rant to self

Storms kept me awake most of last night. This semester ends in 72 hours. Blog Every Day In May's topic for today is to do a rant. Because I am utterly exhausted and unshowered and have to be at work in 7 minutes - this rant will be short, painless, and directed at myself. But you're welcome to listen & take or leave any or all of it. Here goes. Being constantly broke is a bad habit. Eating bad food - potential suicide. Ending the semester so stressed out - your own damn fault. Having bad hair or clothes days - ditto. Bad underwear? I'm not even going to go there. Moving boxes into storage at the end of the semester every May - a form of insanity. Failure to book a flight earlier this year to Istanbul for summer - just plain crazy.

top 10

please find below ten [10] of my favorite blog posts and please comment

 using the one [1] emotion/feeling that comes to your mind when looking at/reading

 xx + all the love in the world

skipping class // red-headed stranger // gypsy tea // pistachios.oranges.pomegranates // peach bellinis // shades & lipstick  //found: july // sexy refrigerator // cantaloupe bowl  // a story from childhood // get real: i miss oxford miss

                                                                                                ~follow blog every day in may here

get real: i miss oxford miss

Do you believe the first song you hear on the radio mornings is speaking to you? It's been 80,000 words ago that I wrote this sentence the first week of this blog/book and had no idea where the story would take me. And this morning waking up to a packing nightmare in the barnloft and exam week for students - the first song on Pandora - Sade! Is it a crime?

if blogs were kitchen tables

Carin. Kathy. Adriana. Jamie. Eryl. LeeAnn. These are the bloggers I would love to have live in my hometown. Don't get me wrong. I love Sally and Sini but they're still caught up in friends and romance and travels. And I'm starting to fall in love with Jennifer and Toi and Jenni [thank you for throwing this blog party!] - but if blogs were kitchen tables - I would want these girls to live right down the street from me. 

a story from childhood

It's just occurred to me that I've been writing memoirs for over a decade now and there's not one single story about my childhood in them. Childhood as in "when I was a very young child I etc." This might be because I've never really let go of my childhood and fully embraced the concept of myself as an adult. Even now: I cling to my parents the way some two year olds cling to a favorite blanket. The past few years since I haven't had a family home for my daughters - I've headquartered at my parents' house during summers and  holidays and insisted that my daughters come over and hang out as if they were my best friends from high school. Just yesterday my parents drove four hours to visit me and to carry some of my things back home for the summer. We went out to our favorite restaurant and ordered all the most fabulous food. Ate M & Ms and Almond Joys and Reese's Cups at the Hampton Inn while we watched the late news. Meanwhile today out at the lake in another city - my daughters celebrated the end of a long work week in the corporate world by boating with "our brother Michael" as Monica Margaret responded when she tagged this photo to me on facebook and I asked whose boat she was driving. Funny because I don't remember giving birth to Michael but I'm sure my parents won't mind if we bring him home for Memorial Day weekend.
                                                                         
                                                                               ~day 18 blog every day in may

snap me up: the here & now

This photograph is 20 minutes old.

It is my favorite photograph because it is me: Right here. Right now. Sleep-deprived. No makeup. Stripped down to the bare emotional bones from writing away a ton of grief this year. Exhausted from the work involved with having to unlearn everything I felt to be true about teaching, about students, but most of all about myself. My student took the photo and there are so many things about this moment that I would like to share except that someone's taken my iphone and - I have a feeling that even as we speak - I'm getting hacked on Instagram.

                             ~Day 17/31 Blog Every Day In May 

i miss everything about you

I'm now officially late with a bazillion writing assignments for blog every day in May. But Karma told me it was okay because I've always let my students turn in papers late if they promised me that what they wrote would be worth the wait!