I have a huge blister in the center of my palm from mowing the yard with a push mower on Monday. I mowed for hours - the stupid mower kept dying on the hillside. I bought three young beautiful Blue Colorado Douglas Fir trees to plant in my yard and never got around to it. $4.95 each at Lowes. They are sitting on my back deck, drooping a little.

On Sunday, we made a trip down south to see family. It was to celebrate my Mom's birthday and to take my sister our old e-machine (she was thrilled - thought Windows Vista was like entering a new world). My family, my sister's family, and Mom and her sugar daddy (Virgil, who was at loss after Fern's unfortunate pressure-cooker incident - Mom calls it a suicide). Mom with her dry skin and pink polka-dotted tank top - Virgil with food all over his shirt and missing teeth. Both in matching motorcycle racing caps. I'm not sure why or how they had matching motorcycle racing caps. I insisted that we all gathered at Pike County's park for a picnic - what was once a state forest - a nostalgic place where I remember American Legion drinking parties, climbing the fire tower to the top and then throwing off our shoes. In the time that we were there - a few hours - we saw a total of 287 deer ticks, picked them off of our pant legs, out of our hair, sneaking up our arms. Well, maybe not 287 - more like 20, but 20!!! 20 blood-sucking deer ticks. When we got home (after the three hour drive in the dark), I had to pluck one off of the back of my 16 year old daughter's thigh.

The trip was hard - as usual. All was as usual - worse in fact maybe. And it hurt. My chest has been in a knot since Sunday. I keep blaming it on graduation and the pressure to get a job.

I didn't quit smoking. I quit blogging (sorry) . . . in the name of completing my one hundred page thesis, but I kept smoking. I did slow down immensely. And I started smoking vanilla clove cigarettes (more properly referred to as "Golds") at first meagerly, but then - come evening - I was all about inhaling fiberglass (and whatever else they put into those awful things) as a means of concentrating - especially when I'm writing against the clock (I lie). They cost twice as much, I could only buy them at the Tobacco Depot, and they nearly killed me. I've never coughed so much in the mornings. They were changing my voice. I felt like a hag. But I did find out, in this, that my habit is more than nicotine related - it's a physical let-me-busy-myself-with-something-stupid kind of thing. I feel so immature. So . . . I bought regular cigarettes again - ultra lights and no wicked menthol shit - in a neon orange box - 100's with really long filters - and they're okay. Only thing is I am having a difficult time only doing the evening thing. I had a rule I was abiding by - no smokes until after dark, but now that I have real tobacco in my purse, and it calls to me. Smoke goes so well with coffee . . .

I have a ton of shit to grade this weekend AND I have to take one of my daughters shopping for a prom dress this evening. She wants one full-length and "vintage." Yes! Used dress shops here we come! Tomorrow, I have to ride along on a campus tour of Purdue with my other daughter (she doesn't want to go to Purdue - she's thinking Ivy League - but the trip is free). I hope the day will be as pretty as this one.

I talked to my sister on the phone the other night, after not talking to her for weeks. I mention right off that we'd just bought a Wii with our tax refund money. She follows up, telling me that they won't get their tax refund again this year (her husband still owes back child support), and she just had to borrow cash from our dad to cover their mortgage. Her husband got a job, but he hates it, and they cut his unemployment at day one and didn't take into account that whole two-weeks-with-no pay-check thing. My lovely sister has this incessant ability to make me feel like an ass. And, once again, I can't drive down and visit her this weekend nor the weekend after next. I stutter these things to her and my neck grows hot. I owe her a computer and some Office software. I'm bumbling her plans to get moving. She may be blaming her depression on me. I hung up the phone and wanted to send her a check. Money works for something. Of course, in two weeks, I'll be unemployed.

My desire to write about whatnot kinda' sputtered there for the last few weeks, as I was having to worry about things like "flow" and "unity" in the whole of my thesis - which was actually all of these "miniature narrative essays" - some very short. All nonfiction - many centered around my sister. Arranging them and figuring out what was missing was the hardest. The thesis was handed in Monday. All done with proper margins and caps on the title page. Any way, I am out the groove of the blog. I am out of the groove of lots of things. I'll work my way back into it. It might take me a few days/weeks.