Boston Birthdays, Saltine Crackers & Sweet, Sweet Sixteen

Happy Belated 19th Birthday Natalie Nichole Stump. I hope her birthday was all kinds of fabulous. I imagine her doing something uniquely Boston, and everything uniquely Boston in my mind is utterly fabulous. That’s right Natalie, I’m jealous of what must be your utterly fabulous Boston life. I really hope your day was marvelous, darling. It was a total disappointment to not be able to spend the day at school with Natalie on her birthday like always and to not be able to plan a “surprise” kidnapping with Krystal. My how times have changed.


I have spent the better part of the day lying in bed nibbling saltine crackers and sipping Gatorade. Yesterday morning I knew I was getting sick and by last night it was awful. This is the first time I have been sick since I have lived away from home and heavens knows I am being a baby about it. I miss having my mom here to take care of me. I guess I have to learn how to take care of myself someday, and age 19 seems like a respectable place to start; hence the best rest I have ordered and the Gatorade and saltines I bought by myself, thank you very much. I will get the hang of this “being-on-my-own-thing” eventually. I hope. Unfortunately my sudden illness prevented the last minute cramming I had intended to do for my Nutrition test this morning. Lesson learned the hard way for putting things off until the last minute. Somehow I doubt the lesson will stick, however.

Spring break seems like it was so long ago. My brilliant summer vacation countdown seems like it was put up on my wall ages ago, and we’re still at 47 days. For some reason 47 days feels a lot longer than 51 days did last Sunday. Here I am entrenched into school like that weeklong blissful break never even happened.

Look at that. Game time. Go WILDCATS!

51 Days

…until summer vacation. The countdown goes up on my wall today. Regan remarked that 51 days sounds too long, and we should count by weeks, but 7.5 weeks sounds entirely too long for me; almost 2 months. 51 days I can handle. Or at least, I hope I can.

I am absolutely shocked I made it to my classes today. The orange blossoms outside my dorm have packed their bags and left town, taking all of my school related willpower with them. And yet somehow I was still able to manage to pull myself out of bed this morning for geology, and again this afternoon for Spanish. But attending class doesn’t mean much, really. It remains to be seen how heavy I sigh, how little I study, and how long I procrastinate for the rest of the semester.

I went “grocery” shopping at Highland Market this morning, meaning I bought a loaf of bread, mostly. My dwindling account balance indicates I will be eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly over the next 51 days. But I don’t mind. I’ve always had a soft spot for PB & J. If only I had thought to bring my heart shaped cookie cutter with me.

The Pros and Cons of Pro-Con Lists

I am beginning to realize that spring break is not going to last nearly long enough. But then again, I don’t know why that should come as a surprise; it never does. But even still it has been a welcome respite from school and every stress that goes along with Tucson, with living in the dorms, with homework, with life. I can’t say it did not come at just the right time. I was nearing a breaking point. And now I’m only a few weeks outside of summer. I can feel it too. This morning I woke up with a strong desire to go play in the sun. If this was 1997, and I still lived in Ohio, and the family boat wasn’t slowly decaying in some storage space, and it was summer vacation, I would be on the lake right now. Everything would be perfect (and that’s not an exaggeration by any means. It would literally be perfect). If only, right?

Everyone keeps asking about what I am going to do next year. Maybe they don’t understand that I go as long as humanly possible without making decisions. Making a decision is probably the hardest thing in the world for me. I can’t do it to save my life. So next year is still as undecided as ever. And it will be for quite a while now. As of this time last year I still had 3 pro-con lists taped to my bedroom wall: ASU, U of A, and BYU. The BYU list was eventually taken down to make room for the other two. Ultimately they were abandoned all together. It seems for every pro I could just as easily think of a con, and every time I added to the U of A list the ASU list got longer as well, and vice versa. It is my mind’s way of playing tricks on me to purposely keep me from making a decision. *sigh* (Apparently I really am too witty for my own good, if I can so easily outsmart myself like that.) I wonder if I still have those lists somewhere. I doubt they will be of any more use this time around, (my brain undoubtedly will continue to come up with new clever ways to make me miserable) but you never know. Maybe they could help. I see desperation in my very near future.

Me: I really need to make a decision about this.

Crazy Me: Maybe, but you know you will never be able to make a decision until the last second anyway, so why bother?

Me: I guess. But I should start weighing the facts now. Maybe I’ll make a pro–con list!

Crazy Me: Go for it, but rest assured by the time you are finished each decision will have exactly the same number of pros and cons, thanks in large part to me; you’ll be back at square one.

The regular me needs to learn to outmaneuver the crazy me.* Crazy me thrives off the drama of waiting until the last possible moment to make a decision. I learned this handy fact from He’s Just Not That into You. I never realized how true it was until right this minute. Is it time to trim the drama from my life? Or is it time to break out a pen and paper and go to work on those never ending, completely unhelpful lists? I fear the latter.

*Editor’s Note: Neither of me cares how much a grammatical nightmare this sentence is. I am invoking poetic license, thank you very much.