Rust Bucket

My legs hurt, but I feel better than I have in a long time. I'm going to need to spend time - preferably while I read a hundred and something pages of Lear tonight - with my legs upright against a wall to drain the lactic acid from slightly abused muscles. My ass hurts. I've drank more water in the past two hours than I have all day.

I blame - and thank - all of this on my pal, Rust Bucket.

Let me back up before you guys think I'm more nutzo than normal. Remember all those commercials New Balance put out about people getting back together with running? How it shouldn't be difficult to have a relationship with running, and that getting it back is a good thing? Well, I don't have a relationship with running. I have one with Rust Bucket.

Rust Bucket is my bicycle, appropriately named because the thing is a bit old. I mean a good ten or eleven years, and we got him fairly new - maybe a year or two old - at a yard sale one summer when I was in middle school. So RB has been with me a while and of course made the move to college. He's a sturdy little shit, despite the startling amount of iron oxide (rust) on him, and he and I have gone on many an adventure, both here at college and at home.

RB and I haven't gone for a ride in the past four months. It's been the middle of winter; the tires needed some air (and actually wound up getting replaced yesterday), but none of that seemed to matter because rather than doing this damn formal lab report on Co(III) complexes, we took advantage of the nice weather and went for a 7.8 mile ride.

Yeah. My lower body is going to hate me in the morning.

For as much pain as rolling out of bed is going to be tomorrow, it was worth it. Really worth it. It feels really good to have gone for a ride.

Though maybe next time we'll start a little smaller.

Escapades and Shenanigans

Last night (this morning, really) I set my alarm and accidentally set it for 8pm. Shortly after that, in my haste to unplug my computer cord from a barely reachable power strip wedged between the fridge, dresser, and movie crate, I accidentally switched it off and have yet to fix the damn blinking time that currently reads 1:30 in the afternoon. Needless to say this was the type of morning where liberal amounts of Kahlua wound up in my coffee, which, thankfully, I remembered to grab on my way out the door.

My analytical lab is under the impression I'm probably going to drop dead from caffeine ingestion very shortly, due to the amount of coffee I ingest on a regular basis. The only saving grace is that, according to our most recent analysis by HPLC, there less of a caffeine concentration in dark roast coffee than light roast (mostly due, we think, to the roasting process in that you literally bake the caffeine out of the bean). Also, I usually only drink after that first cup of coffee unless it's going to be a seriously hellish night, and then all bets are off. Usually by that point I've been to Timmy Horton's and am probably contemplating a Dunkin run.

The highlight of my day came this afternoon - closer to dinnertime - when my housemate found she had locked herself out of her room. Naturally, she called campo (campus police) to come open her door. So we sat there in the living room for a further five minutes, when I calmly remarked, "Don't you have a bottle of vodka sitting on your dresser?" She looked at me, muttered, "Shit," and we immediately began planning how exactly we could get in that room to hide the so-called evidence. Campo had already taken a bottle of booze from us earlier in the week (it was left out, they came to let somebody in, we got an email from Res Ed and all found it slightly hysterical), and, well, long story short, we remembered there's a fire escape going up the back side of the house, conveniently stopping at the window of our house manager who happens to share a bathroom with my locked out roommate. House manager was not at the house. There wasn't enough time to get shoes on, so, out the door we go - her in socks, me barefoot - and around to the back of the house.

K: I can't do this. I don't like ladders.

Me: Okay.

Keep in mind it's pitch black outside. With no lights on to light this damn fire escape.

You guessed it - barefoot up the metal ladder in the middle of December, move the screen out of the open window (bless you, B & G, for having the heat so damn high), foot in the waste basket after sliding off the chair in front of the window, stagger across the room, open door, go through shared bathroom, hide vodka, fix everything like you'd never been there, and wind up in the living room with semi-frozen feet. The guy showed up about three minutes later to let her in.

Mission accomplished; crisis averted.

Even better was the conversation we had while randomly watching an episode of 30 Rock we found on Comedy Central.

T: So, gin and tonic is just gin and tonic, right?

Pretty sure my housemates have made my senior year so far. I couldn't ask to live with a better group of girls (and three guys) than I currently do. They keep me smiling through the week.

Focus Meets Train

I made a Facebook status sometime last week that detailed the fact that my Focus, my beloved Murfee, had more or less eaten too many cookies, rolled down the back hill, and was subsequently hit by a train as it passed by the house.

That should give you an accurate picture of how my semester has been going. Between two education seminars, four classes, a minimum of 20 hours community service (which, honestly, is actually 45, due to where I'm living), and three labs a week, I'm impressed that I'm still upright, mildly functioning, and haven't given myself a massive heart attack due to my caffeine consumption. I am, however, out of my meals provided by the Colleges courtesy of my meal plan, which isn't a big deal as I have a house with a kitchen, and thank sweet baby J that I have a coffee maker otherwise life would be more difficult than it already is on some days.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. That light is next semester's schedule - which I've already registered for - and it is glorious. No class on Mondays and I'm done on Fridays by 10:00 am. Essentially a four-day weekend my senior spring. Which brings me back to this happy fact:

I registered for my last semester of undergraduate classes.

Which prompted a whole string of thoughts, most of them involving four-letter words and something that sounded very similar to I don't give a shit what this semester turns out like as long as I pass everything with the minimum grade required to have it count for my major.

It's kind of sad, really, as I started off the semester really hoping that I'd be able to pull of a solid 3.0. At this point in my life, the more realistic goal, however hard it is to swallow, is that I'll be very lucky if the hard work that I'm putting in this semester results in the minimum grade required to have all this shit count for my degree. It's not like I'm slacking, but having three chemistry courses all over 300 level is, well, not only time-consuming but soul-sucking in a way that you haven't really got a concept of until you actually get there.

I'll be amazed if I have any sanity left at the end of the semester. That's when I'm assuring myself that I'll be able to sleep, while my sister assures me that I can sleep when I'm dead. That's true, too, but I'm hoping to hold out on that for another couple of years, at the very least.

In other news, I was at a Ben Folds concert this past weekend and it was absolutely epic. Truly one of the highlights of my senior year and I'm really glad that I went. He's an amazing musician - and a piano player that words can't adequately describe - and it was an awesome experience.

The fact that my 22nd birthday is coming up in 11 days hasn't really registered, either, because it's not like I'm going to spend it relaxing. I'm most likely going to spend all of Black Friday - my birthday - working on my curriculum project: lesson plans, assessment criteria, rubrics, the whole nine yards and whatnot. It's going to be painful on multiple levels, but it absolutely has to get done because there's only so many weeks of class left.

It's not supposed to go this fast.

So, now that I need to prepare myself for my analytical class (don't get me started), I'm going to spend the next few hours of my life trying not to freak out about the fact that I flat-out forgot I have a lab write-up (thankfully not a formal) due today and the mother of all formal labs due tomorrow. (But maybe we can convince her to change that to Wednesday.) Couple that with an exam tomorrow evening, auditions for the winter and spring shows on Wednesday (with a prepared monologue, too) and this week is going to be fairly busy, culminating in another exam next Sunday and a project for Econ on the Tuesday before break. With all of that is who-knows-what coming down the pipes in the education courses and, really, people are wondering why I drink the amount of caffeine that I do? How else do you expect me to get through a week where my hours of work have bypassed the hours in a week?

But that's more or less what I've been dealing with for three months.

So damn difficult to think through that it's almost over. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's hoping it's not an oncoming train.

[Insert Expletive Here]

Some things, no matter how many times you force them to the back of your mind and tell yourself you've dealt with them, don't actually ever leave you alone.

I was out walking with my mom the other night - because we wanted to walk - and my exboyfriend doesn't live very far down the road from me. We had stopped at my grandmother's to talk to my aunt and uncle (who were using their trunk to remove grass and throw it down over the bank, yes my family is like that at times) when I looked up the road and saw a very familiar figure. And wanted to start swearing immediately. It was one of those times that, even though you know deep inside you're glad that things worked out the way they did, that life is funny like that and doesn't give you more than you can handle (though, it really seems like that) it just makes you remember.

You realize then it's quite another to be alright when the subject isn't around, but it's quite another to actually be alright when confronted face to face. Or rather, road to driveway.

Ultimately, it makes me wonder when exactly I'm going to find a Murphy of my own. I've got great friends, an amazing family, and a winding road ahead of me, but in a way, I'm still kind of lonely.

Patience in this aspect is not one of my virtues.

The other thing that's sort of eating at me and has me kind of freaking out is that my aunt's cancer came back. After losing a teammate in March to a lung infection because fighting leukemia for the second time hadn't left her with much left in the tank, this was just a bit much. My aunt will do what she needs to do to fight it, but...It's still cancer.

It's. Still. Cancer.

Like everything else life decides to chuck my way, I'll find a way to get through it. Hopefully intact.

Roads to Take

Or not to take, as the case may be.

It was a really difficult decision, one that I really didn't think about otherwise I would have waffled back and forth for, well, days, and in the end, it's really for the best, hard as it is to see that now.

On the subject of whether to apply for the writing class to be held by our sort of writer in residence, I've decided not to. Even apply, that is.

Writing is something that is so ingrained in me, it's really hard to separate the two. It's not like acting, where there's the actor me or with playing soccer, where there's this person on the field that has my body, but does things with it that, if I were probably thinking about them in any other context, I'm not sure I'd do. Things like slide-tackling a girl from behind in my own penalty box, or going head to head (almost literally) with an attacking player. This isn't like that. The Louise and writing are two very intricate, almost completely combined things.

The reason I'm not even going to apply is because I don't think I have the strength to be accepted and not actually rearrange things and take the class. I don't think I'm strong enough to just take the fact that I was accepted and go with that. For me, right now, it's better to not even apply and wonder whether I would have made it or not, rather than apply, get accepted, and force myself do not do anything about it.

This was not an easy decision, but one of those that you make and then, maybe a few years later, think...what if?

Oneness

This is the third time I've tried to write this post.

My varsity soccer coach my junior and senior year in high school told me those weren't the best days of my life, and not to let them be. That there were bigger and better things out there waiting for us to find them, experience them. He was right, for the most part, that high school wasn't the best days of my life.

What he wasn't right about was WAZA. A travel team I'd been playing on for four years. Those girls, since the first day, they were more than teammates, they were practically family. We were family, actually. After our first practice our coach had said, "Welcome to the WAZA family," and he never stopped saying it. It was drilled into us that if our sister was against the boards, you go help her. You give her support.

Those girls were one of the best things that have ever happened to me. One of the best groups of people that I have ever come to know.

Friday afternoon we lost a sister. She'd fought leukemia not once, but twice - and won - only to lose to a lung infection.

It's been four years since we last stepped on or off a soccer field together. Four years, but with this we've come back to the family we were once. And still are.

That is how we'll grieve. We'll grieve with our blood family, and the family we chose.

We'll grieve for our sister.

Integrity

I write for the alternative student newspaper at my campus. That's no secret. I'm also layout editor for it, and a general ear when someone needs to vent in a way that we can't necessarily print. That and I keep my editor from going completely batshit on our publishing weeks, and she returns the favor.

Believe it or not, I bring a lot of who I am as a person to that role. I can't not, in a way.

I am an honest (blunt, at times) person who strives to do the right thing, even if it hurts and thinks that people should know the truth, even if it's the unpopular opinion. For someone to call into question my abilities as a writer - as a journalist - though it's my chosen field, calling me out on my fact-checking, and denoting a lack of "interviewing and investigation" and flat-out accusing me of lies? You right there are not only criticizing my ability as a writer, but you're criticizing my integrity as a person.

I have not, did not, and never will print anything that is not the truth. Information can come from different sources, and the source I used, while it might not have been the one some people would have liked, it was reliable information and, as far as I can (I haven't sat down and run my number's against our fellow newspaper's), the damn information that was printed there.

If we had felt the source of the information was sketchy, we would have done more "digging." But we didn't. We trust our source, and I stand by the information I printed to be true. To have the audacity to call into question my integrity as a person - albeit indirectly through this - it's the same as walking up to me, and saying, "Molly Louise, you're a liar."

That my friends does not fly with me.

I'm not infallible. I know there are things in my article that were ambiguous. There were details about minor things I did not put in there, and I'm woman enough to know I'll eat my words next issue with a follow-up article. It happens. However, the main point of this weeks' article - asinine concerts, asking for a ridiculous amount of moment for said concerts when they have, in the past, not even broken even, and instead caused a significant deficit - will remain unchanged.

As with all of my writing, I'm not going to give you flowery bullshit. I'm going to tell you the point, and I'm going to be blunt about it. If people have any questions, they're more than welcome to actually come to me and talk about it. Talk about what they didn't like. A student government hoping to set standards on journalism? Well hell, why don't you just attempt to censor us.

I will not apologize for something that needed to be said. For something that was said. For information from a valid, reliable source that was used, and my decision to keep my integrity and allow that person, who came to me in confidence, to remain anonymous like he requested.

Questioning my writing questions my integrity. This is not something to take lightly. While some may choose to take the low road, sling a little mud and get a little dirty, I will remain classy. Again, you might not like the result, but you poke me like this, there's a good chance I'll punch ya. That you must always expect.

Irony. Oh, the Effing Irony

Thank. God. It's. Friday.

That was my first thought after I turned on the coffee pot this morning before getting in the shower. Starbucks cinnamon coffee in a travel mug to warm my hands while walking to my first class of three? Absolutely amazing. The rest of my classes today - great. Even the one where physical chemistry II is a synonym for quantum mechanics was great, and my two geoscience courses? They're going to be a nice change of pace. I have my first line of my Shakespeare monologue memorized, and, as Hatch says, if you do a line a day, you'll have that thing memorized in no time.

Academically speaking, life is groovy. As I have a potential goal for after graduation, this, right now, puts me on a great track. I feel confident and I do the reading, and it makes sense - even the chemistry - and it just works.

What's not working so well right now is this complete and total asshattery that's between me and Residential Education. Which, incidentally, also involves the room I moved into upon arrival on campus three days ago.

Let me say, right now, for the record, and as I have said many times to many people of varying importance in the past day and a half, I absolutely love this little room. I was a little leery of it when I first saw it, but after I moved in, got settled, got unpacked, and made it my own - as I have this habit of making home wherever I go - I've made home in this little room in this wonderfully awesome old house.

The Fire Marshall, on the other hand, has deemed this room that was offered to me, that I have moved into, and that I have been living in since I arrived, unlivable.

There is so much wrong with that previous statement in terms of details and cases and things that happened last semester - including someone living in a room that's apparently unlivable - that it just blows my mind.

I feel a little like I'm living on borrowed time. That I'm going to settle further into my routine, into my campus and collegiate life where I'm at, and then they're going to, if they continue like this, uproot me and move me somewhere where I get to start the whole process over again. There are a few things that I've learned while trying to make nice with people, and trying to understand how one thing can work one day, and the next it simply can't function the way it should with nothing broke.

The only good news to come out of this - along with immediately helpfulness and a let's see what we can do to fix this, or make this less frustrating and painful for you attitude from Student Affairs - is that the Fire Marshall and someone else is going to come back on Monday and reevaluate the room. Sadly, I won't be here when they do. Which means, they won't be able to ask the student that lives, works, and generally lives in the space what she feels, how she likes it, and what options she has.

Reminds me of a bunch of aging men trying to decide in Congress what to do in regards to a young woman's body and her decision of what do with it. Last I checked, they didn't have the means to grow another human inside of them and continue to help the species flourish and have never had to have a gynecology appointment. Quack, quack, anyone?

That, however, is a matter for another time.

Ironically, my academics I'm fine with - I have a handle on those. The other side of the coin? Living and socialization? With the exception of this absolute clusterfuck, I'm good.

Maybe someone should ask the student living there what's best for her in terms of keeping her on an even keel so that she can continue to do her studies and achieve what she can hope to achieve. I am, after all, a full-time student paying full-time student fees. Work with me a little bit.

Small Favors

I'm not sure what exactly to write about that doesn't start with the phrase I'm on the edge and thinking too hard makes my already sinus-stuffed head feel like it's going to implode.

So I'll start this by saying I spent two and a half hours of my life with Sir Ian McKellen on the other side of the woman next to me at the play Deathtrap, which was quite good, too. The man nearly stepped on my toes when he got up for intermission. And no, I didn't ask for a photo or an autograph or anything, because the man was more or less just there to see a show with a friend, and I wasn't about to interrupt that. They have lives, too.

On that note, the others ran (almost literally) into Hugh Laurie on Monday. Apparently he lives around where our hotel is. Again, no photographs or autographs.

I'm sitting in a hotel room in central London, trying to find the words to adequately describe what exactly is going on this head of mine. Or, what feels like a swollen melon sitting on top of my shoulders, truthfully. Particularly my forehead and under my eyes. Oh well. It just needs to sit there a bit more.

There's what we want and then there's reality. Ultimately, we have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes they aren't going to match up. I'd like to be home for Christmas, but depending on the weather - something completely outside of my control - that might not happen. You have the optimist on one side, and the realist on the other, and they might not play nice. The saying is best laid plans of mice and men or something to that effect, and it's completely true. I'll recognize there's a big different being stuck in London and stuck someplace completely away from it all. Hell, I even know what it's like to be stuck in the airport for days on end, and I'll tell you, I was pretty damn ripe by the time I got to where I'm currently at on Monday.

Like I said previously, I know both sides now.

It's in no way what I want, but it's what I've got, and what I have to deal with.

A month and a half from now we'll look back at this, look at the pictures, sort through the recent Underground tickets, and we'll laugh. It'll make a great story, when it's not so raw. We'll laugh, we'll make Tom Hanks references, and we'll joke about it as best we know how. That's how, eventually, it will be seen. It's an experience. That much I can't deny. But it's not one that many people willingly choose, honestly.

I would like, very simply, to go home. That is all I ask.

Moving

I told you I had an odd sense of humor. As in the title of this post, and the fact that I've now moved from Heathrow to a hotel not far from the Bond Street Underground station in the borough of Westminster.

And believe me, it's a nicer hotel than I would have chosen had I been the one to choose originally. Namely, this one would have been classified as a little out of my price range.

The last time you heard from me, I was sitting on the fun side of security at Heathrow, waiting to get on a flight to JFK. As I'm not posting the joys of being home, it's safe to assume that I'm still in London. That assumption would be correct.

It's been an interesting few days, to say the least. If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll see some of what I've been posting [including the one from the reporter at CNN who wants me to email him, and I still need to do that, too] and the responses.

Despite all the good thoughts, karma, prayers and whatnot, if it continues to snow - and stick - there is the possibility that we won't fly out on Wednesday and we'll be spending Christmas in London has an HWS family.

An HWS family in which they're happy to have me back.

I'd been "Tom Hanks-ing" it from Friday until late this afternoon, sleeping on the second floor of Virgin Atlantic departures since then. Except for Saturday night on the floor by some exchange bureau near check-in point F or G. I woke up during the night, mostly because I was really freaking cold, and sat up, looked around, and thought why are there so many people covered in tin foil? Then figured that if I was having that thought, oddly reminding me of when my sister was sleeping in the tent with the dog at the lake and saw my aunt in her nightdress, wandering around, I needed to lay back down and go to sleep. Which I did.

It was really difficult to keep track of days, because, eventually, they blended together. It didn't so much happen that first morning, but Sunday into Monday it really started to.

Saturday was the day I fought with the airline to get my bags back. I had checked my backpack - not only was it too large, apparently, to be in the cabin, but it was too heavy, too - and there was also my suitcase, too. The suitcase wasn't an issue. The backpack was the issue because it had my meds in it. Not the Align, the important one, but the other stuff that I needed to supplement it. And the longer I go without my meds, the more things get....interesting.

It took multiple trips to Arrivals (where the baggage was supposed to be, as it was still on the plane at the time) and upon the fourth trip downstairs to try and find out when my bags were coming off the plane, only then did the Virgin Atlantic representative actually ask if there was anything she could do for me, if there was anything she could get me. I told her no, I just needed my bags (because, yeah, making my own dosages with something that wasn't even close to being the UK equivalent was not going to happen) and she actually was the first one all day to take my bag information off from my passport, and also my mobile number in hopes that when she knew when the plane was being unloaded, she would let me know. I assumed this was going to be true.

Despite having my mobile number, they didn't call me. However, the moment I hit the departures floor, she immediately remembered me, pulled aside another rep, and sent me with her to Arrivals to fetch my bag. The suitcase was on a trolley, and the backpack was on top of that. First thing I did after returning to my spot in the second floor of Departures, was to crack open my bag, ingest my meds, and then check to make sure the breakable stuff I had wrapped in clothes and in the bottom hadn't broken. It was intact, but the entire right side of the bag was wet. Like it had been dropped in snow.

Not a big deal, but, well....makes things in there not smell great.

So, now it was Sunday and after some phoning home, we decided that it would be best for me to stay at the airport and maybe hope to get on a standby list. Then the news came in that there was a rescheduled flight that we had seats on for Wednesday. I have a printed e-ticket, and a guaranteed ticket on this flight. But we wanted to see if maybe there was a way for me to get something earlier.

Which, ultimately, didn't work. So I wound up spending another night on the floor of the airport.

And, as there is a mirror above the desk, I'm looking at the circles under my eyes that somehow keep growing. Not great.

Monday turned out to be a bust, and then information trickled in from the homefront that it was best for me to find the hotel everyone had been living at while I had been living at Heathrow, and it was made that I was to find that and check myself in.

Feeling like a bag lady, I trotted down the elevator and then out into the cold, slightly snowy London air and headed for Arrivals. That would take me down to the Heathrow Express - the train that gets you to London Paddington in fifteen minutes. And they weren't charging for it because of all the snow had done to travelers. From Paddington it was down to the Underground and then, one transfer later, I was at the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street (I think) and wondering where exactly to go next. After a bit of wandering (which is more or less what I'm famous for, really) I found the hotel.

Not too long later I was in a room with an actual bed, a shower, and thinking that it was proverbial heaven, truthfully.

It's weird. I have internet access (free, too!), a bed to sleep in tonight as opposed to the floor, and I was able to take a shower and find some different clothes to wear. Though what I'm going to wear to bed tonight is a completely different story as most of the rest of my clothes are packed in space bags with the air sucked out. And unless someone wants me to give myself a slight hernia by sucking that much air through a straw, I'm not opening them.

The most important part of this is that I've seen both sides to this story. I've seen the I don't have anywhere to go, and the airport is now home until they figure out how to get me to where I need to go and I've also seen the I have the opportunity to get out of this place for a while, get a shower, sleep in a bed, and generally wander around London until we're supposed to fly. I know which side most would prefer - it's the side I'm currently on. But I've seen both. Done both. And that's been one of those experiences most people should really have.

It's truly how the other half lives.

I'm in London until Wednesday, at the earliest. I'm back with the rest of my student cohorts, and we're planning on seeing a show tomorrow night. Something to pass the time. To keep ourselves occupied and see some of London that we haven't seen before.

And I just found something to sleep in, which just made my night, really. It's the little things right now, like being connected to the internet and being able to call back home. It's things like that right now that make a difference. A big difference, really.

I understand that I'm lucky. I'm in a hotel when I could be spending another night at Heathrow under a blanket on a foam mat on the floor in some corner with my luggage. As it is, I'm going to crawl into a bed and sleep like I'm dead, probably, and hope the bags under my eyes don't get any larger or I'm going to be giving a raccoon a run for his money.

I would love to be home right now, layin' on the couch with the dog or curled up in my own icebox of a room (backside of the house, gets a little chilly in the winter) and wondering if I'm going to be making Christmas cookies with the Smidget, but I'm not. I'm in London - Borough of Westminster, to be exact - and if things go right-side up, I'm leaving on Wednesday to actually head home. If they go pear-shaped, then we're looking at spending Christmas on this side of the Atlantic with some of the alums that we can find in this country.

Bright side of life. Make the most of what you've got when you've got it. Right now, while this might not be ideal, it's better than what it had been, and better than what some still have. That's always a good thing to keep in mind.

At Home in Heathrow

[I wrote this Friday night (I think) and it was the first time that I was, well, more or less aware that I was going to be living in an airport for a couple of days. Now that I have internet access, be prepared for, well, a series tentatively titled At Home in Heathrow. I have a sick sense of humor, don't I? So, this was actually written Saturday before I was supposed to get on the plane to come home. My how plans have changed.]

I know the time stamp on this sucker is going to read something different, but I’m currently sitting on the fun side of airport security waiting until I can board my flight home.

So, yes, I’ve been living at Heathrow since yesterday at about six-thirty at night. It’s been….real.

Let me back up. Yesterday morning I get a call at about nine-something (woke me up, I’ll be honest, I was sleeping in) and it’s the International Officer asking me if I’ve looked outside. Out the window there’s at least a good couple inches of snow on the ground. Not much by New York standards, but definitely more than the UK can handle. She then proceeds to tell me that because of the weather, the bus company isn’t sure if they can successfully get us there on time if we leave in the morning. So there’s going to be a bus leaving at one in the afternoon.

Cue Louise’s temporary panic because there’s nothing in my room that’s packed. There’s part of my desk done, but other than that? Nadda.

Anyway, she tells me she’s going to call back when she finds out what time the bus is leaving and then she’ll want to know if I’m going to be on it.

Holy. Shit.

This is not how I wanted to leave the country in a state of semi-panic.

So, I get up, get around and take a shower, and then start to power pack my room. She calls me back around ten and tells me the bus is going to leave at two, and if I’m going to be on it. There might not, because of the snow, be another way to get to London if I’m not on this bus.

Hence, Louise needs to be on the bus.

Do not ask me how I managed to pack an entire room in the time available, including the three bags I had with me, and they are all stuffed. It’s ridiculous.

This was, however, not how I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be rushing around and leaving like this. I wanted to take my time packing, saying goodbye, and maybe having a snowball fight with Jess and Jen before I had to leave. It didn’t happen. I didn’t get to hug Math, or say goodbye to some of the other internationals because they weren’t available, and I was in a time crunch. It wasn’t ideal. But what can you do? They were the circumstances presented, and, quite honestly, I want to go home.

Looking at pictures on my camera of the people I’ve left behind is not the right thing to do at the moment. Though the ones we have when we found a space to claim as ours for the night in the airport? Those are priceless. And Heathrow provided blankets, too. So I have this horribly ugly brown fleece blanket with me that someone gave me at about one-something this morning, along with a bottle of water that I didn’t drink.

Luggage was an issue. Not only was my suitcase overweight (power-packing in three hours? Yeah, that’s gonna happen) and, apparently, my backpack that I took with me on the plane in the cabin was too large and too heavy. Therefore, I had to check that.

That did not make me a happy camper. Especially because I have my Newcastle Brown Ale glass from the Rose and Crown Hotel in that backpack and the stuff that Jess and Jen gave me for my birthday, all breakable. And I was going to have that with me to, well, not break it, and now it’s in with the rest of the luggage. However, I was a good person and wrapped it in clothes before putting it in there, so it should be okay.

Hopefully.

On the bright side of that, when I did self-service check-in, I changed my seat. Was supposed to be in the middle on the side, but now I’ve got a window seat. Which makes things better. Not great, but better.

I won’t tell you how much I’ve shelled out to be able to get my overweight suitcase and extra bag on that plane, but it can’t very well sit in Heathrow, can it? And I can’t really repack it because, well, where the hell am I gonna put that stuff? Exactly. At this point, I will do what I need to in order to get home.

Now I’m currently sitting outside a T.G.I. Friday’s and a Jo Malone, listening to Nate play his guitar and thinking that I might have been in this airport too damn long.

There are some truly hilarious pictures from last night, sleeping on the second floor of departures, and, honestly, I slept really well for about five hours on the floor. I will be submitting that photo to This Week in Photos on the colleges website because, well, it’s priceless. Come study abroad and get stuck in airports! Spend the night with your fellow students in a public, co-ed sleepover experience!

Bright side of life, here, people. Bright side of life.

I’m still torn. On the one hand, I want to go home because I haven’t seen my mother in weeks and my sister, father, and Smidget in months. I wanna have filter coffee in my kitchen with my sister, and I want to wake up in the morning because Mads is standing by the side of the bed just staring at me, maybe poking me to see if I’m real and I’ll move over and crawl into bed with me. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed her and her three-foot tall barely containable endless energy.

And if I have to listen to one more security announcement, I’m going to freak out and curse in languages I don’t even know.

What’s making this more bearable? The venti-sized Starbucks peppermint mocha that I’m consuming while I’m writing this and the fact that, yeah, I’ve gotten really used to running on not a lot of sleep over the past couple of weeks. That, and I’m predicting when I get on the plane, I’m going to be asleep before we’re even off the ground.

Shit. The pack of gum I bought specifically to help my ears pop? That’s in my backpack which is now a checked bag. Damn it. I’m going to need to bum some gum off someone if I’m going to make it through take-off without a ton of pain. Sometimes my ears won’t pop.

Again, bright side – I figured out my calling card last night. I couldn’t call the 800 number straight away, I had to call the international connection (for free) and then have them connect me through to AT&T, then I could use the card. Simple once you figure it out, a little complicated and a hell of a lot of frustration when you don’t know what you’re doing.

My laptop sports a Mind the Gap sticker from London on the lid. Perched at a jaunty, angle, of course, and hopefully a conversation starter if I’m in the library and someone’s wondering.

I should probably start thinking about articles to submit to the study abroad journal back home, but I think I have other things to worry about at the moment.

My teeth feel incredibly fuzzy. Brush my teeth, you suggest? The toothbrush and toothpaste are in the backpack, along with most of the pills. It’s been absolutely lovely. What can you do, though?

Yup. I’m going to get on that plane and probably be asleep before we even take off. Me and my window seat that I changed when I checked in. Still makes me smile when I think about that. I like window seats. Not only do I get to look, I get something to lean against.

Let’s talk about re-entry. As in, re-entry to America and American society. It’s going to be an issue. I’ve spent three months getting used to this system, this way of life (and driving on the left side of the road, thank you very much) and maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going to be able to drive until roughly next week because my license expired. Dad has to take me down to DMV sometime next week so I can renew it, and then I’ll be able to drive. Hopefully, I will have assimilated enough to be comfortable driving again and not feel like I’m going the wrong way.

Right. I’m almost out of battery on my laptop and I don’t feel like digging out my plug and my adapter, and…I will see you on the other side of the Atlantic.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Dear Baby Binsk

[This is a letter to my younger self from me now.]

Hey Binsk,

It's me. Sorta all grown up. We just turned twenty-one a little over a week ago, on Turkey Day. Yeah. You, me, our cartilege piercing, and our tattoo we've more or less named Otis. He's still rockin' the tan line from this summer, still lookin' for that horizon. Much like us, really.

Anyway, there's something that I need to tell you. Or rather, we need to talk about.

It's about Al*. I know you're going to have a hell of a time believing me on this one, but, Al got married yesterday. Before you freak out that I've somehow estranged us from the family and eloped in Mexico or anything, we're still single. We've got crazy curly long hair (though, I kept chopping it all off at one point, and now I'm letting it grow back) and, well, I'm currently in Wales. Yeah. You'll enjoy that, trust me.

Anyway. Yeah, Al got married yesterday. Don't look at me like that, all wide-eyed and whatnot. I remember just as clearly as you do freaking out in the kitchen when he came to the back door looking to drop off a can collection bag for Scouts and we thought he was there to see us and we freaked, royally, because we didn't want Mom or Dad to see him because we hadn't told them. I remember him and his dad and his friend turning up in the driveway during Italian Festival one summer, wanting to know if I wanted to go with them while I sat writing The Crossing from composition book to Word. I also remember being smooshed in the backseat, too, with the cake we'd made for Saint Mary's.

I remember all of that, just like you do. Just like I remember the way I felt junior year when I put on the dress I'd worn at Heather's wedding to go to my first prom. Eventually we'll be able to look at those pictures - and the ones from senior year - without tearing up quite as badly. For now, we'll leave them in the picture box in the living room with the ones from Music Club trips to NYC and other places we've been.

We're quite the wanderers, you and I. But that doesn't really hit us until we get to college and start blogging. Originally, we're Confessions of a College Coffee Addict but being a Wandering Sagittarius is what we are, so we change it.

I know it hurts, Binsk. I know it just tears at you to let him go that last time because you don't want to hurt him when you go away to college, and that's fine. I understand that. We don't regret that. We just thought he would wait for us. Can't really blame him for finding someone else, even if we think things moved a bit fast for them. And we were suitably stunned when we found out he was engaged.

Yesterday was their big day and you're over three thousand miles away living a very, very different life.

There's nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to regret. I know it's hard. Really hard. But you've done great things. You've got, at this point, 1,994 pages of composition book filled with a novel; you've got thirty parts on a blogging series that's more or less turned into a book called Murphy and Me; you've recently celebrated a birthday and can legally drink the US now; and you've turned out to be one strong, confident, bluntly honest person who, at all times, remembers to be herself before anything else. Because that's all we can do. Just be us. Even if it hurts.

I thought of how I was going to tackle this particular subject, wondered if there was a line I was going to cross that I shouldn't cross, and then decided, like with a lot of things, to screw it. Life is about crossing lines and this? This is hella personal, but at the same time, it's not. Don't ask me to explain that more fully because, well, I probably can't.

We're a little bitter, some days, I won't lie. We wonder how we can write such a wonderful romance between fictional characters, but can't live it in our own life. Our sister tells us to be patient, that God won't give us more than we can handle. But boy, it does seem like a lot sometime, if not in physical things, than especially with emotional.

Of course, this comes roughly two weeks before we head back to the US from spending three months in a foreign country. Because, well, if we didn't have bad luck we wouldn't have any luck at all. Coincidentally, that was the inspiration for Murphy and Me. And we haven't stopped writing since.

That, Binsk, is the biggest thing. We haven't stopped writing, living, breathing, loving, and wandering. We haven't stopped being us because of this fiasco. And it is a fiasco. It threw us for a loop when we got that random friend request, and it threw us for a loop to realize yesterday they got married. What we can do, though, is to recognize it, and not let it be more than a fading thing.

We can also sit back with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and wait for the wedding photos to crop up and crack up (in more than one way, probably) but that's a normal reaction.

The other normal reaction for us to write him into whatever we're working on, and we have. In little ways, we have. We'll listen to music, cry a little, and keep writing.

This will, eventually, be just another day to us. Another Saturday because, honestly, it doesn't have specific meaning to us. It's not our wedding day, not our anniversary (or one that we should be keeping track of, at any rate) and it's really not important to us. Mean? Slightly. Truthful? Definitely. And that's one thing we refuse to do, is lie to ourselves. Not when it counts the most.

We've come along way. And you've come further yet to get here. We've got more to go, too. More wandering, loving, writing, and most importantly, living. Live it up, kid, cause this life? It's the only one we've got. And to spend it freaking out about a path we didn't take? Not worth it, no matter what we thought he was worth to us back then because there's a Murphy out there for us somewhere. We've just gotta run into a few cars to find him, first.

Love,
Louise

Dumbstruck

With the exception of some pieces of fiction, you really haven't heard much from me lately. I can't decide if you guys are missing the snark yet or rolling in the silence. Either way, that temporary peace might have just been shattered.

There's this great organization called Host UK. What happens is if you're a student from another country, you can fill out an application, tell them where you're studying, what you're interested in, and how much you'd be willing to spend on travel, and they put you up with one of their hosts for the weekend. Your host feeds you, gives you a place to stay, and usually sort of shows you around the UK town they live in.

I spent this past weekend in Bath, England. My host was over sixty, and had lost her husband little over a year ago. But that was okay, because she seemed really enthusiastic about hosting and she' had done this plenty of times before. And I didn't think it was a big deal that she was about fifteen minutes late to pick me up, because, and I was looking right at it, traffic was chaotic. I can understand that. That's fine. And our first little trip out to a place called Wells to see the abbey and bishop's palace, that was cool, too. The church was absolutely awesome (if you're still stalking around my Photobucket, I'm working on it, though that seems to be Louise's Famous Last Words, but you know me) and that was a really nice way to start the weekend off. I'd been on a train for three hours, then sat in a car for another half an hour, got out and wandered around an abbey, and then back into the car and we drove to her house, where I would be staying. I had my own bathroom - down the hall toward the kitchen - and I had my own room. And it was nearly the size of my one at home in New York, so it was pretty big. It was really nice. She has a lot to offer these kids that come stay with her - which, from my understanding, are a lot of Chinese students because they come over to England for university a lot of the time.

Cottage pie for dinner followed by a sort of apple cake thing that had been warmed in the oven, and we watched a little TV and talked about what was going to happen the next day. The woman is over sixty. Walking is not her strong point, and you know damn well I'm prepared to hike all over the place if it means I can see all that I can see and do all I can do. So she was just going to drop me off in the middle of Bath, by the abbey and the Roman Baths, and I would catch the two hour tour that was leaving from there. I'd see all sorts of things.

Honestly, it reminded me of when we went to Toronto for class in the spring. Most of Toronto's speakers involved wandering around and looking at social housing, mixed housing, and that sort of thing. In Bath? You looked at Georgian architecture and talked about the heavy Roman influence and how the place had been a spa for the rich and maybe not-so-famous. The Circus was a great piece of architecture (a circle with three roads coming in all equally spaced apart, really a thing of beauty) and the Royal Crescent was nice, too. It's a crescent-shaped building. And, of course, the Roman Baths because that's what made the place famous to begin with. And really, once you've seen all of that, you've really seen Bath.

I wandered through the Roman Baths. They still function - they've actually opened a new spa right behind the Roman Baths that uses the natural hot spring water that bubbles up - but you can't swim in them because, well, the water's green from algae. There's no roof on the thing, so the sunlight hits the water, and the algae grows.

Another interesting point is that the sheets of lead that surround the pool? They're still there, and still watertight. I heard that and I immediately thought of something along the lines of lead poisoning, anyone? But apparently not. And no, it's not much warmer by the water than outside the building.

Right next to the Roman Baths is Bath Abbey. It's a fraction of the size of the Norman church that used to stand there, but it's still impressive. Along the sides of the front door is a Jacob's Ladder, in which there are angels ascending to heaven. I felt really bad for the bottom angels, because they were missing their heads - most likely due to erosion - but everything else was pretty much intact on the outside.

In Bath Abbey, you can go on what's called the Tower Tour. You get to go up into the tower and see the back of the clock face and see the bells. You learn about how they ring them - because, yes, they still have bell ringers, and it's not as easy as it sounds if you want the real deal - and we were actually in the bell room when the clock struck two. The only reason that we weren't deafened was because the mechanical parts hit the bell with a hammer, it doesn't swing like a bell ringer is doing it. If we had been in the room when they - especially the tenner bell - were swinging, you'd kiss your hearing goodbye.

As my host was coming to pick me up at half four (four-thirty), that didn't really leave me a lot of time to find lunch and then get to where she was picking me up, after seeing everything that I had wanted to.

I thought it very appropriate to work on Murphy and Me while in a Irish pub sipping on a pint of Caffrey's and waiting for my BBQ chicken melt. The chips were excellent, the melt not so much, and the beer was, as usual, good.

Once again with my map and on foot, I hoofed it to the William Herschel Museum - and was not very impressed with it, I'll tell you that, and I don't really care that the guy did live in that house - and then was craving something sweet for some reason. Which meant that I found a pub (because I didn't have time to walk all the way back to the Ben and Jerry's by the abbey) and saw that they had Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Heaven in a bowl.

I don't normally eat butterscotch (my dad likes butterscotch pudding, but I won't touch the stuff) but I am a huge fan of Sticky Toffee Pudding, specifically with custard. You have to be careful with that first couple of mouthfuls because you'll burn yourself pretty spectacularly, but after that it's bliss.

I had curry for the first time on Saturday night. It was good (I'm still not a big fan of curry, despite what I told her because, on occasion, a Sagittarius can be tactful) and after watching more DVR'd Rugby than you should probably watch in one sitting (though when Scotland plays, they have bagpipes and music by The Proclaimers) and then she wanted to watch something about America in the fifties and sixties. Something about the American Dream.

And that's kind of where the night went to hell in a handbag.

I'm sitting here struggling how to word this. How to start this.

Yes, I'm a scientist. A chemist, more specifically. I know that the creation of the atomic bomb was a great development in complete science terms. Forget everything but the science. If you look at just that, it was a great advancement. And I like advancements in science; maybe one day science will find a cure for cancer, and that would be awesome.

Now go back and factor everything else about the end of World War II into the equation with that science, and the fallout - literal and figurative - from dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. The understatement of the century would be to say it wasn't good. Thousands of people died, and even more are, in some cases, still suffering the after-affects of that this day. Their parents or grandparents had radiation sickness. Buildings were leveled, people died. Without getting too much into the politics, it was a very bad thing. Understatement? You betcha.

I'm sitting in this armchair and I'm hopin' that we can get off this topic and move on because it's not the greatest, and it's not one of America's finer moments, when my host goes, "That's the best thing that America could have ever done, drop those bombs on Japan."

I was speechless. Absolutely speechless.

It was also a struggle not to say anything because what exactly was I supposed to say to the woman who had taken me into her house for the weekend, fed me, gave me someplace to sleep, and had drove me into town? So, and this was by no means easy, I kept my mouth shut and hoped she wouldn't say anything else along those lines. Mostly because I was so infuriated that she had such a disregard for human life and the lasting effects of something of that magnitude, but also because, wouldn't you think something like that might offend someone?

I was still pretty mad by the time we hit the sixties in the program. And they got talking about homosexuality, how there was a beach in California that was known as the Queer Beach, and this guy was talking about a sort of pseudo-affair thing that he'd had, and the next thing I know she's pressed he fast forward button (she'd recorded the program) with a, "Too much talk about homosexuality."

Still sittin' in my armchair, grindin' my back teeth together.

Then she starts to speak about the dissolution of marriages and how homosexuality undermines what's a natural marriage. How it leads to depression in both the parents and the children. Basically, how pushing homosexuality has destroyed natural families.

I was downright livid by the time she pushed play, but also trying to figure out what exactly I should do. Again, I was in this conundrum of, do I say something? If I do, what do I say? How do I say it? Or is this another occasion to just keep my mouth shut?

Actually, what I really wanted was out of there. I honestly didn't want to be in the house anymore. If she had been closer to the city of Bath, closer to other places to stay, I would have packed my belongings in the night and left because I did not want to be there anymore. And I debated getting up and leaving the room. Then I thought if I did that, she'd want to know why I'd done it, and I didn't really want to talk about it.

Mostly because I didn't want to offend the person that had opened their home to me for the weekend.

It was a struggle for me to enjoy the rest of my time there. There wasn't much left, truthfully, and even though I went with her to her church - St. Mary's - and I was respectful of the service (because I do have manners and I know how to behave) I just really wanted out. I wanted to be as far away from this woman as I could possibly be. I just wanted to get on the train and go back to Wales and, honestly, never see her or hear her again.

At one point I was counting minutes.

Bath is a nice city. There's not really much to do other than shopping, but there's some pretty neat pubs and shops and architecture to look at. And now, honestly, I'm struggling to not let the last half of my interactions with this woman color the entire trip for me. It's difficult.

Gimme a week and ask me what I think of Bath. By that point I might not be so pissed off.

Murphy and Me XXX

[Great. Now the Roman numerals look like the short-form of bad porn. Fantastic.]

It was a small party, if it could be called that, and was just me, Jo, Sasha, and Cara. For the moment, as the boys hadn't come back yet. We were finishing up Dead Poets Society and sniffling like fools. Well, I was, at any rate.

"You okay, Ollie?" Sasha asked from her position of leaning against Cara on my bed.

"Fine," I sniffled, watching Todd stumble away from the rest of them toward the pond in the snow.

Nolan was telling Keating to collect his things when a knock came at the door.

"Open." My attention was glued to the screen, Edgar crushed to my chest.

Colby pushed open the door and the boys traipsed in. Murphy handed me a take-out container that I traded for a slightly greasy plastic bag.

"Oh - two?" he smiled, biting into one as the boys on the screen stood one by one on their desks with Todd's, "Oh captain, my captain."

I opened the take-out container; a mound of sweet potato fries with little containers of honey. Oh, yay. I wanted to squee but figured that might be a tad too creepy.

Liam and Dev were looking through my DVD's, muttering to each other. They pulled a few done; I put aside sweet potato fries to deal with the movie we'd just watched. Dev and I made the most awesome movie hand off ever and then I nearly dropped what he'd handed me.

Practical Magic.

Not what I was expecting when my movie shelf also includes stuff like The Patriot and all three Lord of the Rings, but okay. I can roll with that.

I set it up to go and the eight of us played musical chairs with only one real chair. Jo and Colby sandwiched Cara and Sasha on the bed; Devn had rousted me out of the moon chair; Liam was leaning against the wall of the nook, and I was sitting comfortably against Murph who had his back against my desk. We were both mowing down our respective guilty pleasures.

"Dinner alright, boys?" Sasha asked.

Oh, shit. Not sure everybody knew everybody. Jo did, and maybe Sasha. Cara was probably clueless.

"Was fine," Dev said. "A little crowded but otherwise fine."

"Cara, have you met the boys?" Some hostess I was.

She glanced around and shook her head. "Nope. I'm assuming that you're leaning against Murphy, and that the guy who looks like his twin is somehow related."

"My twin, actually. Liam." Murph set the other egg roll aside for later. "Colby is on your left and Dev is in the chair."

She smiled at each of them and laced her fingers with Sasha's. My room was and always would be a prejudice-free, judgmental-free, LGBTQ-friendly zone. If I was going to be PDA-ing it up with Murph, Sasha and Cara were going to feel safe and secure enough to do the same.

And anyone who had any notions to the contrary was going to have my size nine-and-a-half where the sun didn't shine on their way out the door.

No one so much as batted an eye. That's when I really knew I was in extremely good company. There had been other factors as well, so this was almost like extra icing at Cinnabon. Free extra icing.

Occasionally I like free things.

"Practical Magic?" Jo said as the opening music started. She looked over at Dev. "You like chick flicks?"

Dev turned a rather pretty pink and refused to answer.

"My brother's got a girlfriend who likes to quote movies," Liam said blithely.

"My boyfriend's twin likes a certain movie with Irish twins who are badass, so I'm actually impressed we're not watching Connor tossing a toilet at the moment." Not to be outdone, of course.

Jo looked down at Colby. "How do you live with them?"

"It's an art form," he said casually. Murph threw a balled up piece of paper at him.

This was honestly nice. Watching a movie with everyone - laughing when Sally couldn't poke needles in James Angelov's eyeballs without the incredibly coincidental crack of thunder - was really nice.

"Liam," Murph said as Sally and Gilly stomped mud over where they'd buried him after killing him the second time, "I just want to let you know that if your girlfriend ever tried to kill you - after branding you with her class ring - I'd help you bury her in the yard." He said it so straight-faced that it took Liam a few seconds to realize he was joking.

"Might have more of a chance doing it for you, especially after Manda."

Every muscle that Murph possessed - between six hundred and fifty and eight hundred, to be exact - went rigid. Liam had crossed a line, one that was obviously very clear and very sharp, though there was nothing apologetic in his eyes. This was a shove from one brother to the other to talk about something quite sensitive.

Incredibly so, as Murph felt more coiled than a freakin' slinky.

I rubbed his thigh just above his knee with my fingertips, accidentally digging in when I realized something more or less monumental.

The ex now had a name.

She had a name and a presence now. Not a welcome one, if Murph's fingers on my hip were any indication. Which was fine by me, truthfully.

Colby looked between the twins. "Don't worry, Liam, we do the same for problem roommates, too."

Liam frowned. "I don't have a roommate."

He looked innocently at the screen. "Oops...I thought you were Murph....should've said twin."

Murph relaxed slightly - namely, he wasn't going to accidentally leave bruises. Though I might turn colors there tomorrow if he didn't really chill soon.

Jo chuckled and very slowly - molasses in January slowly - the tension leaked from the room.

He crept the hand not easily seen by the rest of the room up the back of my t-shirt to rub circles in the area I so lovingly (not) called my back fat. As it seemed to relax him - and felt good - I didn't care. Course, if he crossed a line I'd let him know, most likely with a well-placed elbow, and settled more against him.

Even though Practical Magic was pretty old (1998) the special effects when Angelov comes out of Gilly? Flippin' awesome. And Sally? Totally feel you with wanting something you shouldn't and then wondering when it's going to fall apart. Story of my life, pretty much.

Until now. But that was only going to last four months, max.

Stop it.

I almost missed our favorite lines.

"Midnight margaritas!" Jo, Cara, Sasha, and I squealed with Gilly and Sally.

"We are so doing that when we live in the town houses and can drink," Cara said, jamming her shoulders in time with the music.

"You'd wind up in Odell's Pond," Sasha snorted, "though we could sit on our porch and pass a bottle of tequila."

"I don't do tequila," Jo and I said together. I was more of a beer or wine drinker than hard liquor, though SoCo and lime shots were lovely.

"So we'll give you a bottle of white zinfandel and let you have at it," Sasha continued. "The adults'll drink liquor and you can sip on that." We shared a knowing, if somewhat pained, smile.

Sasha had hit bottom and then the bottle when Cara had broken up with her last semester. How she'd gotten a hold of Jose was still a mystery, but when Mel had called me to say Sasha was sitting on the quad at eleven-thirty and pretty much sobbing into copious amounts of alcohol, I really hadn't thought twice about running barefoot in soccer shorts and a sweatshirt from my room on J2 to the large grassy space outside the colleges administrative building. It had taken a lot of convincing to get her to come with me, and she threw up by the college store on the way back to Jackson.

Don't ask how they'd fixed things, since between puking twice more and the absolute bitch of a hangover the next morning, Sasha wasn't in the mood to say anything to anyone. Even me. In a rate moment of brilliance, I hadn't pushed. Looking back now, I'm glad I'd let her do her thing.

Dev gave a full body shudder that almost dumped him out of the chair when Kylie and Antonia pushed Gilly - tied to an armchair - across the floor with a swath of toads in her wake.

I'd like to say we all didn't turn and openly stare like landed trout. Despite evidence to the contrary, I try very hard not ot feed myself utter fantastical bullshit, even if it tastes better than reality.

"Are you afraid of frogs?" Colby asked, clearly skeptical.

Dev colored. "Like Murph's afraid of heights."

Any trace of a smile vanished from Colby's face. "Oh. Sorry, Dev."

He shrugged. "Not your fault. I blame living next to a swamp and three sisters."

I had one sister that pushed my sanity. How he dealt with three was beyond me.

Murph's fingers slipped around more toward my belly and he flinched when, at the end, the Owens women jumped off the roof and flew. Probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been so close to him.

I tried to play the good hostess and probably railed miserably because, after making brunch plans with everyone, they cleared out.

For the first time since I'd met Murph, it was awkward between us. Pink elephant named Manda awkward. He sat on my bed, wedged into the corner where two walls met, idly turning Edgar over in his hands. I stayed leaning against the door, content to watch. And not say anything.

"Amanda Morrison is my ex-girlfriend," he said, rubbing his forehead before giving me that look that said he'd really like to have me physically near. The elephant and I eyed each other as I crossed the room, climbing onto the foot of the bed to put my back against the dresser. He looked at me, open and vulnerable to the point where it was beginning to scare me. "And I'm not ready to talk about it."

Understandable. Very understandable.

Because if he wasn't ready to talk about Manda, then I was nowhere near prepared to talk about Bobby. That was a whole lotta mess to handle in one try and...no. Not right now.

"I - "

"You don't have to tell me," he said softly. "When you're ready, you're ready. When I'm ready - "

"I'll know." I would, too. And wouldn't that be an interesting conversation.

Edgar was put gently to the side, Murph's head lolling back against the wall. "I do trust you."

Oh, Murph. If I gave him an arrhythmia, he was going to give me a stroke. "I know." Before I could stop and analyze it, I slid forward between his knees and planted my shoulder against his chest, curling in on myself and toward him, solid and warm. He slipped an ankle between mine where they were pressed together and rested his other thigh on mine. Now utterly caged and content, the pink elephant didn't seem quite so large. Might even have been shrinking. Temporarily, of course.

"Chroi," he murmured into my hair. "What you are to me. And what you do."

"I trust you, too, Murph," I whispered, breathing against his chest. Even if it's only because I think I love you.

Inside Screaming

It's been a while since I've been frustrated enough to want to scream obscenities at the sky and stamp my feet like a three-year-old. I mean, it's been a good thirteen, fourteen years since I've wanted to do that, but dear God in heaven was I ready to carry on like someone had taken away every holiday that had ever existed this afternoon.

Working with kids is a test of patience. Granted, I have more than my fair share especially when dealing with other people's children, but I'm no saint. My buttons can be pressed just as regularly and as easily as everyone else's. Which was why when I got back to the flat this afternoon for my lunch hour, I was already kind of tired and more than a little frustrated at trying to get particularly unmotivated children to do what they were supposed to be doing. Especially the ones that have their own agenda and would rather you piss off so they can continue doing as they were doing.

That I can deal with, and I was really glad that I was going back to the relative quietness that was my flat on a weekday. Even that stench that accompanies a wet wool coat didn't really bug me yet, and generally it makes me think I stink.

I decided I was going to have pancakes for lunch. Odd, I know, but this is me we're talking about. That and I really didn't want to eat the plain rice from last night because it was the only thing that I really had available. That and maybe a bowl of oatmeal, Tesco brand frosted flakes, and whatever else I could rustle up that didn't involve either bread or tortilla wraps. Or the minced beef in the fridge that accidentally got left out the other night when I made dirty rice. Eating that just might kill me and I haven't been brave enough to bring it out of the freezer yet and do something with it.

Anyhoo, here I am in the kitchen mowing my way through one pancake while the other one - slightly massive because I'm using the rest of the batter so I don't waste food - and we're just generally having kitchen conversation. So, I take my frying pan off the heat, go to get myself a glass of milk, and hear one of my flat mate's saying, "You're not leaving that there, eh?"

Slightly confused, I look to where he's pointing - my batter bowl. Now, I had every intention of at least rinsing it. I nearly always do when it's not my day to do the dishes because I figure that helps the people who's day it is. And I'm just staring at him, like, RUFKM? And he's completely serious as he tells me to wash it because otherwise it's going to be a mess.

Hold the phone. Today is not my day to do the dishes. Today is actually his day.

And believe me, the amount of shit that I have washed out of various pots and pans in that kitchen has been incredible. Including his dirty dishes, which, he will just leave there.

But no. I'm told to that before I can leave - unless I want to wear the rest of that batter on the inside of that bowl - it needs to be washed. Not by him, who's day it is, but by me.

Very rarely have I wanted to lay into someone so badly for something so trivial. Yes, I recognize that it's just dishes. Though I will say this; this is the same guy that was foolin' around in the kitchen, sliced his toe open on something by stepping on the bin bag, and then refused to clean up his own blood smears on the kitchen floor because it wasn't his day. Two guesses as to who's day it was to clean the kitchen.

Mine.

That kitchen effin' sparkled when I was done, mostly because I was incredibly pissed off, homesick, and generally needed to calm the hell down. So I cleaned.

So I go back to school, try to leave everything at the door, and every one of my kids seems determined to step either on my last nerve or push every button I possess like a fancy elevator.

I'm pretty damn near the edge and ready to snap. And it's going to be anything but pretty when it happens.