Progress Report

It has officially been six weeks since my debut entry about Labor Day resolutions so I thought I ought to provide a progress report. I should tell you that I intended to complete a progress report after one month but I was performing so dismally that I procrastinated for two weeks in the hopes that I might scrape up something better to tell you. I haven’t. 

So far I have flossed my teeth 11 times. One of those times was because I had spinach in my teeth after dinner in Vegas and three of those times were because I had cilantro in my teeth after eating Chipotle burrito bowls for lunch at work. The circumstances, and the fact that I didn’t give attention to every tooth, should not minimize the fact that I flossed, though. If I were a smoker who didn’t smoke 11 cigarettes, you’d be really happy for me. Also, I’m aware that I need to be flossing, even if I’m not actually doing it and, having served as a teacher in our confused school system I can tell you that ambiguous nonsense like “awareness” counts when grading, and I should be held to the same standards as our school children, right?  I give myself a C .

I have read more books! You should be really proud of me on this one because it required the supplementary effort of showing my face at the library and paying a $50 fine for forgetting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in the drawer of my coffee table for a year and a half. Turns out that that when a book is missing that long they label it “stolen” (ouch, Library) and remove it from the inventory, so that my simple return became the chaos number in a Broadway show: Perky library personnel scratching their heads and furrowing their brows as they peer at each other’s computers and pass the book around, check the stacks and call the main librarian on her CELL PHONE (I wish I was kidding), all the while with me in the middle at the circulation desk, spinning and repeating the refrain, “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do to make this easier? I’m so sorry, just tell me what to pay and I’ll get out of your hair!” 

They figured it out, though (special thanks to the kind staff at Silver Lake Library) and I immediately borrowed five books, not realizing that they are only loaned out for two weeks at a time. I thought you got them for, like, a month? Anyhew, I read three of them, so that’s huge progress! Especially here in LA, where you’re regarded a scholar if you read anything other than a script. I give myself an A+!

I have not called someone I haven’t talked to in 6 months or more. Putting that in writing makes me feel like a really bad person. I will make that top priority, right after I take a walk and eat a snack. Classic F.

I also have not explored someplace new. I considered falling back on eating at a restaurant I’d never been to or stopping into a new boutique but those are technically instances of checking out someplace new, whereas I intended “exploring someplace new” to mean that I would spend the day in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with or take a road trip somewhere… basically, even though I haven’t completed this resolution, I should get pops for not cutting corners (reference details of corrupt grading justification in Paragraph 2). I give myself a D. 

That means that my overall Back-to-School/ Labor Day Resolution Grade is a C-. This gives my over-achieving-self mild arrhythmia. I’ve only gotten one C in my whole life and it was in high school Honors Chemistry. I was not good at Math or Science and had no business being in that class but my ego wanted the Honors credit and my Guidance Counselor approved it because Guidance Counselors at all-girls Catholic prep-schools know better than to mess with the ego of a hyper-competitive 16 year old, so I spent the entire year in a state of tortured confusion and only maintained a C because my teacher (I will not use her real name even though Itotallyrememberhernameit’sMrs.Danforth) told me during one of our tutoring sessions that she didn’t know how to help me and I cried and for the rest of the year she propped up my grade to account for her own failing, which was fine by me. The point is, no one can cook the books this time so sh*t just got REAL. I will update you of further progress this time next month! And by that I mean, in six weeks…