The Post

Dear Sweet Charles,

Welcome to this crazy place we call Earth. You're perfect and adorable and I promise to do everything I can to keep you that way for as long as possible. You're only 5 days old but I can tell you're a Long through and through. You have dark dramatic eyebrows, are the Alpha Male of the NICU, have charmed all the nurses, eat like a Viking preemie, don't over fuss at all, and can recognize and love your mommy and daddy like none else.

Loving you more than life,
Auntie E

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Dear Obnoxious State of Utah,

I am always leery coming here. I get stir crazy after a few days but your amazing scenery and super low gas prices keep me interested. Coming here was a bit of a necessity with all the recent medical fireworks resulting in a new person but did you have to require the sacrifice of my wallet to see my nephew?! I mean really, I'm pretty dang broke as it is being unemployed and such. Now you have to complicate my life with keeping me here sans drivers license, cash, temple recommend or social security card??? Really - really. Is this kind of harassment necessary? I don't think so. I'd really like to call a truce with you you know. Its exhausting thinking so poorly of some place like I do of you but you're hardly giving me reason to do otherwise. If it wasn't for the people that I love living here I'd sharpe you RIGHT off my map!

not your friend,
~Ms. Long

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Dear T-Mobile,

I'm leaving you as soon as I see an opening. You've let me down once too often and at the least opportune times. Your phones are not cool, current, or functional most of the time. You still use SIM cards in a PSP world. Why don't we just use two flags and a flashlight for Pete's sake??! You're fired, that's just the long and short of it and do both of us a favor and do not use me as a reference.

barely keeping my middle finger to myself,
~ Ms. Long (but you can call me Ms. Thang)

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Dear Big Sur,

I am hopelessly and irrevocably in love with you. I know that this comes and a rather inopportune time seeing how our reckless state legislature can't manage to find their ass with two hands and a floodlight much less budget enough money to make sure that the State Parks stay open for the world to know the joy that is you. I'm embarrassed and shocked on their behalf because the world should see and sing your beauty. I will never be the same after seeing you, smelling you, feeling the sunshine that only you seem to be able to produce. Life is simpler in your company and I feel more alive. You will never be rid of me. I will be back as often as my cattywampus life allows me to be.

Yours ever after,
Liz


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Dear Bad Dreams,

You're a new addition to the three ring circus that I've come to refer to as "my life". I don't know if you're a derivative of the surprisingly violent anime my brother said I "had" to watch but I don't enjoy watching and hearing my friend's necks crack, break, and watching them die. I'm sure my friend Brett would not enjoy the experience either so lets just have a parting of ways right now. I haven't seen someone die in a dream and Brett would never go gallivanting around on construction equipment and let himself be mangled by said equipment. Either way just please see yourself out. I have quite enough to worry about and I don't want to wake up screaming ever again.

waving goodbye,
~e

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Dear Michael Jackson,

Where to begin...

I am so so so sorry that your life had the finish it did. You are better than that and you left behind some adorable children that truly love you. It's just not OK. It's true you had a tragic life and operated in a paradigm that was pretty far removed from the rest of us. No one really understood you much, including yourself I think. I really enjoyed the music you gave me though. Its the soundtrack for a good portion of my life and I remember being honestly inspired by "Man in the Mirror" and honestly horrified by "Thriller". I still can't watch it without flinching. You did some truly amazing things and were a one of a kind. I'm sorry it ended the way it did.

respectfully,
~e

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Dear Elizabeth,

Will you PLEASE get married soon to someone who has a modicum of stamina and virility. I'm dying of boredom over here and you don't exactly age backwards. Get to work woman!

Impatiently,
Your uterus

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Dear Wallet,

I miss you. Please come back to me soon.

still weepy,
~e

Missing the Forest AND the Trees

Dear Thanksgiving,

I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you. I know that half of the world and most of the stores therein are already decked out with ornaments, red and green tinsel, and the signs and tents are up for the tree lots, and all just minutes after Halloween, but I have not forgotten about you.

You're my favorite holiday and always have been.

I don't know if I just like to cook, like to feed people, like to be fed, or if my favorite thing in the known universe is being in a spice filled room with people I love, but you are it. I can't help but get happy warm fuzzies at the thought of you.

How can I begin to apologise for Corporate America's insensitivity? I know you're not the most lucrative holiday but President Lincoln wasn't too worried about that when he invented you. He just wanted a war torn country to sit down for a good meal and remember the things that made life worth living, just for a day. I suppose it was the next best thing to teaching everyone yoga but that would have been difficult in those corsets anyway, so he told an ancestral and patriotic story instead. I don't mind that its pretty much made up. It still makes me happy, gives me two days off of school when I most desperately need it, left overs for a week and a few glorious hours with people I love.

You're the real deal Thanksgiving! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'll keep preaching the Thanksgiving gospel and you keep on keeping on.

Your devoted friend,
~Lizzie

New levels of Sleepless

(and not the Seattle kind)

Dear frustratingly sadistic Instructor of English Grammar that should really have been the practicing Russian Nazi you are and whose class I had the gross misfortune of registering for,

Firstly, welcome to the country. I'm sure someone is glad you're here. However, today, right now, I cannot say that its me.

I understand that you've been dealt a hard deck. Its hard to be 5' 1" anywhere in the 1st world. Its also hard to be a woman in academia. And I cannot even imagine what moved you to get a PhD in English Grammar and Rhetoric when you were a linguistics exchange student from Moscow. Its a challenge I'm sure. I'm also sure that you have a deep love for ridiculous complexities like most of your countrymen do. Its loaned itself to many amazing novels and poetry and ballet dancers. I can't imagine what else would have led you to Grammar. It's its own painfully tedious language. Its a series of ridiculous and ridged guidelines inside a TOTALLY subjective universe. There is no absolute anywhere. Its a horrible conundrum for anybody native speakers included.

I don't know which of the Fates I pissed off enough to have landed you as an instructor at this really sensitive time for me. Probably Clotho. You and your class are the one thing that is standing between me and graduation and grad school. If I don't pass your class I don't graduate. If I don't get an A in your class I don't get into grad school. And you only let us take two tests that are each worth 35% of our grade??!! So if the first is a "learning opportunity" there is NO hope at redemption. None. None at all. How is that effective instruction?

So pretty much the stress of your class ruining my life and making me doubt any and all of my academic potential and value as a person in general. And not in the hyperbolic sense either. I am loosing sleep and emotionally destabilizing because of you class and methodologies. I'm not a stranger to challenges. My life has been a string of them. I have taught myself to read with dyslexia. I have sung in front of 1000's of people on a few minutes notice. I have played tennis matches with torn cartilage in my knee and blisters that went through 5 layers of skin and won. I have done some hard things in my life. I have learned languages within a matter of months (I had a lot of help on that one though)! I have never broken down in tears during an exam for sheer frustration or gone into the exam shaking with nervousness. But I did today and all within 15 minutes of each other. I feel like an overacting character in a bad soap opera but it's the truth. I believe its possible for Grammar to be accessible, to be learnable. People have done it for centuries. But in your class I feel like I'm studying Greek mixed with Klingon.

Your midterm that I took today realized every possible insecurity I've ever had. I feel like I should just apply for that good paying Waste Management job and let you consider your job done.

I have studied more for this class that I have the entirety of the rest of my college career. And I was studying microbiology for a good while, but none of it is making sense. I can't even see why it should be important to me. AND I'M A WRITER! This is why I am loosing sleep and faith in myself.

Do you understand that this isn't a game?

That these are people's lives that you're toying with with?

Do you get that your past perfect progressive adverbial clauses and the derivational morphemes exclusive to attributive adjectives in the Closed Class and all other impossible circumlocutory questions demanding short answer essays, examples, and argumentative evidence are sadistic?

And the next question is basically the same one as before but slightly different so that puts me into a slight panic attack wondering if I didn't understand the first one and makes me doubt everything I just said and will say later?

And 8 other pages of the same to get through?

And only having 50 minutes to do it?

And if I don't finish and finish well then I'm damned?

Do you get that?

Do you even care?

Do you know that answering a questions about jargon with string of other jargon that we don't even have a clue about understanding won't help? We don't stand in awe of your knowledge, we loathe the fact that you are our teacher. When the average class performance is below 40% in an upper division core class at a University that should tell you something. We're not casual students and we're not dumb, but we are lost. Very very very lost and running out of patience and time.

I suppose its too late now. The wheels are in motion. I'll get that Trash Lady or Meter Maid application ready right now.

Thank you for telling me to have a good weekend when I turned in my test though. I believe you truly meant it and perhaps felt a spot of sympathy for me if you saw my reluctantly leaking eyes.

Please disregard the fact that there are tear stains on this letter as well. I couldn't help it reliving the last few hours. I apologise for my lack of composure.

Traumatized and completely discouraged,
Liz

Acme Moments

Dear dead possum in the road with the two tire tracks,

What on earth did you do to deserve such a Looney Toons fate? I mean, your very existence is an insult to refined sensibilities everywhere, but your end is pretty much perfect. You are a disturbingly engorged rodent that serves little use in the universe aside of giving us all something to loathe. Oh sure you have some use aside of consuming oxygen -you provide a home for fleas and parasites and are a decorated bastion of the garbage pile. I'm sure you were top of your class at Old Lady Scaring 101 and Skulking 325 but as you saw those two speeding pieces of heavenly rubber we are not pleased and we do not recognize your Magna Cum Laude in Creepiness and Pestilence.

disgusted and loathing you,

Ms. E. Long

Dear driver who left perfectly centered tire tracks on the possum in the road,

Thank you.

Thank you so much for making me laugh like a laughing person at a laughing convention on my lunch today.

Thank you for not being intimidated by the horrible hiss or ratton tail of Mr. Ugly-Possum man.

Thank you for keeping your focus when your headlights hit those creepy iridescent eyes and thank you for having perfect aim.

The world is a better place today because of you.

admiringly yours,

~Liz

Inventory

Dear Mr. Lethargy,

Now I know we haven't been on speaking terms for a while. That's mostly my fault. It usually is when communication tapers off . But I have to be honest, your ever-looming presence isn't exactly what I would describe as welcome or appreciated. Frankly, its been hard not to declare you my nemesis. I have already declared my nemesis to be Purse-Dog Girls and I will not renege on that title. They offend me far more than you do - but you are up there with them. All being some of the most unwelcome visitors in my life. I am not happy with you being around so much. Not happy at all.

See Lethy-boy ---- I have a lot of stuff to get through. They're all on different categorized and prioritized lists of "Want to Do" and "Need to Do" and "Am Responsible for" and "Begrudgingly said Yes to" "Enthusiastically Said Yes To" "Have the God-Given Opportunity To Do" etc. They're labeled and color coded and my schedule is more like a simple set of deadlines now a days. I have goals. I have a system and a plan and a time table for all of it but whenever I find myself in your company it all gets complicated. Horribly complicated.

And you're getting sneaky too - you're coming at me in much different regalia than you used to. You have learned that I like to be productive. Its kind of hard wired into you if you've worked for Franklin Covey and have grown up in my family. So you disguise yourself as something that's busy - and as I am learning, but not productive. They often look like the same thing, busyness and productivity, sometimes they even feel like it but rarely ever produce the same results or emotional satisfaction. Its like frosting in celery shape. You think you're doing something good for you but you end up farther back from where you started. Its just horrible. And whats more is that you're still pretty charming and usually pretty funny but far from the mark that I want to hit.

That's just low man. Wiley and wrong if I were to title the condition. If we can't be honest with each other Lethy then I'm afraid we really are going to have to part ways. Yeah I mean it. Don't scoff! I'm talking here. I'm thinking permanently. Like move you to South Africa or The Iraq. I might even call my cousins Vinny and Guido (not Sarducci) to drive home the point. I'm quickly approaching DONE status. And there really is no going back after that. When I say I'm done - I mean it. Its a phrase I store in the rarely used glass case you need a key to get into. I keep it in there with "I'm in love with you" and "that's impossible" and "video games sound fun".

See - I've been thinking. And not just considering or understanding or processing - I've been thinking and I may be a slow learner, but when I finally get it, it never goes away and I get it. I finally understand that you (in whatever guise you choose that day - YouTube, shopping, toothaches, furniture rearranging, or low iron levels) is the big obstacle keeping me from what I really want and who I really want to be and what I want to be able to offer the world.

You should know by now Lethy! We've known each other a long time now. Probably since my early college days. You should know that I have a finishing complex. I have to see a finished product to feel satisfied about something. I have reserves of strength that I'm not completely aware of and that surprise me a lot. And I have great things I've committed to do in my allotted time and I just don't have any more of it to spare for you. For the first time in a long time I hear ticking. It doesn't scare me, it just reminds me. Reminds me of the lists and how you're not a true friend. You never were. You make me laugh sometimes and even give me stories to tell but you're not the person I'd call if my car breaks down or if the tear ducts won't stop leaking. And if I couldn't call you for that why would I call you at all? I shouldn't and I'm not going to. Not anymore.

So what do you have to say? Huh? What accounting can you possibly have for yourself? I'd venture none. So this is it man - I want my key back and my U2 CD - you could never truly appreciate them anyway.