eye hook poking through its rubber belly, in the bed of the truck, next to the empty bucket for bringing fish home. Dad put the stringer, still in its package, back in the tackle box. I slid in the passenger side and popped open the half-hot can of Mountain Dew that he put in the truck for me before we left the house, when it was still cold. As we navigated the blind curves and hilltops on our way to Dixon to meet Mom, I pointed out all the houses and who lived in them, names I still remembered from riding the bus to school, and Dad drove and smoked and listened with the windows rolled down.

Not home.

It has been a few months since I've had anything to procrastinate about. Now, I reckon that I am making up for lost time. I'm in Murray tonight because I'm giving some so-called presentations tomorrow to the Spanish classes at Calloway, and to think, I'm staying in a hotel. This Hampton Inn is snazzy, I tell you. I'm tempted to use this fast internet to put up a video, but I really do, at some point, have to plan what it is exactly that I'm going to say to these high school kids tomorrow. But here I am in a hotel room in the town that I lived in for five and a half years. I just couldn't help myself; I swung by Brentwood. But as it was too weird and I felt like a real creeper, I buzzed in and out of the lot before I could think too much about it. I was going to get some Jasmin to-go, but wouldn't you know that the one restaurant that I've really missed is closed on Sunday, so I grabbed some August Moon carry-out and came back here to the room to get my money's worth out of this hotel experience, watching all twenty-two Brotherhood videos I've missed out on. I caught up with Tessa at Culver's, which didn't even exist when I left town three months ago. It's like this isn't the same place, and I don't know how to be here anymore. I've closed the curtains because I've got work to do. I could be anywhere.

groundhog day

It's five minutes to six when we drop onto the lower road, when the hairpin turns us toward the sun that we couldn't see before and can't see now. At dusk, the world is instead lit by an unseen source that has turned it all to black and white -- all but the yellow stripes that slide alongside the car, pulling us home. Everything else has gone grayscale between the chalk sky and the charcoal trees. (The three houses visible from this spot in the road were meant to be white; I can see that now.) By the time we reach the crossroads, the light will have changed again. I will, for just a second, put my hand between my eyes and the windshield, and I will, for just a second, be surprised to find that it's only a silhouette.

Sometimes I like to look at my archive list, click a month at random, and read all the entries. Because I am somewhat obsessed with the chronology of my experience, I can usually figure out what was really going on in my life at the time, what had led up to the events I was describing, and what events followed that particular point. Tonight, I clicked February 2005.

It didn't take me long to notice a few things: Maybe it's just because I'm the one who wrote it (and therefore share the author's humor), but I think I'm sort of funny. Also, it was clear to me that I was going through a phase of some serious introspection. There is a sort of buzz of anticipation that floats around so much of what I wrote.

It wasn't until I got to the halfway point in the month that I caught on: That was the month that I decided to go to Spain for the summer. While the study abroad experience itself definitely influenced my subsequent perspective, it was the actual decision to turn in my KIIS application that was what they like to call life-changing.

I often look back on that time in my life and accuse it of being a signifcant series of steps that had led me to now. I know; people get sick of hearing about it. But who knew that I actually had an inkling about the importance of those days at the time? To quote myself directly from February 20, 2005:

The past facilitates the future. There would be no present without the past. There would be no future without the present.

...

There are so many aspects of my life that wouldn't be existent if a chunk out of the middle of my past hadn't occurred.

...

Looking back and seeing each slat of the bridge that would carry me across fall into place is easy. Yet another version of "hindsight is 20/20," no doubt. But waiting for that next foothold to come is not easy. And sometimes, it's tempting to believe that it will never come and you'll just have to jump from where you are--no matter how far you are from the other side. But what I'm learning is this: That foothold will come. The best thing for me to do is enjoy the view from where I am until it does.

...

By no means have I met the greatest obstacles of my life or taken the most fearful steps of the journey, but maybe I've learned enough to keep my eyes open a little more.

I surely hope so.

All pretenses but living itself have long since vanished

I am not sure how a twenty-four year old, single, unemployed person such as myself can accumulate so much stuff. But I did. In three and a half years, I've managed to acquire enough belongings to fill a standard-sized horse trailer -- and then some.

When I lived at Southwood for a month in the summer of 2004, I barely had enough to make a sub-leased room with a borrowed bed feel like home. I was able to carry the entirety of my book collection in one box -- the box my Tiffany lamp, which I bought solely for the sake of that room, came in. This weekend, I found that box -- labeled "BOOKS" -- and filled it with books again. Except, this time, I labeled it something like "Literature A-Cisneros" or "Spanish Language and Culture." See, I'm estimating twenty boxes of books that we packed into the corner of the horse trailer. The books, though, serve only as one fossil of this era.

When I first shifted my little pile of stuff from Southwood to Brentwood, my new apartment was still relatively empty. After hanging a freshly purchased shower curtain and feeling accomplished, I selected an English class literature anthology from my little bookshelf and sat in the floor, in the corner of the living room where the monstrous bookcase eventually stood. I read, from beginning to end, the Lorraine Hansberry play "A Raisin in the Sun" in one anticipatory afternoon.

I can't believe my apartment is almost as empty again as it was that day. It's not nearly as clean, though. I've still got that to do. But once I've collected the last evidences of my residence and once I've exterminated all the dust rodents, I think I'll have a seat in that corner again and read something. Of course, I would punctuate the chapters of my existence with literature.

But what should I read? Too bad all the books have been packed and taken away.

Show me that smile again.

Sunday afternoon in November. I am in the library, preparing for my final student teaching observation. Really, that specific task seems like the least of my concerns.

I decided to walk here. The weather is suprisingly warm to be this late in the year. And the leaves are peaking a bit late, too. So I collected my teachery things in my messenger bag, threw on a light jacket, and started out the door. But when I stepped out, I had a moment of inspiration. Quickly, I transferred my teacher's edition Spanish II textbook, my student teaching binder, and the notebook in which I scribble "lesson plans" into my black backpack.

This backpack has been hiding behind the driver's seat of my car for about five months now. I haven't carried it since this summer, when I hauled it to, from, and all over Europe. I had cleaned it out once I got home, but there are still residual items floating around. My travel alarm clock, a brochure of travel information about the train that runs from Bregenz to Vienna, the flimsy comb I took with me on the weekends because it took up less space in my bag.

There is something distinctly student about carrying your belongings in a backpack. So in last-chance fashion, I walked to campus looking like a student. But I realized something. I don't so much feel like a student anymore. As I walked past the gate guarding campus against who-knows-what, I saw a kid that I had class with first semester of my sophomore year. I said to myself, Is he still here? Of course, I then realized that I'm still here, too.

In this last semester, though, I have been subconsciously bidding this chapter of my life farewell, to use the cheesiest, most hackneyed language ever. Like I said about the inevitable roller coaster drop, I don't know what's going to happen on the other side of this, but no matter what, it is time for it to happen. And student teaching has been the context for this semester, but it hasn't been the entire focus of it. The process of it has made me re-evaluate life and how I choose to deal with it. I can't say I've resurfaced from the challenges that this process has presented, but it's been good. It's been a semester of growing pains, for sure. I don't think they're over, the growing pains, nor do I think they will ever be.

While it was nice to feel like a student again, walking onto campus and fists clinging to the shoulder straps of my backpack, I couldn't help but feel that I had outgrown it -- the backpack, the studentness. I could be wrong. I could be over-analyzing this, like I over-analyze everything else.

For the moment, though, I think I might be ready to stretch my freshly-sprouted wings. Now it's a matter of edging out of the nest. 'Course, I might need some nudging, but well, graduation is less than a month away now.

Deep breath, deep breath...

Please keep all limbs inside the car.

Somedays, I feel like I'm on one of those thrill rides that straps you in over your shoulders and lets your feet dangle as it whips you around loop after loop and plummet after plummet. Other, more peaceful days, I'm cruising along on the rocket-shaped kiddie car that glides gently over gradual hills and smooth curves. Being the risk taker that I am not, I prefer the latter.

Today, though, I can understand the thrill seekers of the world. As much as I would like to keep myself on the kiddie coaster, the reason the big rides are fun is that they make you realize you have something to lose, something valuable. They make you feel alive. In a warped sense, they make you see what you've got, even if it's about to be gone.

Right now, I feel like the amusement park personnel has locked a harness over my shoulders and I can't see anything beyond the big hill in front of me and the hint of the inevitable drop. I can hear the click-click-click as I make my way to the pinnacle of what I can see, and for once, I'm sort of excited about what will happen when gravity wins over.

I'm scared to death, but I'm holding out for a safe return to the station.

The theory of relativity

This summer, when Holly and I were traisping around Europe, we visited the apartment in Bern, Switzerland, in which Albert Einstein conceived the theory of relativity. After reading over the panels of information hanging on the walls and even making shadow puppets on wall where a documentary of his life was being projected, I still don't understand the theory of relativity. I just put my trust in the knowledge that it has influenced our lives and that being in the room where it sprang into his imagination is something of an interesting experience.

Now that fall is setting in, I spend my days in a high school classroom extolling the wonders of literature to students, sometimes to receive only blank stares in return. One of those blank stares came back to me when, in a what-I-thought-was-explanatory moment, I said, "Well, everything is relative, right?"

For whatever reason, I didn't take that moment to explain myself, but something occurred to me. This understanding of general relativity that some of us enjoy isn't innate. Somewhere along the line, probably in a university humanities or philosophy course, someone pointed out to us that everything is dependent on everything else for its quiddity. ["Quiddity" is a word I recently learned. It means essence or thingness.]

To define a word, we need other words. To define ourselves, we look to the selves of others and differentiate for meaning. For instance, I am a daughter only relative to my parents. If someday I have children, I will be a mother relative to their being my offspring, but I will still be a daughter. It is the paradox we live in.

Like, right now, I am a student teacher. The term "student teacher" itself seems an oxymoron, but it is apt. I am teaching my students, but I am still learning from my own teachers. I pass seamlessly from one end of the spectrum to the other without notice. But I wonder, do we retain something in this liquid process, or are we just mutable, intangible somethings -- real only within our contexts?

Leave it to me to look to a tree for answers, but I think this example helps me know that I am more than my relative definition: When growing up, I liked to play under trees. I have yet to explain this kinship with them except that, through the years, I have drawn more analogies between human existence and the nature of trees than I can now name. However, in the years before I realized my very existence could be explained through dendrological metaphors, I played beneath the backyard hickory nut tree.

I could bound out the backdoor of our trailer and run diagonally to the right, at some indeterminate angle, and land within a few seconds under my favorite tree. It was a rather uncomfortable play place, what with all the sharp, broken hickory nuts poking out of the ground, but I put them to good use and collected the bits as currency in my make-believe economy. (See, money really did grow on trees...) Eventually, however, I outgrew the tree, and its attraction and (monetary) value faded with my age. We moved away, too, so visiting the tree every afternoon wasn't feasible, even if we still owned the land on which it stood.

Now, around thirteen years later, my parents are building a house on the farm, which is where our trailer used to sit. Interestingly, though, the house has been built farther back on the property. The trailer, were it still around, would now be in the front yard of the new house. The hickory tree, though, still stands, and it is in the front yard. My beloved tree stands sentinel to the left of the front porch steps. (Left, that is, if you're coming down the steps. See, relativity.) So now the tree that I always viewed as "the backyard tree" is now a "front yard tree." Who knew how much orientation colored my understanding...

But this backyard/front yard tree, though my concept of it has changed, is not really different. Putting a house behind it didn't change it. Sure, it has grown another year's worth of leaves, bark, and hickory nuts, but beneath that is all the growth that happened during the years when it was behind the house and during the years when there was no house around it at all. No matter what situation we put the tree in, it is still the same.

Doesn't that mean something? Does it mean that no matter what situation I am in, no matter what definition I acquire due to my surroundings, I am still me? Maybe it is a simple understanding. And maybe I don't even understand the implications of it yet, but I like it.

I wonder if, someday, adventurous twentysomethings will make shadow puppets on these walls. I doubt it.

If I am alive this time next year.

After I had been blogging for a year or so, it became an OCD obsession of mine to make sure that I posted an entry to this blog at least once a month so that my archives list would always show consecutive months. Alas, this is no longer true.

It seems that blogging has fallen out of fashion among people I know. This is reasonable. I did not quit writing on the blog because it was, say, uncool -- whatever that may be. It petered out because I didn't have time to write, or I didn't have anything to say. While I am not sure much has changed, I find myself missing the blog. So here I am with a two-month gap in my archives list.

I am sitting in my apartment on this Wednesday night. I am only here briefly because, these summer days, I try to stay at home as much as possible. At home, I am spending my days trying to get prepared for student teaching this fall. It is still unreal to me that I won't walk Murray's campus anymore as a student enrolled in proper classes. While graduate school has been on my mind lately, it sure hasn't been a vision of Kentucky's Public Ivy bouncing around in my head. So, I am making my oh-so-blurry transition from student to teacher, a hazy area between the two ends of the continuum that I imagine I will never fully venture out of. I am excited to delve into America's literary history with a group of high school juniors this fall, but I can't help but already miss the classroom in which I am the student.

Anyhow, the things on my mind tonight? I am wondering what my hair will look like this time tomorrow. I am bravely handing over my hair to an unknown stylist who will hopefully do some magic to transfigure me from lazy student to semi-professional educator -- avoiding a "teacher" haircut at all costs.

Also, I am geekily anticipating the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I won't lie and say I am not excited. It always bugged me when certain childhood friends of mine used the word "excited" in such a way that it carried a negative connotation, meaning emotionally upset. Perhaps, though, this is what I mean here by "excited."

In the more traditional sense of the word, I am here to proclaim my exultation at the discovery that even the Murray WalMart stocks Nutella, the hazelnut and chocolate spread that enamors all those who have tasted it abroad. I was so excited that I even developed this somewhat-fraudulent graphic to display my relief.

With this probably being the one and only post added to my blog in the light of this "rededication," I say so long. Perhaps I will keep it up. Only time will tell.

Don't go breaking my heart.

The past week has been interesting, indeed.

• I got my nose pierced. This, of course, is old news these days.
• I had my first accident in which I am the one to blame. Backed into a car in the Corvette Lanes parking lot. You can get any classier than that.
• I found out my rent is going up and that my landlady wants me to sign a new contract. This puts me in a particularly precarious position as far as living arrangements go. Who knows where I'll be nine months from now, much less a year, which means I can't sign a year contract. Which means that I don't know where I'll be living, like, a month from now. Oh, I think I just had an instantaneous nervous breakdown.
• And other assorted matters of the heart which I cannot quite verbalize.

I am putting my Scholars Week presentation together. Me, oh my. What fun.

It's just this thing the seasons do.

I acknowledged my station in adulthood yesterday. I bought a living room suit. Sofa, chair, ottoman. Goodbye futon, hello real people furniture.

Spring break is over, and it signals the homestretch for my last semester of classes. Next semester is student teaching. That's it. Then graduation.

But there's lots to look forward to, you know, besides being an adult. Like going to Austria and assorted other European destinations with my best friend.

And wearing my new wardrobe, here and abroad. It's not new clothes, really. I just had a wardrobe renaissance today. I rearranged it and ended up with something quite nice. It involves lots of flip flops, skirts, and necklaces. Quite girly, in fact.

Oh, and I made myself a purse tonight. A hobo sling, if you will. Joy of joys.

On a family excursion to WalMart, I laid the most superficial (er, girly) stack of purchases on the conveyor belt that I've ever seen. Us Weekly magazine, makeup, and the American Beauty DVD. Not that American Beauty the film is superficial. But, you know, the whole beauty thing.

It's warm. My apartment windows are up and the fans are on. Leaves are budding. Blooms are blooming. I'm happy indeed.

The weight of tomorrow.

I took an hour-long nap today on a couch in Waterfield for no other reason than I couldn't make it home before I fell asleep. That was a strange experience. It was one of the best naps ever, and I took it while about a hundred people milled around me, getting their homework done.

I got three interlibrary loan books today. One of which I don't need anymore because it relates to research topic number two. I've opted for research topic version 3.5. I am glad practicum is almost over because I am actually quite excited about examining Sandra Cisneros and her book The House on Mango Street within the new American canon. It involves both of my majors and education, even. Hopefully I can stay motivated.

One of my professors is coming to observe me teaching tomorrow. It will be my last day at the school. I am a little stressed -- surprise, surprise -- because today's class got out of control. I am going to have to do an unexpected lesson tomorrow on how to use and to cite sources. Great fun.

This has been a great learning experience for me. I know that I have a long way to go to become an effective teacher (ooh, that phrasing feels like the product of being brainwashed by the teacher preparation program), and I am excited about having my own classroom with my own students to teach. I worry, though, how much I am making an impact on these students' futures while I thrash about, making a trial-and-error process of their educations. I wonder, after a week of making them think about their opinons on immigration, are they still closed minded? Tomorrow is my last chance -- or last cha, if you will -- to see to it that I'll be leaving these students in a better state than I found them.

The weight of tomorrow just got heavier.

Hold the apples, at least for a few more minutes.

It's Saturday night, and I'm getting ready to make a Viewing Guide to go along with a ChannelOne video series called "Crossing the Border." I've already make a grade book, a rather detailed assignment sheet explaining how to "picture a poem" using Google Images and PowerPoint, a unit anticipation guide, a unit reflection guide, a scoring guide for the reflection guide... The list goes on. All of this is only a portion of what I've done (and what I've yet to do) in preparation for teaching an English II class for a little over a week. One class. One week. And I haven't even taught yet.

I don't like how this bodes for my future.

But who am I kidding? I actually enjoy all of this, and I think working with the students -- all this planning in action -- will be fun, too. Even if the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Hopefully I can deal.

Last night, I was watching the 10 o'clock news at my sister's house. When the sports segment came on, I found myself engrossed in the report on the Calloway County versus Graves County boys' basketball game. Who knew I cared? But oh, how I did when I saw one of "my" students on the ol' television making a play. I was so proud, and I haven't even taught the kid yet.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if this really is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. Not that I've even started yet. And not that I hadn't been planning it all along.

The grass may be greener on the other side, but it still needs mowing.

Apparently I have to keep moving to stay sane. I'm back in Murray for a refresher. I have things I want to get done. While I don't mind whiling away the hours at home, well, I can only knit so much before I go insane.

I've made myself a decent-sized list of things to do tomorrow. I'm not calling it a new year's resolution or anything, but I'm actually going to try to get a jump-start on this semester. I can already feel that once it gets started, it'll snowball out o' control. It's best to not put things off, so says my conscience.

I'm uploading a handful of photos to Flickr. I got a handy-dandy tripod for Christmas, so during the last few seconds of daylight on New Year's Eve, I tore it out of the package and used it to shoot a few fun-filled photos. Yay for alliteration!

Were somebody to force me to make a resolution, it would be to write more. Yeah.

Oh, she's leaving (leaving) on that midnight train to Pooletown.

Things I know for certain:

Between now and Christmas, I will be knitting until my hands bleed. I'm going to try my bloody hand at socktops.

There's a margarita out there the size of a kiddie pool with my name on it. Pass me the water wings.

I will be studying for the PRAXIS at some point during the break. The Spanish and education parts. Not my idea of fun, unless I convince myself that the practice questions are Jeopardy questions.


Things I do not know for certain:

What my final grades for this semester are going to look like.

If I will have internet at home over break. Seems as if there is a strong possibility that I will.

If I'm really going to be awake enough to make the trip home.

Well, most everything, really.

Minty fresh.

It's St. Patrick's Day season again. Here comes the cold, and all that. And I'm celebrating with a new wintry design.

Here's a rundown, free-stylin' the list:

• Today was the last day for Dr. Howe's class. I see post-Waag lunches happening for the remainder of the semester.
• I have at least three different Spanish poems in my head. Uninvited.
• I'm cold. Yeah, that's all there is to that.
• I'm going to see Happy Feet tomorrow -- and it just happens to have the teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix among its previews...
• I forgot to eat supper. Crap.
• I think I left my umbrella in FH 406. Luckily, that's where I have German in the morn.
• I think I've been ripped off by a Half.com seller. It's been almost a month since I ordered my copy of Speak English Like An American. It's a no-show.
• Why are FreshInk cards leaving me? The bookstore is no longer going to sell Hallmark cards. I can just feel the joys of my life slip-sliding away.

Simon says: You know, the nearer your destination, the more you're slip-slidin' away.

Is that so?

And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills.

I talk about growing up a lot. How that's what I've been doing for the last twenty three years. How that's what I'll be doing for the rest of my life. And sometimes, when I'm brave enough, I try to imagine what my life will be like in five, ten, or twenty years. I'm usually quite unsuccessful at it. Because, one, I am so unclear about what it is that I want in life that the image is too blurry to make it out anyway. And two, because I find it easy to convince myself that there is no way of knowing what will happen, and therefore, there is little purpose in playing the what-if game.

I had to play that what-if game today, though.

It was less than an hour ago. I was singing along with The Shins' "Pink Bullets" on my iTunes, heating up some left-over chicken and biscuits dinner-in-a-box I'd "made" last night, and thinking up ways to avoid doing my homework. My phone rang, and it was my sister.

With the recent deaths in our family and the financial and legal challenges that come along with it, I'm getting quite used to this being the topic of my phone conversations. But as I told Holly yesterday, talking about money gives me a rash. Probably because money generally signifies responsibility, and we all know that the thought of responsibility makes me come unglued. But you know, I'm dealing.

So this particular conversation with my sister started off with references to will-making and life insurance and all those pleasant things that I've grown accustomed to talking about. But before I knew it my sister was asking me if, at some point in the future, I would be willing to be listed as guardian of my nieces in the event of my sister and her husband's death.

[Insert silence here.]

What happened, though, was so contrary to my form that I'm still in a bit of shock. I was already nodding my head affirmatively and prepared to give a yes before my sister was finished asking the question. I, the me who hems and haws at any sort of decision or responsibility, discovered in that moment that if there is anything I am sure about in my life, it is that I would accept responsibility for raising Victoria and Kathryn if I had to. I would not bat an eyelash in doubt.

It is a responsibility that I hope I never have to assume because it would be indicative of other unspeakable tragedy. But as I leaned against the kitchen counter in my unkempt apartment that reflects my relatively self-centered, college-student life, I was able to look into a possible -- but not probable -- future in which I was okay. I was responsible -- not because it was a characteristic of my personality, but because it was the role in life that I had assumed. Through that tiny window of possibility, I could see that everything was going to be okay.

There is a lot of talk about life being what you make it. And you know, I can see that. But we can spend so much time trying to make life be something that it isn't, and in the meantime, we end up missing the life that is or forgetting that, sometimes, life has a way of making itself for us. What we can do is become the sort of people who make decent decisions in our given cirumstances.

For me, the future is still just as blurry as ever. I don't know what will happen. None of us does. What I can say, though, is that the present -- which is always morphing in and out of the past and the future -- came into focus some. And that's all we can really ask for.