8. Come up with a mathmematical formula to express something you know/believe. (example: Long Saturday run + Frapppuncino = Happiness)

There isn't much calculus saturating my brain anymore. After three years of various levels of coursework I can recall terms and half-definitions but am unable to write a valid equation. At least, not one would properly represent the education I have received. At some point I shed my abilities to interpret limits and derivatives and even the quadratic equation.

I do distinctly remember something from Calculus I, however.
Okay, I remember a couple things.

Most of these things are not going to assist me in solving an equation or word problem, but they do offer support in a less tangible but, perhaps, a more practical way. I don't remember much of class because I wasn't there very often. I wasn't in school very often. The material was difficult and I didn't really apply myself and lots of kids in that class cheated but I never did because if I wanted a good grade I should have been more proactive about it, right? I did want a good grade though. I really did. I always cared even if it didn't seem like it.

Our teacher always cared too. Students made fun of her and the structure of the class didn't always seem fair, but she did care. She retired the year that I graduated high school and before she left she told me to email her, that "she always enjoys hearing from students". Despite my absence and lackluster grades, she did not think any less of me.

She would often say, "an iiiiiinfinite number of possibilities". She would emphasize the beginning of the word infinite and end the phrase with a slight smile on her face and I'm smiling just hearing it in my head now.

I believe in an infinite number of possibilities.

I just finished reading the book, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge. The author chose a random day, and on that day, ten random child deaths that resulted from guns, and he told the story of those children. Those ten lives, and even more that day, all reached similar conclusions. But that was not their end.

Each life, especially each child's life, has an infinite number of opportunities. The limit of a life approaches infinity, The line of a life can travel forever, throughout space and time and an incomprehensible amount of variables. From this, I know that potential exists.

In Younge's book, he cites statistics and studies that frame each event as a doomed occurrence. These lives were doomed, to end in heartache or poverty or prison. They were doomed by the economy, the government, and the history of oppression in America. They were doomed by legislation. They barely had a chance.

And I agree. I have seen how hard families in low income areas work and the little reward. I have observed how economic oppression has created a harrowing divide among populations America. But, I have also read with a child. I have heard the aspirations of classrooms. My heart has swelled at the generosity of a third grader.

I understand the way that outside events have a way of breaking the line and ushering a life in a certain direction, but I also believe in the potential that resides in all of us.

I'm going to study my calculus and make sure my notation is correct before officially posting an equation. Hopefully there's a math scholar hiding in me, somewhere. There's potential.

1: What is your favorite way to spend a lazy day?

My favorite way to spend a lazy day... I feel as if all my days are lazy.

My favorite lazy days must exclude work and include doing something... going to the movies perhaps. Yes- going to the movies, and dinner.

I could lay in bed or on the couch- not that I ever lay on the couch, but I could, perhaps, at some point. I could lay down with some coffee or cocoa and binge on Netflix or sleep or immerse myself in a book. But that's too lazy, and I spend so much of my life either horizontally or vertically oriented that my favorite days consist of a nice, in-between orientation.

Going to the movies is still a passive activity, but the act of going is enough to make me feel as if I'm filling my time in a meaningful way. And then there's going out to dinner: a step above ordering take-out but many steps below cooking for myself. This also ensures I won't drip any General Tsos sauce on my sheets. My sauce stained sheets are indicative of just how miserably lazy I normally am.

Managing Bubbie: A Review

I expected a book ridden with shock and sorrow, but which which elicits practiced gasps and tears. While stories of WWII and the Holocaust will never be overplayed or overrated, it does not change the fact that there are far too many, which is a tragedy. That being said, I firmly believe that each story is individual and important and all should be documented and carried in the memories of future generations. I began reading Managing Bubbie eager to sympathize with yet another poor family that was forced to bare an undeserved fate of discrimination and brutality and war.

While this book does remind us of the tragedies of the Holocaust, it also does something very different. It juxtaposes the modern life of a Holocaust survivor in America with her time spent evading the Nazi's in Germany. The reader witnesses how these strong souls have aged in a new country ridden with opportunities. The reader also realizes that while survivors may have endured Hell to live to a ripe old age, the current world we live in may not be so far advanced from the world that they escaped. The author comments on how it seems his grandmother still longs for the older days, when times were simple and at least people knew why they were killing other people.

The author achieves this remarkable comparison by interrupting his Grandmother's story of survival with snapshots of her current life as a retired woman in Florida. These snapshots reveal Bubbie as a "stereotypical Jewish grandmother" who is stubborn, constantly playing match-maker, and full of stories. It is during these tidbits of modern life that the author reflects on the type of woman his grandmother is, and this is what makes the reader appreciate the woman. We can all admire a woman who trekked through Europe to save her three children, but it is the woman who would rather hang pictures of her grandchildren in her living room instead of an authentic Picasso that we fall in love with.

The mixture of her fantastic true-life tale and relate-able family stories ties together a complete picture of how victims of the Holocaust assimilate with new countries and new generations. The author uses this to make the point that the greater courage is not seen in surviving the war, but continuing to fight even when the war is over. To move to a new country and secure a job and raise a family without ever looking back. To build a new life, starting from zero. To create a foundation for your children and grandchildren to succeed.

Some of the diction was "corny", for lack of a better word, and some conversations felt made-up and forced, but the author did an excellent job of relaying his grandmother's story in a way that felt light and optimistic and hopeful. He told a serious story covered with a thin film of humor, and I believe it did his Bubbie justice.

Following the novel is a series of pictures of the author's family which I found incredibly interesting and appropriate, especially considering one of the more striking thoughts by the author: "They say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' Maybe when you've lived such a horrible and wonderful life it's worth a lot more- like the marvel of knowing that one glimpse can make you cry when you need to remember or make you smile while you need to forget.". Much like pictures, this book causes the reader to both cry while remembering the past and smile during the moments in which the past is forgotten.

Managing Bubbie is written by Russel Lazega.

Calling All Ice-Pick Wielding Burglars

I've had a migraine since yesterday.

I've felt an intense and painful pressure, threatening to push my eyes out of my head, for the past 36 hours.

I wish my eyes would fall out. I wish an ice-pick wielding burglar would invade my apartment and jam him weapon into my temple. I wish my used the toilet instead of a litter box. I wish I could trust myself to drive to the drugstore for some liver destroying pain killers.

It's not that I want to die, not exactly, but feeling nothing seems like a better alternative to what I'm feeling now.

I asked my boyfriend to bash my face in. He said no.
Just when you think you know a person.

Countdown to 102

So I suck at the blogging thing.

But I can keep trying, right? Maybe when I'm 80 years old and bored of solitaire and my grandkids no longer visit me I will finally come around to writing a blog post everyday. For now, cheers, to the next 59 years of trying and practicing.

For some reason, 59 years doesn't sound like a very long time. I think the increasing average lifespan has thrown my idea of  "old" askew. You're 60 and retired? What are you going to do for the next 20 years? Someone dies at 70 and "they lived a long and fulfilled life", yet the same sentence is used in the obituary of a 90-year-old? Where is the significance of those twenty years? When a 20-year-old passes, did they not live a long and fulfilled life?

I had a neighbor, Joe, who was old. His skin sagged under his arms where his muscles used to swell. A crinkled tattoo, something from his Navy days, was always on display thanks to his daily attire of wife-beater tanks and sweatpants. He was a cranky fellow, but commanded a beautiful garden. He would tattle on us if we even stared at his flowers too long, telling our father "those kids are aiming to pick my flowers and ruin them". I never understood how someone so nasty could grow something so dainty, so precious.

Joe was old, and Joe had a mother. I never saw her. Her arm flaps never wagged us away from the house and I never heard her voice try to convince my father we kids were up to no good. She existed within the garden-guarded house. She existed in a single room in that house. She existed solely in a bed in a single room in that house. She existed in a bed and as a result of McDonald's french fries. That's all she would eat, every single day.

I didn't know any of this, though. Not until she died and she happened to die at the long-overdue age of 102. She was older than the Crayola factory. I distinctly remember this because the day she died was the day the Crayola factory celebrated its 100th birthday... oh, the things we celebrate in elementary school. I also distinctly remember Joe sitting on his porch with my father, drinking vodka, telling him all about the final years of his mother. The countdown to 102.

My boyfriend's grandmother just celebrated her 90th birthday. She'll catch up to Joe's mom in a mere 12 years. Is 12 years enough time to become fulfilled? Or should she be fulfilled already? At what age should you become fulfilled, or at what check-point in your life? Is everyone fulfilled, simply by dying? What do you do in the countdown to 102?

Eat McDonald's french fries, of course.

I'm not sure how to start a blog.

I think I've created dozens of usernames and passwords, keys to entering websites with blank spaces urging me to fill. Myspace, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. etc., but I don't believe I've ever done a very good job of filling those spaces. I've never been able to maintain those spaces.

Now that I'm three years into college I feel as if I've missed out on a lot. All the books I haven't read. All the things I haven't written. I can use Excel to analyze, benchmark, and compare a company's stocks, but I'm not confident in my ability to write a compelling essay about the implications of those findings.

Cheers to those with ambitions. Cheers to those who are self taught. This is my attempt at bettering myself in ways education doesn't seem to.