English Litt.

When I was a junior in High School, I had a fabulous english teacher named Mrs. Phillips. She pushed me to go where my writing had never gone. On my way to becoming the stellar english star I am today, I guess I wrote some real doozies. 

This weekend, going through some basement boxes, I realized I have saved way too much. I mean, I have saved WAY. TOO. MUCH. I found practically every paper I wrote during the 12 years of public school. I found many of the notebooks (maybe all!) that I filled in college. I am sure somewhere in another box are all the papers I wrote in grad school. The good thing was finding some classic pictures to post on Facebook at some point. (cue evil laugh)

Anyway, in that fabulous HS english class, I wrote a paper in 1984 speculating on what 1994 might look like. I had one fine imagination. At that point in my life, I didn't drink, do drugs or sniff glue. This fact worries me a bit, because it means I came up with this shit/stuff all by myself in my right mind. Need a few examples?

The paper was about a friend of mine (a HOT friend of mine at that) who was arrested for no reason and was going to be spending 3 days in room 133. "Rob cried, begged, and kissed the guard's unwashed feet until he was growing fungus on his lips, but the guards still carried him away." WTF?

What did they give him for lunch while they were blasting country music 24/7 in room 133? "a grilled cheese, peanut butter, marshmallow and avocado sandwich on rye bread, a glass of tomato juice and no dessert." I can see the no dessert being a huge tragedy for me, even today.

After leaving room 133, the judge "deported him to a jungle in Africa where he was to join a tribe and worship a head of lettuce."

You can all breathe a sigh of relief that 1994 was "in real life", nothing like I imagined!

Pens, Crayons, Markers, OH MY!

My name is Sue and I have a problem. (OK, more than one, but let's focus on this one today, OK?)

It has to do with writing utensils.

Here is the evidence.

Yes, I have a pen, pencil, marker, sharpie addiction.

I am drawn to the pen aisle in any store. If there is a sale on Crayola or Sharpies I am skipping for joy in the aisle. The colors attract me the most. Ooooh, I could write in permanent marker in seafoam green? hot pink? baby blue? I must have them!!!

Let's review how this all started (because it is just not my fault)...

My Grandmother gave me crayons and paper for every Christmas as long as I remember.(and I looked forward to it!)

My Mom would always buy me fun pens and mail them to me while I was in college. Remember calligraphy pens? Ooooh we had a bunch of those at one point even though we couldn't write calligraphy. Just the fact that you could hold the pen one way and write a skinny line, turn it and write a fat line.

When I was a teacher, I loved seeing all the new boxes of Crayolas that would come in. I almost cried one time (with joy) when I saw a box of crayons that had about 500 brand spanking new crayons in my classroom. The smell is delicious!

Before email, for those of you that remember that time in the world, people actually used to WRITE letters. I loved writing letters and would specifically choose a certain color pen, or decorate an envelope, or doodle on the sides depending on which friend it was.

One of my favorite pen-like items these days are Paint Pens. How great is that? I can't write with a paint brush like I can with a pen, so with this invention I can "paint" on everything and it stays! Don't let any plastic enter my house, if you don't want it decorated with a paint pen.
However, like with any obsession, this one needs to be scaled back a bit. So today, since my sniffles are a little better, but I am trying to lay low so I can tackle the double header of wedding duties this weekend, I am going to organize my pens. Having 4 pen holders on my (small) counter is not cutting it. And I am trying to de-clutter. And I can't stand grabbing a pen and not having it work.

Hours later:
OK, I did it! I checked to see if they worked and threw away the ones that didn't . Now I have to find some nifty containers (haha, that I can label with the paint pens) to put them all in. Oh shoot, I will have to go shopping.....hmmm maybe the container aisle is near the writing utensil aisle.......