My Cardboard Balcony

Tonight's introspection is being typed up a little earlier than most Fridays. Hell, usually I'm scraping close to midnight with these things. But tonight is different - mostly because I need to be in bed by, at the latest, 10:00. I will be driving up to Windsor in order to take all four English subtests of the CSET. Obviously, the mistake here was taking them all in the same day. This was clearly done two months back because I thought I would be rushing to get teaching credential applications in. This ultimately did not end up happening, but I kept the CSET on the date I got it for because, honestly, the next time scheduled was pretty far off. So, instead of taking maybe two subtests for one day, I'm taking all four. I'm obviously privy to making mistakes. Dropping the ball, stepping in it, and, to put it more bluntly, fucking up are fairly common in my life. In this case, I waited until a week before the test before actually looking at what I had to study. I guess,...

How Jimmy the Driver Became Jimmy the Rat by Belinda Roddie It was midnight outside the tiny Italian restaurant, and Jimmy decided to light a cigarette as he parked the fancy black Mercedes comfortably in three parking spaces. Rolling the windows down, he belched out smoke in dark gray plumes in the foggy air, the cold of San Francisco creeping into the seats and chilling his shoulders hidden beneath his jacket. At this rate, Madison wouldn't be out for another half hour, but that was to be expected. Jimmy prided himself on his ability to puff out smoke rings, but if there was one thing that he was particularly bad at, it was driving. Therefore, it was amazing that he had a job as a driver to begin with. He failed at all the rudimentary steps of proper road etiquette:   He screamed at passerby, refused to use his blinkers, and oftentimes ran lights because he claimed the system was just trying to fuck with him.   On occasion he would be pulled over, but he managed to avo...

I like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly. Also, I like ice cream. But I especially like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly, even as you're eating ice cream. You get mint chip all the time, a staple in that little corner shop between the gas station and the thrift store. And the green dairy just stains your teeth, and the chocolate speckles your gums perfectly, as you grin with a mouthful of sugar cone.