Saturday, October 23, 2010

If You Can't Handle Me At My Worst, Then You Sure As Hell Don't Deserve Me At My Best

Okay.  Horrible week.  And we only had three days of school!  But after getting back from a disgustingly indulgent holiday on Tuesday and all throwing ourselves at one another with an abandon usually reserved for sex and seizures, desperately keening and making arduous declarations of adoration - how the last four days apart had rent our souls - we didn't all really settle back into the work thing - the weekend was too close to take the interim seriously.  Bad Idea.  So, I'm guessing it was the under the combined strains of two all-nighters in a row (I may or may not have been found sitting in front of essays in my underwear at 3 a.m., eating chocolate-covered almonds and dry coffee grounds to stay awake), a flu jab, malfunctioning uterine lining and forgetting to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday that I sort of collapsed last night and spent a few hours alternating clutching my stomach on the floor, drinking litres of very cold water very fast, shivering and sweating...  I think that last night was the first time in recorded history that I've gone to bed before my roommate.

When a friend and I decided to make ourselves some eggs recently, we found them frozen... and cooked them anyway.  It was so weird.  We peeled off the shells from these gushy, crystallized, freezing-melty eggs and threw them right in the pan, and they were delicious - but strange. 

Oh, I'm getting really excited about my birthday, which is in less than a month.  I've been known to obsess, and I'm trying to figure out what to do - it falls very fortunately on a Friday this year, and, less fortunately, one day before Thanksgiving break.  Also, Hallowe'en.  And I know, I know, everyone at school who's reading this is going "What?  She's English!" but I lived in a rather American neighbourhood in London and we always had crazy parties and pumpkins and costumes.  My best year, I think, was sixth grade, when I was a box of Kleenex.  I painted it myself and everything, and since then have worn a box almost every year.  This time, I'm being a Rubik's Cube.

This was the ninth week of school.  While I'm of the opinion that nine weeks is far too long to spend anywhere, I do feel obliged to acknowledge how remarkably pleasant these ones have been.  I have friends with whom I chat and walk and watch films, almost more than I did before.  I am able to feed myself to the extent that I have not yet died, nor become so remarkably emaciated that some concerned faculty member has had to have me hospitalized.  While I do not particularly care about chemistry or advanced math, they have not taken any particular dislike to me and are the subjects in school I get along the worst with.  I live with a hundred-odd people who seem to be able to tolerate me far better, on average, than they generally can at home, and while I'm sometimes slightly put out by having to yield my grip on some friends to their paramours, that would happen anywhere and is, I suppose, the price of not having one or any of the accompanying grief (though I get more than my share of other peoples').

I've started Three Cups Of Tea, that incredibly famous book about the mountaineer who got lost on K2 and was taken in by Pakistani villagers and then decided to build trillions of girls' schools around the Taliban.  As everybody else in the world, which is who's already read this, knows, it's quite fantastic once you get past the disconcertingly ghost-written introduction.

Finally, the first read-through for The Importance Of Being Ernest was yesterday - I'm Miss Prism and quite enjoy my part.  The improv club also met for the first time, and both promise to be thoroughly enjoyable and quite satisfactorily distracting from any coursework I might happen to consider doing in the coming year.  I am well pleased.

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