My roommate, Tiffany, comes back from spring break tomorrow. And although, while she was here, I was pretty good about keeping the overflowing containers of crap on my side of the room, in her absence I have spread piles of my own junk over every square inch of the room (excepting her bed).

Tonight I was telling another housemate, Teal, about this. “Tiffany better not come back early and surprise me,” I said, “I think she would take one look at the room and fall down dead.”

“Well,” Teal responded, without missing a beat, “At least then you would have a single room.”

…

Don’t worry, Tiffany. She didn’t mean it. I don’t think.

… who are willing, at a moment’s notice, to drop everything, come TP your car, and then leave you menacing comments about it on your blog.

Makes a girl feel loved. sniff

(P.S. Actually, it kind of ticked me off—at least until I found out it was someone I know that did it. )

1. I was mostly asleep when I remembered that I still had to blog tonight. Granted, I was mostly asleep on the chair in the living room, where I had been sitting trying to decide what to do with the remnants of my evening before I passed out, but it’s more dramatic if you imagine that I had to wake up, stumble out of bed, and force myself to blog. I want you to believe I have that kind of Dedication.
2. Speaking of bed… tonight is the first night in three nights that I get to sleep in my own bed. Last night I stayed at my roommates’ parents’ house, and the night before that I stayed at my parents’ house. It feels good to be back with my own pillows and blankets.
3. Can you tell I want to go to sleep?
4. Goodnight.
5. But first… I want you to know that I am currently wearing retainers (which I do several nights a week) that make it difficult for me to speak without slurping, and that I just spent a great deal of time in front of our bathroom mirror poking, prodding, squeezing, and generally trying to get rid of the horrifying zits that I photoshopped out of yesterday’s portraits. I believe this revelation is what’s known as “keeping it real.” You’re welcome.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I got my hair cut. And because I was wise enough to realize that my hair would never look as good as it did when styled by a professional, I took advantage of the opportunity to have a portrait session with myself—something I have not done properly since last July.

There is nothing quite like trying to take a really good self portrait to make you appreciate being behind the camera. Framing and focus become dangerous games when you can’t look through the lens. And after spending a good chunk of time patiently trying and retrying to get the focus just so, taking my camera off of that tripod and taking pictures of other things was one of the most empowering feelings in the world.

It’s funny, though; I think that because of all the extra effort and concentration necessary to make a good self portrait, by the time I have gotten those few great shots, I have learned so much more than if I had taken a similarly good shot of another person. Kind of like how forcing yourself to translate English to Greek makes translating Greek to English a piece of cake.

Click on over to Flickr to see just a few of my favorite shots from yesterday’s session.

… but this one probably didn’t.

I should have known I was in trouble as soon as I left the house. I needed to be somewhere only twenty minutes away at 4:15, and I was leaving at 3:45—giving me a good ten minutes to spare. This never happens.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “I’m not sure if I like the idea of being early and just sitting around waiting. Maybe I should take a longer route there.” And I almost did, before reminding myself, “Hey, I’m never early to anything. Why not savor this moment. I’ll just make sure to drive exactly the speed limit the whole way there—that should use up a little more time.”

So I did. I got on the freeway and I concentrated on fastidiously following the speed limit; I made it a little game with myself. (I daresay cars around me did not appreciate this little game.)

Pretty soon I started thinking about where I was headed: to get a haircut. Now, getting my hair cut requires me to summon up a bit of courage; not only because it involves interaction with other human beings (and we know that doesn’t always go so well.), but because I have only been to a hairdresser one other time in my entire life. On top of that, this was going to be the first time I would have my hair cut by a guy. Would that be weird?

These are the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head, combined with my obsessive watch over the speedometer… as I drove past my exit.

At first, I refused to believe what had just happened. No, that wasn’t my exit… couldn’t have been… there’s no way that I just drove by it… Oh, bother, it was my exit. Well, I’ll just turn around and go back.

And this is where my important life lesson for today comes in: it turns out that there’s this funny thing about freeways… you can’t turn around on them.

As this fact began to sink in, I admit that I started becoming a tiny bit irrational. “What?? I can’t just… turn around? This is the 21st Century, people! We can speak to our toasters and tell them to do things for us! I should be able to TURN AROUND ON THE FREAKING FREEWAY!!!”

Then I saw a sign on which the first town listed was at least an hour away—and that’s when I almost burst into tears. Suddenly my “going to be a bit early for my haircut” had turned into “going to be horrifically late for my haircut.”

In actuality, the next exit off of the freeway was ‘only’ 10 miles from the exit I meant to get off at… which, when you count the time it took me to drive back after I had turned around, gave me plenty of time to consider the sheer stupidity of what I had done.

The blog-worthiness of the whole situation did not escape me, of course, even at the time—nor did the irony of the fact that the one time… the ONE TIME I was going to be EARLY for something… I ended up still being five minutes late.

The moral of the story is: Don’t try to be early to anything. You will just end up bungling it.

Right?

When I lived at my parents’ house, it was not hard to guess why a particular object was where it was at any particular moment. Either I put it there, so I knew why it was there, or one of my parents did, so it was supposed to be there anyway. Simple.

Living in a house with six other individuals is a different story. When an object is sitting on the kitchen counter or outside the back door, it’s anyone’s guess as to who put it there and whether it is ’supposed’ to be there. (Whatever ’supposed to’ even means.)

So when I stumble on a situation like this…

… all I can do is scratch my head and wonder:

1) Who left a bag of miscellaneous garbage, including, apparently, a box full of cheerios, on our back steps?

2) How did said box full of cheerios end up cascading down said steps?

3) How many squirrels are going to die of obesity because of this?

Add these to the list of un-answerable questions that Gutenberg forces one to contemplate.

Over the last several years, as I have begun to venture forth into the world without my parents, I have discovered a number of awkward social situations that do not allow me to fulfill my ultimate goal for every moment of my life, which is to leave a trail of highly impressed people behind me, praising my incredible poise and tact and efficiency.

In other words, when it comes to things like hairdressers, and restaurants, and gas stations, I do not exactly know how to… act right. And being who I am, this distresses me.

For example: the first time I ever pulled into a gas station by myself, I left my parents’ car running. The. Entire. Time. Naturally, nobody told me until afterwards that this could have caused my parents’ car (and me) to BLOW UP. Thanks for nothing, folks.

Needless to say, Gas stations and I have never quite gotten along since.

There was also the time, only a month or two ago, that I discovered my inability to pay for gas only after I had pulled into the gas station and rolled down my window and begun speaking to the business-like gas station attendant. That was a little humiliating.

Today, I had to visit the gas station again.

I always pick the wrong line at the gas station. My first step, every time, is to remind myself of which side my gas tank is on, and then to look for the shortest line of cars on the correct side of the gas pump. But then I have to ask myself: that line only has two cars, but they look like they could be there for a while—maybe that line with three cars is almost ready to move forward! Nah, I better stick with the shortest line.

And that, of course, is when every line except the one that I picked moves forward.

But today, as I approached the gas station, I noticed that the lane on the end, on the correct side of the gas pump, had no cars in it. But my first thought was not “What fantastic luck!”, it was, “Oh dear. I’m probably not supposed to use that lane.” Because that is the kind of thing that goes through my head at a gas station.

I bit the bullet and pulled into the lane. And after a few brief, terrifying moments in which I was sure no gas station attendant would look over to my forsaken corner of the concrete, a friendly-looking man ran up to my window. “Fill it with regular, please,” I said.

And then I do exactly what I always do when I am at a gas station waiting for my tank to be filled: nothing. I sat, staring out the window, lost in my own thoughts.

When friendly gas station man returned to the window to hand me my receipt, he said, “You’re kind of quiet, aren’t you?”

Oh no, I thought, I’m supposed to talk to them, too?

“Am I?” I said.

“Yes, you’re quiet. I bet you’re the quiet, shy one of your brothers and sisters, eh?”

“Well, anyone who knows me wouldn’t say I’m quiet!” I squeaked. I am not sure what came over me in that moment, but all of a sudden I felt the need to say something—anything—to this man that would prove I could make conversation. That is the only way I can explain why, out of nowhere, I said, “It kind of looks like it’s snowing, doesn’t it?”

“No Ma’am, it’s only a light rain.”

“Oh! Of course.”

And then I rolled up my window and drove away, before he could accuse me of being blind as well. In my defense: It did look a little slushy.

… by typing “I swallowed super glue” into Google:

YOU ARE AT THE WRONG WEBSITE.

You should not use the precious few moments you have before the walls of your esophagus fuse permanently together reading about the time I spilled super glue all over myself.

Instead, you should do something productive, like watching this a few times. You’ll thank me later.

P.S. That is not actually good advice.

For weeks, I have longed for the sweet, sweet freedom that is spring break. While I was staying up all hours of the night writing papers and studying for finals, I imagined what it would be like to spend my time taking photographs and writing blog posts and cleaning my room and organizing my life and when I was tired just… going to bed!

And then reality hit.

You see, while a normal, sane person might look at a day like today—a day completely free of prearranged responsibilities—and say, “Hey! Today is my opportunity to do all kinds of things! I can get together with friends, I can write, I can draw, I can take care of projects that have been nagging me,” I took one look at today and said, “Too many options. Overwhelmed. Going back to bed.”

And that is how I found myself, after I returned from taking my roommate to the train station this morning, sleeping away half the afternoon. You could argue that I needed the sleep, but all the same, it left me feeling bitter at myself for wasting all that precious time.

One of the nice things about having a confining, crazy-making school schedule, I’ve discovered, is that it tends to crowd out all the ways you could be spending your time and focuses your attention on the task at hand: completing schoolwork. In that way, it actually removes responsibility. It also prevents you from sleeping through the whole day.

There I go again—eyeing that grass on the other side of the fence. Don’t worry… in a few weeks I’ll be longing for summer break.

So, did I really agree to write every day of this break?

…

I was afraid of that. It was a romantic idea and all, but now that I’m sitting here staring at this blank entry field I’m wondering if I made my promise in a moment of misguided fervor.

I’ll talk about my room.

The room that I share with another student named Tiffany is on the bottom floor of our house. And by the bottom floor, I really mean the basement. Right outside our door is a little hallway, and off of that is the main room of the basement.

Our room has a huge walk-in closet on one wall, big enough that even divided in two it provides each of us ample storage room.

My side of the room has a bed, a bookcase, and a wee wooden writing desk that I found at Goodwill two days before I moved in. I absolutely love my desk; it has tiny drawers and a leather writing surface that pulls out to make more room.

The wall above my bed and my desk is covered with a collage of photographs and two drawings that I did in art practicum this quarter. Directly above my bed is a set of four mirror tiles arranged in a diamond pattern that were here when I came—and they’re glued to the wall.

The wireless internet modem is upstairs, in the kitchen—which happens to be directly above Tiffany’s bed. This means that if you sit on Tiffany’s bed, your internet connection is just about perfect… but it wanes a little bit with each step you take away from that spot. By the time you reach my desk on the other side of the room, your connection is iffy at best.

So you can imagine how it is out here in the basement hallway, where I am sitting because Tiffany is already in bed, and I do not want to disturb her with my ticker-tapping and my bright computer screen.

Come to think of it, I guess all that is just my way of saying that I would kind of like to get up off of this cold, hard basement floor and go to bed. So I think that is what I will do. G’night.

P.S. Tonight we watched Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. It was very interesting. It’s a very quiet movie, but I think I liked that about it.