To whome it may concern

Yes, I realize that blogs have been better kept up by trained monkeys. In fairness, I have moved, brought the child I brought into the world to her first day (and all subsequent ones) of kindergarten. I have cut the cascading curls from my mid back, and now have a rather disgraceful mop of wakes that stop promptly before the chin-- not short enough to keep under a hat, not long enough to keep in a pony tail. I have seen an abysmal breakup, a tooth extraction, the tragic loss of my favorite pair of black heels, the ones with the round toe and ribbon cuff.

All and all, it has been a hard year.

There has been one upside, however: My pending return to the scholastic world. Yes, at 30 years of age I will be purchasing a backpack, writing papers, walking with boys to class. I want to feel enthusiastic about it, but all I can think when thinking about it for more than 20 minute chunks of time is "wow-- this is going to be sooo lame".

Which of course I realize to be what is actually lame.

One of my concerns (besides turning in papers on existentialism that have been drawn on in crayola and perhaps mommies lipstick if she feels like mixing mediums) is how I can get my own schoolwork done after said small artist has gone to bed... which is about what time my downstairs neighbor likes to let her mullet down and crank the 'Cops' or perhaps The Doors Greatest Hits on repeat. At first, I used to disturb her by pounding on the floor by midnight for some reason, but don't you worry-- she's since figured out that she can simply turn the volume up higher so as not to be distracted by my bizarre thumps and stomps and "Hey, shut the fuck up!" And that's a relief, I would hate to be a bad neighbor, but I'm thinking if I want to get papers done, I will need to cut the power supply to our home and do it by candle light at least a dozen or so times in the next few years.

And no, I don't need anyone to let me know how very lame that is.