friday.

oh my goodness if i could just sleep a whole night who KNOWS what i could accomplish...

le sigh.

lately my nose is so stuffed at night it wakes me up...and last night right before i woke up i was having my recurring dream (not the math dream THANK GOD) that i'm trying to put my contacts in but they are really huge and too big to fit over my eyes...

and i'd get up and do something productive or watch t.v. or something but i'm afraid of the dark...

so i lay there...and then right about the time i start to drift off a few hours later the lord of the ring starts to snore...

i've got errands to run and costumes to finish and it's family movie night so i'm off...

but don't forget, it's the great pumpkin charlie brown is on at 8 pm tonight...

x.

defending your life

middle school: the purse

god i was just a dork...a dork with a cowlick...

anyhow, this particular middle school remembrance involves me losing a purse...my favorite purse...grandma billie bought me this purse when i was visiting her...it was white with polka dots and it was totally *in* that year...definitely a first for me...

so at school one day i lost it!...i was devastated...i checked the office once or twice, no luck...then about the second or third day of it being gone during the morning announcements on the p.a. i hear "there's been a purse turned in at the office"

i just knew it was mine!...the class just ended so i raced to the office...now, in my middle school as in many it was the popular people who got all the fun jobs...like reading the announcements and planning the dances and getting out of class to do errands for teachers...

it's like the teachers were all in on it, too...this whole idea that the popular and the beautiful somehow just deserved all these perks...were the teachers never young once?...or were they just intimidated by people they knew they never were?

so of course the girl running the announcements was there...the most popular girl in the entire school...i go in and say i was the one who lost the purse...

"oh, can you describe it?"

"yeah, it's white with polka dots"

"okay, what's inside...we have to ask that too"

i can't say anything...i'm just standing there...

"well, what's inside...you tell me i'll look and then it's yours...i can't just give it to you in case you saw the outside"

"monopoly money"

"what?...what did you say?"

"monopoly money...there's monopoly money inside"

"monopoly money?...you have got to be kidding me"

so she either doesn't believe me or just thinks it's too dorky to consider and starts to unzip my purse...i should mention there are at least one or two of her friends hanging around waiting for her...

so yeah, there's an audience...

and yeah, she unzips my purse and pulls out a wad of monopoly money...

what, like you never played "bank" with your younger sibling when you were in middle school and then forgot to take the money from your purse...

she is holding the money up and howling with laughter...her friends have joined her and i'm just standing there wishing to be any. where. else.

she's almost done laughing when she spies something else and says

"looks like you have a lot of money here...but i guess if you had to you could write a check!"

and yes, she then pulls out a homemade checkbook...you know, from the "bank"...

finally the warning bell rings for the next class so she stuffs everything back into my purse and hands it over...

"count it if you want, but it's all there"

of course she can barely get this out because she's laughing so hard...and then she and her friends leave the office howling with laughter...

i must say that i learned a bit about karma the next day when she was reading the announcements and came across the name of a girl i had had in class...this girl had the unfortunate last name of "pekar" pronounced "pea-car"

of course she didn't know that and pronounced it quite differently...which of course made her the center of laughter and teasing for quite some time for her mistake...

if it were the movies or i had suddenly grown some balls i would have walked up to her and said "who's laughing now, beyotch!" and then tossed my cowlicked hair over my shoulder and walked away...

i know i know, they didn't say beyotch back then...but in my fantasy i invented it right then and there...which made me instantly popular...and got me a free makeover...and a dance with the boy in the brown button up sweater who read homer at lunch and with whom i fell in love after dissecting a pig together...

but he's a story for another day.