Tonight has been pretty nostalgic, thanks to the task of editing on of Cabana Boy’s aquiescence bias papers. Twenty pages of statistical data that comes pretty damn close to looking like, well, Dutch to me, but if I know anything, I know grammar (English grammar and this was in English, if you couldn’t glean that from the context…glean….good word….gleeeaaan). I came home after delivering my grandpa’s electric razor to him in the hospital (infected spider bite…and I’m asking all these super know-it-all questions like I have a real clue from watching Venom ER on Animal Planet and while no one has yet to answer them, I sincerely doubt a black widow or brown recluse hitched its way here in a box of foodstuffs and snuck its way into my grandpa’s house unnoticed, so the sparkly husk of knowledge that I can fake is probably useless anyway) and saw the oh-so-fun message that, if I had the time (of course I have the time Jackass! I had no life before we were together, what the hell makes you think I’d suddenly run off and get one now?), could I please take a look at his aquiescence article. I proof read his papers relatively often and I don’t mind at all. My inner dork shudders with anticipation at the opportunity to slash and burn a poorly written sentence. My Robert E. Cook bred sense of editorial prowess practically salivates at the fresh, juicy meat of a dangling participle. My Bob the Builder instinct sees a misspelled word and when the child choir chants :Can we fix it? I heartily respond: Hell yeah we can!

So I done strapped on my edit gear (translation: took my contacts out cause my allergies were drying them out, tied my hair back cause it’s still an oven in Pittsburgh after sunset, and shed my hoodie because I’m a body conscious asshole that does indeed wear a hoodie in 80 degree weather-at least until I feel light headed) and got to work…on all 15 pages of text (prior to this the average paper was like, 3-7 pages).

About two pages in I got distracted, cut and shaped my nails and came back. That’s when I decided to focus. I muted Lifetime Television, started playing one of my favorite albums, and really got down to the dirty work. And y’know what? I really liked it. Not only did part of me feel sort of super cool like one of those scenes from a hit tv show where the female lead detective/investigator/scientist type is researching the salvation of the world as we know it, but it was also very gratifying to feel like I was, I don’t know, actually doing something. I realize that what I do has a purpose and that I am important to the kids as much as they are important to me, but you have to understand. In the daycare world, especially with kids 3 and younger, things never really solidify. Every day is a meandering through the hours, preventing excessive amounts of chaos, just trying to have the daily routine go relatively smoothly. An art project? The kids scribbles with three colored pencils for about a minute, yells, “I’m done!” and dashes off to snatch a matchbox car away from another kid. Highlights of the day may be someone going pee pee in the potty or another person not throwing a tantrum when dad drops her off in the morning.
With this editing stuff, I feel like an adult with a purpose to finish something. To polish it off and to help it go somewhere. I feel like I used to back in the day, when I was 18 and ambitious and striding towards some bigger, cooler, more adult thing. In my current world of adulthood, the one where I’m always sort of drifting around living from check to check, changing my plans bi-yearly, I think I’m less secure than I was when I was 18. I am certainly working to change my current state of affairs, but on days like today, where time oozed by like the snot from a toddler’s nose, it was good to see that there is some spark of that studious, academic Korie lying somewhere underneath the hectic, distracted, daily Korie that I seem to have become.

Finis!