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The Grinch At The End of This Story

Once upon a time, someone I know was having a very bad day. In fact, it had been a rotten week, and a rotten month, and come to think of it, when had anything ever really been a good at all?! He couldn’t remember. And so, because holidays can illuminate our prickly branches, and because the opportunity was sitting right there amongst the branches like a shiny wrapped present for the taking, my friend threw the Christmas tree, who for the record, was not being much help, down a flight of stairs. Throwing the tree, stubborn as it was, didn’t fix anything, in fact, it broke more things, including the fragile ornaments shaped like children’s hearts, but for all of three seconds, my friend was focused on something other than his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad life.  For the rest of the season however, he was secretly known as The Grinch.  What can one say?  CindyLoo Who calls it like she sees it.  She hasn’t learned nuance, yet.  But they are only alike to a p...

whitney

I woke up with a name clearly formed in my head: Whitney Oh, I think I remember... wasn't the girl who sat behind me in Pre-Algebra named Whitney? Whitney Bowles... Bolles? I am picturing her vaguely but perhaps she is an amalgamation of the many faces that never solidified into friendships throughout my ever-changing educational landscape. Perpetual new kid didn't lend itself to perpetual friendships, at least, not before social media came along to shrink the world a bit. "I will have to try to look her up when I get a second. I wonder how she's doing and if everything is okay. I wonder why she's in my head". Six hours and a lot of busy-ness passed by before the memory of the lodged name reoccurred to me. I had been busy packing suitcases for our short trip to lake country. 'Oh yeah, I was supposed to look her up. I'll get right on that...just as soon as I get the car loaded' Four hours of driving later, I had still not typed her name into a searc...

light and proselyte

The book sat in front of me as I maneuvered between phone and computer screens. Seven spreadsheets were open in individual tabs and I moved information from sheet to sheet, trying to whittle the seven down to two coherent reports. One group would be accepted into a pilot program, the other would be politely informed that we'd had far more applicants than we planned to accommodate.  If irony exists, it may well be found in this remaining detail: the pilot program was for people who feel rejected. My job now was to reject the rejects as well as to reject all notions of rejection. .  Besides, last night had been the kind that turned into This Morning without warning- one or two quick tasks had turned into hours of fine tuning.  And so, I had made the coffee extra strong this morning I found a sliver of resolve in the bottom of my third cup of tar. I would finish these reports and re-start my day anew after a shower.  The phone rang as I scavenged the second floor for a ...