"I looked your wall, saw that old passport photograph."

I feel like my penmanship is going down the toilet. No, it has gone down the toilet. My writing for notes and lists is a sloppy mix of print and cursive, with random letters capitalized and perpetually decreasing space between them as the sentence goes along. I also switch my slant back and forth, and I have no literal concept of straight lines or right angles.

I'm going to challenge myself to write all my notes in cursive from now on. At the least this will irritate any potential burglars who desire to sneak through my stuff (unlikely, but who am I to dismiss everyday human paranoia?); at the best, this will give me practice until I can make my letters look like the writing of this old Mexican-American grandfather and his Mexican-American grandson, both of whom registered to vote for the first time in September, and both of whom had the most beautiful cursive autographs I've ever seen. I looked at their handwriting and felt like a lazy, uneducated slob.

So I will practice! And after a month or two, I should be good enough to read my own handwriting from high school.