Summertime

It’s that special time of year when my nose becomes remarkably faucet-like, and instead of doing its job, and just politely — and rather delicately — breathing, like a normal nose, it’s dumping out large rivers of clear snot everywhere, which is really becoming quite annoying. I can’t even brush my teeth without fear that a tiny clear ball of mucus will suddenly be poised for a speedy exit, and suddenly I’m forced to decide: spit or blow, SPIT OR BLOW OH MY GOD BLOW BLOW BLOW. I think my favorite part of the whole thing — really, my absolute, hands-down favorite thing ever — is when I get out of the shower and conveniently forget that I am a walking allergy machine, and rub my towel all over my face, including my snotty-ass nose, spreading clean lines of snot all over my face and hair. I love that. And, just in case there was any doubt, I do then get back in the shower and re-wash everything, because, oh yes!, I’ve snotted myself all up in this piece, and snot isn’t a good look.

This reminds me, rather inappropriately, of that terrible time in eighth grade when I forced myself to go to school with a raging cold, and I sneezed, covering my mouth with my hand, but failing, in my feverish fog, to prevent myself from grabbing a nice hunk of hair and snotting right into my hair, and apparently I was too foggy to even notice the large hunk of mucus dangling from my golden tresses. That was cool. What was even cooler was that a classmate pointed it out to me. And ah, I went home sick a short time after.

So! As long as I get through this without publicly snotting myself, I think we’re okay, is what I’m saying.

Interestingly, at least for me, my job has entered a universe of … massively increased responsibility, like a hundred fold, so the next four weeks should be really exciting and by “exciting” I mean, it should kind of be like jumping out of a plane and just hoping that I got the parachute on right. Because no no! I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed enough already, thanks! But truthfully, it’s a nice distraction. At least I’m saying that now, before the shit actually hits the fan, ha ha. HA HA.

::crumples into a maniacal heap of laughter::

In truly exciting, weather-related news, I can say with total accuracy that it is moist outside, as in, it actually feels wet, even when it’s not raining. I stepped outside to talk to a colleague, and within seconds, I was … well, I was moist, look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to put it. It’s humid! Dangerously humid!

Speaking of humid, and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this something in the range of 800 times before, but really, the whole pronunciation of humid as YOO-mid really perplexes me, as does the word huge as YOO-ge. I mean, really, while this might be correct, there’s just something about it that doesn’t sit well with me. I imagine that these are the same people who pronounce white, “HWA-ite,” which mildly grates my cheese even though look, I know it’s right, it’s just that honestly, there is subtlety and then there is HWA-ITE and HWA-ALE.

Incidentally, one of the most public perpetrators of this is Betty White, you know, being a HWA-ITE and all. And as if my love for Betty White wasn’t enough (because oh, I love all of the Golden Girls equally), my beloved father is a YOOGE HWA-ITER, and would totally say YOOMID.

Now, bear in mind, I’m not paragon of pronunciation, with frou-frou and clandestine and … well, let’s just say that I know full well that Jurgen Nation is pronounced “YURR-gen”, and yet there I am to myself, every time “JERGEN!” But I’m not sure that counts, because that one I really do know, because my first Cabbage Patch kid was German, and his name was, fittingly, Hans Jurgen. I just … well, I just apparently choose instead to flout the gentle rules of the English language and go with some vague, arbitrary phonetics. You have complete free reign to mock me and tell me how ridiculous I am with my fear of yoogely annoying hwa-ite-hot yoomidity.

Happy Thursday! Dear sweet baby Jane, is it Saturday yet?

*The Sundays.

22 comments August 8th, 2007