I've done way too much homework in the past month, gone on three dates (there will be another tomorrow), cleaned a lot, had some good meals, and ... that's pretty much it. Sad, isn't it?
It has become popular belief (among my roommates at least) that I am way too busy for my own good. And... they're probably right, but I didn't really think there was anything I could do about it. I just kept doing homework... and more homework... and more?
Last Saturday was especially ridiculous, and I suppose I'll tell you what I can remember about it, since it pretty much sums up my current life patterns.
It was bright and sunny when I woke up that morning. And so was I. And I don't know where Ashley was. But it seemed like the opportune moment to tidy up my room. And then, after I had done that, I realized that since it was eight on a Saturday morning, I probably had several hours in the apartment to myself while my other roommates slept. So... I went grocery shopping. I spent all but seventy cents on my meal plan. I proceeded to clean the kitchen.
And then, as I was putting the dishes from the dishwasher away... I realized just how ridiculously unorganized the cupboards were...
I'm not OCD, I promise. But occasionally, when I've had enough sleep and don't have anything particularly stressful occupying my attention, I have little bouts of obsession-compulsion... this was one of those times. Definitely.
Each cupboard I opened revealed a new scene of chaos... and each would summon a shiver down my spine and a twitch in my eye. With the realization the contents of our cupboards were often in plain sight since Jackie has an odd and nasty inability to close cupboard doors once she opens them, I set out to organize them. All of them.
I discovered lots of strange surprises. Dishes that hadn't at all come clean in the dishwasher, but had been put back in the cupboard anyway. Disgustedly, I pulled these out, opened the dishwasher, and put the guilty dishes inside after scrubbing the guck off of them. I left the dishwasher open, ready to receive more offending dishes... but I would later regret this.
I'm not observant enough to know which of my roommates are guilty of all of the offending things that I found in the cupboards... but all these things did was feed the flames of my temporary-OCD-ness. I finally got up to the top shelf of the cupboard above our sink. It held a jumbled mess of what I suspected to be Tupperware.
I pulled up a chair up next to the open dishwasher, right where I could work with whatever happened to be up there. Among the mess, I found tacky, empty plastic containers like you would usually buy at the grocery store, but containing a butter spread or something.
If we were poor and used Tupperware enough that the plastic containers we did own were insufficient for the demands of our apartment's normal usage patterns... I would understand why we would keep them. But honestly... I think we have way too much Tupperware as it is. All these flimsy plastic containers were doing were collecting dust and taking up space. Oh, and provoking a nasty twitch in my right eye.
I made an executive decision to throw them out. Which required getting down off the chair and placing the offenders in the trash can. My arms laden with junk, I successfully turned around while atop the chair. But I lost grip of one the plastic things in my hand... which flew to my left, above the dishwasher.
(The following happened all within two seconds.)
I wasn't thinking. My hand reached out to grab it, and as I caught it, I realized I had just compromised my balance on the chair. Badly. I came crashing down halfway into the dishwasher.
Yelping out in pain, I leapt back up onto the chair, but not at all very gracefully. Instead of resting on the chair as I had hoped to, I realized that I hadn't landed quite as I'd hoped to... and the chair and I fell... the other way.
Crash.
I lay sprawled on the tile, the tacky plastic things crushed and broken (I told you they weren't worth keeping...). The chair creaked angrily, threatening to come apart. I moaned. I swear I must have hit or smashed every square inch of my body.
I now had an instant headache. But strangely, this was the minorest of the many hurts I now noticed. I got up slowly... threw the evil plastic fragments in the trash... and limped to the hallway.
To my surprise, none of my sleeping roommates had woken from the horrid noises I had just made.
I limped to the couch. And collapsed.
Ow. OW. Owwwwwwwww. There wasn't any blood, just a strange stinging sensation all over. My left leg hurt in particular. I think that is what collided most violently with the chair. I lifted up my pant leg... to discover that it was already purpling with what had declared itself a nasty bruise. Ugh. My right knee hurt as well (this was what I think hit the dishwasher first), but it was just pink with irritation. My hands and arms stung with pain from flailing around and unsuccessfully trying to find a handhold. My head had hit something... I think the ground.
Whatever.
At least my apartment was clean.
I spent the next several hours doing homework... namely calculus. And... more calculus. My brain was working so slowly that I'm not sure how I was thinking at all. I trudged through my homework. Problem by problem... Ugh. I was starting to get sooo mad at this homework, because I wasn't getting the right answers immediately.
It soon happens that I am trying out my hand at primal scream therapy. "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR
Ding.
'Mid textbook-throw, I look around for the source of this mysterious sound.
Ding. Ding.
Oh! My instant messenger! Someone is talking to me! I consider whether or not to answer it. I was positively fuming and might not be the most pleasant being to talk to at the moment. And it was nine'o'clock at night. Well, I decided I would rather talk to a person than to my calculus homework... I might talk more civilly to someone with feelings.
I look over at my computer screen. Hm, it's Ryan. I determine that I am not going to look at my homework for at least another half-an-hour. I glare at it angrily and I talk to him... but alas! I suppose it is impossible for me to talk to someone without leaking out how I am feeling.
Ryan inquires what I've been doing all day... I reply, Homework. What kind? Calculus. Just calculus? Yes... all day... and I'm not done! And I have more! I've got physics and biology and health and dance and... All day? How long is all day? Six hours on calculus.
Hmm... usually when something takes me all day, it means I need a break, Ryan says.
I don't have time for a break! I'm never going to be done with all this homework! Never! Neeevvvveeerrr!
Ryan obviously disagreed. Wanna go an a walk?
A walk? Hm. Here is where that horrible moment where your brain splits into two distinct voices and they start arguing.
No. Don't do it. You have way too much to do. Way too much.
Aw, but I'm sick and tired of calculus. It isn't even interesting, or fun, or cute, or...
You'll never get done. If you go on a walk, you won't be able to do any more homework tonight, and you'll have to do it on Sunday!
Or... I could do it Monday morning. I can't go on walk then...
NO! You promised yourself you would finish all your homework BEFORE Monday. BEFORE! That means TONIGHT!
But I haven't been on a date with him for... two whole weeks?
YOU'RE TOO BUSY!!!
But I told him no to that date on Thursday and he was really sad...
You were too busy... and you're even busier now... you have two midterms next week.
It's nine, and I've been working allllll day!
At this point, one voice kicks the other's shin.
Shut up. I'm going.
So... I go out into the cold outside. So incredibly cold. It's like... twenty degrees... (warmer than last week, but still). But... I don't feel cold. I imagine if you could see stress, you'd see them radiating off of me like heat waves.
We start walking. "Are you okay?"
"Of course I'm fine, I just have (insert incredibly long list of things to do before Monday here)..." I think I was hyperventilating... or something.
He looked at me sideways-like. "Jenna. I am not a physics assignment."
Ahhh! Physics! Oh no. "Oh no no no no... I have a physics midterm this week. And a physics homework assignment. And a reading assignment..."
"Nope. There is only the sidewalk... and the snow... and you're on a date... and you don't have to worry about anything..."
With that, we started exploring campus. Last time we went on a walk we explored all over the north side of campus, and it had been considerably warmer. We did a lot of random things... crossed the bridge, wandered around the Wilk, found a wall map and made each other find the other's hometowns... rummaged through the recycling receptacles looking for today's comic pages in the newspaper... drew little cartoon men... realized we weren't sure if cotton candy was just sugar or if there were something else in it... invaded a computer lab to research about cotton candy (just sugar and food coloring, apparently... the trick is the machine)... found the barber shop... rode elevators... found the flower shop... and then it was eleven'o'clock. The campus buildings close down at eleven, so we went back outside.
Walking along the sidewalk to the intersection, somehow we got on the subject of jaywalking.
"I jaywalk all the time... but only at like... four in the morning when I'm walking to work, and not a single soul is awake. You know what's fun? Dancing on the Y in the intersection here..."
We had come to the intersection, in the middle of which was a large white painted Y.
"Have you done it before?" he asked.
"Yes." And the light turned green for us to cross.
I started to cross on the crosswalk... but Ryan dashed out to the center of the intersection and started to dance maniacally. There weren't any cars that had a green light... only cars with bewildered drivers stuck at the red light. I stayed on the crosswalk, the whole time laughing at him (I didn't know what else I was supposed to do!). He danced until the light turned yellow, at which point he dashed to the other side of the street, and swung around the light pole, me laughing the whole time.
We started to walk back to our apartments, but then we saw a large icicle. Ryan decided to try and get the icicle down. He jumped up and broke it off, but of course right below the icicle was a sheet of ice. Icicle in hand, his feet went all over the place... but he didn't fall or crack his head open. "Ah! I almost got myself killed!" Hm, that would make twice in one date, within five minutes.
I kept the icicle, and we kept walking. We got to my back door. And we both ignored it. Instead... I decided I wanted to know how deep the snow was. He tried to push me into it, but I ducked in time. However, I did drop the icicle. It didn't break, but he warned that if I did break it, it would hurt his feelings. We went around to the front of my hall, where there was a large patch of snow.
We left Ryan's phone number in big writing there so that when my hallmates came out they could see it. (Unfortunately for Ryan, the whole thing got annihilated by several inches of snow that came down that night.) I left my icicle next to it in the hopes that when the sun hit it, it would reflect the sunlight and attract people's attentions.
Then we went inside... and began looking at the wood grain on people's door. We found one door pattern that looked like the Salt Lake Temple. Then... there was this one door.
"It... looks like bacon."
"Bacon?"
"Yeah... there's the dark meat in the middle, and then the strips of fat on the side, and..."
He was right. That door looked like bacon. And, of course, we had to tell our friends that lived behind that door. We knocked. And, well, I guess since it was nearly midnight, no one inside had been expecting visitors. Patrice eventually opened the door, but we had to wait for awhile. She answered groggily (we feared she had been sleeping, but no... she had been doing homework) and looked at us with a bewildered expression as we blankly informed that her door looked like bacon. She looked quite confused when we bid her adieu.
Well, guys aren't allowed in the girl's hall after midnight on Saturday... and vice versa. So guys were clearing out of the place. We kept talking, and then it was a minute 'till midnight.
"Aren't you going to leave?"
"Nope. I have a whole minute left." And then he hugged me... and he kept checking his watch... and then he hopped outside exactly as the second hand reached midnight. And then I went home, where I barely escaped getting grounded by my roommates, who had been watching chick flicks in my absence.
So this week I've done a whole bunch of homework.
And I have a date tomorrow (with Ryan, yes...). So... good night all.
