A smidge overwhelmed

I really need to find a way to coerce ... er ... trick ... er ... convince my boyfriend to help out with winter holiday stuff. So far, I've hung lights, put up decorations, ordered and wrapped a zillion gifts, designed a Christmas card photo insert and printed out addressed envelopes. He has ... uh ... he definitely looked at the photo insert. After I asked. And he ordered a couple of presents online. Which I'll probably wrap. Oh, and he came with me to grab fun Christmas food at Trader Joes and Costco.

I still need to write in, stuff, stamp, and send the cards. Wrap more gifts. Burn and wrap the annual holiday CD. Organize like the Dickens for our impending two week trip. Etc.

His contributions are all helpful and appreciated, but I can't help but want a little more assistance. I mean, I'm working 5 billion jobs and I feel like my personal to-do list is just growing and growing and growing ...

Mostly I just wish I didn't have to initiate it all. It feels like any failure on my part to make a concerted effort to make Christmas happen will result in my most favorite-est of holiday seasons passing me by. Thank goodness I'm going up to my parents' place, so I can sit back and enjoy other peoples' holiday efforts for a little while.

Of course, no one is making me do extra work for the holidays. I just really, really enjoy getting cards and looking at purdy decorations. I figure I should put some effort into making this time of year nice for other people too.

Intellectual Inferiority and Unadulterated Glee

I've always been convinced that I am secretly a moron. I'm sure some would agree. There is proof to the contrary - decent grades, published writing, etc., but I'm still worried that I'm infinitely dumber than I think I am. Worse - that others judge me for it. I used to fear the days in high school when I'd have to hand over my essays to someone for peer reviews. On some level I intentionally brought it on myself. I wrote ridiculous things, absurd things - I once compared the plight of Ethan Frome to a doughnut that fell off of the teacher's desk right as we began the assignment. By refusing to be serious about an assignment, I could write off failure as no big deal.

It was particularly awful when I was partnered with a friend for the reviews. Friends are especially well-equipped to judge me. Negatively. I remember wincing as I saw them pick up their pen to scribble a note on the crisp white pages. I always hoped to get back something that was still pristine, devoid of any marks that would be sure to tell me I was a douche-tastic bottom-dwelling turd, unqualified to clean a toilet a the local Perkins. (Which, coincidentally, I did for awhile. On that note, men are completely disgusting. You would not believe the kinds of things they leave in urinals. Anyway...) By the time my essays were finally handed back to me, the scribbling was invariably positive, but I was still convinced the grader actually felt otherwise. I was sure they were secretly judging me. Like those ladies at church with the raised, over plucked, drawn-in orange eyebrows, poodle perms and holiday sweaters. The ones who always seemed to have three vapid children with glazed over eyes and a Labrador. Or a poodle. To match the hair, I assume.

Luckily, I don't *always* feel this way. Sometimes the world shows me that there are in fact people dumber than myself. Sometimes the world hands me a golden nugget of comedic goodness that breaks through the gloom and monotony of daily life with the white hot passion of one thousand burning suns. For me, last night was one of those times.

I should preface this by mentioning that I am still in school. I take the majority of my classes online, through a brick and mortar college that happens to have an online program attached to it. I can't say I love all of the students - they are the same people from which I intended to escape when I left* Montana for greener pastures. I'm also displeased with the quality of the education I'm paying precious shoe money for, mainly because I feel neither intellectually challenged nor engaged. I worry that I'm not learning anything.

Here is the nugget of glory that made me first smirk, then snort, then belly laugh in a sort of seizure of snorting, giggling, chuckling, tears and that silent laughter where you just shake and make zero sound. My boyfriend probably thought I was dying.

Last night a classmate said:

"I really had a hard time thinking about what 'issue' is the 'most pressing in the world.' But to get this out there - 'world' to me is the entire planet."

Oh. My. God.

Really?

Derek Zoolander goes to my school.





*ran screaming from