ab salute praise (couldn't think of anything)

When I left my hometown of Bothell, I wasn’t just leaving family; I was leaving my best friend. This person, both a family member and my friend, was Jim/James “Brownie” Petritz, my grandfather. (past participle) Soft spoken and full of grace, he was a man that everyone loved. (absolute phrase) Since I am an only child and my parents couldn’t afford daycare when I was younger, I would spend day in and day out with him. Even as I grew older, I made sure I stopped by his house everyday for at least a half hour to an hour. Even when Bob Barker made his final appearance on the Price Is Right (a daily watch), I went over to his house and had dinner with him. (appositive) See it was always our goal to go see him down in California, but sadly we were not able too. Right when I left for school, I told him I expected him to come to a Coug game with me, followed by a hug goodbye. Little did I know that this would be the last hug I receive from him.



As soon as I arrived at the hospital, busy with a deadly calm staff, I took the long elevator ride up to the floor he was on. (appositive) Immediately after, I searched the hallway for the room that read his name. When found, I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what was behind door number 2306. The aroma of the room, clean and sterilized, overwhelmed me as I saw everyone go silent and look at me. (out of order) With the sorrow look on all their faces I expected the worse. When I saw my grandpa just laying motionless in bed I thought to myself, fuck I blew it. But then I saw a small sparkle that was in his eyes like normal and I knew everything was ok. I believe that small sparkle was the happiness in him to see me arrive safely. Overprotected, full of anxiety, he was always one to worry about me. (Absolute) I started to calm my nerves down a little until I was able to talk to him and say the things I’ve always thought but never told him. While speaking, a small tear trickled down from his motionless face. At that moment it hit me hard and everything came into realization.

i am not appositive i did this correctly

Hopefully i did this right



When I left my hometown of Bothell, I wasn’t just leaving family; I was leaving my best friend. This person, both a family member and my friend, was Jim/James “Brownie” Petritz, my grandfather. (past participle) Since I am an only child and my parents couldn’t afford daycare when I was younger, I would spend day in and day out with him. Even as I grew older, I made sure I stopped by his house everyday for at least a half hour to an hour. Even when Bob Barker made his final appearance on the Price Is Right (a daily watch), I went over to his house and had dinner with him. (appositive) See it was always our goal to go see him down in California, but sadly we were not able too. Right when I left for school, I told him I expected him to come to a Coug game with me, followed by a hug goodbye. Little did I know that this would be the last hug I receive from him.



As soon as I arrived at the hospital, busy with a deadly calm staff, I took the long elevator ride up to the floor he was on. (appositive) Immediately after, I searched the hallway for the room that read his name. When found, I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what was behind door number 2306. The aroma of the room, clean and sterilized, overwhelmed me as I saw everyone go silent and look at me. (out of order) With the sorrow look on all their faces I expected the worse. When I saw my grandpa just laying motionless in bed I thought to myself, fuck I blew it. But then I saw a small sparkle that was in his eyes like normal and I knew everything was ok. I believe that small sparkle was the happiness in him to see me arrive safely. Overprotected, full of anxiety, he was always one to worry about me. (Absolute) I started to calm my nerves down a little until I was able to talk to him and say the things I’ve always thought but never told him. While speaking, a small tear trickled down from his motionless face. At that moment it hit me hard and everything came into realization.

freaking semicolons

It has been a week since we had to do a blog. I’d be lying if I said I was excited for them to be back. This week in grammar, we learned about AAAWWUBIS’s. I had never previously heard or knew about the abbreviation of it. Because of that, I never really worried about the way I used them. We also continued to learn about different ways to use a semicolon again. MAYBE ONE DAY I WILL UNDERSTAND THESE COMPLETELY; PROBABLY NOT. I’m hoping I can fully understand semicolons by the end of the year. Any suggestions on how to make it easier?

week three: no catchy title idea

This week we started talking about how a sentence is framed. In class we went over the sentence “Seth uses.” This would normally be viewed as an incomplete sentence to most. But thanks to our generation of slang, it can be viewed as a real sentence to mean something like Seth uses drugs of some sort. This last sentence I used also shows another thing that we went over this week in class. The starting of sentences with words such as “butt, and, because” is usually viewed as doing the wrong thing. But as we learned, it is perfectly fine to use.

My question is, if I am teaching a high school English class, how can I convince students that it is perfectly fine to start sentences using those words, even though they have been taught all their lives that it is incorrect?

the list sentence

Through week two of grammar class, we started to look more at punctuation and grammar structure. One thing that I learned this week was that when there is an “and” sentence, it is still correct to have a comma before the and and after the and. What I mean by this is sentences such as “I LIKE TO PLAY BASEBALL, BASKETBALL, PING PONG, AND RUN,” and “I LIKE TO PLAY BASEBALL, BASKETBALL, PING PONG AND RUN.” I was always taught that if you didn’t put a comma, it was incorrect. It is one of those rules that I don’t understand why there are multiple ways of teaching it. I believe there should only be one. What I want to know from people is, which way do you think is more correct more often?

week one: commas are my best friend

            When it comes to writing, I am the first to admit that I am not the best at it.  This isn’t just for one aspect of writing either.  I feel this way when it comes to my writing style, voice, vocabulary, and grammar.  When it comes to grammar, what I have learned about my way of writing is that commas are basically my best friend.  As you will probably notice in this blog alone, I use a large amount of commas, even if there is a better way of phrasing a sentence.  I am not sure the reasoning for using them so much, but I believe it is because depending on their placement in the sentence being used, they make it sound better.   This of course is in my non-professional opinion.  For example, last Thursday we did an exercise in class that tested our grammar skills. In one problem, it asked for us to find two separate ways of how different grammar tools placed into the sentence changes how it reads.  The phrase given was “A woman without her man is nothing.” The first response I put on it was “A woman without her man, is nothing.”  The second response I put was “A woman, without her, man is nothing.”  The first response I believe is perfectly fine, but I also believe the second one is too. Later during the class, I was told that the second way of writing this was incorrect and that it should actually be “A woman; without her, man is nothing.”  See, for me, I would never have thought to put a semi-colon instead of a comma.  This is due to the fact that I typically avoid semi-colons all in general.  I do not completely understand how or why they are used.  So because of this, I use commas like crazy. Another example on the grammar worksheet that we received on Thursday was the love/breakup letter.  While going through both of them, the best ways I could figure out to make them work was to use commas.  For the most part, about eighty percent of what I added was a comma.  I didn’t even attempt to use anything else besides those.  While this strategy worked for the most part, it is also the reason why I struggled with it as much as I did.  Although commas are ok to use, I believe I use them way to often and I want to be able to change that.  Commas do make papers sound better and they typically work for classes like history, math, science, and any other general education class.  As for English class, although commas usually work, it would be so much better if I could replace some of them with other things such as semi-colons.  This is also especially true if I want to someday teach a high school English class.  It would be beneficial if I could teach students other ways than just commas to make their writing better.  Although I want to remain friends with commas, I just need to stop making them my best friend.