What happened to my writing style?

What a week.

It would seem that a week shortened by Labor Day would go faster, not slower than a regular week, but not in my world. I made a few choices involving boyfriends and parking passes. I got swept up in the white water that is grad school. My TA position at the PIE is a big commitment. My grad classes are intellectually demanding, not to mention that I devote almost entire weekends to doing the readings and projects for them. The rest of my life (not that I know what that is) functions around eating, gym time and thinking about the PIE or my classes. 

My aunt is notorious for coming home from volleyball with tears in her eyes. My grandma often quotes here as saying "If I didn't have swing choir, I don't know what I'd do." In an ironic twist of fate --as she and I had the same coach and same tears-- I now find myself wondering if I could survive without my weekly PIE volleyball fix. It's often the highlight of my week. I can destress, sweat and enjoy a little fame. It's nice to be able to just enjoy being a person. Not a teacher, not a student, just a person who likes to hang out with international students.

When I'm not playing volleyball, sometimes I'm ruining surprise parties. Today I did that. I showed up at exactly the wrong time, and I had to make the choice to run, hide, or just lose a lot of face. As I was walking up to the door, I hear the surprisee coming. Not being a close friend, I knew I would be extremely out of place. With nowhere to go, I just attempted to be as weird as possible, and get her to the real surprise as quickly as I could without doing too much explaining. OMG. How embarrassing for someone who is as punctual as I am. I was late one time, and this is what I get. Anyway, the party was a lot of fun, I made fun of myself, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Actually the surprise was still good. My presence was just disorienting enough to accentuate the whole mystery of it all.

Life isn't smooth sailing. Every single day, we have to handle situations with grace and humility. Unfortunately, we don't do the right thing every time. Sometimes I really want to put my foot in my mouth or time-travel back just a few minutes and try again, but I can't. We don't get a re-do, and I think that's something I'm working on this week. We can't re-do the situation, but we can learn something and do it better next time.