somebody spoke and i went into a dream

Today 9-year-old Christian asked me what puberty was. I restrained the urge to be sarcastic, avoidant, or really really mean. Instead I explained that it was what happens when you start to become an adult. "For example," I said, "Your voice will change. It will start sounding like this," I did an (in my opinion) accurate impression of said voice change. He laughed hysterically and for the rest of the afternoon randomly shouted "Puberty!" and burst into manic laughter. Yes. This is my life.

Anyways this incident reminded me of Louis, Emma Cole's pre-pubescent alter ego who made frequent appearances in our apartment for a while. I miss him. Evie, Emma Cole's insanely angry and violent driving personality, I miss less. Mostly because she was less humorous (but only fractionally.) I had about four different personalities in high school which I enjoyed randomly inhabiting, not including the confused transitional one that I used when I switched between personalities "Who am I? What is all this?" My friends encouraged me in these activities – in fact I have always had friends who have encouraged some pretty bizarre stuff. (Of course I am easily encouraged.) My brother calls them "Siobhan friends" or something along those lines, and says I always manage to find them.

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Brian had some pretty interesting homework excuses today. "I didn't do my homework because my neighbor attacked me...and then a tree fell into my house."

And then there was Jessica's wonderful writing entry:

Word: Imminent
Definition: Hanging threateningly over one's head
Sentence: He imminented her from head to toe.

I think possibly she decided that if she managed to get one of the words in the definition into her sentence, she was doing all right. I changed the description to something along the lines of studying for an imminent test, but I kind of liked the original definition. It was almost poetic. Almost.

Today I also discovered that laptops need to breathe and if you consistently cover their vents by using them on soft surfaces for several years, they will DIE. I thought this seemed like important information to share.

On the T9 setting on phones, my name typed in comes out as phobia until it's added into the dictionary. This makes me feel strange.

Today's Article is about the cheeseburger cat website people. I thought it was pretty neat that they were willing to take a financial risk on something they believed in.

I have an uncle who guzzles self-help books that range from liver cleansing to internet entrepreneurial endeavors. Every time I visit him, he is incredibly enthusiastic about a new scheme.

This is the same uncle who gave me a vegetable high. Literally, he made me a vegetable drink (by shoving a bunch of vegetable into an awesome squeezer) and the drink brought me high and then dropped me low. Definitely a strange feeling. Definitely would do it again.

Speaking of relatives, my Auntie B has a fabulous blog which has kept me up to date on the goings on in Boerne, Texas. One of my favorite posts of hers is about the pool I've swum in most summers for the past 10 years. It's been through a lot.

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Today I met a personality that I had never encountered before. Okay, I'm not being ridiculous – I understand that people are like snowflakes and no two of us are the same, etc. But snowflakes have general patterns they fall into, and so do people, so I'm often surprised when I meet someone who I struggle to easily place/read (even if it's just easily reading what they want me to read.) I like this sort of surprise. It's nice to be reminded that I don't have everything figured out, and that is absolutely fine.

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I like natural light. It just feels...different. And it looks different. The Swedes are also fan of the sun. After working at The Chimes for a year, I became used to a naturally lit office environment. (Literally if someone flipped the light switch, our features editor would announce that the giant florescent lights in our room caused cancer, and switch them back off.)

So at the two subsequent office jobs I held, I would leave the lights off in my room and bask in rays from the window. At the Embassy in Egypt, this occasionally perturbed my boss and coworkers, because, as they put it, "I keep forgetting you're here because the light is off." They also possibly found it strange that I sat in the room with lights off and classical music playing online in the background. It was peaceful, ignoring all the pacing and conversations and anxiety in the jarringly artificial florescent world just outside my door.

I never had enough work. I often sat there, over analyzing every detail of each task, trying to make them last longer, completely opposed to the idea of being paid for doing nothing or surfing the internet. I missed the rush of constant deadlines and unending issues to be dealt with at The Chimes. I felt much more overwhelmed with the free time than with the stacks of deadlines and unresponsive writers and unedited stories.

Funny old world, isn't it?

Word of the Day: Noctivagant. According to dictionary.com, it means "Pertaining to going about in the night; night-wandering."