Welcome back, Cola!

Welcome back to me! If anyone's checking, I think I will begin posting again. Smiles!

Have You Heard?

Did you know that a famous actor is dead from E-COLI spinich? So sad.

Why?

The other day I was drinking coffee and I spilled some on my crisp white shirt. Of course it was early in the morning so I’d have to wear my coffee all day, and of course it was in front of a stranger who walked up at just the right time. Thankfully, the stranger was one of the nicest ladies I’ve ever met and she offered to let me try her new Tide stick.

Why don’t those things work like they’re advertised? Or maybe Kelly Ripa just has the magic touch...

Quick update:

I’m getting fat. After spending the last three years of my college carrier in-between sizes, and this last year of my life living in denial, it is finally beyond debate. I can no longer fit into ANYTHING in the smaller of the two in-between sizes not even at Wal-Mart. I am officially no longer in-between. Or sizes have gotten smaller… That must be it. I don’t FEEL fat! :)

I go to bed before midnight, even on the weekends. I stayed up way late both Friday and Saturday, and I’m exhausted today. This is beyond needing a day or two to recover. It’s been three days already, and I’m not recovered. I’m a mess and can’t function at anything. I’m officially an early to bed person. I have yet to become an early to rise person.

I have no money. But I do have a car that runs. I like it. But it’s nothing flashy. It runs and I can afford the payments… barely. But I can’t afford new clothes. And I can’t afford food. I guess that’s good, because in a month or two, I may be able to fit into my college clothes. Or I could give up my apartment, and live in my new car… I’d save enough to feed me, but not to buy clothes. I guess that won’t work.

Fall is beautiful! This weekend, the trees were lovely! We had a normal day yesterday, and so all the leaves blew off. Today was rainy, and so they are all wet. They are in huge mushy piles all over town now. When it dries out, I’ll jump into one of them.

A Cola Origional

Silly little Sally Tucker,
Bought a very shiny sucker,
But the pretty candy made her pucker,
It wasn’t sweet at all but sour.
So she put it on a silver tray,
And left it there to sit and stay.

Hot with Embarisment

“Nice day today!” said Fr. D as we passed on the sidewalk:

“Yes! Yes!” I agreed enthusiastically. “Just hot enough.”

He gave me a puzzled look. He paused. Finally, he said “You’re welcome(?).”

It was my turn to give Fr. D a puzzled look. Both of us, looking bewilderedly at each other, went on our separate ways.

As I walked along, I reflected on how odd it must be for Fr. D here in the States, having just moved here from Africa. He spoke very poor English, was used to different food, and certainly this cool spring day must be an adjustment for him temperature-wise.

At that moment, it hit me; I stopped walking; I was too shocked to move. He wasn’t commenting on the weather; he was paying me a compliment! He actually had said: “You look nice today.”

I wonder if that was the first time in this priests life someone had so wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agreed with him when he told them they looked nice. It most certainly was the first time I have so vehemently agreed with a compliment on my looks by exclaiming: “Yes, yes, just hot enough!”

Bugs

I’m not really scared of bugs. I don’t particularly like them, but as long as they stay in their space (outside) and stay out of my space (inside) we can live peacefully together. This being said, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive Noah for bringing mosquitoes on to the Arc.

It was really HOT a few days ago. It was uncomfortably warm as soon as the sun came up in the morning (I woke up sweating, ICK!). It was officially hot by the afternoon (I sweat all through work, YUCK!). It was unbearably hot in the evening (I was sick of sweating at this point, BLAH!). So I turned on my air-conditioning when I got home from work.

This was the first time I had turned it on since moving in last August. I’ve found that opening up a select few windows and placing a fan in the exact right place will move the air around and keep my apartment nice and cool. Some nights, it's even chilly by the time I go to bed.

Except for this particular unbearably hot evening, with not even a whisper of a hot breeze through the trees. That night my apartment was hotter than Brad Pitt in a bathing suit. So I turned on the air.

And a big, round, flying insect-beetle shot out of the vents like a cannonball right into my face.

I ran around the room, flailing my arms and trying to blow it away from my eyes (being very careful to not take a breath in; I was afraid I'd inhale it). I ended up knocking it senseless with one of my thrashing arms, thankfully before I passed out from lack of oxygen. In the midst of my panic, I had managed to punch myself in the side of the face.

I still have a nice little burse.

N-E-C-E-S-S-A-R-Y

As I was writing my last post, I couldn’t help but remember one of the few times my mother lost her temper. Mom rarely lost her temper. I don’t believe she ever, truly, lost it at all. The times it appeared she had lost it, were, in fact, moments of righteous anger, similar to when Christ “lost” his temper in the temple.

Such was the time that Mom was grading my weekly spelling test in 6th (I think) grade. Mom had worked out a system, so if I misspelled a word one week, it would appear on my next spelling quiz. Most of the time, I was able to memorize the dozen or so words that I would be tested on, so my Friday spelling quiz was never a big deal to me.

This particular Friday, after I had taken my test, Mom sat down to correct it. I had miss-spelt "necessary," again. I don’t really remember the details, but I believe that this was the fourth or fifth week that I had miss-spelt it. Chances are, I was just not able to come up with a memorization trick, or I kept forgetting what memorization trick I had decided to use.

This was, understandably, very frustrating to mom. I’m sure she got tired of quizzing me on it week after week. Also, my laid back attitude toward my spelling wasn’t helping her peace of mind. She called me over to her desk (by the frustrated undertone, I could tell something wasn’t right, “Cola, how do you spell necessary?”

I proceeded to spell necessary, incorrectly, out loud.

“No, Cola, it’s spelt n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y. Spell it again.”

I tried, and again failed to spell it correctly.

Then Mom wrote it down on a piece of paper, “See, this is how you spell it. Look at it! Try it again.”

She took the piece of paper away, so it was, again, miss-spelt.

“Cola, look at me.” Mom said, very frustrated by this point.

I looked at her, although I would really rather have kept looking at the carpet. Who in their right mind wants to look at their mom when she’s mad?

“N (bang) E (bang) C (bang) E (bang) S (bang) S (bang) A (bang) R (bang) Y (bang)!!!!! THAT IS HOW YOU SPELL NECESSARY!!! N (bang) E (bang) C (bang) E (bang) S (bang) S (bang) A (bang) R (bang) Y (bang)!!!!!”

The bangs were Mom’s fists against the desk, as she hammered them both down as the appropriate letter came from her mouth.

To this day, I still can’t spell necessary, unless I bang my fist against my desk. Then it just comes to me. I believe that is why I know that Six (bang) teen (bang) ounces (bang) equals (bang) one (bang) pound (bang).

I can’t spell!!!

I’m sure that this statement comes as no shock to you, my dear readers. Even with the help of this lovely thing called Spell-Check, I’m sure that I still end up with numerous spelling errors. I am blissfully unaware of any, however, because unless a word has a squiggly red line under it, I assume I’ve spelt the correct word the proper way.

As soon as I learned the alphabet, I became obsessed with playing the spelling game, much to the exasperation of my folks. The game went something like this: “what does r-q-u-t-k-a-i-e-r-h-j-l-k spell?” Most the time they would simply say “It doesn’t spell anything” but sometime, if they were in the right mood, they’d sound out the letters I’d strung together, which I thought was hysterically funny. Imagine a big, strong, grown man saying riqutierhajelk. Embarrassingly, the only word I ever spelt playing this game started with a p and is a common term for the male reproductive organ. My dad thought the story was very funny and told it to everyone he saw for about a month. I think it was to get me back for laughing at the funny sounds he made while sounding out my “words.”

Another spelling mishap took place when I worked in the Ave Admissions Office. I had to send numerous emails to staff and faculty, alerting them when a prospective student would be visiting. One particular email I sent to a very uptight teacher at the very beginning of his very first semester to let him know that a student changed his plans and would not be able to attend his class. I apologized profusely for the “impotence” (darn auto correct!). Don’t ask me how I managed that one. I never took a class from this particular professor, and I was always wondered why he made no effort to meet me. Guess I'll never know...

My most recent embarrassing error was in a paper I wrote recently for a Diocesan Scripture class. In grand, stately language, understandable to us intellectuals, I described how a sin may appear small and insignificant, but if one persists in corruption, the lifestyle of vice will become a huge, festering organism that seems to have a life of its own and actually controls the sinner’s life, depriving them of their freedom. Except that, instead of organism, I accidentally used a very different word, complete with a very different meaning (sometimes this word is refered to the Big O). Thankfully my teacher is a woman, and her only comment on this particular error was a big circle around the word, with a line drawn through it, the line effectively distinguishing it from the other spelling errors.

After reading this, I’m sure that you’ve come to one of two conclusions: a). Freud IS right, after all, or b). God is trying to keep Cola humble (please note that careless on my part is not an option, as I spell worse and less careless than most people I know).

Ey hoppe u half a goot dey!

Irony

Some people come back from vacation with a tattoo…I came back from the Caribbean with a scar.

Yes, that’s right. A scar. You may want to know how exactly I procured said scar, and where it’s located, and what it looks like. Nothing would please me more than describe, in exquisite detail, the who, what, where, when and why of this bodily alteration, which I will undertake in a paragraph or two. But before I undertake this colossal but pleasurable task, I would like to put aside these interesting particulars, and take the time to stress the irony of the entire fiasco.

Irony may or may not be the word you would chose to illustrate this situation. I understand completely if are of the type who thinks that scars are a remnants of a dangerous/ stupid/ embarrassing/ excruciatingly painful event (hopefully not all of these adjectives would be used to describe the same scar). That means you are a normal person, with normal scars, unless you have no scars, which would make you extremely cautious, extraordinarily healthy, just plain ol’ gosh-darn lucky (and abnormal). Chances are, you have scars, and that those scars and the experiences involved with obtaining them would not be described as Ironic.

One of Webster’s definitions of irony is the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning. So when I claim my scar is ironic, am I saying that it is an atypical scar obtained in an atypical way? Not exactly. Am I claiming that my scar has made my skin more healthy and radiant, instead of deforming it, as implied by the meaning of the word scar? Not particularly. All I’m saying is that my reaction to the scar does not cause the emotional response implied by the idea of obtaining a scar.

I feel that this particular blemish is ironic because if I wanted a permanent reminder of my Caribbean vacation, I would have gotten a tattoo. I like tattoos. I’ve wanted one for awhile now. I think they are pretty darn sweet if you’ve got one you like in a non-conspicuous pace. But my friends, being Godly women, flipped out on me. They went on and on about theology, and tried to convince me that it was not pleasing to God disfigure your body in that way and blah blah blah. (The reason I treat their opinion lightly is that I don’t believe one little tattoo tastefully placed is a disfigurement, but an ornament, like pierced ears. So when they toss theology into the mix, I feel that they are trying to make a little, harmless tattoo a moral evil, which I don’t quite agree with). (Please note that, regardless of how I babble on about the subject, I do see their point, and I’m not convinced I’d ever get a tattoo, even if all circumstances were favorable. But, for sake of this blog, let’s just pretend that I didn’t just say that). To sum everything up: I wouldn’t have/ couldn’t have/ didn’t get a tattoo because my friends are good friends and wouldn’t want me to do something I’d regret later (or that would keep me out of heaven, which I dare say I would regret latter).

The other ironic thing about this scar is that the friend who protested the most about the tattoo was the friend who caused me to scar in the first place. She chased me down in the ocean, and then forcefully shoved my head underwater and held me down for an uncomfortable amount of time, while sea water rushed up my nose. I, of course, trying to save my life, put up a valiant but ultimately ineffective struggle. The result of this tiff was painful; somehow my dear friend managed to gouge the top of my foot, by using a bodily part or a nearby rock, and cause a copious amount of bleeding and pain (because of all the salt in the ocean’s water). Now, I have an everlasting deformity on my foot, and not a cool tattoo, which I would have placed in a more discreet area.

To tie up this longwinded post: instead of a tattoo as a memento, I get a scar, nature’s permanent souvenir. Ironic.