And Speaking of Crazy...

Runners are freaks.

No, really.

I mean, my personal belief has always been that the only time one should run is when being chased either by the cops or by some large, hairy animal with sharp teeth (I'm referring to Rednecks of course).

Yet somehow, through no fault of my own (I blame DanskoGirl76) I have become one of them.

In fact, about three hours ago I set off on an adventure which will most likely live on in infamy (at least as far as my hips are concerned...

It started innocently enough...It was just going to be a short jog through the outlying environs of Smallborotonville... Yet somehow it turned into a jog of epic proportions...

I "ran" 6 miles in about an hour and a half.

I place "ran" in quotation marks because I'm fairly sure that no objective observer would call what I did Running. (Seriously, at times I was certain that any self respecting blind person with a really good seeing eye dog could have walked the equivalent distance in about half the time).

It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't all UPHILL.

I swear to Carlos...Smallborotonville has more curves and hills than Scarlett Johansen.

I'm just sayin'.

Really, the only question now is, how long is it going to take before I start walking like a little old woman in need of a walker?

I'm Never Gonna Survive...Unless I Get a Little Bit Crazy

Do you know when the best time is to have an adventure?

I do.

9:42am on a Sunday.

Preferably the Sunday of a long weekend...

After all, that way you still have time to recover from the bruises and abrasions before you go back to work on Tuesday...

So let's face facts. I've been huddled in the Batcave for far too long and it was time for an adventure.

The minute I woke up (4:15am to be precise) I knew that it was time to head out in my never ending search for trouble... Wait, make that Trouble.

Done and done.

I set out to start the day off with a Red Bull and a scrumptious breakfast at a local pirate establishment. With those necessities out of the way, I could safely be about my business...

WORLD DOMINATION, that is.

I began my sojourn innocently enough by buying some cheap hair dye and a shovel.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

You see, the snow shovel was just sitting by the door of Rite-Aid, looking so sad and forlorn that I just felt bad for it.

I mean...who buys a snow shovel in May? In New England?

I'll tell you who... NO ONE. Well, no one except me...

The hair dye was a spur of the moment purchase which I hoped that I would live to regret...

And regret it I did.

After digging that grave, I was far too tired to dye my hair... That's all I'm sayin'.

You see... I wasn't intending to steal a corpse originally... but he, much like the shovel, seemed very lonely all by himself on that park bench... And having experienced a bit of loneliness myself the past few years, I just couldn't bring myself to leave him like that.

So that's how I ended up, at 9:42 on a Sunday, driving into the White Mountains to bury a guy I didn't know with a snow shovel.

As for the dye... I'll let you know how it turns out.

Adventures in Grooming

Well... The Pirate Queen chopped her hair off today.

It was about time for me to stumble into the bathroom, look at my reflection, shudder, and start clipping away.

So I did it.

When I was done, you could've made an Aikens voodoo doll out of what was lying on the floor of the bathroom.

Damn. I have too much hair.

Seriously.

If anyone ever decided to kill me by dropping me off a tall building, I'd drift to the ground like a dandelion gone to seed and land harmlessly on my spiky pirate shoes with nary a scratch.

I suppose I should be grateful...

Random Thoughts and Windless Nights

"The wise man said just walk this way
To the dawn of the light
The wind will blow into your face
As the years pass you by..."

I was roller blading through the dark with these words floating through my head...

"Hear this voice from deep inside
It's the call of your heart
Close your eyes and you will find
The passage out of the dark..."

The darkness was all around, pressing on me like a gloved hand. It was around me like a blanket. It was around me and inside me, freeing and holding me back...

Where are the heroes now?

It's just me.

Like I planned this all along...

Like this is how it was always meant to be...

I can see the future stretching out in front of me like a dark road on a windless night.

Will there ever be a bend in the road?

Or will things go on this way forever?

I'm not sure... but I know something has got to give... eventually...

"Here I am (here I am)
Will you send me an angel?
Here I am (here I am)
In the land of the morning star..."

All I can say for sure is...

There are no stars tonight my friend...

The Importance of Being First...

I have always believed that secretly every person has a list.

The list is never written down anywhere and it changes day by day, week by week... Sometimes even hour by hour.

It is a list you carry in your mind/heart of all the people who are truly important to you.

Or is it just me?

I freely admit that I have such a list. It is long, somewhat like my memory. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I remember details... Things most people forget.

Of course, being socially retarded, I frequently find that my list of who is important to me causes me pain.

Pain is caused by unfullfilled wants.

You see, I always make the rookie mistake of assuming that simply because someone is important to me, that the reverse is also true and I must be important to them.

Yes, I know... I am a silly silly girl.

I think that this same thing is probably true of everyone to a greater or lesser degree... At least, I certainly hope so...

And that's all I have to say about that.

And Now, After a Long Hiatus...

...We retreated back into the woods to regroup...

When last I left our Superhero tale, Shaggy, The Aviator, Lizzard and I were in the woods of Canterbury, contemplating our next move. The others were trapped inside a burning church, surrounded by an acre or so of enemies...both of the cultmember variety and ninja persuasion.

After a moment of discussion, the Aviator and Lizzard rushed back through the woods to get our vehicle and make a fly by, hoping that we could possibly just swoop down out of the sky and load our friends on board...

Shaggy, however, was not satisfied with this plan... He had every intention of taking as many evil-doers as possible down...

I intended to assist in his plan.

As bait.

The minute Lizzard and the Aviator were headed back through the woods and out of earshot, I took off running back to the church. I burst through the tree-line and into a group of Cultmembers, shouting and waving my arms, demanding that they surrender before I did something... really... bad...

They stopped what they were doing. Momentarily they recoiled and a few of them even took a step backward.

Then they realized that I was alone... and they laughed.

As they rushed me, en masse, I took a moment to revel in their stupidity...

It was then that Shaggy burst through the woods behind me and began shooting.

I put my head down, closed my eyes and rushed forward, fully prepared to take out anyone who stood in my way, with nothing for protection but my extreme solar flare-do (my hair can withstand nearly any assault by man or beast).

Luckily, this was unnecessary... within moments an entire group of the villains had been incapacitated with shots of bone from Shaggy's fists... not to mention a succession of quick kicks to the head (the taller members of the group had been so distracted by my seemingly suicidal rush that they had completely failed to make any attempt to dodge my quick friend).

I felt a flush of joy and endorphins... Any fear I had that we might not kick ass and save the day was now completely gone and I reached my hand out and jumped in the air for a quick "super" high-five before rushing forward, closer to the church itself...

The question now was... How would we get inside to save our friends?

The answer was obvious, thanks to an enormous ladder leaning against the side of the burning structure.

Unfortunately, the ladder and the side of the old church, were hot to the touch. The second my skin met the metal of the climbing device, I felt a sizzle and drew my hand back with a yelp of pain...

What to do?

And then I felt it... The charm around my neck began to grow cold... Reaching up, I touched it.

As per usual... at this point, something strange began to happen...

I looked up, searching the vicinity to see what Shaggy was doing and also looking for villains in my immediate area... There were none yet.

Shaggy however, seemed to have increased in size... and he was looking at me very strangely...

I wanted to ask why he was staring at me, when the ground began to rush toward me.

And then I began to comprehend... The ground wasn't rushing at me... I was rushing toward it...

I was shrinking.

As soon as I took my hand away from the charm, I ceased to become any smaller...

(And it was a good thing too...I really can't afford to get any shorter...)

I rocked a little on my heels and looked down...I was only about two feet tall now. I hadn't just gotten shorter, I was actually like... a mini-me...

After the look of shock left his face, Shaggy actually began laughing so hard, I thought he might fall out of the sky himself...

And then another band of ninjas came rushing around the corner of the burning edifice...

Luckily, laughter hadn't dulled my friend's sense of fury over his own suffering, or that of our friends, and he barrelled forward, a furious torpedo of flying bone splinters, fists and feet. As he dove through the air and directly into the chest of the largest ninja, the air seemed to crackle around him, sending the hapless ninjas flying. In no time at all, there was a pile of them with Shaggy hovering in the air above their bodies, cracking his knuckles and smiling a devious smile.

Before I had time to say anything (or do anything for that matter), he bounded through the air back toward me, said, "Uhh... I think we can rescue those feebs sometime today, don't you?"

Reaching down, he grabbed me by my upper arm and took off up the side of the church.

As I was hoisted unceremoniously into the stratosphere by my friend, I could only think one thing...

'HOLY SHIT, WHERE'S THE OFF BUTTON?"

I must have been so shocked that I actually screeched a little, because Shaggy laughed again and then said, "No balls! I bet you wouldn't trust me to drop you through that hole in the belfrey roof to Seymour and Boe..."

Closing my eyes against the sight of the church, which seemed to be growing smaller and farther away the higher we got, I mumbled a quiet 'Holy Mother of Carlos' to myself and then yelled,

"Yeah yeah, I trust you... Just do it!"

The next thing I knew, I was rocketing downward, back toward the church, falling through space toward a hole in the roof... Screaming in my head all the way...

...What a rush!

"Go Home and Polish Your Twig!"

Earlier today I was headed to my usual Pirate locale for the last part of the day and unobtrusively clip-clopping my way down the Saltmine hall in my spiky pirate shoes when I was suddenly and without any warning at all, nearly knocked flat on my cute little pirate heiny by a large, ugly and somewhat angry inmate.

This particular inmate has been a problem for a long time.

He glowered at me from beneath his protruding brow and shoved me out of what he clearly considered to be his own personal space with nary a word of apology, though, just as clearly, I had done absolutely nothing to deserve this rough treatment.

I was dumb-founded...Shocked.

Without even a backward glance he proceeded down the hall, making a thump-clop sound. One foot was clad in a large boot of the shit-kicking variety and the other was absent (he has a wooden leg).

Loathe as I was to allow such treatment to pass without a word or even a sour look, the fact that this particular inmate is short one body part gave me a moment's pause... For once I was at a total loss...

Luckily, a trusty lieutenant of mine came to the proverbial rescue.

Apparently, whilst I was in the midst of my dilemma, Shaggy had come up behind and seen the whole thing from a distance of about 15 feet or so. As I stared after the rude and scurvy knave, Lt. Shaggy took the initiative, shouting, "You! Hey you!"

When the oafish lout turned our way Shaggy looked him full in the hideous face and jeered at him with glee,

"You pathetic jacanape! Yeah, I'm talking to you!"

At this, the general look of stupidity on the lout's face gave way to surprise...then a bit of rage. It was obvious from the look of utter cluelessness on his face that he hadn't decided what exactly he was going to do about this verbal assault on his person, when Lt. Shaggy fired the final shot of the altercation, "Your face makes my skin crawl, your foul odor makes me violently ill and your stupidity makes me want to read a book... Why don't you go home and POLISH YOUR TWIG!!!"

The cluelessness on the scoundrel's face was finally replaced by such a look of rage that I felt momentarily weak at the knees on my lieutenant's behalf... This could end very, very badly...

And then,

Inspiration struck me about the head and shoulders with the force of a newspaper on a naughty puppy...

The answer was right there at my elbow.

So I grabbed on for dear life and pulled...

The alarm sounded.

Thank goodness for the promptness of the local fire department...

By the time they arrived, the lieutenant and myself had positioned ourselves innocently in a classroom as though we'd been there all along...

The best part was that I finally made my childhood dream of pulling a fire alarm come true... and better still...

...Nothing was caught on tape.

HOORAY!!!

The End of an Era

Well, I'm deleting my myspace page.

For those of you who don't know, I've been blogging on there for over three years now and in that time I managed to accumulate quite a few writings (over three hundred in fact).

I also made some really good friends, who, ironically, I've never met.

I will miss going on there but the fact is, I was on there WAAAAY too much.

One of my greatest phobias is making a pest of myself and I was afraid that was exactly what I was doing...so I quit. Cold turkey.

Well, not exactly... I have "rss"-ed some of my favorite bloggers and bookmarked a few pages that I tend to check entirely too much. However, the move I made will keep it from being way too easy to send lots of messages and make unwarranted comments.

So anyway... I am hoping that this complete change of venue will result in the burst of creativity that has been lacking for about a month...

We shall see together...Shall we?

The Year that Passed...

Well, it's 4:16 on a Sunday afternoon, it's raining and I just got home from the Saltmine.

I met some Saltmine inmates for a breakfast meeting (they are awesome and humbled me by offering me money to show up... How sad is it that I'm the teacher and can't afford gas so four juniors pooled their resources to make sure I could attend a meeting with them? I love those guys, I'm going to miss them next year).

Then I went up to Saltmine Central and inputted my grades for three hours (for once I'm done with them early...they're due tomorrow).

Next, I roller bladed for an hour in the Saltmine environs...tank top, black jeans, pig tails, loud music and all...

And while I was doing that, my mind was racing faster than my feet... Moving me backward and forward from past to present...

Every year about this time I start to become more and more withdrawn. I feel the need to pull back inside my sea-urchin-like shell so that when it's time to say goodbye in June I will be protected by my tough exoskeleton.

It's hard.

The greatest thing about teaching is getting to know so many fabulous people.

The worst thing about teaching is having to say goodbye to those fabulous people, knowing that if I've done my job, most of them will go away forever...

It's harder to say goodbye to some of them more than others.

The absolute toughest part is never knowing if I've really taught them something, if I've done my job as best I can... I've always believed that for me personally, teaching is more a function of who I am than the material I impart. I think that the connection is what ensures that Inmates will actually listen...

But then someone will say, in a fit of pique..."I haven't learned anything."

And I beat myself up about it.

Still...I continue to put on the armor, wade in, do my best and hope every day for a good result...

I hope it's enough.

I already miss the Inmates.

How could I ever do anything else with my life but this job?

It has me by the short hairs.

I am the Saltmine's wench.

But I kind of like it. Does that make me weird?

I'm just sayin'.

Four Girls and a Movie

The drive-in was packed and since I had no money, I had my three friends hop in the trunk.

They said it was pretty cozy back there but it was worth it only having to pay 8 dollars instead of 24.

During the movie we decided to honk at other people and do lots of Chinese fire drills.

The other movie goers hated us, until we held the consession stand up with water pistols and pirate guns and distributed our booty to everyone else in the lot.

We were afraid we might get arrested...

But no such luck.

The movie was pretty good... Though Reifsnyder the pink missed the last 5 minutes because she was rescuing a kitten from a tree...

Oh wait, it wasn't a tree, it was someone's back seat.

This was not intended to make sense... I've been reading a lot of Edward Albee and Luigi Pirandello.

I'm just sayin'.

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS...DOWN WITH PLAID!! (aka...I’m Gonna Get You Mr. Chemistry)

... After all that I've said and done, why would ANYONE think they could mess with me and get away with it?

You see...here's yet another reason why I've been incommunicado recently...

Dear friends...

The Pirate Queen is at WAR.

Oh no, I am NOT kidding.

You see...it all started when this guy... this BillNye guy decided to emotionally torture me.

How?

With fashion of course.

You see, I've never claimed to be fashion conscious. In fact, I have admitted on more than one occasion that I am in fact "fashion roadkill."

But this guy...

He makes me look like Yves St. Lauren with a little bit of Chanel thrown into the mix.

Let me just tell you about MrBillNye...

He is a geek. Now, being an admitted geekgirl myself, I can't fault him for that... But you have to picture this guy... He looks like a stick figure with a bobblehead. He has a voice that's a dead ringer for Kermit the Frog and he wears pocket protectors every day.

But that's not the worst of it... He also wears...

*shudder*

Sweater vests. OH THE HUMANITY!!

The war began, not with the "shot heard 'round the world" or even a crash-bang-clatter as so many other altercations... It was much more like T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" in which he said,

"This is how the world ends...
Not with a bang but a whimper."

The whimper, good reader, came from me.

It was brought on by the sight of this human preying mantis in a pair of blue shortpants with little green boats on them.

Alright, I can hear you over there saying, "Hey, that's not so bad... What's the problem?"

Well, okay fine. Maybe it's not a problem for YOU, but that's because you didn't have to sit next to him for 6 hours whilst he regaled you with stories of his wife-in-laws-roof-AP Chemistry stuff... Even the stories wouldn't have been so bad, if he hadn't repeated the same ones...Over...and over...and over...in his muppet voice... with a shark-like smile on his face... Taking great pleasure in my ignoring him.

The more I ignored him... The worse he got.

Finally, just to shut him up, I responded by giving him the hardest of hard times I'd ever given anyone in my life.

I mocked his clothing.

I mocked his repetitious stories.

I mocked CHEMISTRY for Carlos' sake...

I even went so far as to give him my dissertation about how the laws of Thermodynamics are completely made up.

But in the end... I lost.

Yes, ME.

How so? I'll tell you how.

He loved my diatribe so much, that he began to LOOK for me, to actively SEEK ME OUT.

He adored being the object of my mockery.

I kid you not.

If there was a meeting, he sat next to me. If I was in my room attempting to "work," he stopped by to show me his latest fashion disaster. If I was given an obnoxious new duty, he offered to help me out with it.

Clearly, his masochism has reached a level to which all other masochists one day aspire.

The more I abuse and mock him... The more he loves me.

It would be the perfect friendship...If only I were a sadist instead of the closet masochist that I am.

At some points, I've even felt bad about giving him so much crap... but when I'm nice, he gets this disappointed look on his geekboy face and says things like,

"But aren't you going to make fun of my new sweatervest? Are...you... okay?"

At which point, I ACTUALLY FEEL BADLY FOR BEING NICE TO HIM!

The man is SICK.

And recently I've been forced to "step it up" since, in order to REALLY freak me out, he wore a pair of hideous PLAID PANTS to an all day meeting...

Just for me. I know you think I'm kidding... but I'm not.

So I recently put my artistic acumen to the test... making him a couple of posters which I ever so indiscreetly placed in his room... on his board... while he was teaching. These stated in blatant terms my complete disgust with both his subject and his plaid pants.

As you can probably guess... He loved it.

And now... he thinks he's going to get me back. He has actually been attempting to call converts to his side... The self-same scurvy inmates who have learned to love and serve the Pirate Queen so diligently in the past... Strangely, it's the inmates I least suspected to be on my side who ratted him out to me.

And ironically enough... he has managed to convert one of my trusted lieutenants.

That's right... he has usurped my place and the loyalty of one of my most favored crew-mates.

For this... more than anything else he's done... HE MUST PAY!

Oh boy... he's going to be soooo disappointed tomorrow... Not only have I formulated a clever diversion which will distract him from his own evil scheme, I have another plan for the following day which will cause him no end of amusement.

Don't worry...It's a bloodless plan...

In fact, if I didn't know what a thrill he's going to get out of how I am going to upstage his evil plans, I'd almost feel bad for him. Almost.

Of course... I have a sneaking suspicion that my victory will be short-lived at best.

My friends... This war is FAR from over.

The worst part is... I'm enjoying it more than I think I should...

What can I say?

I'm a pirate queen... I LOVE WAR.



I'm just sayin'.

I Just Love Monday Mornings

Ahhh...there's nothing like waking up on a Monday morning and freezing your butt off.

I made the rookie mistake of leaving a downstairs window open and it's a bit...brisk in here right now.

Plus, I fell asleep wearing a tank top and (of all things) a skirt.

My soul feels like smouldering embers but my skin is like ice. I refuse to move from this bed.

There are three cats on the bed, one sleeping on my feet, one on my back and one my pillow. Apparently they don't like the cold either.

Plus, there's a text message on my phone about Starbucks, which gives me an excuse to lay here for a while, since they don't open until 6:30. Good news for me, since that allows me to avoid exercising this morning.

I'm such a backslider.

But at least I'll be a backslider with good coffee.

Go me.

I had strange dreams last night filled with people I don't know very well and talking trees...

And I woke up with this haiku in my head...

"The tree stretched
lay on the garage roof
You have your heaven it said,
Go to it."

(That's a paraphrase by the way).

I really should get up but my theory is, as long as I'm philosophizing I have an excuse to remain right where I am.

That's my story... and I'm sticking to it.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho.

Is it bad that I woke myself up this morning humming my profile song?

These ramblings are disjointed...much like my sleep pattern...Just a coincidence?

Dang. Cat on the pillow is biting my hair...Time to get up.

I still haven't come up with anything impressively funny and moving to say in my speech and I can feel the deadline sneaking up behind me like a freshman with a squirtgun full of fake blood...

Ug. Coffee... bye.

Humour, Hotness and a Long Absense

Yeah, sorry 'bout that...I've been mentally away for a while. Too much going on around here between Saltmine Central and the noise inside my head... The stress of the end of the year is taking its toll...

And then there's this...

I would like to rant for a few moments (I know how much you love it when I go off on a roaring tangent, so if you like that kind of thing, please enjoy).

You see, as I've mentioned a few times, I've recently gotten all healthy and crap (NOT!)... Actually, I'm just getting progressively smaller and smaller.

The point is, according to a small minority of the population, somehow I've gone from being just me to being some new and improved "hot" me...*snicker snicker*

Anyway, I had an experience which nearly sent me over the edge into screaming insanity last week and after ruminating on it for a few days...

I need to rant.

Here's what happened...

I had arrived at a local pirate hangout to spend some time with PaperGrrl. We have been hanging out at this establishment on a regular basis (trans: 2-3 times per week) for the past 4 years...

Let me just say that one more time...

4 years.

When I arrived PaperGrrl was already there waiting for me. She passed me a carbonated beverage of the Dr. Pepper variety and I settled in to decompress. She then informed me that the owner of the establishment had been asking her about me just before I arrived. Keep in mind, this gentleman has seen/spoken to me on a regular basis for FOUR YEARS. He said the following,

"Hey, is your friend single?"

She replied, "Yep." He then said,

"Really? I'm surprised... She's hot! Is she straight?"

Again PaperGrrl replied, "Yes, yes she is." He responded with this,

"What's her name? She seems really nice... smart and funny too."

PaperGrrl agreed with his assessment and told him my first name.

End of conversation.

Okay, fine. I'll be the first to admit, anyone who thinks I'm hot is okay in my book, regardless of whether or not I'm interested, so that was pretty cool.

After that information had a minute to get settled in my consciousness and the appreciative glow of knowing that there is at least one person in the free world who thinks I am "hot" made its way into my schema... I suddenly began to get pissed.

REALLY pissed.

Why?

I'll tell you why.

You see, as I say... I have been coming to this establishment for FOUR YEARS.

This was a very enlightening experience for me. I have always known that living in this time and place, that appearance is important to people.

Fair enough.

However, I always believed that it wasn't the ONLY thing that was important.

Sadly however, I was wrong.

Appearance is indeed the ONLY thing that is important. I could be the biggest, meanest, cruelest BI-CH in the free world...but as long as I look good, that's all that matters... How disappointing for me. You see,

I have always been "funny" (at least, I think so...but I'm a sarcastic wench, so what do I know?). I have pretty much always been "nice" also...(Quiet Shaggy, I can hear you laughing out there somewhere). Also, I am actually pretty darn smart too.

But clearly, these qualities mean absolutely nothing. All that matters about me is the way I fill out a pair of low rise jeans and a tight sweater.

Boy, it's good to know that I've wasted my entire life getting educated, developing self-esteem, and living life to its fullest, when all I really had to do was starve myself in order for members of the opposite sex to express interest in me.

DAMN YOU COLLEGE!!

I spent all that money, yet all I really had to do was force myself to barf on a daily basis...

Dang. If only someone had told me that when I was an impressionable young girl.

*sigh*

Alright, fine...for those of you who are sarcasm-challenged, I'm just kidding. I'm not starving myself.

But I am annoyed. It's good to know that people currently find me attractive... But I do wonder... Was I worthless before?

And this has made me appreciate all the more those people who knew me before and thought I was pretty great BEFORE I lost weight.

*deep breath*

I'm okay now.

I'm just sayin'.

Why I Need a Night Light

As you are well aware by now, the Pirate Queen has a myriad of hidden talents and skills...aka kicking ninja behind, bending the law of gravity and, of course, bellydancing (shhh...It's a secret).

But there's one talent I have that I'm not so proud of.

I am able to freak myself out like nobody's business.

Case in point... I currently live alone in a house that resembles the Gingerbread House from Hanzel and Gretel.

It's a good little house.

Just one problem... My bedroom is on the second floor. This has many positive attributes, however, there is one major drawback...

No easy escape route handy for when the whacked out pyscho killer emerges from the trees that separate me from the rest of civilization.

Not that I think a psycho killer is coming for me or anything (I'm not THAT paranoid... YET).

Unfortunately, there are times when I'm lying in bed, staring out of the skylight or the sliding glass doors and I'll suddenly hear a strange noise from downstairs...

I have no closets to hide in.

The bed is too low to the floor for me to get under it.

And the cats, though fierce, will most likely COMPLETELY FAIL to protect me from a large man weilding a 6' stiletto...

Uhh...

I think I hear a noise down stairs...

Cold chills are racing down my spine, up my neck and making my hair react unpleasantly...

Oh Mother of Carlos... I'm gonna die...

Please...someone call 9-1-1...

I'm just sayin'.

The Beauty of the World--The Pirate Queen Turns Contemplative

I just recently got home from yet another long, mind clearing jaunt in my car (with a brief stop to do some roller blading as well) and had some interesting thoughts...

I was parked near a mountain, watching the sunset through the trees... The clouds were turning the color of flaming embers and I wondered...

What exactly is beauty? I mean, sure, the poets have been talking about it since the dawn of language... but really... what is it?

I came to the following "conclusions" on Beauty...

1. Beauty is in struggle... it's anticipation, not acquisition...it's in the moment of creation, the "I've almost got it" not in the solution.

2. Beauty is what you see in the eyes of a "friend"... Someone who "gets it."

3. Beauty is in follow-through... promises that are kept, not just given out with a casual word... when people do what they say they will.

4. Beauty is in generosity of spirit and selflessness... Caring, even when you know chances are "fair to middlin'" that no one will notice.

Sorry for the semi-crappy-philosophical-wanna-be musings... The Pirate Queen is in a contemplative mood this fine evening.

But I will say this...for once the ride really did actually calm me down... And every now and again, philosophical musings please me...

In fact, I frequently force both my scurvy pirate lackeys and my cabin boys to listen to my ramblings... Mostly they stare blankly at me but once in a while I see a flash of recognition that pleases me immensely.

That's real beauty baby.

I'm just sayin'.

What follows is a poem I personally love by Gerard Manly Hopkins... Though I am not a Christian, I have always found his sentiment to be particularly beautiful... The idea that beauty is not just about celebrities and women on magazine covers with perfect skin... Beautiful. (NOTE: G.M. Hopkins was writing in the Victorian Era in England...so he wouldn't have had any idea who Paris Hilton or Britany Spears are... LUCKY HIM).

See what I mean? Do you get it?

If so, and you actually read this far...

I love you... You're beautiful. :)

P.Q.


"Pied Beauty"

GLORY be to God for dappled things-
For skies fo couple-colour as a brinded cow:
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and piece-fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Yet Another Formal Event Sucks My Soul Out Through My Ears

Last night I arrived home at 2am after attending yet another formal event...

For the fourth year I was invited to attend the Saltmine Prom.

Yes, the PROM.

And I tell ya, there is absolutely NOTHING like being 33 years old, getting all dressed up, attending a Saltmine dance... ALONE... To make you feel like a complete and utter WINNER at LIFE.

Let me just set the scene for you...

The room was on the 3rd floor of a place I'll call... The BrickMill.

The floors were hardwood. The walls were made of brick. The room was tiny, decorated in christmas lights and lovely blue and white bouquets. The food was quite good actually.

It was cold.

Until the dancing began.

At which point, it took less than 30 minutes for the room to become so packed with pheromones that you could practically body surf on them. Hell... you could practically SEE them.

And let me tell you... The only thing better than being a 33 year old single woman at a Saltmine Formal Event, is being a 33 year old single woman who knows that she is virtually the ONLY person in a room who will be going home to her CATS at the end of an evening of music, dancing, food and raging hormones.

Ahhh...Youth.

Anyway, I will admit that the evening had its high points. Everyone looked beautiful, I got to buy some sexy new shoes and a dress that was pretty damn fabulous (if I do say so myself), and I got to hang out with some of my favorite people.

Naturally, a couple of the other Saltmine workers gave me crap... "Why aren't you sitting with us? Are you trying to say that you'd rather hang out with Inmates?"

Uhh, actually... Yes, yes I am.

Plus... what do I have in common with people who teach mythological subjects like... Chemistry? Physics?

Let's face it, you and I both know that Chemistry and Physics do not exist.

I am proof that there is no such thing as gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.

All you have to do to know that is take a look at my shoes to know that.

I'm just sayin'.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Or, With a Great Honor, Comes Great Anxiety

I got some news at the Saltmine yesterday but I haven't really told many people about it yet. Apparently, some of the Inmates voted for me to speak at an event being held at the end of the year (June 14th I believe).

Actually, enough of them voted for me to speak that I actually won.

Dude...You could have knocked me over with a crayon. (I'm trying some new analogies on for size).

But honestly, when MrStrangeHairdo came and told me...or rather, asked me, "They voted for you...will you do it? You don't have to answer right away..."

I answered right away.

I mean, who would say no? Who could say no? (Seriously, the day in question is all about them and what they want...It would be selfish to refuse, even if I had wanted to refuse, which I didn't).

Of course, now the bigger question remains...

What the heck to say?

I am well and truly freaked out.

I'm thinking the same thing I did when the Saltmine hired me...

"What were they THINKING?"

This is going to require a great deal of thought...

I'll get back to you on that.

The Worst Field Trip EVER!!!

Today at the Saltmine I took some of my inmates on a field trip.

The fact that this was yet another example of my truly evil side never even crossed my mind until Shaggy pointed it out to me...

Yet another of the small ironies in life.

There I was, in the library during the last period of the day, when Shaggy came in...

He said, "What are you doing in here?"

I responded, "Field trip."

He asked, "What are you doing?"

I answered, "They're taking a practice test."

He looked at me for a long moment, his face slathered in a mask of incredulity.

Slowly, he began to laugh, shook his head and said, "They've been in the library all day...Taking...a...test?"

I didn't get it. I said, "Yeah, so?"

At this point, he began to laugh. I asked why.

He shook his head. Then he said, "Only you would tell your students...Hey guys, I'm taking you on a field trip! Then when they got all excited and asked, 'where are we going?' You'd say, 'the library.' And then, when they asked, 'what are we gonna do?' You'd say, 'Take a test!!' And then laugh maniacally..."

He added, "You really are evil...You do realize that this is the WORST FIELD TRIP EVER, don't you?"

At that point, I did in fact laugh maniacally, until I began coughing.

After he left, I told a group of kids what he said.

They agreed that it really was damn funny.

I'm still laughing about it.

The best part of the whole thing was, even TheBeardedOne had to say something that went a bit like this...

"I have to admit...He's funny...No wonder you like him.(In reference to Shaggy)" (If you knew TheBeardedOne, you'd know...That's high praise indeed).

Ha ha ha...worst field trip ever...That kills me.