A full rich day.

Well, if I wanted excitement, I sure as hell got it today. There's an episode of the classic sitcom "M*A*S*H*" in which the main character, Hawkeye, uses a tape recorder to send a message to his father in which he describes what a "Full Rich Day" the 4077th has recently experienced. Everything seems to happen within the course of this one day: they are overflowing with casualties, they lose a soldier from the microscopic country of Luxembourg, they get bombed, and they have barrels of fun with a so-called "mad Turk," a Turkish soldier with a serious wound who will not calm down enough to receive treatment- he just wants to get back to the front lines to fight more Chinese.

We had a full rich day today, to say the least. We woke up and very quickly lost electricity; a company was cutting limbs around power lines down the road and ended up knocking down some lines. Today was payday, so we simply called the power company and left a little early to run our errands. After a little shopping at the Walmart in Suffolk, we retrieved Daddy's paycheck and did our business at the bank. After we returned home, the power FINALLY came back on, and we began to finish our chore of cleaning the kitchen from Monday. We ironed the curtains, washed the windows, put the curtains back up, and I scrubbed the baseboards while Mama cleaned out some cabinets. There were some dishes that needed washing, so we called my brother to do them.

My darling brother began to put the clean dishes from last night away, but upon opening the knife drawer, screamed and darted across the kitchen. I thought maybe he had seen a mouse, which we have had a lot of this summer. No, there was a snake coiled up inside the drawer. I screamed at him, "CLOSE THE FUCKING DRAWER. CLOSE THE FUCKING DRAWER, YOU IDIOT!" while retreating to the pantry. While he urgently told my mother to get up and out, because she has a deathly fear of snakes, I was trying to figure out precisely how much speed and force it would take for me to break the pantry window and get the hell out of there. My mother frantically scurried out of the kitchen while John FINALLY got some sense in his head and closed the fucking knife drawer to let our unwelcome house guest be ALONE. We peaced out of the kitchen to help my mother, who was as white as a sheet and shaking. Then I called my father, ordering to come home RIGHT now because we had a situation. Mama and I decided to go to Walmart in Franklin just to get the heck out of the house with the snake in it, leaving John alone with the snake to wait for Daddy because he was too big of a wuss to take care of it himself.

Mama and I exchanged some shoes and did a little shopping. I bought some pretty nail polish and some clearance rack makeup (Loreal HIP, at that. It's normally expensive stuff, but I got two lip glosses and an eyeshadow for $1 each. Suh-weet!) Less than twenty-five minutes after I called my father, he called to tell me the situation was taken care of. I have never known my father to get home from Suffolk in less than thirty minutes, so I know he must have been worried about us. But geez, now I'm terrified to go in the freaking kitchen! I'm so paranoid and I keep looking around because I think I see things. This is just insane! Now we'll NEVER finish the kitchen, and we only had one set of cabinets left to organize! BLARGH! But today, I am thankful for my father. Oh good grief am I ever thankful for my father....




* This is what I typed up last night and intended to post today, but, obviously, that didn't happen *

I love the television show Glee. It honestly lives up to its name every week. For one hour on Tuesday nights (during regular season; Thursdays this summer), I find myself in complete bliss as I watch characters who are just as awkward as myself navigate the ins and outs of high school, love, friendship, music, and competition. It's painfully real and honest, and I find myself feeling emotional connections to characters that do not exist in reality (no, Amie, they are NOT real. I have to keep reminding myself that I cannot really date Finn or hit on Mr. Schuester while asking him for teaching tips). Glee doesn't shy away from complicated issues like a gay guy coming out of the closet or an overweight girl's struggles with body image and pressure to slim down. You can be laughing until your sides split one minute and drowning in tears the next. I have the whole first season on iTunes, and I've watched every episode at least ten times; "The Power of Madonna" is the leader at 33 views while "Acafellas" is next at 24 views. FYI, I pretty much don't have a life.

Ever since I blogged about how much I miss everyone and how badly everything sucks, things have slowly taken a turn for the better. A friend who just graduated from SBC is starting grad school at William and Mary this fall, and I offered to go help her move in... along with Mariah, who will then hopefully come home with me, Seanne, Mary, and Sierra (who will have just arrived from their cross-country road trip). It's so funny how things work out like that. I find it odd that I was once so determined to go to William and Mary and make a future for myself there, but now I cannot imagine my life anywhere other than Sweet Briar. I'm sure if I had been accepted there and chosen to do my undergrad there that I would have made friends and learned a lot in the rich historical environment and all that jazz, but it just wouldn't feel as personal and heartfelt and... genuine as they do at Sweet Briar. It's an awful cliche, but I have definitely found where I belong... it just happens to be at a microscopic college in the middle of nowhere in cozy classes in which there are no boys, but with friends by my side who are from every corner of the country with remarkably different gifts, quirks, dreams, and ways of life.

I watched Dead Poets' Society with my parents tonight. I had seen it before, but after two years of field experience with teachers, I watched it through an entirely different lens. I want to inspire that kind of wild passion for literature in my students. I want to nurture their talents and help them on their way to achieving their dreams. I know it's next to impossible to make students feel the same way you do about your subject matter, but that movie makes me want to try even harder to ignite a fire for books, plays, essays, composition, stories, poetry, speech, and grammar in my classes. Heck, I may even show it to my class someday :-)