Let me begin by offering my apologies. It has now been almost eight months since I last fed you. If you were a cat, you would be a very dead cat.
Second, let me add that I should not be playing with you right now. I should be studying math problems I happily forgot how to do ten years ago -- twelve years ago -- and cramming pointless vocabulary into my head (the toady vowed never to write an encomium in favor of apostasy again). That sentence probably makes little sense, but even if it does, I don't actually need to know what those words mean (toady, I admit, is kind of a gem). And now I have a small circuit of neurons devoted to those words, and many others like them. Damn you, ETS and your stupid general GRE!
The good news is that I am facing all my insecurities, which are no longer being allowed to slowly attenuate my confidence while studying for the Truly Evil Exam (that not-so-clever sobriquet refers to the Literature in English exam that ETS, the darlings, are also responsible for).
Would you like to hear about a typical day for me these days, then? Try: wake up at 7:30, go to work by 9, file, call, organize, and stress non-stop until 3, then drive to the library, tutor until 6, then either drive to next tutoring job till eight, or go to personal trainer to have ass kicked by a very kind, sadistic man. Then go home, watch Rachel Maddow, read three pages of Emma, and pass out. Oh, and try to sneak in a few minutes to review words like meretricious and paean.
My dad recently emailed me my horoscope, as he sometimes likes to do in lieu of writing me an actual note, and it stated: "You need to offload some of your more demanding commitments. You are doing too many things for too many people and not enough for yourself, so learn to say "no" and say it every chance you get." Which is actually pretty good advice. But the question is, how? How do I refuse the mom who won't let me quit tutoring her son? (she begged me, said she would accommodate my schedule however I could do it, and as a consequence I am now tutoring him Wednesday nights from 7:30 to 9). The spoiled rich college girl I should be able to leave in the dust, right? The merest hint that she might want to find someone closer to where she lives set off seven text messages to me saying I was doing a 'fine' job (as in ok, not as in awesome) and that she didn't want to switch tutors again. Now, that one was way less of a compliment, but her desperation was too depressing to disappoint.
I am going to finish, little bloggie, by distracting myself from the temporary insanity of my life by totally randomly giving you a few menstrual-dream treats to ruminate on (I don't know if this happens to all menstruating females, but I get the CRAZIEST dreams):
- I discover my friend Barbara is mad at me, and it kills me. I find her, shake her, and, after asking her why she didn't tell me what she was mad about, desperately yell at her that she is "a good person trapped in a bad communicator's body!" Then I hug her tight and roll down a hill with her, and rapturously point out how beautiful the rotating pink sky/green grass is.
- I marry my high-school boyfriend, who morphs into my last-year-of-college boyfriend/ can't-date-you-or-stay-away-from-you-for-a-few-years ex. My sister announces she is getting divorced from her real-life husband, which makes me pathetically weepy. Then I sleep with a mysterious stranger, and feel guilty about having a husband rather than about cheating on the husband.
- My latest ex-boyfriend -- now seven months behind me -- tells me he is pregnant with our baby. I watch him with concern as, about to give birth, he squats down, and gives birth out of a vagina. I empathize with his pain until I see the baby's head pop out, from which moment on I can do nothing but think about my amazing new daughter and walk around oblivious to anything else and breastfeeding in public.
Pretty damn freaky, huh?
