Gotta Collect 'Em All, Or Something

My Dear Reader,

I was in junior high when they started making quarters that honored each state. One day, all quarters were the same, and the next, there were these cool new ones with what looked like Paul Revere* on them. I kind of hoarded them. A little. They were just so awesome!

And guess what? There were more of them! There were quarters with trees and ships on them. One even had a peach! It was a pretty exciting time to be a distractible pre-teen.

And I know it wasn't just me, because other people were going crazy for these new quarters, too. My grandpa even went so far as to get me a board that had a slot for every quarter in the series. Lots of people had them. And, like me, lots of people waited in anticipation for the next quarter to be released so that they could gleefully fill another empty slot.

And, like lots of people, I lost interest about two or three years in.

I always figured that I'd finish it eventually. When I got around to it. I mean, it's not like the quarters were going anywhere.

And a few months back when I found that quarter board in a bunch of packed stuff, I didn't really think much of it. Then, a few weeks ago, life threw me a few curve balls that hit me right in the gut. All of a sudden, I had all these problems, and there was nothing I could do to solve them. Sometimes it just happens that way.

An unsolvable problem is complete agony. There is nothing that you can do but hurt, and wait, and hurt some more.

And it's funny how in a situation like that, something trivial can suddenly become very important. Next thing I knew, I was determined to finish that quarter board as soon as possible. I couldn't change the laws of physics or the choices other people made, but I could find South Dakota, by jingo.

Luckily for me, I work at a place with a cash register. Soon, scouring the quarters was an almost hourly routine. To the annoyance of my co-workers, I enthusiastically looked for state after state, and the work went quite quickly. I was able to get a state almost every day, and four or five on good days. By the end of the first week, I'd gotten around forty-five of the fifty states.

I ended up finishing the whole thing before the second week was over.

And when I placed that final quarter (Texas, for those keeping score) in that final slot, I wasn't Cecily the Loser anymore. I was Cecily the Finisher.

Cecily the Solver of Problems.

Cecily the Conqueror.

And that felt pretty good, considering the situation I was in. Sometimes, you just need a challenge, even if it's not very difficult. Sometimes, you just need to remind yourself that you're actually capable of something, even if it's not something important. Sometimes, you just need to win one.

And thanks to a loving grandpa and a fad that died a decade ago, I was able to give myself that small victory. It's the small victories that give you the courage to fight for the big ones.

My problems, of course, have not gone away. They'll be around for a while yet. But guess what? They also made quarters for the six U. S. territories. And they're starting this new ten-year series for state parks. My grandpa even sent me two to get started with.

So I'll chip away at that. And at the other things, when I can.

You don't happen to have a Guam quarter, do you?

Regards, best wishes, and coping mechanisms,

-Cecily Jane

*I didn't even realize until I looked it up that it's actually Caesar Rodney on the Delaware quarter, not Paul Revere. I somehow feel used. Also, Delaware missed out some pretty fantastic symbolism, and that's just unacceptable behavior.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

My Dear Reader,

This story is brought to you by request.

I love the bed that I have. It was given to me by my grandmother, and it's both legitimately vintage and elegantly beautiful. It's the same bed that Padre slept in when he was a little boy.

The only problem is that the mattress that came with it is just as old.

For the past few decades, the bed was used as a secondary guest bed, and until I tried to move it out of their house, I had no idea how bad the mattress truly was. Grandma had put layers and layers of blankets and sheets on top of it, creating a Princess-and-the-Pea*-kind of situation. I'm not quite a princess, so I had always slept on it just fine. When I moved it and had to leave the blankets behind, I was confident that I could handle sleeping on it without the protective barrier.

I'm tough, you know.

Two nights later, exhausted and suffering from a sore back and a mysterious rash, I went to my parents' house and took almost every blanket I could find. They will have no idea until they read this blog post.

That pretty much solved the problem as well as a person as poor as I could solve it.

I tried to save up for a mattress, but between rent and paying off a car, it wasn't easy. So a few months went by, I moved again, and I kept trying to save up to get that new mattress. I mean, after forty-or-so years, who knows what was going on inside that thing. It could have its own ecosystem that supported organisms that were slowly evolving into sentience. My mattress could be the birthplace of the race that would one day supplant humanity as Earth's dominant species.

Yup, that was probably it.

And whether that was the case or not, there was something alive in there, because about two months ago it started biting me.

It was pretty horrible. I went through almost an entire bottle of calamine lotion that week. It was the kind of experience you'd expect to have in a North Korean prison.

Near-sentient or not, it turned out that flea powder wiped them suckers out. I poured enough on my mattress to put down every creepy-crawly thing within thirty feet. And while the mass murder of my unknown assailants was quite a relief, I couldn't exactly sleep on that mattress again.

Luckily, I have a friend who has this uncanny habit of swooping in and saving the day right when I needed help the most, and she miraculously produced a new mattress for me to sleep on. She is the kind of friend I never could deserve.

Now, there is another thing about my bed that I should probably mention. Like most beds, the mattress is supported by a number of removable slats. Unlike most beds, though, mine only has only two slats left. But since I'd never had any problems with them before, I didn't even think that my new, heavier mattress would make any difference.

That was, of course, until a few nights later when I heard a loud thump, and suddenly I was see-sawing on only one slat with my toes about a foot above my head. And if it wasn't two in the morning, if I hadn't been exhausted from attending my church Christmas party, and if putting a mattress back wasn't a two-person job, maybe I would have done something about it right then. But those were not the facts of the matter.

So I just slept like that.

I was on a steep enough incline that all the blood had rushed to my head by the time I woke up. It felt like I had a bad ear infection. But you never know that you have the skill of sleeping head first on a twenty percent grade unless you try, right? Guess I'm pretty tough after all.

I turned out the troublesome slat hadn't broken; it had simply fallen out. So my roommate and I put it back in.

At some point, I'll have to get some new slats to put in my bed frame. But I have other fires to put out, and since things are no longer sucking my blood at night, it's a little low on my priority list. But I am a little wary every time I climb into bed at night, knowing that at any moment, my bed could once again turn into a catapult.

Oh, well.

Regards, best wishes, and restful slumbers,

-Cecily Jane

*That hasn't been made into a Disney movie yet? Pffft. I mean, it's a musical.

2012!

My Dear Reader,

I just want you to know that I've written several drafts of several different posts, because I really feel like I should be blogging regularly again.

I know.

I've said it before, and who knows how long it will take before I make good on my promise. I really should have done what I did when I started this blog: write ten or so posts in advance and schedule them to be automatically posted so I could have a head start. Well, that didn't happen. Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because life has me in a half-nelson right now, and it's just been difficult.

But don't worry, Gentle Reader. It's fine. It's just kind of like God and Satan are playing tug of war with my soul, and the rope around my middle is starting to chafe. That's all. You'll hear more about that later.

Anyway, my goal is to at some point resume my schedule of posting on Tuesdays. And maybe every once and a while, fiction on Fridays.

If you're new to this blog, you should know that it's something of a room of requirement for me. It's where I put stuff when I have nowhere else to put it. That includes everything from short stories that aren't really publishable to a drawn-out explanation of why I like doughnuts.*

But mostly it's a way to sit down, organize my thoughts, and let those thoughts loose on an unsuspecting world. It's my way of taking out a megaphone and saying what I need to say. And you may find that I have more to say than most. But I find when I don't say it here, it just gets tucked away under a rug somewhere, and that's no way to live.

So, here I am. Cecily Jane, the blogger, back again.

Gentle Reader, I have missed you so!

Regards, best wishes, and resolutions,

-Cecily Jane

*Oh, that post is in there. It's not too hard to find. I dare you.