Can't make this stuff up.

Overheard in an undisclosed sector of my workplace yesterday:

Co-worker #1: Hey, you know what I've found really works with 3-year-olds??

Co-worker #2: Beating them?

How to fail good.

"The goal of life becomes individual glory and greatness. The failure to achieve these aspirations, to be who we should be, seems to diminish us. As we age, as life deals its blows of fortune and bad luck, as we face the harsh reality of human limitations, our own limitations, we become resentful. We hate ourselves for failing."

~ Chris Hedges, Losing Moses on the Freeway

I relate to this perhaps a bit too much, LOL. Living in America, perhaps we're fed the lie too much, that anything is possible, when it's not. I wanted to be published fourteen years ago. I never dreamed I'd be this age and still unaccomplished. But it seems the lie exists apart from any type of reality, especially individual realities with so many bumps in the road that keep us from realizing this gilded dream. And feeling like a failure sucks.

He goes on:

"All lives, at their deepest level, are failures. We fail to be the person we want to be; this is inevitable for we are human. We will fail to achieve all we want to achieve. We fail those who love us in small and large ways. We are failed by them. We suffer betrayal and feel unappreciated. We are never as good as our expectations. We never overcome all our faults. We act in ways that are foolish, inconsistent, mean or thoughtless. This is part of our ordinariness, part of the failures inherent in human life.

"But only if we can accept this failure and our ordinariness, only if we can have the courage to face this wounding pain, can we find sustaining joy and happiness."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd...

(from a reeeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyyy long poem by Alexander Pope entitled "Eloisa to Abelard")

(image courtesy of www.sodahead.com )

It ain't that time.

Of the month, that is. And yet I find myself awwwwwing over this perfect little quote:

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

~A.A. Milne

I've been feeling weird today. The planets must be all wrong. Too quiet, too dreamy, too wistful, too Piscean. Nothing I can do about it.

(image courtesy of http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/flow)

Happy birthday, K-Dawg.

Y'all don't know how happy this makes me.

Oh Moms, you so crazy.

So, I was visiting my mom the other day, and I'm pretty sure she was trying to burn the house down.

We were just talking, chilling, and I looked over and saw a cloth on the stove. A cloth. On the stove. And the burner to the left of it was on. So I said, "Mom, there's a cloth on the stove!"

And she was all, "So? It's no big deal. It's wet, it's not like it's gonna catch fire..."

"But you have a cloth on the stove."

I mean...isn't that self-explanatory?

Less than twenty minutes later I looked over, and there was a skillet on the stove with bubbles in it! Bubbles! So I said, "Mom, why are there bubbles in that skillet?!"

"Because they'll help clean it better, I wanted to get all the oil out..."

"But they're bubbles!! You're cooking bubbles, you can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because I said so!"

She grudgingly took the skillet off the stove.

You know, there's a lot about the house I'm going to miss when she finally succeeds in burning it down.

Get lifted.

Last night I attended the surprise birthday dinner of one of my good friends. She's the kind of person you don't have to know very long to count among the best. We met when I worked at the corner drugstore for several months last year. Whenever she was in photo and I was at register 1, we talked (and laughed) about anything and everything.

At the dinner (which was at an aMAzing Italian restaurant - the lasagna was divine!), quite a few of the partygoers stood up to say their piece about why they find her so special. Tears leaked. But probably the most moving, inspiring, and maybe even life-changing things that were said were by Ebony herself, her boyfriend, and her father.

You know, a lot of people have given up on believing, in anything. I myself am hanging by a thread some days. But last night I realized (or, maybe, remembered) that if you fail to believe in what you truly want, then you certainly are doomed never to find it. Ebony and Joe both expressed that plenty of "friends" had told them through the years that the girl/guy they were hoping and praying for, just didn't exist. That someone whose soul already lines up perfectly with your own when you meet them, is just a pipe dream.

It was really, really fascinating, and even profound, to see literal, living witnesses to not only belief and faith, but the power of God. Both my friend and her future husband turned a deaf ear to those who would have them settle for something less, and found each other in due time. Both ignored those who are fully entrenched in a world that now trusts only irony, cynicism, sad endings, and the power of themselves - and what are we but ants in the greater universe?

Ebony's dad, you can tell just by looking at him that he's been a very wise person for a long time. You can always see it in their eyes. Anyway, I will quote the closing words of his speech and never alter or add anything to them in all the years I am sure to repeat them.

"If God is in you, then you will see God in others. If love is in you, then you will see love in others. Don't go looking for love. Love will find you."

To be or not to be.

Ghosts are real. Stop fighting it!

It's official. My place of employment is haunted.

My very first day here, at closing time, I went from room to room making sure all the outside doors were closed. I entered the baby room, which had been empty for nearly half an hour, to find the rocking chair rocking all on its own.

Months later, in October, I was here all by myself on a Saturday, fixing up my classroom for a very important visit the coming week. I didn't leave till almost ten-thirty that night. What really spurred me on to leave was that I had just thrown something away, and we have that type of tall trashcan with the swivel top. As I was walking away from the can and gathering some things, I heard a loud Thunk! and looked back to see the swivel top swaying back and forth very fast, as though something very heavy had been dropped into it. Trust me. Nothing had.

Two days ago the school-age kids had a snow day. I was standing in the classroom talking with my co-teacher, and I felt something touch my back, like a finger scraping at my shirt, and what disconcerted me was that I could feel this under my shirt as well. A poor guy was coming in the room at the same time to get his kid, and I whirled around all accusatory...but it wasn't him. My co-teacher confirmed that he hadn't come anywhere near me.

One evening last summer, at the pre-K graduation, I took what might be photographic evidence of the...phenomenon. (There are other pictures, as mentioned in a minute) I was snapping a photo of one of the pre-K teachers giving her speech, and as I was using a digital camera I could see right away something was wrong. It was still light outside - and the lights were on in the room - but the picture was almost completely dark, and covering the still of the teacher was what looks very, very much like silken cobwebs.

So, the employees who have been here a long time will tell you in a heartbeat we have a ghost, and they for no good reason call it Shanaynay (yeah, like the silly character off the old sitcom Martin). Not everyone has experienced Shanaynay. But I sure have.

Probably the weirdest part of this is that one of our nearby centers seems to have a ghost as well. In the school-age room, whenever it would rain, condensation would appear on a certain window in the shape of a girl clearly wearing a bonnet and a shawl. (I've seen the picture. You have to believe me!) Sometimes she'd be facing the opposite direction. After a while her hair had noticeably grown longer.

She stopped appearing when they put screens on the windows for added child safety.

Now, I'm the kind of person who does believe there are ghosts but is skeptical of just about every account I've ever heard. All those shows on TV, while fun to watch (I do love to get spooked), I'm pretty sure are way overhyped and on the 'reality' ones, do any ghosts actually show up? Nope. At least, not ones that aren't completely staged by the crew.

So, while I still think that ghosts aren't that common (or manevolant), I can't deny what I've experienced. It makes one think.

Hilarity.

A short exchange overhead the other day by two fourth-grade girls:

First Girl (in desperation): Aaaaaugh! She's drowning me in Legos!!!

Second Girl (unemotional): You can swim, can't you?