In another life I was a preschool teacher.

Either that or I take after my mom. But it's not my fault. I grew up in a house with a mother who collected bears and Raffi records. (And if you don't know who Raffi is, you lived an unfortunate childhood.) I'm not ashamed to say that I still pull out the Raffi Christmas CD every year and sing along to Must Be Santa and Douglas Mountain. These are also the song titles that made me winner of the boy's union Christmas party game of who can name the most Christmas songs. I was pulling everything out from This One's For the Children (NKOTB Xmas album) to Dwayne the Reindeer (sang it in my second grade school concert) to Holly Jolly Christmas (same concert). I remember the year my grandpa fell down the stairs on Christmas Eve and spent the next two weeks in the hospital pretty banged up. Despite my dad's protests, I insisted on visiting him in the hospital. Grandma pulled me aside and gave me an entire package of Holly Jolly wafers--cookies covered in frosting and red and green sprinkles. I ate the whole package while hiding in the corner of that hospital room, too afraid to get near my grandpa in his hospital gown and bloodied face. Years later I did the same thing at his funeral, minus the cookies.

But anyway, I still declare I would make the world's best preschool teacher. I like going to garage sales and picking things up thinking "I guarantee my mom would buy this if she were here." A couple weeks ago I found a real bargain at a daycare's going out of business garage sale: a matching wooden washer and dryer set for $20. I knew for a fact if you bought these in a catalog it would be over $100.

And I like listening to Charlotte Diamond sing Looking for Dracula and I am a Pizza and Slippery Fish. I liked how my mom let me go to work with her most days when I was in eight grade and homeschooled. I helped kids cut out paper pumpkins in October and paper turkeys in November and paper Christmas trees in December. I ran the fish pond at their carnival.

I spent the morning at Vikings training camp, getting paid to put tattoos on little kids and pass out paper footballs. The kind you used to make in school and flick through someone's hands. When it was slow, the PR intern and I threw a football back and forth. But it wasn't slow very often. I'd tease parents until they got tattoos to match their sons'. One guy wanted one on his chest. I obliged. I smiled as girls squealed from the water I'd spray on to get tattoos to stick. Another asked for an ankle tattoo. A few wanted theirs on their cheeks. I saw more little girls in cheerleading outfits than I care to discuss. Boys in jerseys, too many with Culpepper's name or Moss on the backs. But it didn't matter to them that they were traded.

Kids ran up to me with their signed penants and flags and backpacks and hats and jerseys and everything else they could find to be signed. One grandma had three boys with her, all proudly holding graffittied backpacks. Jess: she could have been an extra in Fargo, no problem. Another dad had three girls, all dressed in the aforementioned cheerleading skirts. I worry for him in another ten years. One family carted four boys. Eesh.

And I played with the best of them. I enjoyed myself so much more than all those days I'm sitting in a cube, staring at a screen, surviving only because of Pandora and worrying about what the IT people think when they read through my emails with too many references to poop and boobs (again, thank you Jess). I enjoyed making kids smile and laugh. I would have made a great preschool teacher...except that after about three days I would go completely nutso. So yeah, pretty much props to my mom for doing that for twenty years. Eesh.

I've been in the mood to write.

I find myself writing on scraps of paper at work. On post-its and the backs of directions for programs I should probably keep or laminate. I find myself wishing for the less restrictive world of teaching, of academia. Wishing I had been MFA so I could have one more year. Except that I would still be done now, I suppose. I ping pong back and forth between liking the idea of wearing pin stripe pants and a badge with my picture around my neck, listening to the beep of doors unlocking. I like to take long strides to the mailroom, the breakroom, the bathroom. Anything to get me out of my cube. Othertimes I like that cube. I think how much better it will be when I put up pictures of the boy, my niece, my dogs. Now I stare at countless pictures of the toddler of the woman whose desk I sit at. In one she's smiling and waving to the photographer. In another she's hugging a Pooh Bear.

I got my journal out last night, wrote two sentences, and tucked it away. Again, there was that need to write. But it seemed like nothing fit in the journal. I couldn't decide how I felt, what to focus the entry on. For the same reason I've avoided blogging. I'm not sure how to address things, understand the things that come along with my entry into "the real world." I'm sure I've talked about this before. How every time something terrible happened and I told my dad, he'd reply "Welcome to the real world." My brothers got the same response to their problems. I started to worry that the real world was full of nothing but problems. Maybe that's why I stayed in school for so long, why I still long to be in school. The problems there seemed temporary, kinetic. If I had a problem with the teacher or the workload, I could drop the class. If I wanted to watch The Newlyweds marathons and Behind the Musics, my statistics homework got pushed to the side. (Fact check: The Newlyweds wasn't actually a show during the time I was taking statistics, but really isn't that really just a metaphor for any thoughtless show now?)

I was talking to JP, debating whether her life would have been better had she taken the cubicle job last fall instead of the teaching job. No doubt it would have been different. But better? Mabye people like her and me are not meant to be in cubicles. We should be roaming free through the midwestern grasslands or, at the very least, at least Pier One mid-afternoon. But for now I take my cube job. It pays almost enough to cover my student loans.

Sidenote: Yesterday, while shuffling through piles of cooperative agent marketing accounts (yep, that's what I do), two very excited middle-aged ladies came to see me. One had a coffee mug filled with Jolly Ranchers. The other handed me a certificate bordered in stars. Apparently I was name Elite Employee of the Month at Jeane Thorne (take that Chadley!). I was also presented with a $10 gift certificate to Cub Foods or Barnes and Noble, my choice. Then the ladies stood for a good three minutes smiling at me. In all honesty, though, it felt pretty good. I walked around the office offering Jolly Ranchers, hoping they would bring friendship or at least a quick "thanks." I only wish it meant a raise. Wouldn't that be nice?

I shouldn't blog when I'm this tired. I hope this makes sense in the morning.