I have now been sick for two and a half weeks. Not vomitous-sick or death-bed-sick - just... sick.

It started out two Sundays ago with a sore throat that seemed to be progressing safely and slowly. However, it suddenly transformed into a miserable cough when I most unwisely fell asleep in the boys' room (a.k.a. cancer pit) in Chicago on Tuesday ( Read more... )

Were there ever those moments in your teenage life when you just wanted to rip your parents' heads off and shove them down their bleeding stumps of throats just to get them to stop talking down to you like you were five years old asking to buy a candy bar in the checkout line?

(Noooooo, never.)

It was recently brought to my attention that there are two gay penguins at the Louisville Zoo. After my initial wonderment at how they discovered that these penguins were gay and, secondly, how fortunate these two little birds were to have found each other in the world of penguine captivity, I realized what an amazing situation this really is. I ( Read more... )

I see a photograph of him in my mind. It's the one of him in the tux, standing in the doorway, grinning almost sheepishly at the camera. He looks so uncomfortable. In such a charming way ( Read more... )

In my memories of faded amber carpeting and the smell of white wine, I see my grandpa. A raspy, "Hel-lo, Dolly!" accompanies the wrinkled warmth of his kiss on my cheek and the comforting hollow of his hug. My grandpa. I find him in peeling paint chips and in the taste of earth and ripe tomatoes. He is standing by the door of his garden shed, a ( Read more... )

I was sitting at lunch not too long ago with a group of girls with whom I am not quite friends, but more like friendly acquaintances, really, when one of them began singing the "Farmer in the Dell" song. I had not heard this song in quite a while, and as the song moved on down the line of farmers taking wives and wives taking children and children ( Read more... )

You feel the lights upon your skin as you step out onto the satin-finished floorboards, and you know there is no turning back. The fleck of mascara in your eye does not matter now, nor does the itch on the back of your knee. You cannot feel that which your character does not feel, and while the contact sticking to the interior of your eyelid with ( Read more... )

Since the dawn of this great nation, the import of Africans, immigration, and many other factors have helped the U.S. become a sort of “melting pot” where all different cultures can meet and blend. Along with all this mixing, however, comes the inevitable resistance to mix - racism. In years past, Native Americans were discriminated against as ( Read more... )

I have recently become inspired by several members of the Live Journal community to start a journal dedicated mostly to actual writing ( Read more... )