Sunflower Powers Thru

Writing for DueNow.com

Time has been in frenzy since just before the new year. My honeybee paper ended up being 32 pages, including a works cited page with 24 items. Even if I wasn't out of practice, it would have been a big challenge.

I also remembered those almost all night sessions when I lived in Kinsolving Dorm in Austin the last two years of college. As time goes on, I have an added appreciation for the opportunities I had for study. UT is a top university. I did have top quality instructors, and excellent reading material. And I did the best I could. I graduated with a 3.0 (rouded up), and I have my diploma under glass, matted in burnt orange, proudly displayed in my study.

One of the counselers who came to my house when I was very bipolar, pointed out to me that whatever befalls me in my life, nobody can take away what that diploma represents. I appreciate that concept. This year would be my college 30 year reunion. People change with experiences over that long. I'm not the same person. Mostly I can see my loss of naitivity, and optimism. Things don't always turn out like you envision.

Back in the day, my best friend was going to be the business executive with the sports car, and social life to match. I was actually, really and truly, the president of my high school's chapter of the Future Homemakers of America. I found a picture of me in front of the orange tree in our backyard in Corpus Christi. I was quite the seamstress. I made the dress in the picture, and I remember making a coat for myself when I lived in Houston my senior year of high school. Looking back, one wonders how I've managed to go on in my twisted turning path of life.


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I can still see what I envisioned for me. I was going to be the home body, children about the open aired, high ceilinged, sun lit, multi-level home, with a little one pulling on mommy's dress as I stir some exquisitely aromatic element of dinner. I was probably influenced the the fifties' version of Ozzie and Harriet's life. That's Ozzy Nelson, not Ozzy Osbourne. What a swich in popular cultural family view and activities. It ended up almost opposite as far as what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew what I wanted to be.



We kept in touch after high school. I was in her wedding in 1977, and she was my maid of honor in 1978. We lived in the same town at times, but drifted apart, as friends do. We reunited over the Internet last year. In so many ways, she's still the same person I knew and loved, and hated at times. It's like that. Sometimes, you accidentally steal someone's boyfriend. By now, that doesn't matter. But, it's good to know she's alive and doing well, though her mom died a few years back. My mom has gone downhill of late. Time crawls forward, and life happens.

My friend is still in the title company business, where she started in her mother's office as part time high school help. Now she's one of those people involved with the paperwork of selling houses in the capital of our state. I've heard Austin's still growing, so her business is booming. I imagine she has the income to match, since she lived through several years--maybe always--as the country club type. I never aspired to that life style. I'm sure she drives a new nice looking car. She became the superwoman who has it all, just like she thought, though I'm sure the times have taken their toll as well.

For awhile, during college days as I studied to be an English teacher, it looked like I was going to be the typical little old lady school teacher, hair in a bun, sitting in my rocking chair, destined to smush the cat's tail as I rocked and graded papers. I did end up grading lots of papers. I worked the thrill out of a red pen. I EVOLVED AS A WRITER, after gaining 13 years of teaching experience. I did put my degree to good use. I had as many hours in hitory as I did in English, since I started as a history major. I enjoyed history, but the IDEA of the perfect job for me out of that expertise never appeared. I could only see some job requiring lots of reading from your office area in the back room.

It would have been a good undergraduate degree if I'd gone on to law school. I thought about it seriously. With my degree from UT, I knew I could get accepted by the law school at the University of Houston, or maybe continue study at UT. In reality I burned out studying after 4 1/2 years.

I've never gone back and gotten my masters. If I'd had the time or the money, I couldn't decide between going for a counseling degree, like a LPC/MSW. I do better in arts and sciences than meticulous things like math. I got my degree without taking any math courses, substituting psychology in it's place. I think I had 18 hours of psych. I still enjoy reading a Psychology Today when I run across one.

My opinion of math has caused me problems all my life. I hate checking account stuff because it's math. I went to the credit counselors to help me with my debt, and I haven't had to deal with that lately. I'm about to close, and then re-open my checking account, so they'll quit automatically getting a quarter of my income. I hate having to deal with being on the wrong side of the numbers. I hope to get past that someday. Life is always full of somedays....back to the University of Texas reverie...

My roommate was RA (like floor mother, only a peer), and she picked me for her roommate because she's a tall girl too. Our room was fantastic, even though it was probably all of 20' by 10'. The room faced the Tower, which gets lit up orange when UT wins a game. Those were the days. I can still see the common area on the fifth floor, with the lights down because of the late hour, and me, or another pajama clad girl, clicking and clunking away on a typewriter, trying to finsish some assignment at the very last minute. I was always a last minute person. Unfortunately, I've not gotten much better about attacking a project so that there's not some last minute flurry of 'Oh my God'. But this time, with the bee paper, I'm proud of the outcome--"I still have it", just like Ralphie on 'Happy Days'

The DueNow.com job of writing about the decline of domestic honeybees ended up being a big deal. I sweated bullets over it. I way over-researched, and consequently had more than enough info for 7 or 8 pages. In MLA fashion, the paper included a citations listing with 24 items!!! Typing all those periods and commas in the right place was what used to cause the death of many slivers of tree in the day of the typewriter. It would take me forever to do that part in school, because I'd always mess up and have to start over. Needless to say, I have a whole new appreciation for cut and paste. I'm learning about judging time involved in these writing assignments. DueNow doesn't have the best reputation around, but they did pay me for a job in December. I've got a couple of assignment that are due next week. In talking with Jon, my bee paper client, I concurred about having reservations about the way they run their business. I told him I probably wouldn't work for them anymore. We were both in a passionate, emotional state at the time. I do want to follow his directions to a web site that posts fraudulent sites. He said DueNow is on the list. But, they did pay me once! And now I have two little jobs pending.