Is it Friday yet?

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Adjusting to school seems to be so much harder this semester.  I think it's because it's so busy.  No matter how much sleep I get, it never seems to be enough.  I have three essays due by Friday this week, so I'm not sure when I'll get around to visiting everyone.  I try to make a point to blog hop once a week, but it doesn't always happen.

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Took this from here.

1.  If you spoke English with an accent other than the one you currently have, how would you choose to sound?

I used to work with someone from New Zealand.  She had the coolest accent, and sometimes I'd ask her questions that I already knew the answers to just so I could hear her talk.

2.  Be honest:  How do you feel about people who smoke?

I don't usually mind the people themselves, but I hate their habit.  While I'm not asthmatic or anything, I find it difficult to breathe in the smoke when I'm around it.  I also don't like the smell it leaves on you afterwards.

When I worked at my last job, I resented the smokers because they got to take smoke breaks.  The rest of us were expected to work without one.  That was very unfair.

3.  Whose death touched your own sense of mortality the most?

There was a big group of us who used to go to the movies once or twice a month, or go out to the bars or whatever.  Within that group was a woman I didn't really get to know that well until a few months before her death.  She was a recent widow and her children were grown.  I felt like sometimes she glommed onto me more than I liked, but because I wasn't working much and had a lot of time on my hands, we started to hang out more.

She'd been going to the doctor for awhile, but they couldn't seem to find anything wrong.  She went to one after another, it seemed.  Finally one doctor looked down her throat and saw a very large mass tumor there.  He told her she probably only had six weeks to live.  She was immediately admitted to a hospital in another town that could properly care for her and she never came home.  I would try to visit her once a week or so, but missed the last week.  From the very first visit, she was no longer the same person I knew.  She couldn't talk, or walk, or eat, or really do much of anything.  Because she was on so much medication, I don't think she even really knew that I was there.  But I knew...

Surprisingly, I didn't cry when she died.  I don't know why.  It made me think about how we'd gone shopping just weeks before she went to the hospital.  She'd bought shorts, groceries, and a variety of other things.  I thought about how she'd never wear those shorts, or use those groceries.  She had no idea when she bought those things that she'd never have an opportunity to use them.  It made me think about life and how you just never know when your time is up.

I had an answering back then with messages recorded on a tape.  One day shortly after her death, I came home and found the machine blinking back at me.  I listened to the message and it was an old one from my friend.  The message was something to the effect of, "Hi, it's Mary.  I'm home now, give me a call when you get the chance."  I think this was the very last message she had left me, and I am certain that I'd deleted it.  There was no reason to save it!  I tried to delete it repeatedly, but it never would let me.

4.  Show and tell.  What comes to mind first when you see this picture?  Or tell a story if it reminds you of one.  

I have no idea what those big bugs are, but I don't like them!