Floating In Puddles

Today was a day to sleep. I woke up this morning-if it was still morning-to the sound of rain battering my window. Sleep, I thought, I should just sleep. So I did for a while longer, although I knew in the back of my brain that I should have been awake and doing homework. After a while the rain stopped and I got up. It was still gloomy outside. That's okay, I thought, gloomy is nice sometimes, maybe it'll rain again later. So I got up and ate a waffle, Eggo, not homemade. The flavor didn't really sink in though, my tongue and the inside of my lip are a little scorched from drinking tea last night. I came down with a tingle in the back of my throat yesterday. So I drank tea, that always helps.

I spent the rainy day watching the telly and thinking about how I should be reading Frankenstein, and how perfect a day it is to be reading a Gothic horror novel. A while later I found myself in my bed, gazing at the work of an 18-year-old Mary Shelley, wondering if I'll ever be published. It was raining again. The heavy drops battered my window, and I fell asleep again.

I dreamed something. I don't remember what. My suitemates voices floated in and out of my consciousness, but I never woke up from my dream. I wasn't happy, that's all I know. Restless, like I had something to do. Reality seeps into dreams sometimes. I wish it wouldn't.

I woke up a while later, it was around six o'clock I think. Something hard was hitting my window. That's odd, I thought. So I listened again, and there was the hard thing hitting my window again. I popped out of bed and gazed through the wet glass at the rain and the hail bouncing off the picnic table on the patio. I ran to the front door, flung it open, and gazed at the ice falling from the sky. There was more rain than hail, and it wasn't even that large--at most the size of an average grape--but I watched just the same, a few of the pebbles hitting my bare shins as I stood in the open doorway. The rain was really coming down, so much that the small steps across the street had become an impressive waterfall. I went around to all the doors to see what each view had to offer. I saw the hail bouncing off the windshield and roof of my car. I watched it float in the massive puddle outside the back door.

Before long it stopped hailing, but the rain kept coming, so I sat at my desk and watched it. I like rainy days. When I was little I always liked when it rained hard. There was a hemlock tree in my yard that always had a deep puddle under its low branches when it rained hard. When the rain stopped and my parents let us out, my brothers and I would make paper boats and float them in the puddle. We would push them with long sticks, stepping through the puddle in our big rubber boots. We would race them until they got waterlogged and wouldn't stay upright anymore. We tried racing paper boats in the gutters with the neighbor kids on rainy summer afternoons when we moved to Orlando. It wasn't the same though.

I tried to make a paper boat the other day. I couldn't remember how.

A Little Metal Sink To Spit In

I found myself wandering through the stacks in Strozier Library today. I had to figure out who wrote the article I referenced for an essay I wrote earlier in the semester, and rewrote for our last assignment before finals week. I was in a hurry, so I asked directions from the man at the information counter. He was a veteran at the job, and new exactly where the periodicals section was. I gave him the call number and he directed me right to it. I still had to wander through the stacks a little though.

So I got up to the second floor and made a left and then a right into the periodicals section. Its amazing. Row after row of books filled with bound periodicals published ages ago. Walking past one stack, I saw the Saturday Evening Post. The clock was the only thing that prevented me from stopping and thumbing through the thick books. Images of famous Norman Rockwells popped into my head; a family at Thanksgiving Dinner, the one of the kid in the doctor's office. I want to say there was a painting of a kid in the dentist's office, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it reminded me of the Norman Rockwell I used to look at it when I was little and someone in my family had to go see Dr. Brockmeier. That's where I was the day the Pulaski County Courthouse burned down in the early 1990s, sitting in Dr. Brockmeier's waiting room looking at a copy of that Norman Rockwell. Funny the things you remember.

Dr. Brockmeier had an old style dentist office, one where there was a bowl to spit in next to the chair. No suction tube things in that place. I want to say the tile was green or maybe aqua, but that might just be me imagining things. I never got to sit in the chair, although I always wanted to. I liked the kid in the Norman Rockwell, I guess I wanted to be like him a little. I had perfect teeth when I was little, so I never got to sit in that chair and spit in the little metal sink. It looked so complicated, so high tech. Before we moved, Dr. Brockmeier retired. I think he had worked on my dad's teeth when he was a kid, so it was probably about time. I was sad though, when we went to the dentist after that. His office was new, and actually high tech, and there wasn't a little metal sink to spit in.

The Crime Fighting Team of Caramel and Macchiato

You know I have a paper due the next day when you get a new blog post from me. You know I really don't want to write the paper when you get two blog posts from me within 12 hours. You know I really really really don't want to write the paper when you get a blog post about a new crime fighting team.

It's funny, the creative juices that flow at one thirty in the morning when something is due the next day. Too bad those creative juices aren't flowing in the right direction, eh?

So I was sitting in the dining room typing away at my trusty laptop, when my roommate poked her head through the swinging door from the kitchen.
"You want some coffee?" she asked me.
"Sure," I said. It was the early hours of the morning on a day a paper is due, and the chance was growing that I would not see my bed tonight. A cup of coffee could not hurt. I capped my pen and joined my roomie in the kitchen. She was doing something nice for me, I figured I should join her.
"So what are you working on?" I asked.
"That project I told you about."
"Oh, right. How's it going?"
"Good," she said, "I'm making a pet rock now."
"Pet rock? Sweet."
So we got into a conversation, one of those conversations that seems to meander through the wrinkles of the brain, stopping at every interesting intersection to point out random bits of information. Paper towel roll binoculars, stupid cows, and coffee...sweet coffee.
"I realized that I don't really like coffee, " I said, putting down my paper towel roll telescope. "I mean, I drink Starbucks, but that's not really coffee. It's like sugar water with a little coffee flavor."
"Starbucks kind of scares me cause they say things like Venti and Macchiato," my roommate says.
"Yeah, Caramel Macchiato sounds like some kind of crime fighting team." I alter my voice to sound like some kind of crazy cartoon announcer. "Behold! The crime fighting team of Caramel and Macchiato! Ridding the world of tea one bag at time!"
We laughed. I grabbed my half-full coffee mug and teaspoon, posing in a kung-foo-esque stance. The conversation went down hill from there. All of a sudden I was six years old again, having a paper towel roll sword fight in the kitchen.

After a while we realized that even though we felt like kids, we are in fact college students who have work to do. We laid down our weapons and returned to our laptops. And now I'm procrastinating...again.

All I have to say is: "Skcubrats! I have to finish my paper! Aahhhh!"

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I Am:
1. Tired
2. Crampy (and yes, I took some Midol)
3. Battling a headache
4. Ache-y
5. Sleepy
6. Feeling like I need to vomit
7. Gas-y
8. PMS-y

I Have to:
1. Write a 2 page summary of a very long, very boring article
2. Write a 4-5 page paper that extends that very long, very boring article

I Feel:
1. Frustrated
2. Burned out
3. Lazy
4. Confused
5. Whine-y

Not a good day for me. Not a good day.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Been busy. Haven't had a paper to write. Haven't had any inspiration to write. I'm tired of reading [boring stuff] and writing, I feel like that's all I do. Give me a math problem, please, I'd like a concrete answer for once.