Full of Indian food and done cleaning up, I am monumentally tired.

What a good good good time. More to follow (perhaps).

To reiterate: so. tired. Jeezy Creezy.

History of the Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhaustible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

-JLB




ps - Ben tells the best stories.

Jolly Indeed

Conquests are fun and silly and I really need to grow up about it already, but really. I mean, we mustn't forget ourselves here. Propriety and details and all of that.

So, Emily and Julie and Kat are coming here soon, and Annie and Jess are also coming here, and there will be fondue and dirty santa and possibly (probably) other dirty things as well. I'm looking forward to it immensely, but when they come, it will be the last fun thing that happens before school rushes back in and sweeps me away (don't even talk to me about New Years - we all know how I feel about that...). I've been terrible this break about counting down the days, and even though there are twelve of them, I'm not enjoying each one completely because in the back of my mind I keep thinking that there's one more day gone and here comes work again and it's awful because why can't I just forget my teacher-self for more than twenty minutes and immerse myself in friends and family and sleeping and cleaning and reading and baking. It just doesn't work. I'm broken. But maybe fondue and the Apartment Six girls will help fix things.

Also, I want to go to Prague. Like now. And Budapest. And Cordoba.

For Christmas (in case anybody was wondering) there was a new teapot that whistles, deluxe scrabble con diccionario, perfume, sweaters, soup bowls, a grill, an itunes gift card, a pasta jar (finally), a 2007 calendar, a white puffy vest, some chocolate, a haircut, assorted other apartment things, and a text message from Zach Tolstyka.

Why don't we use different toothbrushes when we're sick? Doesn't it seem like sticking all those germy bristles in your mouth twice a day would be detrimental to getting well again? Or is toothpaste strong enough to kill the germs? I bring this up because I've been ill this weekend. This is the first cold I've had since getting my nose pierced, and I've got to admit, it's kind of annoying. Good thing I don't get sick very often. This afternoon I'm committed to getting as healthy as possible, so I'm ignoring all of the friends pouring back into town for their ridiculously long college-type vacations and relegating myself to the couch with a glass of Sunny D and a pile of journals to grade. Plus I just discovered that the lovely people at TNT are showing the LotR trilogy all afternoon (and on into the evening...) so it looks like I picked a good day to sloth it up indoors. I just wish it weren't so sunny outside.

Living alone for the first time, I'm slowly discovering things about myself that I never knew before. For instance, this evening I learned that I can carry $65 worth of groceries up two flights of stairs in one trip. (Are you impressed?) I also managed to slice my finger open during the haul in which my grocery-packing prowess was evidenced, and I didn't notice until I saw the smear of blood on my fresh, new box of honey nut cheerios. Gross? Kind of. And I hate band-aided fingers. They're so cumbersome and stiff. I had planned on updating my hair color and making rice crispy treats tonight, but both of those will be noticeably impeded by a bulky digit. Luckily, I can still take out the trash and change the cat litter, so the night isn't a total loss. Oh no! And tomorrow is Christmas Wrapping Cookie Decorating Day. I wonder if I can train myself to tape and frost with my toes in the next twelve hours.

nothing everyone hasn't heard/felt/realized before, but...

I love how it takes me almost a week to get around to making unplesant phone calls home to parents, a fairly simple and straighforward activity, yet Emily, Julie, Kat and I can simultaneously coordinate our four (count 'em!) ridiculously busy holiday scheudles and successfully plan a multi-day get-together in less than three hours (give or take). Same rule seems to apply for how long it takes me to get through a stack of Ad Analysis papers versus the time it takes me to read Glamour from (back) cover to (front) cover. Huh.

Q: What do my four English preps have in common with female roommates living in close quarters?
A: No matter what their scheudles were at the beginning of the year, eventually they're all on the same cycle.

Okay, that was awful, I know. But it's also true. Through no effort or intention of my own, this week all four of my classes are finishing up units, which means taking tests, writing papers, and doing projects. For the past three days, I have spent the 5 hours between 4 and 9 pm grading grading grading and then grading some more (with breaks to eat and blog, of course). And it's not over. Monday Macbeth projects were due, Tuesday Macbeth literary analysis papers and Word Journals were due, along with vocab. Today World Lit took an essay test on Siddhartha, and Writng for the Real World handed in their Ad Analysis papers. Tomorrow WftRW has a short test on logical fallacies and on Friday Eng 11 takes their sonnet quiz and Apply hands in their Macbeth projects. Oof!! It's just the pace at which things are rolling (what do we say about momentum? we hate it, right?) To put off any fo these assessments would gum up my schedule and make things hectic later...so instead they can be hectic now? At least they're only hectic outside of the classroom. And since all of this is happening now, my holiday break should be comparitively school-work-free which will leave time for social events when other people are actually around and available. So now that I've whined about it I guess I can step back and say it will be all right...as long as I don't die of paper cuts before the week is through.

Also, I've decided Tuesday is the worst day of the week. Fucking Tuesday I've begun to call it (only in my head and occasionally under my breath, of course). I'm always tired on Tuesday. By Wednesday the slide toward the end of the week has already started, and on Monday I'm still refreshed from the weekend. Tuesday is that point where, if one were to compare getting through the week to swimming the English Channel, you've come too far to go back, but there's still so far to go, and everything is cold and grey and wet and miserable. You have to paddle on, but you don't have to like it.

And Suddenly I'm Not Tired At All

Last night some city utility trucks parked on the street outside my window. At 7ish they started their motors and commenced to dig a giant hole in the ground and futz around (loudly). Amid the drilling, jack-hammering, clanging, chuffing, and generally making a terrible ruckus...surprise!...they turned the water off. The noise kept up non-stop until 5 this morning. I slept for maybe half an hour total, and spent the rest of the night tossing, turning, and running through alternative plans to shower and get ready for school if my water was still off in the morning, plus intermittently peering out the window waiting for this huge "snowstorm" they predicted to actually arrive and save me from a potentially fatigued, greasy, and generally heinous day.

The call came at 5:25, and that's all I'm going to say because nobody likes a gloater.