A Golden Tale

So tonight before Adam went to bed, he asked Sarah if she would like to hear a bedtime story. I know this sounds insane, and its not like he has ever told her bedtime stories before. But I guess when it boils down to it, a big part of our lives is coming home from work and saying really ridiculous things to our dog. But I wanted to share the story with you guys. So here is A Golden Tale by Shel Silversten Adam M.

Long ago, in the kingdom far away across the Great White Ocean, there lived a monarchy that was ruled by three ruling goldies. These goldies ruled a vast land overflowing with raw hide bones, fried chicken, and McDonald’s french fries. However, the goldies did not know their limits, and soon became greedy. The greediness lead to sloth and stifled their creativity. It took their promise and smashed it upon the rock of laziness! This is a cautionary tale, young Sarah.

In other news, I've been serving on a jury all this week (wrapped today), and I can't wait to tell you guys all about it because the defendant was actually a celebrity! Talk about a quintessential Southern California experience. I go in for jury duty, get chosen, and its a celeb. That is better than my, "I saw Richard Simmons at LAX story!" But jury duty has set me so far behind in work and school, I barely have any time to breathe. And I'm running on like no sleep, so now I'm having issues sleeping because my body was like, "Ok girlfriend, so you don't ever get in bed before 3 a.m., I'm going to make it impossible for you to fall asleep before that time from now on, TAKE THAT." Which would be fine if one ornery golden retriever didn't make it her job to wake me up.

I also haven't been able to check up on everyone in the blogosphere, so I can't wait to have time to come by and say hi.

Take One Nun, Add a Pinch of Underage Gambling, Place in a Mixer, and Press Blend

The last two years that I lived in St.Louis before moving to Alabama, I attended a private Catholic school. I'm not Catholic, but the area I was living at in St. Louis had a pretty rough school district. For example, our elementary school's motto was” Be Fight Free!", and not "Education is Important." I really struggled at that school, so my mom put her Southern Baptist daughter into a safer environment.

I really enjoyed attending St. Aloysius. It was a really low key school, it had no heating or ac, so school was canceled if it got too hot or too cold. We had no playground, so we played in the parking lot, and if there was a funeral at the church we had nowhere to play. The classes were really small, and there was only 11 other people in my entire class. It was odd to be the only non-catholic in the entire school, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. My biggest memories from that time period involve dissecting owl pellets (gross), learning to diagram sentences, and a really awful mid-90s hair do.

You see I used to have stick straight blonde hair. You've seen pictures of my hair now, and I have more curls than a southern toddler beauty pageant contestant on the show Little Miss. Perfect. This is because in 3rd grade my mother decided stick straight wasn't good enough, and she gave me a perm. A perm that never, ever fell out. I'm not even kidding. It changed the texture of my hair. If all hairdressers gave perms as permanent as mine, they would go out of business. When it was first permed, it looked like a big curly mullet. And I hated it. It took years before I learned how my hair should be cut, and what it takes to look good. LOTS AND LOTS of FRIZZEASE.

The nuns that ran the school were really kind, but they seemed scary to me (but you know I'm scared of the wind). Those nuns were strict. We wore uniforms, could not wear nail polish, or so much as a hair scrunchy that wasn't in St. Al's colors. But I loved wearing a uniform. It made getting ready in the morning such a simple process. Now I have to do things like MAKE DECSIONS about my clothing, and that just seems so unnecessary. Plus if you know me, you know that picking out matching clothes has never been my forte.

I remember one particular fall season, asbestos was discovered in our school cafeteria and it needed to be renovated, so all the different grades were eating lunch in different classrooms around the school. Our fourth grade class just happened to be eating our lunches in the computer lab. We had been warned again and again that we were not to even think about touching the computers with our grubby little fingers. So we didn't, but the screen saver on the computers were of three hamsters racing. Each time the hamsters would race, a different hamster would win. We soon started betting on the hamsters racing in a CATHOLIC SCHOOL.

"If Green Wins You Have to Trade Me Your Oreos for my Carrot Sticks!" (See, I was a fat kid even then). " I See Your Pretzels and Raise you Two Chips!" Pretty soon we became addicted, and every day we were taking bets and whooping and hollering for every race. And I guess it was the whooping and hollering that attracted the attention of the nuns. The nuns just don't go in for the whooping and hollering. And the nuns were not so happy when they discovered what we were doing. They told us they were very disappointed in us, didn't we know that gambling was wrong? " And that this was something we needed to talk to the priest about at our next confession." (They used to take us to confession once a week as a class, we didn't have to confess anything, we just had the opportunity).

I think she was probably a little hard on us. I don't think we really even knew what gambling was. What did she want us to do break down an apologize and promise to join gambler's anonymous?!? Plus, does she know what I used to do when people would tell me they were "disappointed" in me? I would go home, open my closet, empty my toys from my toy box, close the closet door, and hide in there for hours (I did this all the time as a child).

You would think all of this would have taught my class some kind of lesson about the evilness of gambling. But I guess THEY were all already addicted and it was just too late. Because the next year they started playing poker at recess. But this time, I stayed in the corner and watched.

Past Blast- Dorm Room Philosophy Edition

This is a second journal entry in the Past Blast series. This was written on Spetember 24, 2004, when I was a freshmen at the W. My commentary is in red. Any spelling errors or typos are original.

There are hobbies that I like to do only every now and then. I like the term every now and then. Every now and then creates a good relationship. It doesn't let your water run dry....nor does it flood you. It surrounds you with the perfect peace (I am basking in the utter profoundness of that statement, notice I didn't mention any of these "hobbbies." I just wanted to sound cool by saying that, I'm certain. Like when I would cuss in third grade). 

 Everyone has come back to the humble dormatory (after labor day weekend). I have to say Im glad to have everyone back. It got slow. Wow, it seems like the whole focus for most people was to have sex this weekend, which hearing about these endless/fruitless pursuits is kind of funny in a way (I used to like to think that my life was like one long episode of Sex in the City. Even though I was not doing anything at all).

People freak out that college kids are having sex, i freak out because college kids are having sex without protection (thanks for the public service annoucement, Brittany. That sounds like something someone would say on those NBC "The More You Know" commercials).

 My room is so cold. I have to sleep in sweats. Stealing Robyn's term I live in the land of eternal winter (yeah that room was never comfortable anytime ever).

 These girl are becoming my friends fast. But I still wish for something. I wish I could have my new college life but bring my old friends along with me.

 Took orders tonight and jumped in the car with Santana and Christina to go to Taco Bell. We had 9 orders to get, but they only let you do three orders per car. So we had to just keep going around and around, it was starting to get ridiculus (this was traumatizing to me, going through drive-thrus has always made me nervous, and I bet those people were getting tired of us). She drove really fast and it made me a tad nervous, but I made it out alive (she was probably going 25 mph, I am the worst passenger ever).

Ive been invited to a party next weekend after the game. I will most likely go, I have that hot new dress that I LOVE. But most likely I will be the sober sister just because I worry about everyone else (goody two shoes, much?). And Im not a huge drinker (I remember that party, I drove and didn't drink. We hit a police road block coming home, and the minute he approached the car I got nervous and blurted I HAVEN'T BEEN DRINKING. He laughed at me for a good five minutes. Oye.).

My cousin Crystal IMED (back when my life revolved around my AIM chat window) me today and said she had a question for me. I was getting pretty nervous since I have cut off all ties with that family. I was worried she would ask if I would be home for thanksgiving or vice versa (how does vice versa make any since in that sentence? Vice Versa what?). But she didnt, just asked for a recipe for dip (best DIP ever). Thank God, it was such a relief.

Bring Me Your Repetitive, Dreaded, and Mundane Tasks

School is slowly eating my entire life. Two weeks ago, I was walking around the house, feeling like a hippopotamus was sitting on my chest, because of my role-play (it went pretty well). Not that you would know it, my professor has a complete pa-pa-pa-pa-poker face, there is no reading her. And yes, I just referenced Lady GaGa. I've probably said this before, but sometimes when I get really anxious and the event happens and it ends up not being so bad, I kind of wish something bad did happen. Because when I get home, after spending a week running around like a chicken with my head cut off, the person I was whining to typically says, "See I told you it wouldn't be so bad." And sure I'm glad it wasn't so bad, but just one time I want my fears to be justified. So I can tell them, "See it was that bad!"

I didn't even get to breath a sigh of relief, before having to jump into my next assignments. The weekend before last, I was at Borders with my Team from school working on our assignment on a Friday night. School work on a Friday night! Now mind you, I probably wouldn't have done anything exciting with my Friday night, maybe watch some TV and pick my belly button lent. But it is the idea of working on a Friday night, that bothers me. After the meeting, I spent that whole weekend slaving away, working on paper after paper. Being jealous of Adam as he played video games and went to bed early. Pulling my hair out, because I had no clue how I was going to get it all done on time.

But I pulled it off, and dragged my tired butt to my last class in group counseling. I was so excited to get that class behind me, so I could kick start my three-day weekend. The first weekend in months that I didn't have any homework. I was going to do things I never get to do! Like watch all my movies on the DVR! Take Baths! Go to Bed Early! Read more than 20 pages at a time! So I woke up on Friday looking forward to the free day ahead of me. I puttered around the house, I read some blogs, I watched a movie, and by noon I was bored.

Not just a little bored, but the type of bored I was as a child, when I would plop down on the chair in our living room and whine to my mother, "I'M BORED!." Then she would rattle off several things I could do, but I was so stuck in the boredom that nothing seemed worthwhile. So I waited and waited for Adam to come home, hoping he could entertain me. He is like my little monkey that I make dance! But that didn't work either. So I just got through Friday, believing that Saturday would be better. But it wasn't, and I spent the whole weekend BORED.

So I have come to an awful conclusion. I only enjoy my free time when I shouldn't be having it, and I'm supposed to be doing something else. I enjoy the guilt that comes with procrastinating. And worse than that, I seemingly enjoy doing school work. Who loves doing research and writing papers? Apparently I do. I guess I've been a student so long it has just melded into my identity. So who knows what my life will be like post school. I may have to keep going for my doctorate just to stay satisfied.