Perforation Problems

(Day Five) Another prompt from 642 Things to Write About: Two dollars isn't a lot of money, unless... Two dollars isn't a lot of money, unless you're twelve years old, hiding in your mom's van in the parking lot at your brother's baseball game. You're laying in the backseat where no one can see you, reading piles of Babysitters' Club books you just got at the library, when you get a little hungry. There's two crisp dollar bills in your mom's change purse in between the two front seats, so you head on over to the concession stand. You can get a lot for two dollars at a concession stand. Airheads. Bubble gum. Tootsie rolls. Tootsie rolls are something like five for a quarter, so that means 2 dollars = 8 quarters x 5 tootsie rolls = 40 tootsie rolls. That's a lot of tootsie rolls. As the teenager behind the stand counts them out for you one-by-one, you hear a voice behind you. "Wow, Mom, she's getting a lot of tootsie rolls....

(Day Four) Today was a rough day. There was no particular reason for it to be a rough day, and in the grand calendar of my life, today will probably not even warrant remembering. But it was a rough day. All I want to do now is zone out with some TV or maybe shut my eyes and just go to sleep, but here I am. I can't even really think of anything to write about. I just wrote a paragraph about my mom's friend, Debbie, who sent me a late wedding present over a year ago. I never wrote her a thank you card, and I feel really bad about it. I deleted this paragraph because I got to the end of it and realized all I really had to say about Debbie was that I never wrote her a thank you card, and I feel really bad about it. Michael is playing video games right now. We've fallen into a probably-not-very-healthy pattern this winter where we come home, eat dinner, talk a bit, and then retreat into our separate zones of either work, the computer, or TV/reading/video games. We don'...

(Day Three) I am not feeling the writing tonight. I wasn't feeling it last night, either, but I'm only three days into my personal challenge, and I can't give up yet. Here's the thing, though -- I think this is exactly why I need to see this 60 days through. It's too easy to fall back on the "I'm tired," or "I have no energy because I worked all day," or "I'm not inspired." I've made a habit of it. That's why I fell so far behind on the actual writing part of Project 365. The more I do this, the easier it should get. Right? It's like running. Plus I think it's good for me to have to write about different topics and not just ramble on and on about myself. That being said, tonight I'm going to ramble on and on about myself. I have a book called 642 Things to Write About , which my brother's fiancee got me for Christmas. I was flipping through it tonight, trying to find something to write about for day...

(Day Two) Our bathroom is infested with ladybugs. They're not anywhere else in our house, just the bathroom. I'm assuming it's because they either like the cold tile or the high ceilings, but it might be because they have an irrepressible, suicidal urge to be washed down a shower drain. But nothing seems to stop them -- not freezing temperatures, not extra caulk on the window, not the threat of the vacuum hose. Tonight I stood in the shower washing my hair and watching as two ladybugs crawled over the loofa in circles, wiggling the water off their little spindly legs. Forget the fact that now I could not use said loofa. The worse part was that I could not even close my eyes to wash the shampoo out, because everyone knows that as soon as you take your eyes off a bug or a spider it lunges towards your face. (That may seem like exaggeration, but it was only a few days ago that one dive bombed my head as I brushed my hair, so don't underestimate them.) You might be ...

Guys. I think I'm going to stop doing 365 posts. I'm just not spending time on them, and they're not serving the purpose they were meant to -- to get me to write. I'm just doing them to get them done, which is not really writing. It's typing. It'd be one thing if I were writing about the pictures right after I took them, when the experience was fresh and I could focus on one and really do it justice. But that's not what's happening. I have 60 more pictures that do not have posts. I could continue to do half-hearted posts for them and probably finish in about two more months, or I could try to turn this into something a bit more productive and that will help me become a better writer. So...instead of finishing those posts, I'm going to adapt it into a new challenge: 60 days of writing every single day. Don't think I'm copping out -- this is going to probably be harder. A couple rules / guidelines: 1) I have to write everyday, but it can...

This is a little more interesting, though not a very good picture. My friend and I drove down to Bloomington tonight to see David Sedaris read from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls .

I am 100% unsure why I took a picture of my almost-empty ice tea. I told you the pictures were going to get even more boring than normal. Only 61 more days of Project 365. Hang in there.