Finals! Flying! Giant birds!

Sunday 12/12

• Work 7-4.
• Econ sample questions.
• Realization: sugar cookie dough will not keep over winter break.
• Wander building in search of a kitchen that is not being used as a study room.
• Bake sugar cookies.
• Wander building in search of friends to help eat cookies.
• Continue assembling Greek culture essay outlines.
• Glance over journalism notes (again.)
• Econ late into the night.
• Facebook status: "Studying the night before a cumulative final is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." Ten friends agree.

Monday 12/13

• Up at seven to study.
• Econ final from 12-3. Keep my cool but agonize over every answer. Trandel's parentheses confound me. Work from front to back then back to front, skipping many first, second, third times through. Catch a bus home at quarter till three.
• Work 4-10.
• Studying journalism and Greek culture until about three.
• Distress. Tossing and turning. Dreams feature Oedipus and Antigone arguing about the theories of freedom of speech.

Tuesday 12/13

• Up at seven to stare at my Greek Culture outlines and review journalism. Decide to write on Apology of Socrates or the causes of the Peloponnesian War. Rule out prompts regarding Antigone and statues. (Did we cover statues?)
• Study until eleven.
• Dress. Catch a bus.
• Greek Culture final at noon. Write on the war; essay goes well. Last short answer section is iffy.
• Gap. Go to Student Learning Center (SLC) to study journalism. Rumbling stomach embarrasses me, sends me to the cafe for some overpriced chicken salad and unripe fruit. Flip through note cards until 3:30.
• Sit for the journalism final. Simpler than the preceding four; knock out the multiple choice in thirty minutes, excluding one, which contains a double negative. Professor scolds me for over-thinking, possibly does not understand the concept of a double negative. Short answer is tougher but doable.
• Catch a bus.
• Pack, change sheets, clean out refrigerator.
• Bid Roommate a Merry Christmas.
• Ask strangers for help carrying bamboo and potted plant.
• Offer stranger the pizza that will not fit in my cooler.
• Meet stepfather out front.
• Pick up rotisserie chicken for (late) dinner.
• Home. Load of laundry #1.
• Enjoy some quality time with Brooke. She likes her music box, brings me a Target gift card. Assure her I will use it. Certainly will.
• Convince stepfather to make me a fire because room, above the garage, is arctic, and couch is more comfortable anyway.
• Fall into a coma of happiness.

Wednesday 12/14

• Awoken by Mom's evil finch colony at eightish. Find that seven hours' sleep suits me better than four.
• Pack for Florida. Condense everything into one duffel, one backpack to avoid paying stupid checked bag fee. Read the long list of forbidden items. Enlist Mom's expert help in rolling clothes.
• Loads of laundry #2-#3.
• Shower.
• Share Nutella toast with Sofi. Several leisurely cups of coffee.
• Wander around house awhile. Blink and it's two o'clock.
• Drive like fire truck to the airport in Atlanta.
• Check in. Fret that I won't make it. Stand in line at security. Make conversation with a five-year-old and a Frenchman. Fret again. Phone rings three times.
• Wait forty minutes at the gate. Make conversation with an old man from Maine. Give a Kindle tutorial and discuss the lost art of biographies(?).
• Board plane. Am assured that said plane will depart on time.
• Flight is delayed forty minutes due to ice.
• Flight. Take photo ONE somewhere over Florida-Georgia line.
• Locate grandparents at Orlando airport. Depart for Dad's.
• Dinner en route.
• Arrival. Hugs for all. Second coma of happiness.

Thursday 12/15

• Day consumed by an important scholarship application -- contacting professors, requesting transcripts, writing essays. Find professors quite willing, bless them, and am able to arrange the transcript to be mailed straight to the appropriate office.
• Visit local library with stepmother. Am delighted to find that they have both a CD and a DVD collection.
• Stay up until 4AM perfecting essays. Do not feel especially put-upon, since finals week was still worse.

Friday 12/16

• Am awakened at 7:30. Feel groggy but accomplished, as the essays are done.
• Print application, essays, etc. Sign name and date; scan and send to my friend LaShon, who has said he will deliver them to the Honors office.
• Drive dad an hour to the V.A.'s local health clinic. Meet a shy old man from New Hampshire who, when pressed, really just wants to talk about his grandsons and snow tires. (No connection.) Am approached by another man who calls, "Look, Sarah Palin has come to visit us!" and am stared at all the way down to Dental. Enjoy a relaxation podcast and the office Christmas tree -- see TWO -- while Dad has his teeth prodded.
• Drive home.
• Nap...?
• Watch Catch Me If You Can with the family. Enjoy younger-than-Inception's DiCaprio.
• Other stuff happens. Fail to remember exactly what.

Saturday 12/17

• Read through most of The Princess Bride.
• Bake and decorate a million Christmas cookies with siblings and participate in holiday merrymaking. See THREE.
• Am bullied into watching The Other Guys (another Will Farrel movie...) with family.
• Check grades. Am delighted beyond all expectation to find five As and one A-. Feel justified in being a recluse/insomniac/grouch for a week.

Sunday 12/18

• Attend Mass. As one of probably three protestants present, am asked to usher and collect the offering. Little sisters offer much helpful instruction; presiding elder gives me bewildered looks. Refresh my hazy memory of the Apostle's Creed.
• Meet the neighbors (again.) Mrs. Neighbor's "old family friend" insists he must kiss my cheek. Am informed in the car that said old friend is senile and, after meeting stepmother, purportedly informed Mrs. Neighbor that stepmother was a floozy who wanted him for his money. True story? Unsure. Entertaining anecdote? Oh yes.
• Play "Singing Star" (game like "Karaoke Revolution") with siblings. Excel at "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Want You to Want Me," but have serious trouble with "More Than a Feeling."
• Make soup.
• Go on a walk with stepmother. Am pursued by these crazy tall birds that make weird sounds and perform dances of aggression. See photo FOUR.
• Finish The Princess Bride. Enjoy the prose but have mix feelings about the it's-not-my-work-I'm-just-the-abridger device.
• Get caught showing entire family a photographic representation of my life since March.

Now we're up to speed!

Appendix

(ONE)

(TWO)

(THREE)

(FOUR)

A Year In Five Stanzas

He brings her out before the crowd

And sets an apple on her head.

She tries to like the joke -- she laughs;

He teases her for turning red.

He is a world-class archer. Once

He split a pea at twenty paces.

This audience is not familiar.

She reads the question on their faces.

Does he mean to hurt her? No;

The entertainer seeks to thrill.

She smiles and she bids him, shoot,

Impress them with your expert skill.

The girl beneath the apple is

A foolish one -- too young, too good.

The darkness that is in the archer

Doesn't scare her as it should.

Oh, she loves him, and it blinds her

To the longing in his eyes.

He isn't aiming for the apple

When he lets the arrow fly.

The photo isn't mine.

I have no idea whose it is.

This is because I Googled "girl+apple" a year ago when

I did the first draft of the preceding poem and didn't make note of the source.

My inner English major is squirming.

Forgot Your Coat.

Strong words.

The silence on the other end made me want to apologize for her.

Hypothetical Insomnia

Imagine that you are a college student living on campus. As such, you share a single room (see: dorm) with another college student called a Roommate. Because you are not mice, neither you nor Roommate has the ability to collapse your spine. Your space is therefore rather limited.

Imagine that one day, Roommate informs you that she has company coming for the weekend. She does not even keep up the pretense of asking you, despite the facts that you pay the same high rent as she does and that, of course, you would have given your permission for the company to come whether or not you wanted it. Imagine that Roommate informs you of this development the day before said company is to arrive.

You don’t complain. It’s prudent to choose your battles when your combined living space is slightly larger than the average walk-in closet. Roommate’s company arrives on, let’s say, Friday afternoon, and they go out.

Friday afternoon turns golden and becomes Friday evening, which darkens gradually into Friday night. There is still no sign of Roommate. You find things to do around the room -- tidying up, reading, watching some bad made-for-television movies -- in the hope that they will return before you retire.

No such luck. At about twelve thirty, you’re too tired to wait up. You climb into bed, turn the lights out as a signal to Roommate that maybe someone is sleeping in the room, and doze off.

Roommate and the company come in at quarter till two. They turn on the light over the sink, which is incidentally level with your face, seeming unaware of the string of Christmas lights that is there for such a purpose. They turn the sink on full-blast for longer than is necessary to rinse a toothbrush. They bang around. It is nearly half an hour before they wind down. You know because you’re staring at the clock with an angry, squinty eye for pretty much the whole time.

At last the light is turned out, the banging is replaced by squeaking mattress springs, and the room becomes still. You lie there, frustratingly awake, for what seems like several years. Eventually your eyelids slip down and you relax, ill will forgotten, as sleep approaches a second time.

Right about then, the snoring begins.

Your family is full of snorers. You know all the tricks for sleeping with a snorer... but there are some complications. Your iPod is dead. You don’t have any earplugs. You’re not sick enough to justify wasting a dose of the expensive Nyquil. You burrow, pile, and otherwise create a cave out of all available bedding, but it’s no use. Still you can hear it, rhythmic and piercing. Maddening. It sounds something like a tiny elephant and something like a muted trumpet.

Things that cross your mind while you’re in the cave:

• DiCaprio has aged a lot since Titanic.
• “Little Bitty Pretty One” is an inappropriate song for this situation.
• Maybe it’s not really four.
• Ellen Page has nice hair.
• What would happen if you got up and turned on all the lights?
• Do you still have that noisemaker from Sofi’s birthday?
• Can you cry sanctuary at a place that isn’t a cathedral?
• Oh, heck. It really is four.
• The pillows aren't helping.

At about four thirty, something inside you snaps. You snatch up a pillow and blanket, grope around for your room key and house shoes, and make for the door. The lights in the hallway are retina-burning. It feels surreal and a little eerie to be out there at such an hour, when even the hardiest party people have called it a night. The floor seems to tilt. You consider the study room, but its foremost wall is glass, and you've no desire to be a zoo animal. The lounge by the laundry room makes weird gurgling sounds. Finally, exhausted and angry, you settle for the lounge behind the hall kitchen.

The kitchen lounge has one small couch, but it’s over by the glass wall, and you’re not sure you have the energy to drag it. Instead, you kick/scoot two small chairs into the one corner without windows and ball yourself up between them.

Sleep eludes you. In your state of late-night paranoia, it seems very likely that the desk person downstairs will have seen you on the security camera and will come up to tell you off. It seems equally likely that the creepy boy from the main hall will come in and creep on you while you’re sleeping. You quickly retract your foot, which could be visible from the nearest window, and spend the next three hours in a fetal position, sleeping fitfully and jumping at small noises. When the horizon turns pink around seven, you return to the room for more fitful sleeping, which, in about two hours, will be interrupted by the same sounds as last night, but in reverse.

Yeah, this really happened. I spent my last Friday as a teenager lurking around the building in search of a place to sleep. Oh well. I figure it's probably a useful skill for someone who plans to graduate with a liberal arts degree... and I never have been camping.