One more- dedicated to my boss who retired on Friday. 

Found this and just couldn't resist

Maybe I was just really tired and in need of a good laugh when I ran across this during the wee hours of the morning, but after a while it's amazing what you can find funny.

Hopefully I'm not really that hateful, but you have to admit they're funny.

Grad School and Heart Failure

Well, I went to visit my family for the first time since starting school.  I have to admit it is an extremely odd feeling to pull into the driveway you left and came back to for twenty-something years and realize you are only there 'visiting.'  It was wonderful to see them, though.  I attended a "Barbie Princess Party" with my niece and went to Lowe's with my nephew and brother-in-law, which may not sound like too much grand excitement but when you have a two-year old of the male persuasion with you it becomes quite the occasion.  I know the employees were relieved to see us leave, as he tried the door on every washer, dryer, freezer, cabinet, refrigerator and sink in the entire store.  He thought he'd hit the mother lode when he discovered the wall displaying the different types of toilet seats you can buy, flipping up every lid and watching it snap closed.  It was kinda like a weird version of that old game "Memory."  The kid needed to be bathed in hand-sanitizer by the time he was done.  On separate occasions both of my parents asked 'how I was eating.'  Translation: am I eating anything besides trail-mix and orange juice.  Before I left they went through the cabinets and fixed up a box of culinary necessaries for me to come back with.  I think I may be the only college student ever to be sent back to school with a mason jar of bacon grease to flavor food when I cook.  No kidding.  You can't make this sort of thing up......I love my parents.

Graduate School--two weeks down and....two years to go?

So, because I'm nearly as horrible at blogging as I am at keeping a journal I have not written for....a month?  Has it really been that long?  In my defense, I've been completely without internet for two weeks.  The other two, who knows where I was then.  Anyway, to catch up:  I now live two and a half hours away from my family (which will be discussed in depth at a later date), at the beach (which will also be discussed, the universe has a sick sense of humor), attending graduate school (I'm apparently certifiable). 

You know, it's funny what you learn about yourself in those first few moments after your parents have moved in the last of the furniture, washed dishes and lined the cabinets to hold your first groceries in your first apartment.  By yourself.  Its kinda freaky.  I was fine, really....until I got my first voicemail from my niece a week after I got here.  "Ummmmm, Aunt Kehye?  I miss you.  I want you to come home."  Right-o, then.  I'll be there in a few.  I always knew I depended on my family; that I had a hard time being apart from them, but I always thought it was in a 'chapstick dependent' sort of way.  I don't know if anyone else has an addiction, but for those of us who do, you understand how much you panic when you realize you don't have it with you.  (At this juncture, it is absolutely forbidden for anyone to make any allusions to Napoleon Dynamite.  On pain of death.  Seriously.)  However, I realized after two weeks, that it is not a 'chapstick' dependent, but more......I don't know.....iron lung? dependency.  Things are going well, really, and I haven't had any extremely emotionally traumatic moments (yet).  But I still miss them.  Even the cat that actually belongs more to the next-door neighbors than us.  The cat who's name I don't even actually know.  Even though we've had her for 14 years, give or take a few.  Hey, if Audrey Hepburn can get by just calling it 'Cat' that's good enough for the rest of us.  To address the beach 'issue.'  Here's the thing with that:  its not that I 'hate' the beach.  The beach just hates me.  Or actually, more specifically, the sun hates me.  I think I've already discussed in a previous post how I single handedly fund aloe plantations in South America and keep some pitiful impoverished set of migrant workers under the dictatorial thumb of some cruel, flaccid-faced plantation baron.  I should really live in a perpetually cloudy country.  Ireland sounds perfect.  But, all that aside, I now live near(er) the beach.  Just to show how cruel the cosmic humor is, the day after I moved in half a dozen people jogged by my apartment.....It was snowing.  I hate 'em all.   So, when I went to Wal-Mart I hit the cookie aisle and discovered that there is a knock-off brand that tastes exactly like Girl Scout Thin Mints.  Order was restored in the universe.  As for graduate school itself:  how exactly far ahead of time does something have to be contemplated before it is considered 'premeditated murder'?  Because I think they are 'premeditating.'  It's like the Army or something.  They're nice until you sign the papers and then they start making you scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush.  Actually, everything's going, as my niece always replies when I ask her how anything went, "pret'-good."