When I was little, my mom would make me bread and butter and jam when I came home from school. Wait, what? You've already heard that one? Oh, lordy. Okay, how about this one:

When I was in junior high, I announced that I couldn't wear red because I did not look good in it. It's not that I believed it, mind you. I just decided to make that proclamation. (Someone medicate this kid, STAT!) And since nobody disagreed with me, I assumed that I indeed did not look good in red. It was years before I bought anything red. Now I wear red with reckless abandon. (Except, come to think of it, I don't think I own anything red. Huh, weird.)

So, something occurred to me the other day. (Please hold your applause until the very end.) Nobody is going to write this dissertation for me. I know, right? What a monumental discovery. They should give me a t-shirt that has Captain Obvious emblazoned in gold across it. But it's so true, and it's so hard to come to terms with that fact. And it's not just dissertation-writing; it's everything. If there's something that needs to be done, I'd bet that nine out of ten people will willingly do laundry or scrub the toilet before they actually get to it. And I don't really know why that is, actually, because we're only postponing the inevitable. I remember in college, my apartment was never so clean as it was during finals week. And I was contemplating all of this today while I was writing, and it reminded me of an Ellen Degeneres routine we watched once. So, naturally, I hunted around on YouTube until I found it. Watch the whole thing if you want, or start watching the relevant part at 4:15.

This isn't my story, it's Sally's story, but since my other posts this week have been Sally-related I thought I'd run with it. Sally met a stripper at the Atlanta airport. Wait, that sounded bad. Sally had an hours-long layover in Atlanta and spent it at the Houlihan's bar, where a young woman sat next to her. Sally asked the woman what her job was, and the woman replied that she was a model. Over the course of their conversation, it turned out that she wasn't so much a model as a stripper. Now, I'm not judging her, we all have our talents. But here's where the story blows my mind: the stripper told Sally that she strips with her mom. Not just that she strips with her mom, but that they make more money that way. Wha-huh??? It raises a number of questions, certainly, but one of them has to be this: how did they stumble upon that business model?!?

At the IKEA restaurant, Sally was effectively boxed into her seating area by patrons and baby strollers, so I offered to get her a drink refill when she needed one.

Me: What do you want?
Sally: Something diet.
Me [up at the soda fountain, pointing at the Diet Pepsi]: Is this okay?
Sally: Yeah! [then, turning to John] I hate Diet Pepsi.

Later, at our house, I held up a dish we got as a present.

Me: Do you like this?
Sally: Yes!
Me: Really?
Sally: Well, no.

I don't know what you all did this weekend, but we had the most fabulously awesome weekend here at Sally Central. Wait, what? You hadn't heard? My soul-sister Sally flew in on Friday evening and from the time we picked her up at the airport to the time we dropped her back off at the airport (hey, JAX: three dollars for 32 minutes of parking is RETARDED!), we had the most fun ever. EVER. Mostly, we laughed and ate. We got stared at and talked about by two separate (and clearly fun-free) couples at the restaurant on Friday night. We took IKEA Orlando by storm on Saturday, then stayed up until FOUR AM talking. We solved the age-old question, "How do we eat lunch AND go to IKEA?" Solution: eat lunch AT IKEA. We laughed unabashedly at the most off-color jokes, but in the confines of our own home, prompting John to stage whisper the subject line you see above when we were in public. We coined the phrase, "I was so mad, I could have eaten a baby's head!" (It's a versatile phrase, so you're welcome for that.) And on Sunday, we managed to eat scones, pizza, AND apple pie in the course of just a few hours. The fact that part of that plan involved taking a homemade apple pie TO Jacksonville airport should in no way disturb you. Along the way, if it wasn't already clear, we laughed and laughed and laughed. My stomach hurts today, from all the laughing. When John and I got back from dropping her off, and it started to sink in that I wasn't going to see Sally's smiling face on Monday morning saying, "So guess what?", I started to get wholly and completely bummed out. At the same time, it makes me utterly giddy to think that we'll be getting out of here in less than a year and that we might just get lucky enough to be close to family and friends.

So I got bitten by an ant the other day. An ANT, for crying out loud. Ants are, what, one-one-millionth the size of us humans? And the bite itches like you wouldn't believe, itches like the worst mosquito bite you've ever gotten (and, lo, I've gotten some doozies). How can something so microscopic inflict such great discomfort?

And while we're on the subject, the mosquito bites I've been getting recently are out of this world. Clearly the rest of you should kneel down on bended knee and thank me for doing whatever it is that I do to lure all the mosquitos in the states into a 1-mile radius of my body. These suckers are so mean, the bites they administer leave scars. I'm a pockmarked mess from my knees down, simply because of mosquito bites. John tried to be helpful by suggesting that maybe it wasn't just the mosquitos leaving the scar, but the West Nile virus they were carrying. Not helpful.

Along with being pockmarked and itchy (and possibly diseased with West Nile virus), I also find myself in the middle of a Post-It (TM) note connundrum. When I started collecting gobs and gobs of dissertation-related paperwork, I decided to color-coordinate it. (AM A HUGE DORK.) I used these turquoise Post-It (TM) notes to designate dissertation research folders and then, apparently, went on a turquoise Post-It (TM) spree, wasting countless numbers of them on notes like, I don't know, "buy milk" and "take a shower." The result is that now I'm out of said Post-Its (TM) and the only way to buy more is to buy a pack of 8, wherein only 1 is the correct color.

I try not to get political here, because it's only going to alienate people, but I have to make one observation. Not only does Sarah Pallin frighten me and give me a headache, I suspect she also scares John McCain a little. Have you seen the two of them together, when she's talking? It's comical, really. She does this jabbing point gesture with her right hand and each time she does it, McCain jumps a little. I can picture him taking her aside and saying, "Sarah, you're fabulous, but can you stop with the finger jabbing?"

"This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went 'wee wee wee' all the way home." Remember that nursery rhyme? I certainly do. It's one of my youthful favorites. But recently, that happy childhood memory was blasted apart into a million little pieces. See, I always thought that the little piggy who went to market was going to market to do some shopping. You know, maybe he'd put on his best seersucker overalls and, holding hands (hooves?) with his mom and dad, would trot off to the market to buy fresh fruit and veg. Maybe some handmade soap. It seriously never occurred to me that the piggy would be going to the market to become someone else's shopping. What kind of messed up nursery rhyme is that?!? Of course, when I discussed all of this with John, he shook his head in bewilderment at how different our childhoods were. Apparently he has memories of actually taking the pigs to the market to be sold. Minus seersucker overalls and quaint, happy piggy shopping. Clearly John was raised by much more cynical people.