Things I accomplished over Thanksgiving break:

1. Made a music video to this song with the siblings. (Actually, we’re not done yet. Perhaps we can wrap it up over Christmas.)

2. Watched a touching show about cheetahs on one of our now SEVEN channels. Quite an improvement over the 3.5 stations we used to have. (Good news: I can now indulge in a little Telemundo next time I go home.)

3. Visited my grandpa (and Jerry, the resident rabbit) at the assisted living center.

4. Ate a little turkey, etc. etc.

5. Worked from 4:45 AM to 2:15 PM on Black Friday. Survived.

6. Worked 9 hours the next day. Survived. Barely.

7. Realized I had forgotten to check in on a friends’ kitties during the several days she was out of town.

8.  BOOKED IT to her house, praying frantically the entire way that I would not find two dead cats with empty food bowls.

9. Apologized PROFUSELY to said friend, and tried to smooth things over with Marty the kitten and his pregnant mother, who were both very much alive.

Things I did NOT accomplish over T.B.:

1. A lick of homework.

2. A smidge of shopping, Christmas or other.

I am so wound up from work. It’s amazing how hyper one gets after hours of sweater-folding. Here, read this list I just made.

1. I’m listening to a song that talks about eating cheese on toast.

2. Tomorrow (today) is Thursday, which means I will have to bathe.

3. My neighbors make me so jealous because they have a PORCH and SCREEN DOOR.

4. My neighbors are super cool hippy people, or at least that’s what I imagine. There seems to be approximately 24 people living in their house. It’s probably some type of cult that revolves around porch-sitting till 3 am and collecting furniture from dumpsters.

5. Tomorrow (today) I will be giving a presentation on the worldview in “V for Vendetta.” I should probably get on it.

6. But not yet.

7. Because now I’m listening to a song about mouthwash and flossing. (It’s called “Mouthwash” by Kate Nash. And the earlier song is called “Merry Merry Happy.”)

8. Currently, I am grounded. From eating chocolate. Per my own orders.

9. And now I’m going to bed.

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.