no comeback

My co-worker Mark and I had a lot of filing to do while the kids slept. As in, a stack of paper a few inches thick. After sorting it out with each client's papers in a stack, we proceeded. Almost done, Mark pointed to a stack of paper sitting somewhat aloof and asked, "Is that a person?"

He meant, of course, "Is that a person's pile?" As opposed to, say, duplicate copies to be shredded. Just to be facetious and because he appreciates dry humor, I replied, "No, Mark. It's a stack of paper."

"What makes you sure?"

"It's flat and white."

"My brother-in-law is flat and white."

I couldn't think of a comeback due to gasping with laughter, but he kept on with a perfect monotone:

"It's true. He's so thin and has such a big head that I call him Mr. Earthworm. I don't think he appreciates it as much as I do."

(I laugh so much at work.)

a fundraiser art giveaway!

When tragedy strikes, more than emotions are stretched to the breaking point. The dollar cost of recovery can push previously financially stable families to the brink of need. That's exactly what is happening to a family I know well. To protect their dignity and privacy, I can't tell you any more details... But I want to do something to help.

So, I have an idea.

Do you want a chance to win an original piece of my artwork?

"Little Miss Kenya"

Original, done with brown marker on white paper, matted, framed, and hung with a wire gallery hanger.

Little Miss Kenya came to life on paper as I was thinking about the many children in our world who know suffering. During wars and natural disasters, it is the children who suffer most. Homelessness and parental neglect forces children to fend for themselves and care for others when they should be being nurtured and protected. 

Yet children are incredibly resilient. Just a few days ago, I met a girl whom I used to teach in Kid's Club. I remember crying over her, asking my friends to help me pray for her, and yet feeling so much despair because her situation seemed hopeless. Now, three years later, her home situation seems to be the same. And yet she makes bright eye contact, has a curly head of thick hair when before she was almost bald because she tore her hair out, and was poised and polite in public, when before she literally hissed and growled more than she talked. Also, just recently, I got a phone call from one of my girls from work who has been discharged. She doesn't have much of a support system, and yet she's doing well in school and making plans for college. 

In children lives some of the deepest tragedy and the most dauntless hope. "Little Miss Kenya" is a celebration of that hope... and a reminder that a child is utterly priceless. A riveting miracle. 

Do you want a shot at owning "Little Miss Kenya"? Do you want to help a family in need? 

If so, do these three things:

1) Comment on this post, making sure to include your name.

2) Email me at becisms@gmail.com. I will reply with my address.

3) Send me a check for whatever amount you want to contribute. 

I will give your gift to the family and will enter your name into a drawing for "Little Miss Kenya". On Wednesday, Oct. 19, I will randomly choose a winner from those of you whose donation I receive on or before Oct. 19. And yes, I will mail it internationally if someone from... say, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Kenya, or Australia wins. ;) Wow, I know people in some pretty incredible places!

Spread the word! Every time you share this post, whether on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc., please comment on this post again to increase your chances. :) 

Thank you all for making this little endeavor a success. Stay tuned for a winner and a total amount of money raised on October 19!

Learning Russian letters

My Russian Culture prof is...

well...

words rather fail me...

but the closest matches would be

unpredictable,

imaginative,

and

outrageously funny.

Today we were starting to learn the Russian alphabet. He warned us that we will need to spend a lot of time rehearsing the sounds and symbols on our own because they will be on the test. "You will spend many hours," he said. ""Not like 22 hours, because that would kill you. But very many."

After shouting the sounds back at him while he wrote the letters on the board for half an hour (and yes, shouting because he won't accept anything less), he squinted his eyes all up into crinkly slits. Looking at each of us carefully, he consoled us, "Learning letters can make you crazy, but there are medications for that."

It was even funnier in his Polish accent.

Signed, sealed, and caffeinated

Everything that happens at work gets logged. Most of the time, we keep it pretty professional.

6:10 AM: Becca goes to cafe for elixir of life

Some mornings are just like that.

Recent Living-Room Scene

Bekah: "I need a pen [as in the writing instrument]."
Me: "Well, you could pretend you're sitting in one. The living room walls are the edges of the pen."
Bekah: [after a long look] "Well, how will I get out?"
Me: "The door?"
Bekah: "A hole-punch, a hole-punch! Oh, my KINGDOM for a pole-hunch. What the world is a pole-hunch?"
Me: [having regained speech] "I'd get you a pen, but that would mean I'd have to sit up."
Me: [managing to leave the couch, walking out of the living room] "I just love U2 (the band). I'm sorry, but I do."
Me: [re-entering the living room, from the doorway throwing the pen like a dart. dart neatly misses Bekah's mouth because she ducks. it hits her above the heart.]
Bekah: "Hey, watch it! I'm going to need that someday. Maybe not now, but someday it might be nice."
Me: "We really should record our conversations when we're in these moods. We say some pretty priceless things."
Bekah: "Maybe we only think they are funny because we are in these moods."
Me: "No, I bet anyone with a sense of humor remotely close to ours would appreciate it."

And so we re-constructed the conversation for your evaluation. Word-for-word.

This one's a freebie.

Rather insignificant thoughts based on a rather mundane and unpleasant experience:
i wish apples wouldn't rot
i try not to get too upsot
when, reaching for a fruit i thought
was nice and firm, and find it not
the same shape as the thing i bought
i try not to get too upsot
but i wish apples wouldn't rot

To those who do not know me in person, I do apologize. Most likely, I should also apologize to those of you who do... but perhaps you're better prepared to understand why I found writing poetry over an oozing fruit mightily funny. If not, take heart. More monumental mysteries await discovery.

An Experience of Truly Epic Proportions

Spending the afternoon digging a new flowerbed affords a person a lot of time to think. So I did. Having taken due stock of my life, some parallels to scenes in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings struck me. Hence, my thoughts strayed out of space and time as my hands continued to remove sod and crumble dirt. Crumbling a clod, I sensed the presence of an odd object in my gloved hand. I opened it slowly, and, like the scene in which Isildur picks up the Ring after having taken it from the hand of Sauron, the dirt fell away.

But the words I uttered without forethought were those of Bilbo: "What's this? A Ring?"

Who needs Walgreens?

We have greens on our wall, too.

Bad joke, I know. I just crack me up sometimes.

Air-drying basil works, but more ingenious is a tip I got from a friend: to dry herbs, spread the leaves on cookie sheets in a hot car for a day. The herbs dry in no time, and your car smells amazing.

I'll have to do that next time. For now, I smile at the sight of herbs drying in my kitchen and laugh at my strange sense of humor.

For real, when you can grow your own herbs and spices, who really DOES need Walgreeens?

EXTRA! EXTRA!

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Discover the exciting lives of Gary and Elaine, the people who live in the beautiful spaces pictured in your favorite catalogs! 

Catalog Living has been my daily laugh lately. NOW, for a LIMITED TIME, it can be yours. FREE!*

*Special conditions and hidden fees apply.**

**No, they don't.

And there you have it: my poke at both celebrity fascination and advertising, all in one package. For real, the website is funny. 

[sic] tree stomp

Listed "for sale" on Craigslist today is a "tree stomp".

I haven't a doubt the poster was referring to one of these:

...but, for some strange reason, I had to wonder if, back before he would "spend a week just breathing", soon after he was created by Yavanna [possibly around 1050 of the Years of the Trees], 

Treebeard had not yet learned his "do not be hasty" motto...

and [on occasion] threw a tantrum.

Jemglyn, the Spider (Part 2)

The sun was as high in the sky as it always was at noon. Jemglyn perched on the web she has repaired that morning as she had watched it climb. A fly droned about, and Jemglyn turned her gaze from the sun. The fly hovered momentarily before Jemglyn's eyes, its translucent wings tattooing the tepid air. Instead of the hunger she expected to feel at the sight of the fly, Bweakulb, who had been more silent than usual for the previous week... or two... (Jemglyn wasn't sure which) arose somewhere in Jemglyn's abdomen. Jemglyn involuntarily did something that had never been done in all the history of spider-kind. She raised her eyes, and met those of the fly. Mirrored in their multi-faceted iridescence, Jemglyn knew. She knew what Bweakulb had been trying to tell her since she was old enough to put a name to him.


Jemglyn dropped her gaze to her web. She thought she should be relieved to have discovered why she loathed it, but the gravity of the revelation hit her like the raindrops from which spiders always take refuge for fear of being knocked from their webs. A fitting analogy, she thought. Beautiful, earth-renewing, and yet powerful enough to completely alter the happenings of one's day. Somehow, Jemglyn knew that possessing her discovery would require more energy than did the long trek back to her web after being shot to the ground by a diamond raindrop.  

Jemglyn, the Spider (Part 1)

Once upon a time, in a land where the sun rose and set in predictable cycles, there lived a spider named Jemglyn. Jemglyn was, to the eye of the casual observer, a fairly mediocre spider of an unpretentious species. Nothing about her stopped mere passers-by in their literal tracks. Only those who sense things their eyes don't tell them remembered Jemglyn for more than a few minutes after they had made her acquaintance, which few took the trouble of making.

But Jemglyn had hatched with a strange discomfort that few noticed or understood. To be fair, even Jemglyn didn't understand it. Some days she built her web and ran about with little thought for much else, as every spider should, but even on those days the discomfort chafed at the bottom of her soul. Other days, Jemglyn loathed her web and the conventional runnings-about. She wasn't sure why. She just did. The discomfort was stronger those days, and, though she usually built her web and ran about on those days as well, it was only because she wasn't sure what else to do. "Bweakulb", as she named the discomfort, waxed so strong those days that he barely allowed Jemglyn to do so, but, as I said, Jemglyn wasn't sure what else to do. Bweakulb told her that something was dreadfully wrong. The other spiders told Jemglyn that something about her eyes made them feel creepier than spiders usually feel.

Her neighboring spiders, even the ones that liked to have Jemglyn's approval, didn't really like when Jemglyn talked about Bweakulb. It made their legs twitch a little in their intricate webs and the breeze in which their webs swayed seem somehow menacing.

And so, Jemglyn rarely talked about Bweakulb. She felt him. She thought about him at night when she stared at the stars that sometimes seemed close enough to touch with her foreleg, and at others so far away that she wondered if she only imagined she was seeing them. The nights the stars seemed furthest away were the nights she wondered why she had been given Bweakulb, why Bweakulb couldn't go away and let her live like her blithe, unbothered kin.


(to be continued)

an Exploration of Travel Alternatives

I have a problem. I would love to go home this weekend. No, that's not the problem. The problem is that I need a mode of transportation that is easy, fast, and does not require funds or the use of a vehicle.

With brain-storm clouds billowing overhead, I have been exploring alternate modes of transportation:

1) Mental Travmosis, the process whereby distance, space, and time are conquered through a concentration of violently stalwart mental exertion

2) Email Attachmentality, a relatively simple procedure into which one's physicality is decoded into data which can be attached to an email much like a mere document. Upon the email's arrival at its destination, the data is downloaded and reconstructed to return one to bodily form.

In the midst of my explorations, I was, by Chris Miller, introduced to a truly superior alternative. Study carefully this detailed chart, containing an astonishing explication of the Highly Complex Transportation System:

I think you, dear readers, will agree that change is coming. Can we remedy the irksome confinements of our deceptively unavoidable reliance upon vehicles? Yes, we can!