All day I've been longing to be home, to be off the clock, to be in my peaceful disorderly abode surrounded by my things and the menagerie of strange furry creatures who live with me. Or with whom I live, more like. And now I'm all cranky.

Things that annoy me:

the grammar police

Really I'm going to stop the list there because I think I'm plenty annoyed by this segment of the internet world to say a few words. Begin your sentences with And or But! It ain't bad grammar, if that's what you're worried about. And hell if it ain't better than saying, "Therefore" and "Additionally." Split your stupid infinitives! End your bloody sentences with a preposition! English has been horseshoed into a goofified Latinate grammar system that just don't fit. And also--who cares? Bend the language to fit your own sensibility and to hell with the stinking rules. But if you are all het up about them rules, I suggest you look 'em up before correcting (please role your double r in that word) the rest of everybody.

Except I do still get annoyed by emoticons and by all the lols and rofls and by nobody willing to capitalize and by not proofreading and by uninteresting or uninspired writing.

So, you know, I'm full of shit. As usual. But seeing people tut tut or tsk tsk about split infinitives or people using I instead of me just gets my hackles up. Erudition does not come from following the rules, especially the wrong rules whose adherents are surely the priggiest prigs in the whole prig town.

Plus I like it when people talk like where they're actually from. I'm not from anywhere in particular, central Florida being a rather rootless sort of place and coming like I do from rather rootless people, but I pretend like I'm from the south. Because I like how people talk here.

Let's start a new list. A list of things I like.

sharp #2 pencils--I've always got one to chew on and I like how they whisper across a piece of paper and I like that you can erase

lamps at night

driving home after a long day when my damned radio works

riding my bike down a hill, turning my head and listening to that wind whistling

tall uncut grass

Frances's voice

brother Shawn tiptoeing up to the bowling lane, brother Shawn trying not laugh every second of the day

cataloging books

fat momma spiders

sewing signatures into a book

fresh ground coffee that still has hunks of coffee bean in it

Miss Blue's beeswax smell

thunderstorms

getting my ass whupped by the natural world

power outages

books that have been written in and dogeared and read

homemade anything: bread, music, clothes, love

dust and dirt and other signs of entropy

the very first day of fall, when you wake up and the air is crisp and you know it'll stay like that

peaches and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries and apples and oranges and all the fruits in the earth's plentiful garden

my pop's dark brown strong and whole hand holding onto my mumma's pale freckled twisted hand

sleeping outside and waking up just before the day breaks, allicayay allicayay