There is a milk crate under my table at “work,” and Sha’Ron has filled it with goodies for us to snack on. There’s popcorn and applesauce and little bags of chips and a package of cookies, but what catches my eye whenever I glance down (as I am wont to do for inspiration) is the bag of Hershey’s Miniatures. I think there might be one or two of the Special Dark chocolates left, and I’m pretty sure I decimated the Krackle chocolates last week, but every time I glance in that general direction I have an incredibly strong desire to root around and the bag and eat something chocolate. It’s barely eight in the morning right now, but I’m still being sucked into the bag of chocolate doom. Yummy chocolate doom, but chocolate doom nonetheless. Obviously I need to eat breakfast more regularly. Or move the milk crate of goodies. Or just polish off the rest of the chocolates and be done with it.
Mondays are always hard.
Breaking News That’s Not So Breaking And Is In Reality Quite Old: The News Goat redeemed himself. Sort of. I’m adding the caveat because I can’t just toss out redemptions willy-nilly. I also have trust issues. But in the past few weeks he has proven himself as being genuinely sorry for what happened and genuinely happy to spend time with me. I thrive on both apologies and attention, so this has been working out well. I’m not going to lie, I do have a bit of the nerves over the possible return of the assholishness behavior. While this is due partly to my self-deprecating ways (I have this firm belief everyone is destined to hate me or move to Kansas), it is a legitimate concern. The News Goat was never a horrible person before he had a bout of the assholishness, which means that him not being a horrible person now doesn’t guarantee anything for the future. So, you see, I have to add a caveat or two to my decree of redemption. I’m in the business of self-preservation, especially since I’m always one heart beat away from being sent off to the funny farm.
“How does one redeem themselves to you?” my (five) readers might ask. Well, there’s a little thing close to my heart known as Comedy Jokes. The News Goat’s first attempt to weasel his way back into my heart was offering to take me to Second City (coming to Charlotte next Month!!!). Ah. The Second City. I love them even though I’ve never actually seen them. And this weekend, I was treated to a improv show at one of those wonderful coffeeshops that also sells beer (I love those places). I’m such a big fan of all things Comedy Jokes, especially Comedy Jokes that are improvisational. Of course I’m saddened by the fact I’m living in The Thrill and can’t lie, cheat, and steal my way into some improv amazingness that’s going on in the queen city, but we’ll just add this to the list of things I’m saddened by not being able to do (e.g. take kayak). Another important factor to redeemption is having interesting and entertaining friends. After Saturday’s improv-viewing, I got to go out and have a Guinness at a pub-like establishment (obviously this is another way to my heart) with the News Goat’s news-y friends, who are smart and funny and all around enjoyable human beings.
Example of smart and funny and enjoyable-ness: It became a challenge to name a dictator for every letter of the alphabet, and it was mostly accomplished, as long as you overlook some of the less dictator-ly dictators we included (i.e. George W. Bush for “W” and Xenu (the intergalatic dictator of Scientology fame) for “X”). Most impressive was that these smart news-y kids actually knew of a dictator whose name starts with “Q.” I am ridiculously humbled by people who know a lot about the real world, as I know mostly stuff that’s fictional, has to do with whores, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Scientology, the Amish, or bad reality TV. Obviously I didn’t contribute much to the dictator game, except for throwing out Xenu, but I enjoyed being a part of it. If only we had thought to write the list down, we could have written one of those learn the alphabet children’s books.
My week last week was full of The Suck, and it even spilled into the weekend a little bit. The Suck has gotten to be so ridiculously overwhelming I’m completely ready to call it quits. Last week I was done with school more than once, done with “work” more than once, and even got done with dance at one point (which I didn’t think could happen). I feel a bit bad that The News Goat got caught listening to me expound upon my doneness with all the things I’m currently involved in, as well as my ranting about how I need to quit and get a job as a secretary somewhere. Luckily he isn’t the type of person who’s all “Chin up! You had a bad week, but you need to stick it out! You’re fine!” Instead he encouraged my quitting fantasy by helping me look for jobs in Charlotte (including the Craigslist personals, because I’m at the point where being someone’s sex slave doesn’t sound that undesirable) and apartments in Charlotte (unfortunately it’s much easier to find a really great apartment than a really great job, damn economy). Because I had such a good weekend, I’m currently not as devastated and ready to up and quit as I was, but since I have coach’s class tonight I’m pretty sure all this positiveness I’m exuding will be dead by 5:15 PM. I will have to discuss my complete aversion to all things in my life that are school related, but not now. I have to “teach” a class in a few minutes.
And by “‘teach’ a class” I mean “give them a list of questions to answer in small groups while I sit there and play on the internet.”
Posted by the center of attention 
