The Art of Dropping Phones

There is an art to dropping and to losing your phones. I have compiled a list of rules or prerequisites to doing so.

1. You must have really small or sideways coat pockets. A phone can easily slip out of your pocket if you bend, sit, lean, or jump up and down. I know this because I have small coat pockets and do all these movements each day and my phone usually falls out of my pockets.
SOLUTION: Find a coat with a zipper.

2. You must be clumsy. A clumsy person is one who finds that spatial awareness eludes them. This person often sees an uneven ledge in the sidewalk but fails to step a little highter. I know this because I have done it. I blame it on my skinny feet...or maybe it's my cerebellum or something up there. Anyway clumsiness results in dents, scratches, and odd ground stuff imbedded in your phone. I just slipped on snow last night, as a matter of fact, and dropped my phone.
SOLUTION: Play the Wii.

3. You must be spacey. When a friend hands your phone to you saying, "Don't forget your phone," and you grab it and continue talking and talking and you have to blow your nose so you go and blow it and you need to talk some more so you talk and you have to leave so you leave, and you walk down their steps thinking about the content matter so intently that you walk past a huge snow bank and get into your car and drive home and start to set your alarm for the next morning but realize your phone is neither in your small, sideways pockets nor in your car, nor in your purse, nor on any shelves or in any drawyers or in any bags or on the ground, and you have to find your phone so you search and search and search, you may be spacey. (Try diagramming that sentence)
SOLUTION: Pat the pocket or place where your phone is to check that it's there.

4. If you're going to lose your phone, it must be on silent.
SOLUTION: At least put it on vibrate.

I conclude that phones in my possession don't stand a chance.

Joy

Her name is Brinley and her middle name is Joy. And though I'm completely awkward with handling her floppy head and too-small body, everything about her points to her middle name: Joy.
Brinley is the third generation of women to be given the middle name Joy. Mom has it. Kearsen has it. Now Brinley has it.
I watch Kearsen moving about the house, patting backs, changing diapers, picking up, putting down, warming bottles, rubbing tummies. She's a mother, and I think it has just become inherent within her to "know" what to do.
Last night I held Brinley for a while, and we had smile time...which was really really cute. She smiles with her tongue out or makes a "ohhhh" noise, her lips in a perfect circle. But this time in a matter of minutes her smile turned to a pout and she wriggled and squirmed. "What's she doing?" I asked. "Just pooping. Or maybe she's stretching," Kearsen said. So I repositioned her and her alert eyes focused on the TV.
I have no clue what I'm doing, and I hope you don't mind, I thought. But I don't think she cared. I let her clasp my fingers tightly and slobber on my sleeve. And that, such a simple moment, gave me the greatest Joy I could ask for.

Almost-love

I remember looking back at you, your face glowing in the 6am sunrise that summer of '04. One swig from your frozen Nalgene bottle, and you wiped off the excess water with your forearm, just as I believed farmers do. I remember those ever-endless rows of barley, swiping the sides of our hips, and I remember those four-wheeler rides and how you believed farming was living. And I remember that fat dog shaking off his drenched fur at the banks of the creek and your mom handing out cookies at coffee break. My friends laughed because you smiled at me, and maybe you winked. We couldn't be sure. I'd never been so tan before that summer, and I was sure it was the potato fields and the early morning hours of walking in the sun that transformed our pale complexions. You were so vivid, yet vague to me. Like the way you joked but kept your distance or the way you offered me rides home from church. Those summer nights crouched on an old wooden porch swing with a book in my hands, I often wondered what it would be like if you and I had lived in the fifties, there in Montana. Surely we'd have stayed around after high school, like our grandparents' generation.
But you still remained a perfect mystery, and better for it. We had growing up to do, far away from dusty dirt roads and walking miles through the fields. Far away from your old Dutch grandpa who told me once that it was scientifically proven that men are messier than women. Far away from eating our lunches at the top of the silo. Far away from silly assumptions and high school dreams.
I left for college in Iowa and we talked a few times. "Wish you would have gone to school here," I said to you years after that summer. "Me too," you said, and we left it at that.
So here's to the hours of conversations as we walked up and down the rows of barley and spuds, and here's to not being afraid to find a friend in you, and here's to time pushing us along like some bully, never allowing us to say what we wanted to say. And here's to an almost-love.

Friday Night

The ning and how students are learning to write for an audience
Writing for writing sake
Super Bowl (Go, Pack, Go)
Snow; the Blizzard of 2011.
Sucking the life and energy out of life with high school kids
Missing my phone--three long days; missing mom and dad because my phone is missing; missing the way it felt to text; missing the alarm sound on my phone. It's the longest relationship I've ever had aside from my first phone (4 years). *sigh
Importance of people
What girls really do when they get bored on snowdays,
Breathing the life and energy back into life with high school kids
What I learn from loud sophomores
Mean Girls
Stressing, eating, no exercise, no sleep, and no breakfast=bigger...oh, never mind
Literature stuff, like all the books I've been too busy to read
The look
Loving a show/movie so much that you've memorized it. When you watch it with someone else, you laugh extra hard and sigh extra loud because, by gum, they will love it too.

What do I do on a Friday night when my D-town friends are both on dates? Brainstorm possible blog topics and then watch Love Story. Don't judge.