“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”
--Bill Watterson
(Note: I am not in a bad mood. I’m quite cheerful today. But I like the quote anyhow.)
Today, I am back in England after a whirlwind trip to Paris with some good friends from Elon.
(Hello, beautiful Elon people! That's Jess walking purposefully on the left, Anna looking Parisian and hamming it up for the camera in the middle, and Kate gesturing on the right.)
Today, I feel very cognizant of my calves, because they climbed two thirds of the way up the Eiffel Tower and then up all the stairs of Montmartre to see the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. And then up five trillion sets of Metro stairs and broken escalators. They don’t quite hurt, but they won’t let me forget they’re there, either.
Today, the heat in my building is off. The boiler burst. Why it had to burst on the exact day that Jess and I were returning from Paris, soaked to the skin with no coats in thirty-degree weather, and very much looking forward to hot showers and cuddling with our radiators, I’m not sure. But c’est la vie! The great thing about humans is that we drip-dry remarkably well.
Today, my dorm has no hot water. So today, nobody in my dorm has showered.
Today, I am wearing fuzzy socks, pink sweatpants, a men’s t-shirt, a men’s button-up, my maroon Elon sweatshirt, my glasses, and a pair of those fingerless gloves that you can flip into mittens.
Today I don’t match. At all.
Today, I’m perfectly okay with that.
Today, I was delighted to find out that the bread I bought last week isn’t moldy yet, so I had pb&j for lunch.
Today, I skipped class because it was pouring and cold and I spent all weekend being wet and cold. And because the powerpoint is online anyway.
Today, I have one pair of clean underwear left and desperately need to do laundry. However, today the dryers at the launderette aren’t working, and the washers’ spin cycles aren’t working, so the clothes MUST be dried, because they come out of the wash sopping wet. And of course, there’s no hot water to handwash anything. I am not totally sure how I'm going to handle this, but I'm sure something will come to me.
Today, I realized that there are about fifteen messages/emails/letters I should really answer, because they’re from people I care about staying in contact with. So, Lora, Jane, Vicki, Mama, Mrs. Foreman, Dalton, and Aunt Sherry, I swear I haven’t forgotten about any of you.
But today, just like every day, I’m slow.
Today, I am amazed by the fact that I have been in the UK for sixty-seven days and have thirty-three left. And I am also amazed by the fact that I have survived that entire time without an umbrella, raincoat, or rain boots and have not been sick at all despite the prevalence of wet hair in my everyday life. (I don't like hairdryers. For some reason, this surprises people. But seriously, people, there have been studies done about this—being cold and wet does NOT make you catch a cold. GERMS make you catch cold. Being cold and wet for very long periods of time might weaken your resistance to germs, but I don’t stay cold and wet for very long periods of time. So, to the people in my dorm who keep complaining that the weather is giving them colds, I would like to say: Stop all drinking out of the same bottle every night, and then, and only then, will you stop getting sick. It is not unrelated.)
Today, I remembered how much I like my rain boots. They have flowers on them. Wait, I know I have a picture somewhere.
(Ok, so it’s from like September of freshman year. They look the same. And they’re still waterproof.)
Today, I have not left my bed for more than ten minutes, because under the sheet, duvet, and blanket, it’s quite cozy. Laptop, check. Books, check. Camera to upload pictures to Facebook, check. Food, uncheck. Don’t have any.
Today, I don’t want to walk the fifty feet to the Union Store to get food because it’s cold outside, and that means I have to put on real clothes.
Today, I am a lazy wimp.
Today, I am appalled at my slackness at blogging.
Today, I will try to fix the situation a very little bit. Even though it means I have to get out of bed and cross over to my desk and fetch my journal.
Tomorrow, I will resume life as a real person.
And on that note…see you later!
