The Boring Manifesto

I have found many, many ways to combat the post-first semester freshman year existential crisis, none of them being remotely effective in any way. Right now, my eyes are just kind of slicking over the surfaces of the room. I wish I could say that my head was whipping wildly about, or that my eyes were darting, or any of that nonsense, but unfortunately I'm just too sedentary by nature. I killed about fifteen minutes slicking over a green wrought iron gate that stands between the fireplace and me. I contemplate it from different angles. It looks like a bearded flower, with a mouth like a teardrop.

I watched another movie today, went shopping, and curled my hair as a defense mechanism against hard water. I don't mean that in a metaphorical sense; our water softener has been insolently refusing to remove calcium deposits for quite some time now. Hard water seems to encourage and rehabilitate oil, frizz, and dryness so that after a shower my hair resembles, in many ways, a dehydrated squirrel preserved in a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil.

This is not to say that I look back at the past week with fondness and nostalgia; I just managed to kill all my work, and kill it good. Um. Before it killed me. And it almost did. Last week, I read that story about the British teacher arrested in the Middle East for naming a Teddy Bear Mohammed. When reporters asked about her plans for the rest of the season, she expressed her wishes to take a break from teaching until the New Year so she could spend time with her family and recover from her time in jail.

Damn, I wanted to be her. Spend time with my family, even if I had to go to jail.

And here I am, spending time with my family and waiting for the remainder of my friends to get the hell home from college, and all I can think about is a bearded flower and an oily squirrel.