Home work

Can you guess the assignment?

Definition

So I’m putting together some vocabulary definitions for my ESL class. I get them from the Mac Dictionary because the meanings are fairly simple. Tonight I looked up “equipment”.

I don’t think I’ll be giving my students this.

(informal) used euphemistically to refer to a man’s penis and testicles.

Blood

I used to have a fear of vampires, blood sucking, soulless creatures of the night. I’m not sure when it began but I am sure I was quite young and watched a movie that if I had had more observant parents, they would not have let me see. I had nightmares as a child of vampires chasing me, cornering me in my bedroom and attacking.

It’s been a phobia that I’ve kept to myself most of my life after getting reactions like, do you think vampires are real? And then I saw some. In Boulder, Colorado. They were a pack of about 10 walking towards me. They seemed odd, out of place. They wore dark clothes of leather and ripped blue jeans and they were a range of ages – from 40’s to a young teenager.

I was scared but didn’t want to make it obvious by crossing to the other side of the street. So I continued to face my nightmare. I looked straight ahead as they surrounded and then passed by me. One of them laughed, a full laugh and swung his head back with his mouth open wide. He had fangs.

Later a Goth friend told me that there are people who actually want to be vampires and they get some kind of cosmetic surgery done to have fangs. This would explain why my demons were walking around in broad daylight, a big no-no for real vampires.
What I feared most about vampires was not that they would suck my blood and kill me (unless, of course, they wanted me to join them for eternity), but rather that they could have complete control over their victims. Not once in all those movies did I see anyone resist the seductive and manipulative mind control. The vamps always got people to let them in the house.

As I’ve grown older I fear real death more than that of the living dead. But I think the issues are the same. I don’t know if I will ever be able to accept that life, my life or anyone else’s, is out of our control.

I’ve been writing…

These are 32-word stories inspired by the theme of ‘dreams’. Not everything you read is true.

The subway station is empty. I put two quarters into the machine. A movie ticket pops out for Grease. I laugh and wonder how this will get me to wherever I’m going.

I have to finish the filing before I can leave but when I look at the stack of papers, it hasn’t gotten any smaller. I look at the clock, hours have passed.

I see my friend ahead of me. I call her name. She turns around and starts speaking to me in Japanese. I’m upset because I was the one who studied the language.

It’s me and my iguana, Iggy Guava. We are surrounded by darkness. How can I make you happy? I ask. Banana Squash, he says. I love to eat Banana Squash. I smile.

It’s like rolling down a hill. Floating in the ocean or swinging upside down. Laughing so hard you can’t breathe or turning your head upwards and letting the rain tickle your face.

We are several people standing around a table having a discussion. I can’t speak. The man standing next to me tells me, You can say anything you want. This is your dream.

Wedgehog

A person who greedily eats foods that have one thick end that tapers to a thin edge, namely cheese, pie and sometimes cake.

Sick

Ok, folks. I haven’t had a cold/flu/illness other than mental for at least 3 years. Until last Sunday – it hit me out of the blue from nowhere and I woke up Monday morning with glazed eyes and a swollen throat. This is day five and I feel better but am still talking funny.

What sucked most about being sick besides constantly having to blow my nose is the fact that all of my jobs are paid by the hour. No sick leave. It’s a very frustrating place to be in when you can’t really work but you have to because you can’t afford not to work. Better health care anyone? So although I missed all my classes this week, I did manage to get out of the house for 2 of my jobs but only after taking heavy duty cold medicine.

As I’m on my way to recovery, I am thinking to myself…

Are there any part-time jobs besides Starbucks that offer benefits?

I need to start eating my Caesar salads again because I think it was the raw garlic in the dressing that kept me healthy.

Where does all that nasty mucus come from or do I really want to know?

Am I ever going to make money with my ‘art’?

When will it start to get warm again or does it get warm up here?

Um, yeah, I could go on but really what I need is to get out of the house.

missing garbage can oakland

That was the internet search I did yesterday.

You see someone, and we know who – the man who takes cans out of our recycling bin, and we know why – a few days earlier his container broke and he left a pile of broken bottles, a thin pair of red pants and a t-shirt in the street in front of our place…he took our small garbage can and put his things inside of it.

As thrilled as we were that he got his stuff, lack of garbage can was not cool. I called the landlord and heard nothing back and last night was garbage night. I wasn’t sure what to do but I did want the chicken carcass that was in the garage out of the garage. So, I tried to find instructions on how to dump your trash sans bin.

I searched ‘missing garbage can oakland’. Any guesses on what came up? How about a hint – they had nothing to do with helping me empty the trash… Ok, I’ll tell you.

Articles about missing bodies found in garbage cans. Thankfully none were about Oakland, but still. This dumping of the human body into a trash bin freaks me out as much as the thought of the murder. People are f-ed up.