How kind

Fifteen emails to ask for the internship, a thirty second phone call a month later to be notified that my requests weren't processed and they weren't taking any more students anyway.

I spent the rest of the day sulking in bed.

A run-in with the Tea Party

Mom hosted a tea party for the feminine francophone contingent of the City Back Home this morning. Which means, essentially, that a dozen or so elderly ladies sat around the living room for a couple hours, complaining about their knees or bragging about their past career in fashion and the expensive private international school they helped found in Big Huge City.

It also means that Mom's Best Friend brought her six-week-old daughter, and that Hitherto Unknown Lady, mother to the only school-age French children in the whole city, happens to be a marine biologist whose home institution is located fifty kilometers from the one to which I applied for this summer.

Speaking of which: early to bed for me, because I have to be up and functioning for Important Phone Calls at 8 tomorrow.

Catching up

It has been a very, very long time since I blogged regularly. It's summer, so with all that free time until I maybe get an internship, I should have time to catch you up on my life and catch up on yours, dear readers (who miraculously remain faithful after my long hiatus, I could not be more grateful to you!). So, without further ado, here it is!

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Big Huge City, visiting Friend Who Likes Science Fiction with all of the usual suspects. It's funny how we see each other nearly every day, but to make goodbyes official, we have to spend some more time together.

Goodbyes don't make me feel very sad, although I'm not sure why. Maybe I've learned that this is a very small world and there's a good chance I will see people again, maybe knowing there are phones and the internet and email and instant messaging makes it easier to (sometimes) keep in touch, maybe I'm just not very good at people?

In this case, I know for a fact that I will be seeing all of them a good number of minutes every single day as we will be living together. It's exciting (we're going to live together!) and terrifying (we're grownups...) but mostly exciting (we're going to live together!). Of course, there will be issues. Many, many issues.

Take food, for instance: Crazy Redhead Mathematically-Inclined Friend is vegetarian and Childish Booksmart Friend is very picky, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem since we'll probably just cook our own meals and are used to a semi-vegetarian diet anyway. Internet-Savvy Friend recently discovered that not only did she have Celiac disease, she was also allergic to every type of grain, corn, rice, soy, fish, chocolate, and many other things. It's already become a sore spot, as she suggested that the kitchen be kept gluten-free, a request none of us were willing to agree to but instead compromised (this means that the kitchen has to be scrubbed clean after anything we make so she doesn't get sick). More than being just a cleaning issue, it's extremely hard on her to not be able to eat food besides potatoes and eggs and vegetables, any food she feels like, or do something so simple as go to a restaurant or put sauces on meats. Over the past semester, we've seen her get overcome previous issues obviously caused by her allergen-rich diet, but she has also started being violently sick whenever she accidentally eats something she shouldn't. It's hard to hold her when she's crying, knowing there is absolutely nothing I can do and I can't even share my stash of Lindt 70% to make her feel better.

Pets: Crazy Redhead is allergic to cats, but Friend With Many Pairs of Sunglasses' little brother is even more allergic. Her family must get rid of their old cat, and for now it seems we will have an extra tenant in our crazy household. A tenant expressly forbidden to enter the rooms, but who will be showered in love and attention nevertheless.

Relationships: Things are going well for the couples, but the possibility of a breakup is always there. It could be awkward for everyone.

On the upside, though (and I may have mentioned this once or twice before), we'll be living together! That should make it easier to keep up with everyone's lives and probably act like an old married couple of seven wives by the end of the year.

(It's getting late. I will finish updates later and sleep instead!)

Taste of summer

There's nothing quite like the illicit feeling of swimming naked in a pool at midnight.

Summer, Day 1

My favorite box to unpack in the first one, whatever the first one is. The feeling of taking your belongings, carefully packed in some other place, in some other time, and arranging them. Bringing your life out of storage.

My least favorite box to unpack is the last one. The one with all the junk you didn't know where to put. You've already spent time unpacking, putting away, organizing. This is the box that makes the move definite, the box that says "you live here now," the box that takes your careful organization to instant mess because there was no place to put the junk anyway. I usually avoid unpacking that box until the very end, when I have to pack again and move somewhere else.


Today, I slept in and enjoyed the stuffy hotness of my room, the sound of rowdy cardinals in the trees, the horn of the passing train. No slammed doors, no muffled music in the hallway, no forgotten alarm clock in the distance, no sleep-deprived crammers slumped over books outside their rooms, no hum and beat of the City. The first day of summer.

As I turned in my key to the front desk last night, leaving dorm life behind maybe forever, the strap of the ex-shower flip flops I was wearing broke. Shower shoes Bookish Friend had given me on the first day of college two days ago, broken shoes on the last day of college this year. A sign?

The End, The Beginning

There was a Boy. There was no Boy. There was a boy between the states of Boy and Non-Boy.

Now, there is not, and never will be, a Boy.

I tore up the "Happy birthday, with love" card. I threw away the dried purple flowers. I deleted the phone number. I trashed eight years' worth of emails. I removed contact information, email addresses, and screen names.

When I get home, I will burn the letters, throw away the Prom corsage, throw away the movie ticket of the first kiss.

There is no more Boy, there is no more feather. What for eight years was the greatest joy of my life was for six months the worst thing to ever happen to me.

There is no more Boy, the scale tips up, and my life can begin again.