If Pepsi can send a talentless twit to the moon, why can't Coca-Cola pay for my college education? I must really be behind on the news, because after hearing how Lance Bass is actually going to float around with no purpose whatsoever up in the great wide beyond, I'm left baffled and irate and hungry -- although the latter is really due to the fact that I've yet to scrounge for food today. (Yes, you care.) Call me crazy, but when a country's rumbling about war and there are insane people overseas and insane people innerseas and when relationships seem impossible and when I actually find time to scribble two days in a row, our world probably doesn't need another machine-crafted shoe or fur coat or fancy car or tuneless schmuck who finds lip-sync challenging.

And before you start thinking, "Oh boy, Christa's off again on her nonsensical ranting," you might want to consider a few more questions. Why are we sending pop stars to the moon when there are kids going hungry? Why does this ridiculous glass insist on being both empty and full?

What is wrong with this picture, and how can I adjust it?

Even now, after all these years, I am still prey to a moderate amount of "Awwwww maaaan, I don' wanna go back t'school." It's not as though I dislike education. I'm definitely for education, because education teaches you the importance of thought and learns you some grammar and gives you something to do besides loll around on the rug all day. And I ought to be grateful for my college education, because it will hopefully allow me to advance somewhat beyond the phrase, "Would you like fries with your popcorn?" Rather, a college education allows me to ask, "Would you like a bibliography with your twenty-page paper?" and "Would you like a swift thwack to the noggin with your ridiculously overpriced book?" or the ever-popular "Would you like a cup of hot coffee poured on your lap with that pick-up line?" or even "Would you like to sit in the dark and shower in cold water and eat olives from the can because you cannot afford your monopoly-driven rent with that studio apartment?"

Yet I am grateful for my college education. I would not be the same sharp-eyed, well-heeled, weighty-thinking woman I am today without it. Without my college education, I would hardly to be able to find proper scribbling material for all my ardent webfans. (I know you're out there. I can hear you breathing. And you might as well stop it, sir, because it's not that kind of site.) I may never finish my college education. Perhaps that is why I still say "Awwww maaan." And perhaps, just perhaps, I have a right to "Aww maaan." Anybody who becomes so busy that she is forced to leave an ode to her uterus posted for a week ought to be allowed to complain. And if not, then give me all your money, because I've got rent to pay.

Uterus, I curse your name. You gore my insides on a monthly basis, you curve my body, and you either spill my tears over the last cookie or cause me to seriously contemplate tearing off the Beastmaster's loincloth with my teeth. You complicate my life, uterus. You bind me to the evolutionary process that I so despise. You consider the word "security" to be a valid measurement. You attempt to make me second fiddle in a world where the other sex was virtually designed to invade. I fear you, uterus, because you threaten to make me soft.

Yet in the end, oh uterus, I will triumph over you. I am nobody's rabbit, prey to my clockwork and the call of vegetable sustenance. I can be both soft and strong. I can be complex and simple. I can yearn and think at the same time. Anatomy, hormones, environment: these things may be included in my contract, but they are not the ruling entity of my existence. I am a woman, but I will not be limited to a "woman's view," a "woman's destiny," or even, god forbid, a "woman's world." To carve my own norm is my right and my gift and -- above all -- my must. I not only can be both things (soft and strong, complex and simple, defined and not defined), I must be both things. And I will be both things.

And if this perplexing little sidetrack causes all my ardent y-chromosomed fans to cringe, then I salute them heartily and urge them on their merry way. After all, there are two sides to everything. A little rabbit told me so.

Apparently they weren't kidding when they said everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten. The very same colors I learned as a wee one are now enlightening me as to the state of our national security. Thanks to the oh-so-nonexhibitionist news media and its oh-so-nonexhibitionist plethora of diagrams, I feel more than fully aware of the country's various color codes. Although I really must give kudos to the nameless newsfellow who oh-so-nonstoically explained, "Well Ted, it's not really a full code orange. A complete code orange would require strategic deployment of the national guard. This state is somewhere between code yellow and code red -- more of a peach, really." That's right, Ted. Code peach, signifying that the nation is in a state of heightened cute.

Of course, some might point out that my satire-drenched tone doesn't seem all that appropriate for this heavy sort of time. And of course, they would be wrong. If we cannot look upon ourselves and our morose memorabilia without the smallest tinge of a smile, then there is no hope for us. Also, if we persist in using the word "we" like it's some kind of uniting factor in this never-ending game of reflection and depression, then we ought to be shooshed immediately with a large flyswatter to the he -- THUMP.

There isn't much to say. (Boy, if that doesn't make a body want to read on.) I'm moving here, moving there, packing up all my fripperies and putting them away for the upcoming move into my new place. I've always wanted a place of my own, and now I have one. It's pretty exciting, except for the fact that it's not available until October. Hooray for living with relatives for a month. After that, however, all I need is a screen and a futon and a coffee table and some stools and some patience and some deep breathing and a Siamese fighting fish, who will most likely be dubbed Sushi-san.

You just don't care, do you.

Today I made a list of all the things that are wrong with me. I titled this list "Things That Are Wrong With Me," numbered it in no particular order, and faced it with no particular reason but to find out which wrong things are fixable. Most of them were fixable to some degree, actually, which made me feel a little more powerful than I did when first setting out to make the list. ("I am too tall" could even be negotiated: embrace flats, embrace disguised weight, cut off legs at knees . . . put brick on head . . . you get the idea.) The list was also not very long, which made me feel even more in-control of things. After all, while I cannot change others, I can change myself. "I can't keep a man" may very well be quite out of my already-tired hands. I can, however, not let the man keep me down. While I cannot change the volume of my stupid roommates' television, I can move into a place of my own and have the sense not to put anything remotely resembling roommates onto my list. "I cannot prevent Suzanne from making me watch American Idol with her sorority" did not make it onto my list either. These pop persons all sound the same to me, but at least Kelly maintains proper breath control.

All false idols aside, I feel good about being fixable, and that is a very good thing to know about oneself. Life never hands you a solid drink. It likes to be shaken and stirred.

So when you go out on a Waverunner for two hours and you speed along the lake while thrilling to the sensation of finally being able to drive the darn thing yourself since your laser-surgeried eyes are finally free of glasses and meanwhile the stupid Waverunner catches more air than a bird because the boat-laden water makes for incredibly choppy conditions, your body eventually becomes The Human Pincushion. Meaning, it hurts in places you didn't even know you had places.

Oh the important life-lessons we learn. Oh, and 53 is new. It may be simple, it may not even be worth a fiftified number, but it is nevertheless accurate, deep, and more than first meets the eye. Just like sore aching poor little big me.