I'm reading through The Secret Life of Bees for the second time because Moby-Dick got off to such a slow start and because I somehow always end up reading three or four books at once. Sometimes, I write down passages that were particularly well-written or that just struck a chord with me for some reason. Here are two that I grabbed today:

"I laid my head on his shoulder and wondered how he could stand me. In one short morning I had exhibited insane laughter, hidden lust, pissy behavior, self-pity, and hysterical crying. If I'd been trying to show him my worst sides, I could not have done a better job than this."

Oh man, have I been there. Just recently, I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor, sobbing into a pile of dirty laundry. I could not for the life of me figure out why I was crying, but it was to the point where I couldn't really stop myself. I hadn't quite reached the "watch yourself cry in the mirror while you halfheartedly attempt to clean up the mess and blow your nose" stage, but I was pretty darn close. Then, my best friend innocently struck up a conversation with me and wound up experiencing Sobbyskirts, Snifflyskirts, Poutyskirts, Grumpyskirts, and several other potential dwarf personalities, none of which were very pleasant. The fact that he made it through the conversation and got me to snap out of it says volumes about what a good friend he is.

"The whole time we worked, I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love."

A. M. E. N.

I have always hated the smell of potpourri.

My family moved when I was five years old, since the school system near our first house was dreadful. I hadn't yet started kindergarten, since I was born three days after the September 1 cut-off. At the time, I was very into ballet and dance and reading, but I don't remember having any friends. I wasn't sad about leaving anyone behind, but I was terrified of the objects I would be parting with. I didn't want the house itself to feel abandoned or unloved.

We went back to visit the house shortly after settling in to our new home, and the lady who had bought the old place was kind enough to invite us inside to show us what she had done with it. I was bravely trying to fight back a veritable ocean of tears, silently sending apologies to every dust bunny and light fixture and even the creaks in the floor for leaving them behind on such short notice. The woman must have seen my quivering lip; she gave me a pair of ballet slippers stuffed with potpourri as a parting gift. I took them greedily and was somehow assured that the house was in good hands. But even then, I hated the smell of the potpourri.

I still have those ballet slippers, tucked away in a box with my baby books and other various paraphernalia from my early childhood. It wasn't until just now, however, that I realized that perhaps the slippers might be the reason why I so intensely dislike that particular odor. Or maybe it really is that terrible.

The boy who sits next to me in my microeconomics class is cute in an innocent sort of way. He is sometimes easily embarrassed, but he manages to make that a charming attribute. I'm not currently "on the prowl" for a boyfriend or even a crush, but there is so little to look forward to in the class that I am sometimes overly excited by his very existence.

Today, he approached my desk before class to compare his homework with mine. The vain part of me assumed that word had gotten around that I was one of the elite few actually floating by with an A in the class, possibly the only one to have gotten an A on the first test. (I even managed to weasel a higher grade out of my teacher, who had deducted a point without reason on one of the short-answer questions on the exam.)

A different vain part of me ditched this theory and assumed that perhaps he was merely using the homework assignment as an icebreaker. Who could resist a girl in a sweatshirt and plaid pink shorts who hadn't even bothered brushing her hair before letting it air-dry in the wind on the way to school?

But then reality kicked in, and I blushed, accidentally bit the inside of my cheek, and forgot how to talk.