But, despite time’s illusory nature, it is a hard fact that this will be my first blog in over two months.

I can’t make any excuses about my blogging laziness.  I could say I haven’t had time, but the truth would be that I haven’t made time.  I could say I haven’t found anything inspiring to write about, but that would be a lie too; the world brims with posts I could’ve made but didn’t.  The only truth I can give you for sure is that blogging fell by the wayside, while the rest of my life raced past it down the path, and no amount of speed-blogging can catch up.

At this moment, I’m wondering what I would blog about, anyway.  I look back over my past posts, from my old blog to this new one (both neglected now), and I wonder what motivated me to write the things I did.  I talk a lot about my own life, and while some of it seems like it could be interesting to someone out there, I mostly can’t see what the appeal would be for readers who don’t know me already and want to keep up with my what’s going on in my life.

Looking back, I remember that I started my original blog as a way to deal with the emotional struggle I faced when ex-boy and I got back together after our first breakup.  Shortly after that, I blogged about the poetry scandal I inadvertantly caused during my first year of teaching.  When ex-boy and I broke up again (nine months after the first breakup and almost four years after we’d started dating), my blogging friends served as my support group.  Therapy sessions continued when my grandmother died, and then you all became my editors when I posted my personal statement for grad school and asked for feedback. 

I think it was somewhere during this time that the blogging really fell off, partly because my school system blocked blogspot, but also perhaps because, once I wasn’t involved in a breakup, reunion, scandal, family tragedy, or other major life change, I just didn’t have much motivation to keep talking.  I almost felt selfish, blogging about the mundane details of my life for the satisfaction of seeing that other people cared.

The blogs I admire most are the ones that are neither therapeutic nor self-absorbed.  These blogs have nearly universal appeal because they deal with issues or topics we all face, or because they focus squarely on a subject in which a specific community has a direct interest, or because they explore the beauty/love/contradictions/coincidences in the world around us.

I do not admire my blog.  I’ve been keeping a private journal on my own for years, on and off, and (especially lately) this blog has just become an extension of that. Maybe I’m some sort of exhibitionist, or maybe it just makes me feel good to know that someone out there is paying attention; neither of these are good enough reasons for me to put my private life on display.

I’d like to continue blogging just because I like to write, but these anonymous posts about my private life are not the sort of blogging I want to do.  It’s not fulfilling for me, and I doubt my readers get much out of my blathering on about the minutiae of my daily doings anyway.

Those of you who still stop by to check up, please know that your visits have meant a lot to me, and many of you have helped me through what was in many ways the most difficult year and a half I’ve had in the twenty-four I’ve been alive.  Thank you all.

Hellman’s, Duke’s, or homemade, it doesn’t matter.  Unless amalgamated with other more palatable masking ingredients to form tuna or potato salad, mayonnaise is repulsive at best. 

Dear readers, you may ask why my dislike of the substance is so vehement, and I will gladly tell you.  Mayonnaise, deplorable, wretched goo that it is, appeals to none of my five senses. 

Besides its foul, oily, eggy taste and smell, which are my primary reasons for aversion, mayonnaise is not even visually attractive.  In addition to its sickly pale color, which serves as a more than adequate measure of its distastefulness, mayonnaise oozes in shiny glops and smears into a nearly iridescant sheen on a slice of bread–and food (if you could even call it that) was simply never meant to glimmer. 

On top of that, it greases up your fingers (or any other surface) like a slimy snail trail, and its emulsive nature means it quite eerily is neither solid nor liquid.  Quite an untrustworthy mess, if you ask me.

Finally, consider the sound mayo makes when you stick a butterknife into the jar–it’s the same squishing squelch that mud makes when you step in it barefoot, the same dribbly plop that your internal organs will make if your doctor slips during the open-heart surgery you’ll surely need after a lifetime of eating this loathsome stuff. 

Don’t forget, after all, that besides possessing no sensory appeal whatsoever, mayonnaise is also terrible for your health, packed with enough calories, fat, and cholesterol to kill you one day–if your smoking, drinking, and reckless driving don’t do it first.

by e. e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Copyright 1923, 1925, 1951, 1953, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust.

Copyright © 1976 by George J. Firmage. From The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage.

My semester in grad school is over, at least for the next two weeks, and by the time summer semester starts I’ll be finished teaching until August. 

I’ve been (slowly but surely) working on remodeling my living room, and a friend from Oklahoma (whom I haven’t seen since October) is coming for an extended visit at the end of the month. 

I’ll be spending half a week in Myrtle Beach come the end of May, and one of my best friends is getting married on the 27th, right before an in-the-works trip we’ve planned to the new aquarium in Atlanta on Memorial Day.

Oh, and in addition to taking a full time X 2 courseload this summer (five classes instead of just two), I’m also getting a season pass to a local pool so I can swim between classes and soak up some sun while I study.

Busy + happy = aome! 

1. My ten page research paper on the sociology of punk (which I’ve hardly started) is due in about a day and a half.
2. I’m sitting in a downtown cafe right now sipping an iced coffee and blogging.  (Free wireless rocks!)
3. I’m about to go to dinner with the RealLiveGrownUp and shirk my paper-writing duties for another hour or so.
4. Life is grand.

So, now that I’ve made my fresh start, here’s a brief rundown of what the heck has been up with me lately and why I’ve been so freakin’ busy!

• I have three more weeks of teaching–that’s fifteen classroom days, minus one for awards day/yearbooks and minus two for exam days, which don’t really count.  Yippee!
• I am almost done with spring semester in grad school–one paper to revise (it’s just a couple of small changes) and one to write before Thursday of this week.  I probably won’t get much sleep Wednesday night.
• After only a month and a half, I dumped the boyfriend mentioned here, not because I didn’t like him but because, well, it just didn’t feel right.  I realized that although we had a lot in common, we weren’t at the same stage of life; like ex-boy, the guy I’ll call JJoe didn’t quite have the ambitious, goal-oriented lifestyle I need.  He was a lot of fun, but I wasn’t sure we had a future together.  Fortunately, he agreed completely and took the breakup with no hard feelings.
• Two days after I decided to break up with JJoe, I met someone.  In the words of HSSH (who I talked to about all of this), I’ve got men "coming out of the woodwork."  It kinda gives me the heebie jeebies.  So, who is this someone?  Well, first off, he’s a real, live grown-up, complete with house and small business (both of which he owns).  He’s a web designer by day, photographer on the side (I met him at the Boybutante Ball last weekend–I think he was one of four straight guys in the whole 40 Watt Club), ballroom dancer by night (he twirled me around his living room last Friday on our first official date), and amateur chef extraordinaire (at least, judging from the delicious dinner he cooked for me on the aforementioned date).  I’ve never dated an honest-to-god adult before, so the whole experience is kind of new for me, but I’m adjusting…
• HSSH and I have become good friends again during these last few weeks, and I’m happy about it.
• I popped in my Old 97’s CDs for the first time since ex-boy and I broke up (they were our band, insomuch as he introduced me to them, we went to one of their shows, and their CDs were the default for most riding-in-the-car occasions).  For the last 10 months, just the thought of listening to the Old 97’s gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach…but now,even if I’m not in love with ex-boy anymore, I’m back in love with my favorite band!
• Oh yeah–all the little snippets for my Haloscan are lyrical lifts from the Old 97’s, too.

I needed a new blog with a fresh clean look–and I needed it bad!  It’s still under construction, but I think it’s slowly going to be quite an improvement….