There’s a little feature on WordPress that amuses me to no end because it lets me see what phrases people typed into search engines that led them to my site. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

“ana was the most subborn thing alive” (Heck yes she was.)

“hemorroids card game” (uh…)

“pizza hut you tube oh no you din t” (oh yes, I did.)

“cashier unidentified” (yup, my Batman mask comes in handy at work.)

“yippy skippy quilt pattern” (psychedellic.)

AND my personal favorite:

“sweet 50 and 60 year old female hot penpals worldwide” (WHAT???!)

to see who REALLY faithfully reads this blog, even after MONTHS of no posting. So, thank you. I’m still alive.

Now, for the real reason behind this post: I have a dirty little secret I’ve been dying to share with somebody, but the right opportunity just hadn’t come up.

Until now.  So here it is. Don’t tell anyone. It’s super gross. And involves slime. See the way I just built up the suspense? Good. Ahem. The other day I found a big, fat slug in my dishwasher. Think about that for a second. And please tell me how it might have got in there. Ick.

If I hadn’t been panicking and texting my sister in all caps to communicate the urgency of the situation (KATIE THERE IS A SLUG IN MY DISHWASHER. WHAT DO I DO????!!!) I would have snapped a picture for you. He was quite hefty. And obviously I can’t ever eat off of my dishes or use silverware again, even after sterilizing them numerous times, so it’s goodbye cereal and soup, hello…solid things you can eat with your hands off a paper towel.

Good thing I know how to make a mean chocolate poptart.

And now I will share with you The Most Exciting Thing That Has Happened To Me All Summer.

I was at the park, a place I like to go in the cool of the evening to swing in solitude and ponder deep things, like how it would feel to be very tiny with wings and an abdomen that I could light up at will. This night, however, my ruminations were interrupted when a young girl occupied the swing next to me and told me her name was Tasha. She also told me that she was ten, that she was visiting her grandfather, that her birthday is August 13, that she will be receiving a jack russell puppy, and that she will probably name her puppy “Cookie,” but that there is a slight chance it will be called ”Maxine.”

“Oh, nifty!” I offered, and accepted her invitation to be spun on the tire swing.

Big mistake. It felt like my internal organs were playing a lively game of musical chairs and possibly swapping places for good. 

Of course, the best cure for vertigo is to dig through garbage cans looking for plastic bottles with which to catch tadpoles in the creek. Those stubborn things just wouldn’t be caught though, and neither would the pond skimmers. But Tasha, an avid Animal Planet watcher, was determined to scare up some wildlife.

When I heard the words “Hey look, a snake!” I expected to see a scaly-looking twig or a blade of grass gliding with the current. However, Tasha certainly knows her flora from her fauna, and when I noticed the red, black, and yellow bands on the creature I wished I was several safe yards away blowing chunks on the tire swing again.

You know that rhyme “Red against black, you’re ok Jack; red against yellow, you’re a dead fellow”? Well, I couldn’t remember if it was Jack or the fellow who was dead. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m still alive, and I came up with my own rhyme which I think is slightly more helpful: “If you ever see a snake, run straight home and bake a cake.” This way, you’ll put a good distance between yourself and he snake, be he venemous or otherwise, and you can sit in the safety of your own kitchen and lick frosting from a bowl.

I came up with a few more rhymes which I thought I’d pass along because I sure would hate to see you maimed by one of these potentially harmful creatures out of ignorance:

“If you see a Komodo dragon, run it over with a station wagon.”

“When a grizzly you should meet, it’s probably best to cross the street.”

“A cat of 15 lbs, that’s just fine; a 300 pounder with half an antelope dangling from its jaws, that’s another feline.”

“Hark! The prairie dog

stops its hole-digging and sniffs;

a sweet breeze wafts by.”

(That last one was just some haiku I threw in to end on a peaceful note. Feel free to comment with any hints you’ve found to be of help when dealing with nature.)

Tip # 247 on winning over your roommate:

Make her a cute card...

...with a personal message...

...and an illustration.

                                                                                                     (Love you, SR!)

Behold, my list of summer goals:

1. Find a child selling lemonade and purchase $10 worth.

2. NOT have a farmer’s tan.

3. Learn how to geocache.

4. Employing my knowledge from #3, find some really cool treasure.

5. Build a massive sand castle in the volleyball pit.

6. Be a good penpal.

7. Write my congressman. (Just to say hello).

8. Order drinks at Starbucks using the names “Betty-Sue,” “Laverne,” and “Quinetta.”

9. Convince someone that I’m Canadian.

10. Buy one of those jars of pigs’ feet they have in the international food aisle at Walmart. Give it to somebody special.

11. Get super muddy at least once.

12. Go on a date with somebody named Gustav. (This one could be tricky. Gustavs seem to be few and far between in these parts).

13. Aquire some play doh, sidewalk chalk, and bubble wands. Make good use of them.

14. Bake muffins for my neighbors.

15. Go Christmas carolling.

‘Ello, all. I’ve been terribly busy of late rolling people around in a giant black tube on the softball field in the rain at night writing 15 page papers on female adolescence in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, but thought I’d pop in just to say…’ello.

Oh, and I’d like to take a moment to welcome some new international readers. Hello, Piter from Latvia! And Raiul! Glad to have you both with us. My, how global “A to the M” is becoming! This is splendid indeed.

That’s about all I have time for, BUT stay tuned because someday, eventually, I will be doing a post (with pictures!) featuring some of my Favorite Things. I don’t want to spoil too much of the surprise, but a certain Hulk loofah will be making its first appearance on this here blog.

If that doesn’t give you pop rocks of joy in your heart, you must have been given the wrong URL.

Well, cyber-stalkers, it pains me to say this, but I didn’t make it through the 5k. I didn’t even make it to the 5k, due to several factors. Let’s go over them, shall we?

1. Brooke, my running buddy, bailed (after I had called you such a faithful friend, too!).

2. I had just come home from work after being on my feet for 7+ hours.

3. Let’s face it; it’s more fun to sit on the floor and eat popcorn than put your legs muscles through agony.

4. Um…your mom.

Now, on to happier topics! Or not. It has recently come to my attention that I have 50 + pages worth of papers to do by the end of April. None of which I have yet started.

I think you can probably guess what kind of affect this will temporarily have on my maintenance of this here blog. That’s right; I will be more consistent than ever in my postings of utter nonsense as I sink further and further into the sea of denial and become more desperate to find a means of escape from the world of academia!

It’s all part of my new, improved, edgy-bad-girl-who-doesn’t-do-her-homework image. Ok, maybe it’s not so new.

If we were speaking face to face, you would instantly sense the desperation in my voice. But as we are not, I need to let you know that I AM PANICKING BECAUSE I JUST REALIZED I’VE MADE THE STUPIDEST DECISION IN ALL OF MY 20.8 YEARS!!

I can hear you now. “Oh, Anna. Tell me you did not get suckered into buying the Shamwow. I mean, just take a gander at the first half of the word.”

If only. We are dealing with something far worse than the purchase of a superfluous infomercial product. We are dealing with the fact that the neurotransmitters in my brain stepped out to lunch long enough for me to sign up to run a 5k when the truth is that the three R’s (roaches, rats, and running) are the things I detest most in the totality of the universe!

But it wasn’t enough to just get myself into this muddle; oh no, I had to go and pull Brooke into it all too (sorry, girl. And you’ve always been such a true friend…) Thus, for several early mornings in a row it’s been Brooke, me, and Dr. Brown at the rec center cardio room, engulfed in silence save for the soft whirring of the elliptical machine. (I must admit, collapsing jogging on the treadmill next to your former English professor is a little awkward. But not as awkward as the thought of being passed by a gaggle of visor-sporting 60-year-old women as I plod along the sidewalk like a sad, sweaty, I-don’t-even-know-what.)

The running commences this Friday at midnight. If I haven’t checked in with you within a week to let you know how it went you can safely assume my leg muscles overheated, giving way to spontaneous combustion, which then melted the skin off my fingers, inhibiting my ability to type. In which case this blog will be sold to the highest bidder. I don’t care what you do with it as long as you keep the “to the Max” part. Any Maxes lurking out there? Max to the Max would be kinda catchy.

Question: What does a 20-year-old college student do during an entire 8 days at home when “home” is a beautiful, albeit remote,  farm-like property with no cable, less-than-reliable cell phone service, and dial-up internet which takes 4 hours to load 3 lousy minutes of a single YouTube video? (Not that I’m complaining or anything.) 

Let me tell you.

First, you gotta get your priorities straight. Nothing keeps me from spending some quality time with Patrick the pillow and Cathy the comforter. (And on really chilly nights, Quinetta the quilt.) If you ask me, those scientists don’t know what they’re talking about. Seven to eight hours of sleep a night? Pshaw. I could have slept all week and still have begged for more.

Upon waking, skip the shower, I repeat, SKIP IT! Even when among my own kind in civilization, I’m not a big believer in hygiene. It’s vanity, I tell you, pure vanity! Shampoo? Moisurizer? Oatmeal scrub body wash? Nothing more than evil vices. Did the pilgrims need these trifles? Nay, and neither do I. Especially when the only ones around to smell me (all family members aside) have hooves.

Don’t get me wrong, bathing does have its place. But so does Captain Crunch. And if I remember my fifth grade math well enough, Captain Crunch > Bathing. (The duck’s bill does eat the greater one, right?)

After being thoroughly crunchetized, one has some major decisions to make. Option A: Take a nap. Option B: Play badminton. Option C: Get out the good ol’ bucket of sidewalk chalk and decorate the driveway. Option D: Dress up like the spooky creatures from “The Village” and peek out from behind the bushes at any cars that pass by. Option E: Make some ridiculously embarrassing home videos featuring contestants on a show called “The Biggest Gainer” and their demanding trainers who yell at them to cram more pizza down their throats during the Last-Chance Pig Out before the weigh-in. Option F:  Four words: Sunday school flannel board. aka FUNNEST TOY KNOWN TO MAN! Well, I guess technically it’s not a toy. But that doesn’t diminish it’s fun-ness a smidge. 

Oh, have I ever introduced you to K-Dizzle? She is a sibling of mine who, conveniently, is homeschooling this year and therefore is around all day providing me with endless amusement reading The Grapes of Wrath. Here she is, dressed in traditional Things-We-Don’t-Speak-of garb:

So that’s what I did until Friday. Quite a productive week, was it not? But to top it all off, I went as a chaperone with my church’s youth group to a gigantic conference Friday and Saturday. Because nothing brings me joy like jumping  around like a fool in a mosh pit surrounded by oodles of stinky 13 year old boys.  And because no one is more qualified to chaperone than someone who sits around in her Space Jam jammies eating Captain Crunch and doodling with sidewalk chalk.

And that is how I lived it up during Spring Break 09. (Oh, and I’d like to say a special thank you to my dear friends who went to Myrtle Beach and rubbed it in my face. How thoughtful of you!)

Well, dear readers, it was another long Saturday at the store that I work at but try not to mention by name on the world wide web because I’d like to remain employed there for as long as possible. Pizza Hut girl was injured, so who was the obvious candidate for a substitute? Why, service desk worker girl, of course! Dun da da dun! Never mind that she’s not actually trained in that field; the second she slips on that grungy apron and grease-stained baseball cap, she becomes the epitome of hotness.  

I tell you, you have yet to experience true boredom if you’ve never been stuck behind the Pizza Hut counter for two hours with no one to talk to but the breadsticks, which, I just learned, are supposed to go in the toaster upside down to prevent that very tooth-chipping quality mine always obtain. I also learned to check to make sure there is, in fact, marinara sauce in the marinara sauce vat before selling three breadstick combos. Oopsies! My b.

The best part of being the clueless Pizza-Hut fill-in? You don’t need training to wash dishes! Except you sort of do because there’s this special solution and the dishes have to soak in each of the three sinks of various temperatures of water for various amounts of time, blah blah blah. Oh, look, here comes our Starbucks buddy to get some soapy water of his own. But what’s this? A lecture on wearing three-quarter pants? You did not just make fun of my work duds. Am I going to have to go all Bon-Qui-Qui on you? 

Fast forward to mid afternoon. Let’s look in on our service desk worker girl-turned pizza hut girl- turned cashier. (My, what stylish capris she’s wearing!) A customer lays his soon-to-be purchases on the counter. She can’t help but laugh as she bags three big bottles of hot sauce…and four boxes of our Pepto-Bismol knock-off. There you go sir. No, you have an excellent day. Oh, the things people buy/say/do.