"write about where you are. paint a written picture of where you live, and of the random people you meet during a typical day. walk through it, looking with a visitor's eyes." First off, it's a dorm. Hall-style, if that means anything to you. There's a hall, with rooms off it, and two people live in each room. Except for mine, my roommate dropped out, which leaves just me. I woke up this morning at 7:30am to people talking right outside my door. I listened, but I couldn't tell who it was, which is very unusual. I went back to sleep. 8:30am, the alarm went off. The alarm is halfway across the room, since more than once I've managed to shut it off and go back to sleep without ever really waking up. I got up, shut it off, and was about to put my pajamas back on when I decided I deserved 15 more minutes. I reset the alarm. 8:45am, the alarm goes off. I leave my bed for real this time. I pull the beiderlack and flannel comforter over the bed to make it look semi-made, fluff the pillow with the rainbow pillowcase, and throw the bear on top of it. The bear used to be white and fluffy... he's now flat and beige, and he wears clothes to cover up the fact that the cloth on his stomach has completly disintegrated. This morning, he was wearing a green sleeper with the letter C on it. I glance at all my posters to make sure they're not falling down. Above the desk is a great big butterfly that used to be a mylar balloon. Above the bed is a poster of Ani (the Living in Clip one) an adventures in Narnia calendar, a poster of pooh characters playing Pooh Sticks (the game I used to play with my dad.) and a poster of symbols that says, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." On the other side of the room are several pictures I cut out from last year's Alice in Wonderland calendar. I get the most comments on the one of the caterpillar smoking a hookah. It amazes me how many people can see that and not only know he's smoking pot but can name the "hookah" I just learned the difference between a bong and a bowl, I didn't even know that contraption he was smoking had a name. 8:50am, after semi-making the bed, I pick my pajamas up off the floor and put them on. The room was hot last night. I grab my face soap (bath and body works Clear Face, although I have three different ones I choose from depending on how well my skin is behaving) and I slip on my orange jelly shoes and head to the bathroom. It's right next door. While I'm washing my face, Sarah C. comes in. Her class starts the same time mine does, but of course she's already dressed and her hair is already done and now she's rinsing out her cereal bowl. I finish washing my face and head back to my room. I throw clothes on (Old Navy jeans, a white Gap t-shirt, and a $5 sweater. It was on clearance, I had to buy it.) and turn a couple lights on to do the makeup. Maybelline True Illusion liquid-to-powder makeup in true cameo and cover girl cheekers blush in pretty peach. I turn the computer on, and read my e-mail while I put on my boots- blue doc marten boots. I wear them everywhere, everyday, except in the summer. I'm going to be heartbroken when they fall apart. 9:20 I grab my keys, lock the door, and head to class. 9:22, I arrive in class. It's a short walk. I listen to the guy who sits in front of me describe his 21st birthday party the night before. I can still see the black X on his hand from the club, he must not have taken a shower. We're all political science majors there, the four people I sit with compare notes on their world politics midterm grades. I took world politics last year... but I never remind them of that, I try to blend in with the freshman. It's much easier than blending in with the juniors, they're all over 21 and there is an invisible line between those legally able to buy liquor and those who have to depend on those legally able to buy liquor. I'll be done with graduate school by the time I'm allowed to buy liquor. We all sit there and avoid eye contact with the professor while she lectures about Book 9 of Plato's Republic. I think she really believes we all read it, since we just got back from spring break. We had plenty of extra time to finish it, right? Of course it doesn't work that way, and the one person in class who read it keeps showing off that fact by answering all the questions. She keeps looking at me when she asks questions. I play with my lip and pretend I don't feel self-conscious. 10:30 she lets us go. I put on my new coat- dark denim, double breasted, look out the window, and button it. It's snowing again. I pull my keys out of my bag, and walk back to the dorm, looking at my feed to keep the snow out of my eyes. When I get to the entrance I squint at my keys to figure out which one says M for main on it. I open the main door, and walk past the empty RA office and upstairs. Upstairs I walk through the end of the guy's wing that always smells, through the girls wing right above mine, and back downstairs. Yes, back downstairs. The door that actually leads to my wing is always locked, and we don't have the key. The idea is that everyone should walk past the empty RA office. At the bottom of the stairs, Sarah C's room is on the left. She shares it with Lillian, who's never here. Just to my right is Karen and Erin's room. Karen sticks her head out the door to see who came down. As I walk pass she says, "hey Sarah! I like your coat! New, right?" I say "yep" and unlock my door. The only room past mine is a single, half the size of my room. It's Sara R's room. Yes, five people, three Sara(h)s. I'll never get tired of complaining about that. I go in my room, take my boots off, open the blinds, and close both the windows. Then, I sit down at my favorite place, the computer desk. The desk itself holds my monitor on the left (It's huge- 17" and it's covered with toys. The top has five stretch frogs alternating with four sticky bugs, and the front has a green stretchy lizard taped to the bottom right-hand corner), then the scanner (Canon CanoScan FB620P I've only had it a couple days, but I love it.), and then the CPU. It's not a tower model, I like the desktop models better and made gateway put my computer in one. On top of the CPU is the printer. Canon BJC 250. I love canon- they make the cheapest products and they may take longer but the quality is still great. The desk has a back, which is a bulliten board. Most of it is hidden because of the computer, but in the part you can see I've tacked up two postcards from Cleveland. My dad sent them to me on his last business trip. Where the bulletin board ends, there's a great shelf all along the top of the desk. Mine has, from left to right... a magazine holder with all my Ms. magazines in it, a black folder full of "important stuff" (transcripts, SAT scores, financial aid reports..) a beanie baby dragon (Scorch) who sits on the Monopoly Star Wars CD-rom, a princess leia flashback photo that turns into Queen Amidala when you pull a little tab, my pooh one-a-day, which currently shows tigger saying, "Have a springerific day!" a can of bath and body works home fragrance spray in holly wreath, two computer speakers, which are never silent since the cd-rom is currently my only cd-player with speakers... one of the speakers has a pink stretchy lizard on it. To the right of that is a little pyramid of 6 little sticky frogs, a black desk lamp, a cute little yellow volkswagen beetle (You should see that thing go down the hallway!!!) a princess leia action figure in ceremonial cloths, a little McDonalds toy from a bug's life with a purple ant on it, a yellow slinky (in an arch) a little Ty bear who's wearing a sweater with a heart on it, and a beanie baby cat (Scat, who looks like he's been run over by a car.) The toys all came from my mom, when she was on a guilt trip about not having seen me in ages. Except for the princess leia and the vw bug. The keyboard is sitting on a piece of plywood, which is held onto the desk with a pair of 6-inch C-clamps. To the right of it is a little chest of drawers that the mouse sits on. The chest of drawers also tends to be covered with cds, cards, candy, makeup, drinks, dirty dishes, pencils, and hundreds of other things, until they get in my way and I have to move them. That's fairly often, it's a small set of drawers. 10:45am, Erin comes in. I compliment her hair, she compliments my new coat, which is now hanging up by the door. She sits down on the couch (which is really the bed my roommate used to sleep in. It's now set up on the far wall within easy reach of the tv and the little refrigerator the tv sits on) ...but she's up within a minute, she spotted the video "Ever After" sitting on my other desk (the one that used to be my roommate's) and she starts swooning... "I finally saw this over break and I lo-" She sees the movie under it. The Care Bears Movie II. No, I'm not kidding. She starts jumping up and down and clapping. "Oh yes!!! You brought it!!! I completely forgot about it!!! Can I go watch it? Now? Yesss!!! You just made my semester!!! I love this movie!!!" She doesn't usually talk in exclamation points, really. We somehow ended up talking about care bears a couple weeks before break and I couldn't believe that she knew as many lines to that movie as I do. She forgot- understandable, since she stayed up until 6:30 that night working on a paper and then got up at 7:30 to hand it in. I remembered. We went into her room, across the hall, and she sticks it in and presses fast-forward. We have to see the end, she says. She's still singing and bubbling to the video at the end of the movie when Sara C comes in. She's all dressed, and wearing more makeup than I would to go out. She laughs at us, watching care bears, and hands Erin a comb, and pulls up a chair. She sits down, and erin starts parting Sara's hair. Sara asks whose video it is and why in the world we're watching it and did we see it in the theatre? We must've just been babies if we saw it in the theatre, because she saw it in the theatre and she was little. Sara's 21, over that invisible line. Luckily, she wasn't over 21 at the beginning of the year, so she's allowed to be friends to us. By now, it's 11:15 and Sara says, "I'm going to be so late to my class today. My lab starts in 15 minutes and I haven't even done my hair." ...only her version involved more cursing. Her hair looked fine to me, at least until erin started messing with a cowlick that didn't want to part right. When erin finished, Sara went into the bathroom to work on her hair in decent light (dorm rooms don't have overhead lights, only two little lamps that don't help much.) and Erin and I watched Ricki Lake and "Mom, I hate who you date!" ...the mom on tv said she was only in the relationship for the sex. Erin said, "If my mom ever said that, I would throw up. Right there. you'd see me sitting there gagging and heaving. Can you even imagine if your mom was dating a guy half her age? If there was a guy you thought was cute and all of a sudden he was boffing your mom?" me:"I can't imagine my mom dating at all, let alone..." Erin:"That's right. I hope my mom never dates in her life. I can't imagine how she met my dad." me:"My parents met while my mom was still married." Erin:"really? That's how you know it's true love." me:I laugh. "over break, my mom was making soup and me and my dad were both in the kitchen and she pulled out the food processor and I said, "I bet that blender is older than I am!" and she said, "It is! It is most definitely older than you. It was your dad's first christmas present to me, I think." My dad pipes up, "We were out one night, Sarah, and she complained to me, not about losing her last husband, but about losing the food processor!" and my mom said, "yeah, I had to leave it." Erin starts laughing hysterically. "So he had to buy her a new one. That is so funny. That really is so funny." She proceeds to giggle for five minutes while we watch more Ricki Lake. Someone mentions sex again and Erin says "My parents have only had sex three times in their lives. Me, my brother, and my sister. Or immaculate conception. It could happen. Or artificial insemination. It could happen. My parents never have sex. I don't know when they would have time. During the day they watch my sister's baby, and at night we're all in their room. And my room is right below their's so if my dad even gets up to go to the bathroom in the night I can hear their bed squeak." me:"my parents have a whole floor between them when they're sleeping, I think they're pretty safe" erin:"They never got that bed?" me:"No, they never got that bed. The whole time I was home, my dad would go upstairs and go to sleep in my mom's bed, and two hours later my mom would go upstairs and turn the light on and start reading. My dad would start snoring. She'd elbow him, he'd come downstairs and watch tv with me and start snoring on the couch." Erin:"Wait, it's cuz he snores? You never asked them about that, did you?" (it's sort of a running joke... she can't believe I never asked my parents why they have separte bedrooms. About a month ago at dinner she was talking yet again about "Russian Dressing" which apparently her parents make for salads by mixing ketchup and mayonnaise. I'd never heard of it and suggested maybe her parents made it up. She asserted they didn't, and I asked her if she'd ever asked her parents if they'd made it up. She looked at me and said something to the general effect of "don't tell me I should ask my parents something! look at you!" and we laughed and said, "I give up! You win!" and Sara R looked at us both like we were crazy and said, "I think I'm missing something.") me:"well, he snores and she sleeps with the light on, so between the two of them..." Chris, the RA from upstairs stops by. He needs candy, his throat's dry. Erin gives him vitamin C drops. Sara comes out of the bathroom with her hair half done and says, "I've already missed my first class because I can't do my hair. It started a half hour ago." and she goes back in the bathroom. Brad and Chris from upstairs come down and say hi when they walk past to go to class. I realize Brad's already leaving for the same class I haven't even gotten ready for yet, and I go get ready for Chemistry. Chemistry was yet another class. We compare midterm grades, out of the four of us I got the highest (A-) Brad got a C, even though he was the most confident. Kristie won't tell us, but I know what she got on a test and she probably got an E for midterm. (My school needs to be different. It doesn't use Fs, it uses Es.) and Kim got a B+, which she is completely happy with. They all comment on my hair, which has mysteriously turned red since the last time they saw me. After chemistry, I go back to my room and kill an hour and a half until Chemistry workshop, at 2:30. 3:30, it's snowing harder than ever, and I speedwalk back to the dorm. Three hours disappear while I play with my computer and eat ramen noodles for dinner. I show Sarah C. the picture of my bear as a new bear and she doesn't believe it. I show Karen and she doesn't get it. 6:30 I finally start studying. I get through the whole Chemistry practice test, and I feel pretty good about it. 8:00pm, Tae-Bo time. I put on sweats and my Ani Dilate shirt, and help Foz (a very strange guy who I assume lives somewhere in the building) carry Sarah C's little tv/vcr combo out into the lounge. Dena, little Sara from upstairs, and Karen come out too, so that there are three Sara(h)s and three others. We put in the Tae Bo tape. It was my first time trying Tae Bo, I'm glad I've taken Karate, since they muted the sound on the TV and put in a godawful dance CD. Funny, no one else thinks working out to Ani DiFranco is a good idea. Although I don't think I'm quite coordinated enough to work out in front of a tv like that. It's like trying to part your hair in the mirror- you'll be doing fine until all of a sudden you get confused and go the exact opposite way you should. We finish tae-bo (I think it was 26 minutes) and do eight minute abs. I sat out the first half of eight minute arms to drink my water, but I did the last half. I do half push-ups and snakes everynight anyway, I figure I don't really need more arm stuff. After we finish arms, Dena and Karen do eight minute buns, the rest of us leave. When I got back to my door I noticed a new quote on my dry-erase board- it says "Quote: Sarah C: "Don't even tell me your [sic] even using her scruntie"" Underneath it is my quote of the day: "She's shed all pretenses that someday she'll belong" ~Tracy Chapman ...I yell at Sarah C and ask her what the first quote means. She has no idea, Karen wrote it. Above my dry erase board is a black-and-white drawing of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. It's Tenniel, of course. Underneath it I wrote I sit down at the computer, check my e-mail, sign on to aim and notice there are several people I'd like to talk to that never message me first signed on. I decide to be stubborn and not message them. None of them message me. So I open up my journal and start typing. While I'm typing, Erin comes in twice to dance to my music (Tracy Chapman's first album) and both times, I hastily minimize the window. She also walks by 5 times on her way to and from Sara R's room and each time she says, "hey And now, it's 11 o'clock. I'm going to post this, get undressed, put on my bathrobe, and grab my green shower basket (filled with two kinds of shampoo, a conditioner, dial bar soap (in a blue soap dish), shower gel, three kinds of face soap, my toothbrush (in a cover), toothpaste, deodorant, and a bic disposable razor, and I'll go take a shower. And then I'll try and be good and study, but I will probably play with my new scanner until 2am and then go to bed with my alarm set for 10:30, and I'll thank the scheduling gods there were no classes tuesday and thursday mornings that I needed to take. I left the windows open too long today, I'll probably leave the pajamas on tonight. ~me previous index next |