Archive | December, 2009

Dear End-of-the-Semester

10 Dec

Dear End-of-the-Semester,

I’m tired. I have a headache. YOU SUCK.

I still have a fifteen page paper to write. I was feeling all on top of things, because my final portfolios for both my poetry workshops were due last week and I got them done with little to no stress. Then this week I had fifteenhundredeleven tutoring workshops, and my professors decided (rightly) to celebrate the end of the semester with us by making our last classes potlucks. Potlucks!

I love potlucks.

These look scary to me.

Then before you know it, I’m making cookies on Sunday, blueberry muffins Monday night, and I’m running home in between tutoring and classes on Tuesday to make cupcakes (because they can sit in my car all day Wednesday while I’m on campus without turning green– like meat, for example). Then, before you know it, I’ve burned the cupcakes, and I’m running home Wednesday to make another batch of cupcakes and all of a sudden I’m a crazy PTA Mom (hi guys!) and I can hear a little voice inside of me that sounds a lot like nine-year-old me trying to reassure my mother, “But no one will care if you just buy something!”

And something else inside of me says, “But I can have it all! / I hate the grocery store.”

And then before you know it, I’m not putting my poems to bed because I’m busy making cupcakes for all the other poems in the class and they’re crying and I’m crying and the second batch of cupcakes is burning and all I want to do is watch Tombstone but I still have a fifteen page paper to write and I hate everything I’ve written this semester and I’m wondering why I didn’t just bring the open, half-eaten, stale bag of chips that’s in my cupboard.

And then I’m sitting at my laptop saying, “I just want everybody to be happy! I’m doing my best! Why doesn’t anybody appreciate me?!?” And yes, my laptop is my husband in this analogy. Metaphor. Conceit. What is this, again?

Oh, I’ve got the end-of-the-semester blues….the blues….the sad-sack blues…

Why don’t you come with foot rubs and soothing chamomile tea and maybe a parade celebrating everything I’ve done all semester? Hmmm? Think we could work that out? I’ll bake you something delicious to eat…

Not fondly,

MM

PS– And then I’m running around like a cracked out bakery chef saying, “Please take a cupcake. Please. Take. A. Damn. Cupcake.” Because I already have cookies and muffins at home and what am I going to do with all the cupcakes? I love cupcakes. I do. I’m not opposed to eating a lot of them. But I live alone. I get headaches from too much sugar. I have a headache. Someone take a cupcake. (That is not a euphemism.)

Dear New Moon

7 Dec

Dear New Moon,

Let’s do some quick math. There are approximately 8 young men among your characters. Five in the wolfpack, Emmett the vampire, and of course of course the eminently prominent Jacob* and Edward (aka RobPat**). Of those, 7 at one point or another remove their shirts.

Your running time is 2 hrs 1 min, or 121 min. Divided by 7, divided by total time spent by each of those boys on screen, minus the extreme lowness of RobPat’s pants during that one scene (I mean seriously, I wasn’t sure he was wearing pants for a while– do they let him film in the nude in order to get him on set?), plus the amount of time K.Stew spent biting her own lip while looking at the shirtless boys, multiplied by the slope of Taylor Lautner’s neck muscles…

…equals about 92.3% shirtless boy time out of total movie time.

This isn’t a complaint.

WHO AM I KIDDING? I LOVED THIS MOVIE. I laughed and sighed and said, “OH HIGH SCHOOL” more than once. I totally know what it feels like to have a best friend you don’t want to lose who feels more strongly about you than you do him. I totally know what it feels like to wear ugly sweaters and giant raincoats to math class (grew up in Seattle, people. Not that far from Forks). I totally know what it feels like to have go dashing off to Rome at a moment’s notice to save my vampire boyfriend from committing suicide, effectively choosing him over my wolf boyfriend who was finally trying to kiss me and hopefully will not transfigure too close to my face or I will die, and of course they are natural enemies but they both love me even though I am a basically lame girl who is supposedly not that pretty (probably designated as so due to the fact that I have brown hair) and who has no personality whatsoever. I TOTALLY GET IT.

[Ok, on a side note, I actually have heard of grown women leaving their husbands after reading Twilight. Because their marriages didn't measure up to the standard of love presented . (Which is what? The "I would die for you but I can't because I'm immortal" standard? Yeah. That one.) As one trained mental health specialist put it, "I would say they have larger issues than Twilight. I would also question this designation of them as 'grown.'"]

But seriously. Pure trashy fun. Perfect after you have turned in your final, revised poetry portfolios for your first semester in an MFA program***. Entertaining to the ninth degree. And did I mention the shirtlessness?

Yeah. That.

MM

*aka Boy Taylor who is dating Girl Taylor– Swift, that is. We don’t even have to come up with a stupid nickname for them ala Bennifer or Brangelina. They come with it built-in. No batteries necessary.

**aka international heartthrob of girls who like pasty white boys, aka boy who may or may not be dating/doing Kristen Stewart but sweet hell don’t ask the insensitivity of you people always asking questions like she’s a celebrity and this is an interview or something.

***Hello. My name is Margaret Michelle. I am currently getting my MFA in poetry. I also like Twilight. [The views presented here are not condoned by and not in any way shape or form representative of the management, the network, my employers, my professors, my classmates, my friends, my parents, my books, and/or anything that I ever may have touched or spoken to.]

Dear Mom

1 Dec

Dear Mom,

I am just so incredibly, overwhelmingly proud of you. This book that you have written is a force in the world. You have created something that can change things. And that is big, it is amazing, it is awe-inspiring and motivating.

Love,

MM

Note: Moving the Rock: Poverty and Faith in a Black Storefront Church by Mary E. Abrums is available now on Amazon and in bookstores. It’s a book of life stories of African-American women from a storefront church in Seattle’s Central District. It’s about faith and poverty and healing and what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a mother and a daughter and a sister. It’s beautiful. It’s moving. It’s full of truth. It’s hopeful. It’s one of the rare glimpses we have of what it is like to be black and poor in America.  It teaches through stories– which is the best way to learn, and the best kind of stories to read.

Moving the Rock by Mary E. Abrums

PS– This picture of the book is cut off. The cover painting– which is incredible– includes the little girl whose face you can just start to see here…

PPS– For more information, see the University Week article/interview.  (Thanks, skhor, for pointing it out in the comments.)

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