Grading…at a snail’s pace

If snails could grade and I was in a race with them, they would have beaten me. I’m getting close to the end, but I’m having trouble getting into the zone and finishing up this semester. What did I do instead this afternoon? I cut the grass with a weedwhacker and cleaned up the smelly, gross alley between my neighbor’s house and my house. I also cleaned the fridge. Of course, then I wanted to put the clutter back into the fridge because taking it out only confirmed my worst fear — the entire fridge needs a good wipe down. How does one person make a fridge so messy?

If you’ve ever pondered (not that you probably have), what Deogi does when I do glue myself to the couch to grade as I finally did for a little bit tonight, then here is the view from my seat.

That’s his face crunched up against my leg. I like to call this his I’ve-had-more-fun-watching-paint-dry look. He’s actually pretty much asleep even though his eyes popped open for the picture. It cracks me up that when he falls asleep, he leaves his bottom lip open to show off his crooked teeth. I’m glad dogs don’t need orthodontists.

He was actually pretty comfy even with his head all crunched up against me. Notice how I get one cushion of the couch, and he rolls over on his back to sprawl out across the other two cushions.

Alright, that’s it for now. Hopefully tomorrow’s blog will be a celebratory post about finalized grading.

Graduation

Today was graduation for our students at Lancaster Bible College. While I could skip ironing all that regalia at the end of every semester, one of the blessings of being a faculty member is getting to share in this special day with students who have worked so hard for it. Today, I saw a student get the award for a graduate showing all-around excellent improvement. I was proud beyond words of her. Really, I was; the preceding sentence is quite possibly one of the most boring ever written on my blog because I can’t think of how to say how proud I was. This morning, I was thinking about her in my English class her first semester — so much frustration, so many doubts about her ability, and, to her credit, so much hard work. She kept pressing on, and today she walked across that stage. The teachable spirit that got her through that English class has only continued to deepen and mature; some ministry better snatch her up because I promise she’ll be one of the best hires they ever make.

Wiping tears away was also part of the afternoon. We were blessed to have Wes Stafford, President of Compassion International, as our commencement speaker for the afternoon. He literally oozes passion for the mission of rescuing children from poverty. And, he’s a great speaker as well. At the end of graduation, LBC gave him an honorary doctorate of divinity and surprised him by announcing the initiation of The Wesley K. Stafford Leadership Development Scholarship. One of the beautiful pieces of Compassion’s work is how they take promising sponsored students and help them obtain further training in a post-high school environment. I’ve been able to hear a couple of these students who have gone on to receive Masters Degrees speak, and my jaw drops when I hear their passion to take their educations and to help their native countries. The scholarship announced today will provide the opportunity for some of those students to receive a PhD in Leadership from LBC to further enable their leadership efforts around the world.

I was sitting on the stage where I had a direct line of sight to Dr. Stafford as the scholarship was announced, and his immediate and spontaneous reaction to the announcement brought tears to my eyes. His hand flew to his mouth as he choked back tears. I honestly think if we’d offered him a three million dollar beach house that his reaction wouldn’t have been nearly as overwhelmed or joyful. What a beautiful illustration to our graduates that when you stay the course and give your life to others, you will find joy indescribable at seeing those you serve be blessed. I hope the picture of Dr. Stafford receiving that news stays with me for a long time.

The day was also a little surreal for me since this year is my own 10 year anniversary of graduating from college. I stood in the lobby all decked out in my regalia talking to one of my colleagues who was formerly one of my hero professors. I watched students who  I knew as freshmen graduate with master’s degrees. I reflected on being chair of a department with members who were some of my professors of old. How can time fly and crawl at the same time?

And, so, while I couldn’t hold a candle to Dr. Stafford’s commencement address, I did reflect on what I would tell graduates today now that I have 10 years of miles and minutes between me and walking across that stage.

First, don’t panic that you don’t have all your plans in place. This doesn’t give you free license to retreat to your parent’s basement (though I did for a year, and I think I turned out ok). The reality of the matter is that you can’t anticipate what life is going to hold in the next 10 or even 5 years for you. Weeks before I walked, I said in jest to the LBC dean at the time that he should look for my resume in a few years, and I wound up sending in that resume and getting hired. But, I never anticipated being chair, never anticipated being single still, never anticipated buying a house on my own, and never anticipated the journey of this summer when I will start looking at PhD programs not in the English field. Graduates, if you adopt one plan and doggedly pursue it without staying open to what else God may layer in, you will miss many blessings and opportunities for growth.

Second, you’ve already made your decision to follow Christ. I’d be unfair to you, graduates, if I told you that the next ten years will be easy. You’ll be starting families, new jobs, and in some cases uprooting your lives here to live in completely different cultures. If the statistics and my own observations of my graduating class hold true, some of you may face unchosen singleness, infertility, the lost of a child, or the illness of a spouse. Because you are young, these events will strike you as odd and ill-timed. As you serve and serve alongside people, there is incredible opportunity for mutual blessing, but at the same time, you are opening yourself willingly for some of those people to cause the deepest hurt. Some of them will be ungrateful, will squander the training you’ve poured into them. Some of those you serve will lose heart and lose faith and because you care about them, you will have pieces of your own heart break as you watch this happen. And, unfortunately, there may be a morning when you wake up and ask yourself if it’s really worth it. Do you really want to live another day for Christ? Or, you may walk the floorboards at night and ask yourself why you shouldn’t just storm off to find your own way, to make your own path by cutting a few corners or sidestepping a few of the values that you’ve held to that point. I pray in those moments that you redirect your decision, that you understand that you’ve already made your decision to dedicate your life to Christ. In those dark moments, you need only to decide whether you are going to do that one more day. And, you can do that. You can keep doing that one day at a time as you walk through the trial. And, I pray for you that the intimate times with God and the blessing sprinkled amidst the trials will hold you steady and will cause you to remember that if you would run, there is no destination where you’d rather be.

Finally, since you will be navigating new territory, often without much of a map and often with much at stake, surround yourselves with good people. Don’t walk this road alone. Find married couples who’ve walked the road before you who will invite you into their homes to learn by observation. Find someone who you can walk with everyday who will listen to your heart. Find someone who shares your passions and can stir you to greater commitment to them on a regular basis, and find someone who is different from you so they challenge you to continue to see the world in new ways. In the 10 years since I’ve left college, these people in my life have been lifelines. They have reminded me to breathe, to have fun, to continue to serve. They have modeled marriage and parenthood in the way that I hope someday to be able to live it out. They have been there to take slow, limping steps beside me in the moments when my heart has been broken or I have faced times of doubt. It’s foolish to think the you’re too busy to find time to build these key relationships. Wherever your path goes next, be intentional to seek out this people and be fervent in prayer that God will bring them into your life.

And, finally, don’t forget where you are launching from. Many of you have wonderful families and a group of faculty watched you graduate today. We collectively know your passions; we’ve heard of the formative decisions that you’ve made, know your character strengths and your weaknesses. So, sometime, ask us to meet you for coffee. More than likely, we’ll know that you’re still living on a shoestring, so we’ll pick up the tab. And, we can remind you of the day when you had big dreams; we can help you navigate tough waters, and we are humbled to both rejoice and mourn with you as you stretch in new ways. You do our hearts good when you continue to share with us how you are students, of God’s word, of the world.

New Furniture

Classes finished last week, and this week is supposed to be final grading time. Sooooo, I refinished my entertainment center. Now, in my defense, I have guests coming to stay at my house starting Thursday of next week. They’ve never stayed at the house, so I wanted to use their arrival as motivation to get as many projects done as possible around here. I mean, if I’m going to do them, what better time than when someone else will get to enjoy them.

I started the week with visions of grandeur: 5 hours a day of Writing Center wrap-up, 1 hour a day of admin work, a few graded projects a day, and house projects galore. Yes, this indeed was to be my schedule for success except that I’m not good at multi-tasking, and when I took off on this little venture, I forgot how low my end of semester motivation can be. To make a long story short, I’ve charted this motivation for my readers.

Now, I’m at the point where I think I can get the house clean for the guests, finish up with grading by Monday, and still have 3 weeks of break in July (instead of 4) after finishing up Writing Center work. Yeah, I can live with that.

The entertainment centerproject snuck in right before my optimism bubble burst. Here’s a before picture of the piece.

Sorry about the annoying flash, and please extend some grace and don’t be totally grossed out by all that dog hair that was uncovered once I cleared my board game stash off the floor.

With those disclaimers aside, I have to say that this entertainment center is one of my favorite pieces of furniture in the house. I bought it for $5 at an auction. The auctioneer couldn’t get anyone to jump on it, and my mom and I looked at each other and smirked at the 70s era piece. I said, “It looks like something from IKEA.” And the wheels started spinning. I stopped smirking and put in a bid right before the auctioneer gave up. I can’t believe I almost lost out on it.

I painted it black to fit my black and red living room theme in grad school, and it was one of the reasons that my parents rented a van to come help me move away from grad school because it was one piece of furniture that I did not want to part with.

But, as you can see, the trim in the new living room is brown. There’s not a stitch of black anywhere in the room, so the black paint had to go. So, why this week? I should have taken a before picture, but cords were snaking everywhere for all the electronic gadgets. The power strip that’s normally tucked up under the piece had migrated to the floor during a Roku hook-up, and the cable company sent me a new internet modem that I needed to activate. Still, so why this week?

Well, here is the list of characteristics that I’d like in a future husband:

1. Must be actively living out his faith
2. Must love me
3. Must hook up all electronic devices

Yep, those three characteristics are nearly weighted evenly. I dread hooking up electronic cables, but I also dread house guests seeing the entertainment center askew with cords. So, if I was going to unplug everything and arrange it neatly, I was only going to do it once. That’s why the paint needed to go — now.

Furniture painting ventures on Pinterest fascinate me, and Kate over at Centsational Girl amusingly posted about how well a product called Citristrip worked for her. What I liked was that I could use it (supposedly) indoors. Since the entertainment center was built back in the day when furniture was made out of real wood, I didn’t relish the thought of dragging it outside; nor did I relish the thought of sitting out of the front porch until the wee hours of the night to be sure that no one would abscond with my beautiful entertainment center in the night while it dried.

I was skeptical that a furniture stripper really could be used indoors without a noxious smell, so I threw open windows to create a cross breeze. But, the smell, honestly and truly, wasn’t bad. Of course, when using any chemical indoors, I still recommend ventilation when possible.

If I remember correctly, I used a high gloss latex paint originally. The stripper said that it would take at least 30 minutes before scraping could commence. However, I noticed when my paintbrush overlapped into sections covered in stripped only moments before that some paint was already coming loose. Besides low odor and fast action, what else was so great about the stripper? It is a rather thick gel, so there was virtually no dripping. Even on the sides of the furniture, it stayed in place to do its job.

I painted the stripper all over the piece (except the rollout doors), then I went back to start scraping. A few places didn’t come off right away (probably due to sloppy application). But, I’d say about 85- 90% of the paint came off in the first go round. On that round, I scraped the best I could, found some rags to sacrifice and dry wiped the piece, and then applied a second coat of the stripper to the remaining paint spots.

To give you an idea, here is what everything looked like after round 1.

Pretty good, huh?

Round two started the tedious part because it involved getting paint out of the crevices. Plus, my attention span was flagging. If you have to get paint out of the crevices of furniture, do yourself a favor and arm yourself with two things – toothpicks and q-tips — plenty of both. If I didn’t have them, I’d have lost my mind. Obviously, you should also have on some good protective gloves throughout the entire process. I definitely think it’s not a good idea to come into direct contact with a substance that melts paint.

Once I was done with all my rags and toothpicks and q-tips, I thought the floor looked a little like the room of an ER after a trauma case (or at least that’s what it looks like when I watch my guilty pleasure ER shows on the Discovery Fit and Health channel).

Yeah, here’s to furniture trauma

I tossed that kitchen spatula, but it did come in handy to scrape paint off the curved legs.

So, after several hours of stripping, digging paint out of crevices, and yelling at Deogi to stop walking so close to the furniture, here’s the piece sans black paint.

Yay! Who cares that it was 11:30 at night when I reach this point and that I would still be up for a few more hours so I could be routed through 3 different Comcast call centers to get the new modem working.

A few obnoxious cords rear their ugly selves over the cable box, but now the power strip is tucked back under the entertainment center, and I’ll hide its cord after I mop the floor and stick the board games back under the entertainment center where they are kept so as to lure guests into playing them.

Now, I’ve only got two problems. Unfortunately, stripping the paint did seem to strip off a protective coating that I think used to be on the piece. I don’t want an ultra shiny shellac or poly coating on the piece, but the wood does look a little raw right now. Anyone have any suggestions for what I could rub into it to bring out the natural grain and give it a little protection without going overboard?

Also, I’m not fond of the color of the wood against the yellow walls. Uh-oh. Thoughts of repainting the living room were already faint in my mind before this little undertaking, and now, I’d really like to repaint. Ok, I don’t actually want to repaint (as in the process of doing it), but I would like the walls to be a new color. However, I’m going to make myself solemnly swear not to do that until I finish painting the trim and hallway ceiling that have never even gotten their first round of attention. Still, I might not be able to resist picking up some burgundy paint chips the next time I’m at Home Depot.

I’m linking this project up to one of my new favorite blogs, Young House Love, which is my new favorite substitute for the DIY channel — and if you know me, that’s saying a whole lot. Right now there is an unofficial spring Pinterest Challenge afoot paired with a link party. If I let myself fully explore all those links…well, I just can’t until I get this grading submitted.

Deck Destruction

This post was supposed to be cleverly titled, “Look ma! I still have hands.” And, it was supposed to contain a picture of me victoriously yielding a circular saw for the very first time ever. Alas, I am still not all that fond of circular saws.

Here’s the walkway that I had to finish destroying.

If you’re curious why there are random boards missing in the walkway, you can read all about the ridiculous battle that I’ve had with this walkway.  The many episodes that led up to the missing board and that followed the board removal have surely left the neighbors thinking that I am certifiably insane.

I’m getting antsy to see some forward movement on the walkway, and the last time that I went outside to pry up boards, I pinched my finger and dropped the crowbar on my foot, so it was time to dispense with the measly hand tools and to face my fear — saws, more specifically saws powered by electricity. I went to Home Depot the other day and bought a sweet circular saw with a laser, so I could see where I would be cutting. It also has lime green accents and was hands down the prettiest power saw in the bunch, not that I guess that matters too much.

Then, I asked my friend Danielle to come over and babysit me while I sawed the deck apart. She’s a nurse, so I figured if things went horrifically awry, she’d be there to put my severed limb on ice. I read the saw directions, especially the ones about kickback, which I fear more than anything else when holding a circular saw. I attached the blade. And, I did cut some boards off the deck. This was the part where a victorious picture was supposed to be taken, but since I wound up being pretty much a chicken, I thought myself not worthy of the victory picture.

It was slow going because every time the saw made a funny noise or slowed down, I stopped the saw, got out the crowbar and finished pulling up the board by hand. To my credit, the saw did kickback a few times, and I did manage to handle it without putting a gash in my leg or taking off a thumb. When Danielle asked me how I was doing though, I admitted that I was feeling pretty frazzled. I just kept looking down the stretch of boards and counting down the sections that I had to navigate safely to call it a day without bloodshed.

God, bless Danielle. She offered to take over. Handing off the saw to someone only a few cuts more experienced than me didn’t really ease my nerves all that much, but Danielle powered though the rest of the boards. We found it worked best to make one cut. Then, we could use the leverage of the board to quickly rip the board out of the other side of the decking framework. With her wielding the saw, I followed behind picking up the boards and pounding down the nails, so the garbage men won’t get stabbed by them. I should have taken a victory picture of her.

Here’s a picture of her handiwork. Notice that one side of the deck framing is gone. Except for where the framing is nailed to the main decking board of the house, this deck was attached to absolutely nothing. It was resting on a few cinder blocks. There are no posts at all. This doesn’t surprise me since the deck was built out of 2x4s instead of traditional decking lumber. And, despite not being good deck construction, the lack of posts is a blessing because with just a little tugging and convincing with a crow bar, Danielle and I were able to wrestle some of the framework out of place.

Oops. I just realized as I was uploading the picture that I need to go out and hammer down those nails on the end of the board in the morning so the dog doesn’t impale himself on them. Now I can start cycling the old decking out to the trash.

Since I’m scared to anger the trashmen, I hesitate to put more than 15 boards out at a time. It could take awhile to clear the yard at that rate. But, at least now, I can start to dig and figure out how to get this massive pile of concrete blocks down for the new walk.

They are ridiculously heavy as a group of my friends discovered when they helped me haul them home. I reconnected with a former student last night while participating in a super fun scavenger hunt, and he works in landscaping during the summer. He said he’s open to freelance work, and I have a feeling that I’ll be throwing some freelance work his way. I’m not sure I have it in me to dig the squares for all these blocks and then the strength to wrestle all of them into the holes. Plus, even if I did muster up the strength, if the job is taking forever, I’d probably rather be quilting anyway.

To redeem some of my pride after the bruise to my ego of not exactly conquering power saws, I will try to redeem myself somewhat by ending with a picture of my feet on my roof. I climbed out there to put the downspout back that blew off the roof during Hurricane Sandy. Going out on the roof is more than what some girls would do, right?

I’m gonna marry a werewolf

I was just browsing my email featuring free Kindle books for the day, and one of the descriptions reminded me to blog about an article from The Atlantic that’s been in the blogging queue. First, let me explain why I’m reading The Atlantic. Once upon a time someone challenged me to subscribe to and read one new magazine a year, a magazine completely outside what I’d normally read. So, while my perennial favorite Better Homes and Gardens continues to roll in each month, I decided this year to get Relevant and The Atlantic. Both take me into pop culture frequently, an area where I’m a complete dunce, so it’s been an eye opening journey.

The free book I found shall remain nameless because I’m going to be snarky about it, and even if I’m not totally following the rule to not say anything if I don’t have anything nice to say, I’ll at least not specifically call out the author. Here’s the plot summary.

A ghost is haunting an English teacher. The ghost realizes a boy in the English teacher’s class can see her. Said ghost develops an attraction for the boy, and the two overcome the awkward obstacle of him having a body and her not so much to become lovers.

Ok, here’s where I get snarky. That’s weird. And, alarming. Did I mention weird? I mean, I know English class can be uncomfortable sometimes, but let’s not get carried away.

Christopher Orr, in his fascinating essay “Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?” aptly explains this nauseating trend of  weird — vampires hooking up with humans and, well, I don’t know what else. I checked out recent NY Time best sellers fiction list to see what else is going on. Apparently shape shifters are rescuing packs of werewolves, and a woman is convinced that vampires do exist after all when she’s kidnapped by one who is psychopathic. Lovely, remind me to double check the front door lock tonight.

Orr explains that these unlikely matches occur because taboos in our culture that once had to be overcome in a good love story have either been diminished or eliminated. For example, he points out the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’ desperate journey to meet one another in Sleepless in Seattle would’ve lost a considerable amount of plot tension if they’d had just Skyped each other. While I personally think the Orr might be looking through slightly rose-tinted glasses to say that race and socioeconomic taboos no longer pose an obstacle to love, I do concur that they don’t create blockbusters. And, so we move on to the taboos of humans marrying creatures from other worlds or yank in the stereotypes of slobbish men or free spirited women who must be wooed to normalcy by relationships.

Orr also conjectures, and I found this particularly interesting in light of where I was reading the article, that romantic comedies have lost their appeal because it’s not all that unusual for the first five minutes of the film to show us the couple having sex. It’s true right; I go to a movie today, and I’m never quite sure if the opening credits are going to be plastered across someone’s naked backside. He implores, “There was a time when carnal knowledge was the (implied) endpoint of the romantic comedy; today, it’s just as likely to be the opening premise….Where’s a film to go when the ‘happy ending’ takes place at the beginning?”

This wrangling of where sex plays out in a relationship certainly is an interesting feature of the culture. After all, those of us watching Rick Castle and Kate Beckett of Castle or Jim and Pam of The Office were willing to watch for seasons and seasons of relationship tension. We may have been shouting at the TV, “kiss her” or “tell her how you feel.” But, I doubt many of us would have enjoyed the shows nearly as much had the characters shacked up in the first season. As a matter of fact, both shows struggled a bit to regain their equilibrium once the characters did become sexually involved.

As I’ve mulled over Orr’s article, I’ve been reminded that many of us seemed to enjoy our movies more when the filmmakers embraced the truth that a well-told story is a beautiful story and when we realized that sometimes the most potent passion lies in the wait rather than impetuous exploits.

Still here…

Two days — that’s how close I am to wrapping up classes for the semester.

I had a horrific week last week — one of those kinds that I could only write about publicly if I had a pseudonym so anonymous and untraceable that I could do highly sensitive  undercover work with it. But, this week is leveling out. A few unexpected bumps cropped up along the way — like having to sub in for a prof this week. Fortunately, her class was scheduled to give presentations, so a video camera was all I needed to jump in as substitute. And, seeing her freshmen present on what they’ve learned in English class this semester has actually been fun.

The writing center has been abuzz with conversation about John Donne and secular and sacred poetry and last minute visits.

This is the time of the semester that my brain gets so overloaded that I think, “Is this essential right now?” If I answer no, there is a good chance that it’s waiting until next week. So, if you would come to my house, you’d see a thin film of dog hair on, well, everything. It’s be there waiting for me when I get around to it. My emails is stacking up, and hopefully, I’ve answered the essentials. Next week, I’ll try to set aside some concentrated time to deal with it. This shedding of the non-essentials is actually quite freeing. For now, I concentrate on breathing and pacing myself through grading – and coffee.

And this week, I’m mostly just thinking about cookies. Yep, I realized something the other day as I was in my office eating cookies for breakfast.

Don’t judge. I ate a banana too.

I realized that I have a food crush. Yes, an infatuation with Biscoff cookies. The feelings are hard to explain – as they so often are when in the throes of springtime love. So saying these cookies are addicting will have to suffice. I should ask the administrative assistant to ration them out to me so I don’t sit at my desk stuffing my face with them. But, she’s on vacation, so there is no one left to protect me from myself.

Don’t judge. I bought a Nutribullet this week and have consumed two smoothies full of spinach, carrots, and cucumbers…and more bananas.

Also, don’t judge. Of course, I did not pay $120 for the Nutribullet. I get Kohl’s coupons.

Anyway, back to those cookies. As my brain was paralyzed by overload, I sat in my office munching on my cookies and reading the packaging (because reading email would have been an overrated use of my time). And, I realized that Biscoff touts itself as the “airline cookie.” Huh…apparently these cookies are served on European airlines, and the airline patrons were so ga-ga over them, understandably so, that the company started selling them to people on the ground — people like me.

This led me to wonder if any other airline food has ever before in history managed to create excitement. Unlikely.

I’m also pondering why U.S. airlines can’t seem to come up with a crush worthy food. Also unlikely considering that some of the airlines still serve peanuts despite the fact that peanuts these days seem to make 99 out of every 100 people have some type of allergic reaction.

At any rate, thank you, European flyers, for making such a clamor over these cookies that they found their way to me, in my office, so I could eat them for breakfast.

After consultation with the Biscoff website, I’ve discovered that there are Biscoff cookies that are coated with chocolate. I want these intensely. But, I should probably pretend like I do not know that they exist.

Then you would have to judge me for eating the entire $28 package of 100 cookies — for breakfast. No banana.

Disclaimer: Biscoff didn’t pay me to say these nice things about their cookies. Really, this is about the best my brain can come up with for content, leading most of you to be glad that I only have two days of classes left as well.

Offer: Biscoff is more than welcome to sponsor this blog, a terrifying prospect for them I’m sure.

 

New word of the week

I particularly dislike it when people say OMG. It’s a little too close to dragging God’s name through the mud for me, so though I’m not a fan of cursing, I’d probably just prefer they straight up curse if that’s what they want to do. Then, I just know that perhaps “using their words” as we tell young kids to do is failing them in the moment.

With that said, I get why OMG has snuck into the our language, or at least, I have a hunch that is completely devoid of any empirical linguistic research evidence. Sometimes, we do just encounter an event that boggles us – we want to express dismay, disbelief, and  general shock. Maybe we are after all trying to tell God about it.

But, in light of the fact that I don’t want to use OMG and that cursing at my workplace is quite clearly frowned upon, I’d like to propose that “Oh, YKM!” move into our speech. I know to make it do so, I’ll have to reprogram the world to forget that in texting it’s become the substitute for “You’re killing me.” Because, instead, I’d like it to mean, “Oh, you’re kidding me!” Think about it. Wouldn’t “Oh, YKM!” be a great way to quickly express dismay, disbelief, and general shock when saying, “Oh, you’re kidding me!” would take too long or seem too harsh?

“Oh, YKM!”  I just realized I could have been using this phrase all week.

For example, when I came home after the Monday to beat all Mondays and found a dead mouse in the trap by the couch, I could have sighed loudly and said, “Oh, YKM!”  as I slumped my shoulders in despair.

Or, when that crazy driver was in a super rush to pull out in front of me a few day ago and then determined to drive about five miles per house, I could have shaken my hand at the windshield saying, “Oh, YKM!”

Or, when my email inbox topped 800 — again — I could have just curled up under my desk whimpering, “Oh, YKM.” No, actually, the full, “Oh, you’re kidding me” would work better in that situations.

Or, last week, when I fell through one of the holes in my walkway with such a lack of grace that my shoes flew off, I grasped to the fence for dear life, and I found myself standing barefoot in a mound of loose dirt, I could have said, “Oh, YKM!”

Yes, I’m liking this new expression. The next time life serves up an order of crazy with a side of chaos, I’m going to use it.