lent me your ears

or...
neither a borrower not a lenter be.
belly button lent.
lent for yourselves!
return to lenter, address unknown.
memories were lent for this.
they lent that-a-way!
lent me a tenor.
could you give me a lent?
lent-up anxiety.
i can't pay the lent.

yes yes yes, i am a complete fan of the puns. send me more if they pop into your head, and i promise to laugh appropriately until i snort. speaking of which, this seems to be a trait i picked up from vee and rhiannon. perhaps it isn't only regional accents that rub off on a person when you're in a group.

so you're all waiting to see what my secular lent brings this year, aren't you? it's almost as good as seeing what liz ate for breakfast, i know. as predicted, it's the soda ban until easter. i told a couple of the kids about it, and guess what? they said it really isn't that hard to do after the first week or so. some of them have pretty much given up soda, and these are teenagers! if the adolescent set can go without the pepper, then surely i can do it for a while. hopefully they can be a good influence on me. see now, peer pressure doesn't have to be a bad thing all the time. it's what is getting me through to my degree, after all.

in all honesty, this whole secular lent thing has become a great joy. i'm not religious in the least, so it's sort of like making a new year's resolution, but with a light at the end of the tunnel. in thinking on it, i suppose i could pick any time of the year to take on a challenge like this. it's just easier to do it at a time when there are people out there to commiserate with on giving up something. the ritual part of it is comforting, though. and i've been told that when you publicly declare a goal, you're more likely to stick to the means that will get you to that goal. maybe that's the whole trick. it's been an unconscious habit of mine for years to play it this way. i tend to be very close to the vest on a project until i decide for sure that i want to do it. i mean, if i actually tell people that i want to get something done, then i have some responsibility to follow through and try. what a fucking bummer that can be.

i'm not a fan of being responsible. in general i try to be as lazy as i possibly can while making sure to wash my face every day. outward appearances may speak to the contrary, but at heart i am a total slug who would gladly spend a great deal of time lolling about munching on cheese and crackers while reading trivia books and flipping through trashy magazines. the only reason my schedule stays busy is to get me out of the house. people need a reason to be, a purpose in life. my purpose is to get out of bed and socialize in real life with other people. if i ever lose that, you'll have to use a crane to get me out of here.

but then i could be featured on one of those discovery channel medical mystery shows, telling how it took a team of people to wedge me out of the bed... after it collapsed under a thousand pounds. they would dig me out of a pile of pizza boxes and periodicals. i would meet all sorts of new and interesting production assistants and doctors and go on to be the inspirational before/after story of the year. my story would live on in reruns night after night as you saw me breaking down in tears and admitting i need human contact to sustain my life. my goodness, who can commit to that amount of time just to be edited improperly later on for a thirty minute cable show? that would take way too much work. better to just go on getting up every day. see, that's how my particular brand of laziness works.


guilty pleasure movies for one and all:
bring it on
national treasure
doomsday
spy kids
strictly ballroom