Just saying...

I HAVE been writing... tomorrow I do not work so I might have time to transfer writing from paper to blog.

Consider it a date!

Playing with words

Unfortunately, I didn't write these, but in the spirit of all the writing I'm doing, it seems appropriate.

A Few Punnies...

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse.

A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

If you don’t pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.

When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.

Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of defeat.

Atheism the only non prophet organisation.

Seven days without water makes one weak.

When making whipped cream churn it a little longer, it’s butter that way.

Puns are for younger readers, not for groan adults!

Dyslexic Devil Worshippers sell their souls to Santa.

Two hunters saw a sign while driving which said, “Bear Left,” so they went home.

The mushroom is always the life of the party because he is such a fungi.

Ever hear of Mothers Against Dyslexia? They call themselves DAM.

Protons are positively sure they are not electrons.

A pun is a rare medium well-done.

Day Four

Day Four was a gaming day, so you get a gaming backstory and a day late posting. I am running a StuperPowers game, silly and light but fun. The group has 11 players (!) and this was a first day for the two in the story. This backstory is how they met up with the rest of the party.

On Friday evening, Jon and Laura returned from their holiday in Germany early. Noone was in the house when they arrived, and there was not much in the way of food, so they headed into town to have dinner. On their way to the restaurant, they were surrounded by a large group huge rodent looking things.

Some of the rodents were white, and some were brown, but they were all about the size of a small dog and they were extremely aggressive. Jon and Laura thought that the rodents were going to attack, as they kept nipping at their heels and making angry sounding chitters at them. Jon and Laura moved away from the rodents, but they only circled behind and nipped at their heels again. It was soon obvious that Jon and Laura were being herded by these angry, giant-teethed creatures.

They forced the young couple to the Cathedral, and to a hole in the ground at its foundation, which led to a tunnel. The walk down the gently sloping tunnel was extremely long (about a 45 minute walk) and led to a series of underground rooms that had been dug and well packed. The floors of the tunnels were layered with grasses and leaves, and the smell was earthy and pleasant. Jon and Laura walked through many rough-hewn rooms and down a flight of dirt steps before Laura was separated from Jon and herded into a sterile looking metal room. Jon was herded into a different direction and placed into a different room. Hours later, Jon was taken out of the holding cell and herded by the rodents into a different room where a short young man with crazy white hair (looking decidedly like Albert Einstein’s) strapped him into a chair. The man wore a white lab coat, thick yellow plastic gloves (like cleaning gloves, but much thicker,) and a pair of goggles that made his eyes huge.

He was doused with pink powder, which made his head feel funny and swimmy, and the man talked at him for a long time. Jon didn’t really understand what was being said, but it felt like he knew what he was supposed to do when the man was done. The man then stuck Jon's face into a bag of green powder and poked at him until he screamed, which gave Jon a big lungful of the stuff. After about a minute, Jon began shrinking and felt very strange. He was slowly turned into one of the same rodent things that attacked him!

There was a huge commotion outside, great chitterings and stampeding noises, and the man ran off, leaving Jon alone in the room. He went exploring in his little rodent body, having forgotten that he was anything except a rodent. As he nosed, he found a jug filled with brown liquid on the counter, which he knocked over. It's thick brown viscosity oozed across the counter top and down the side of the counter door. It smelled interesting, and Jon could not help but have a good taste of it. It counteracted the work of the pink powder and Jon realised that he was actually a human named Jon who had been turned into a redent. He remembered Laura, and realised that he hadn't seen her since.

In great haste, Jon scampered around the room looking for a way to escape. Luckily for him, the man had left in such a rush that he left the door open a crack, and Jon took off down the corridor, looking for Laura, or anyone else that could help him find her.

Day Three

Day Three was my birthday, and while I did write, I didn't take the time to post it. So here it is.


Birthday dinner: Mexican food, which is always disappointing. But this place was new, and seemed to know how to make margaritas. They had poppers!!!!! And they were good poppers. The chili con carne was spicy, but they used it as a staple. I had a beef burrito. Inside was the chili con carne. Stephen had chicken tacos. The sauce on the chicken was the sauce from the chili con carne. The margarita... well, it didn't suck, but it also wasn't wonderful. I spoke to the barman afterwards who said it was made with some random silver tequila. Tell me I have champagne tastes, but I like my margaritas with Jose Curevo - gold. Silver has such a delicate flavour that it is lost in the frozen margarita. The barman said that he makes margaritas on the rocks with Cuervo gold - so I might have to try that another day. So all in all - birthday dinner: didn't suck. I guess that it pretty good for Mexican food in England.

Day Two

Sweat
once as familiar as breath
trickles down my back in a slow crawl.
It is not a friend, this new sweat.
It sticks and clings.
It mucks and binds my clothes to my skin
and slides stinging into my eyes.

What is this creature
that burns my thighs
and hangs under the swell of my breasts?
Sweat drips and cools.
I know because sweat was once my friend.

This is not my friend. This is not that sweat.

This must be a relative come to visit that just won't leave - like dead fish, smell after seven hours (as I smell - though I never actually dried from the cold shower and my hair is still damp twisted into my bun.)

The air hangs ponderously in
obeisance to this sweat,
worshipping at the alter
of the damp that covers the world.

Finally,
       I collapse into a chair
              AIRCONDITIONING........
                     AHHHHHHHHHHHH........
                            and the sweat dies on my skin -
                                          only to rise again as I step into the street.

Day One

The day is just warm enough in the sunshine to make me drowsy and careless. The steps I take, loud in my own head, are drowned out by the heartbeat of the crowd. Men in suits and ties, teens in dark clothes and spiked hair, and ladies dressed in the long robes and head coverings of their faith pass me. Suddenly I am trapped between the tall buildings whose centuries-old façades block out the sun and the green and white medieval tents that fill the center of the High Street. I am crammed in between strollers and tendrils of cigarette smoke, between girls in short skirts and old men in top hats and canes. Languages swirl around me like eddies in the waters of the river over which I pass. Even if I choose otherwise, the crowd carries me forward. Groups of foreigners gather in excitement; dogs and men covered in tattoos drink lager under the shade of the pub umbrellas, but eagerly crane their necks to watch. It is Market Day.

I look for a place to sit and listen, a place to escape the crowd and seek to understand the sights and sounds of a busy English High Street on Market Day - but there are people everywhere I look. Every spot of shade is filled with bodies stacked upright. Vendors hawk their wares to the vertical dead. "Flowers! 2 bunches a pound!" "Cigarettes - Get your fags and cigars here!" Stalls, rainbow fields of colour, act as the market's own façade: hiding the stacked boxes filled with emptiness behind them. A tub of watery marbles entices passers-by with a sign that says, "Touch me - but do not squeeze." As I pass, a small girl sticks her hand in the tub and shrieks shrilly. She tugs at her mum's ample skirts, but they are swept away in the crowd, her hand caught in the folds, her voice fading to a whisper on the wind. The vendor calls to me, "A bag is only a pound, why don't you take some home?" I back away, shaking my head.

Bees drone complacently at the baker's tent - pastries tempting them with bright colours and sweet icings. These lures work on other creatures too, for there is a line forming and dumpy pigeons peck at the crumbs dropped by those who have gone before. Enough have plunged their coins into a cup for their desire to stuff themselves, without a thought for what might come afterwards, that the cup splits, spilling coin. While young apprentices scurry to gather the fallen coins, the people only shuffle in the line towards their reward. Nearby, a small table holds a sign on which is written "Children's DVDs" and houses Ghostbusters, The Darkness Within, and Home Alone side by side in a silent, emphatic statement. People pass, oblivious to the warning.

As I walk, I am tempted by the old, familiar smell of blue coconut. Visions of sno-cones and blue lips fill my eyes - marks of innocence and childhood that are buried in my olfactory sense. I thought this was something I'd left behind - but as I turn and walk past again, the smell reveals a sour undertone and my stomach rolls. Eventually, I end up in the small bit of America in the midst of Market Day: Starbucks. There are tables at which to sit and absorb, though I am no more safe from Market Day than I was before. The words I write, punctuated by the screams of a newborn desperate for suck and darker than I thought, make me wonder if there is more to Market Day than meets my conscious brain. But the people who walk past my watchful eyes don't even seem to notice. After all, it's Market Day.

Goals

Kelli and I talked for 7 hours today.

She told me that she only wishes that she were as good a writer as I was, and while I don't actually think I'm all that awesome, it did get me thinking about my writing. I really enjoy writing, and used to do it everyday. I use to take time and make myself write, about anything. And usually the things that I wrote when I was stretching to find something, anything to write about were some of my best writings.

I miss writing like that.

I used to blog everyday. The earlies entries on this blog were not always about information that was needed to catch people up on what is going on in Amy's world, but were instead bright fresh meanderings in which you thought with me.

I miss writing like that too.

I used to sit and watch, write about those things that I saw or felt or thought. Writing that was an active process, and that the world around me was involved in as well as I was.

And guess what... I miss that as well.

The rest of my summer is supposed to be about getting myself ready for school. But when it comes down to it, there are some goals that I have set for myself, personally. I need to get back to finding the core of me. Unsurprisingly, I am not all that great at balance. I give 'it' my all, whatever 'it' is, and now is the time to balance that with getting back to those things that I find important, that I want to make time for, and that make me a more reflective and complex person. My writing is one of those things.

I know there are not many of you who read my words here, and I'm ok with that. But I feel as though I have things to share with you. Thoughts and processes that you could see if only I were to get back to what I know I can do: what I'm good at. If I would only open up and write. The last 2 years has been a lot about closing things down, changing to fit into a world that I don't easily understand. I have had to reinvint myself simply to be understood and fit in. But I miss the writing.

So I am setting myself a goal. For the next 30 days, I am going to write, everyday, about stuff. Things I see and hear, notice and feel. I am not going to write about things that are going on, those posts will ahve to be seperate and in addition. The next 30 days I am going to get back to the writing.

Wish me luck!

T-H-E-C-A-R

The school that I will be teaching in is too far away from my home for me to get there easily. There is no public transportation services. And that means that I have 2 options: either I rent a car on a long-term basis, or I buy a car. After much research, I have discovered that not only is it less expensive to buy, but also to buy a new car rather than a used car. So, after even more research, I found the car I would buy. It is called a Toyota Aygo, and is a "micro-car." It gets more than 60mpg, and is tiny. I ordered it yesterday, and it should be here sometime in September. I'll still have to rent a car at the start of the school year, but for a lot less time than I thought. Here are some pictures of my exact specification.


The outside, which has 4 doors. There is enough space on the inside for Ashley to fit, but it will only ever fit 4 people.

The back, with the tiny trunk. It produces 106 g of carbon per kilometer, which means that I only have to pay the lowest amount of road tax each year. This is good.


The inside. Yep, the driving stuff is on the right. I have discovered that this disturbs me most when I am trying to flick the windshield wipers on, because I end up messing with the turn signal instead. My brain hasn't figured out that I need to think about which side the wipers are on yet.


And the inside from the door. This car is also nice because it has the lowest insurance rating possible, which means that the insurance on it will be low.

These pics are not of my potential car, because it has not yet been built. There is so much demand for this brand that there is a 6 week backlog. It's nothing fancy, but it is safe, inexpensive (comparatively,) and ecologically friendly. It will happily get me to work and home. Don't worry, we still intend to keep walking everywhere locally, though. Our town is so compact that it would be silly to drive. But we may well get to go and do more sightseeing when we own a car. Here's hoping.