Murphy and Me XXXXII

[Sometime this weekend there will be a rather legit nonfiction post from me. Promise. At some point this upcoming weekend.]

The shenanigans started way too bright and early. Though the Happy Thanksgiving text from both Murph and Liam - with separate ones from Sasha, Cara, Em, Mel, Jo, Dev, and Colby - were both greatly appreciated and slightly unexpected. At least the volume. Dev's was shorthand and rather sleepy, but he was either still awake or had only just gotten up, and was therefore excusable.

Dexter, after pacing up and down the short hallway outside the bedroom for what seemed like hours, finally nosed open the door and decided to crawl in bed with me. And happily wash my ears.

Coffee was in order. Immediately. And Dex followed me down the stairs - almost bowling me over - and I staggered down the last few steps and almost into the stove.

"Look who's bright-eyed this morning," Dad chuckled. "Coffee, sweetie?"

I weaved around Mama and Aunt Janelle, who was a regular at our house for morning coffee on weekends and holidays, and beelined for the fridge - and the coffee creamer.

While wearing a flannel shirt that wasn't mine. A flannel shirt that was way too big, even considering I liked my winter sleepwear tops bigger. Shit.

Oh well. Live and learn.

"Cold in Geneva?" Janelle asked once I'd sat down, coffee creamer at the bottom of the mug. It would mix when Dad poured the coffee in, thus not requiring the need to dirty a spoon. Not that it mattered, as we had a dishwasher.

"Very." Mama handed me my freshly filled mug from Dad.

"It's a little big, don't you think?" Mama this time. "And a bit like something your Uncle David would wear?"

Uncle David's style was borderline lumberjack some days. There was no way to win this argument. Damage control, yes. Win? Hell no.

"Is it yours?" Dad finally chimed in, as expected.

Cue flaming face. "I'm borrowing it until B and G comes and actually fixes my heat." Go big or go home. "He's got, like, four." Which was true. The boy had multiple and he hadn't put up much resistance when one had come with me.

Then again, we'd had bigger problems regarding Murph's appendix and everything else had been relegated moot.

They seemed to absorb that and I sipped my coffee. The little black flip phone was upstairs - which was fine - and when Dad started taking rolls out of the oven, the only reaction appropriate was to salivate. And then steal one off the tray. As Aunt Janelle did the same, Dad doing anything other than semi-glare was rather pointless. It was tradition.

"Ollie, when do you want to do your birthday?" Mama asked.

To anybody else it would have been an odd question, but it was fairly standard procedure in our family that a birthday party rarely occurred on the the actual day of birth. We usually held out for the weekend - since it was better than, say, a Tuesday - and whoever was celebrating go to pick dinner and one form of dessert. Yellow cake, chocolate frosting, and cookie dough ice cream, please and thank you. Though rumor had it Dad was making cheesecake sometime today.

I told Mama Saturday sounded good. That way those going out for Black Friday didn't have to hurry home.

Aunt Janelle stayed for another cup and a half of coffee before heading out the door with an "I need to get my ass home and be productive" though how much productivity could be achieved on a national holiday was beyond me. There sure as shit wasn't anything I was going to be rushing off to get done - physics included - and that was both understandable and fine by me.

I did not come home to stuff my face and do homework. Well, yes to the first and hell no to the second.

"How is Murphy?" Mama asked. "Did he go home?"

"Yup. He and Liam and Colby are heading back, still on the road, I think, and he's doing okay. He's tired."

"So were you."

True. Very true. "Yeah." Took another sip of coffee. "He'll probably sleep better when he gets home." Until the sores on his heels go worse. "He got the card you sent." Because, once I'd gotten back from the ER that night...morning...whatever, whenever the hell it was I finally made it back to Jackson, and had gotten enough sleep to function, my first step had been to call Mama. Then text Izzy. Then text multiple people to ask how they were doing. Then, predictably, there was a nap.

There is no shame in napping as a college student. So long as it's not during class.

"What was it, again, that happened?"

"His appendix exploded." Rather gruesome, now that I think about it. But more or less gruesome than a six inch long, skinny twisted cyst a doctor pulls surgically out of your lady parts?

Yeah. That's a toss-up.

Mama headed upstairs to take a shower and I sipped cold coffee, occasionally trading remarks with Dad about the turkey, and he proudly said he'd made pie.

"Oh. What kind of pie?" Pie is good.

"Cranberry-raspberry."

Normal pie is good. This might be a train wreck. "Fantastic." I picked up my coffee mug. "Can't wait to try it." When, in reality, I was beginning to think I wanted to wait until Christmas to have a bite.


It was a small crowd for dinner - only eighteen - and it was a regular food feast. Turkey, stuffing, broccoli, green beans, rolls, somebody brought sweet potatoes to go alongside the regular mashed potatoes, and a dish of corn because Dad doesn't eat any vegetable but corn. Between dinner and dessert was copious amounts of coffee to go around.

Izzy and I wound up next to each other on the end of the table closest to the corner cupboard, watching as the desserts were brought out. Cheesecake, Dad's pie, and somebody had made some sort of pumpkin mousse concoction in a graham cracker crust.

Pretty soon, along with a fresh cup of coffee, I was staring at a slice of Dad's pie and wondering what, exactly, it was held together with. Or rather, failing miserably at being held together.

The whole smelled like syrup. Pancake syrup.

"Hey, Dad..."

"Yeah, Ol?"

"This have maple syrup in it?" Somebody had to ask. As with most cases, it's usually me. Scratch that - it's always me.

Dad grinned. "Yup."

Great. Absolutely fabulous.

Izzy leaned over and whispered, "Chomp chomp."

Damn it. Generally, you take it, you at least tried it. As it was a holiday - and a new recipe - and I had an audience, fork found pie and pie found mouth.

Regurgitation was not an option.

"Shut up," I growled at Izzy after getting that first bite down. She laughed. Ah well. Can't win 'em all.


It was late - early, by my more recent bedtime standards - when I finally crawled between the sheets to curl around Edgar. He smelled, very faintly, of Murphy - a combination of his cologne, general boy smell, possibly shampoo, and probably whatever he used for laundry detergent. But it was Murph.

The phone buzzed. I tugged it onto the mattress with me and flipped it open. New text from Murph.

u awake?

Love T9. Yup. Hit send. Waited. Saw the light from the screen before it buzzed.

how was dinner? and the fam?

How to phrase this... Dad made a pie held together with maple syrup. Yeah. Self-explanatory. Other than that it was great. They asked about you. Even el. She'd come right up to me, looked around, and gone, "Where Morefy?"

The ceiling had a new patch of faint blue in the dark.

awwww :) ma and da asked how u were and about ur heat

Yeah. Still no heat. I'll just bring another blanket back. I pressed my nose into Edgar's fluff. Edgar smells like you. Send.

Damn I was tired. The buzzing jerked me awake.

yeah? :) miss you

Oh, Murph. You make my heart hurt. So much. I miss you, too. So much.

I sent that message and then opened another, typing I love you. Writing it made it feel more real. More tangible. But it was so difficult to say.

It's not that the feeling is wrong or superficial. It's not forced. It just, like so much of me when it came to things like this, circles back around to Bobby.

Bobby was the first real relationship I'd had, off and on all through high school and into the summer before my first semester at William Smith. We'd said those three little words, but, if it was true, shouldn't it have been more difficult to say goodbye each time we took a "break"? It should have hurt more, shouldn't it? It didn't. We cycled on and off and there wasn't much more to feel than lonely for somebody to spend time with, to hold hands and be comfortable with in those months we were off.

Murph and I are comfortable, but different. A different kind of comfortable. We were inherently different than Bobby and I. And those three little words...I wanted to be absolutely sure.

This was one thing in my life I didn't want to lose, that four month mark be damned. For the first time, this feeling for another felt bigger than me. A lot bigger.

Murph's newest message had arrived five minutes ago.

when do u think ur gonna be back on sunday?

Should be back before dinner. Why? Askin' me out on a date? :) Not that we made too much of a distinction between unofficial and official dates. What the hell was the difference, anyway?

The mattress shivered. That little flip phone had a mean vibrate.

u kno it ;) but yeah dinner sunday?

Predictable. Utterly predictable.

Yes. Dinner Sunday. As I'm falling asleep, I need to say goodnight. Night, murph.

Edgar got crushed to my chest. Much like normal.

The phone buzzed again.

night ollie :) sleep tight

I proceeded to do just that.

Murphy and Me XXXXI

Murph moved back to the fishbowl three days later. He didn't move well - or fast - and he looked much the same as he had when he was lying in a bed on the second floor of Geneva General. Pale. Borderline paper-white even days after emergency surgery. He spent a lot of his spare time sleeping, a phase I remembered well because it took almost all my energy to go to class and focus that first week back almost a year ago.

Murph had left the fishbowl unlocked so I could swing by and see him in the afternoon. The major perk of having morning classes was being done by one-thirty, except on lab days.

The room was as dark as it could be at two in the afternoon. There were some Get Well Soon cards on the desk, including one from my parents and one from Izzy and her family. El had made some scribbles on the inside in blue crayon, which had made him smile.

He lay on his back, Smokey and Edgar propped on the inside pillow and keeping a careful plastic eye on the sleeping college student. I pulled the desk chair over and curled in it.

The months peeled away.

"You're gonna be here when I wake up?"

Mama pushed my hair from my face. "I will be here when you wake up."

The nurse - a twenty-something Russian by the sound of it - wheeled me, bed and all, toward the OR. He gave me roughly half of what was gonna knock me flat and I spaced out for a minute.

One moment there was a gurney under me, the next there was a metal table and it was cold. The surgeon - maybe it was him, maybe it wasn't - leaned in. Matchbox Twenty filtered through from somewhere.

"Hi."

"Hi." He smiled, pushing something into my IV port.

"I like Matchbox Twenty."

Everything went dark.

Mama had been there when I woke the first time and then promptly went back to sleep. Woke up sometime a little later and tried to stay conscious.

Though knocked out completely is a little less fun than being consciously sedated - eyes open but definitely not all there.

"Thinkin' kinda loud, Ol."

I clutched at the chair, almost slipping out of it. How long had he been awake and looking?

"Sorry." Got settled again and smiled. "Hi."

"Hey. Whatcha thinkin' about?"

"Surgery." No point in beating around the proverbial bush. "Mine, that is." I'd had plenty of time to think about Murph's in the ER. Think. Freak. Repeat. "I - I missed the first El went tubing. I'd been out of surgery about a week and going up and down the stairs was about it. I sat in the kitchen and drank tea." And absolutely hated it. But it was beyond my control.

"This winter, then."

"Yeah." It just needed to snow first. "Yeah. How you holdin' up?"

"I spend a lot of time in this bed. Sleeping."

Yeah. Knew all about that, too. The only time I'd been "up" had been to be fed a pain pill and then it was Goodnight, Gracie.

Murph made an aborted move to roll over and settled back with his eyebrows drawn together. "I hate sleeping on my back."

Which made two of us. It would be another two or three days before his heels got sore enough to add to his problems.

"My heels hurt, too."

Or not. Make that sooner. "Yeah. I know about that, too." I curled in the chair and balanced well enough to rest my cheek on Murph's pillow and blinked. "You hungry or anything?"

"Not really."

"Sick?"

"Not right now."

He reached up and tangled his fingers with mine, the digits rather cool. Gently touched my forehead to his, relieved when it wasn't overly warm.

"At least you're not feverish." Which was honestly a good thing. Fevers were usually bad.

"I'm just bored." He looked at me, blinking and breathing. "I'm not gonna break."

It took me a few seconds to figure out what he meant, and my first instinct was to panic. What if he accidentally tore something? What if I accidentally made him accidentally tear something?

"Ollie." He waited until he had my attention. "Please."

Good Lord, when did he get Anime eyes?

This was going to take some strategizing to make this as painless as possible - relatively speaking.

Ultimately what we wound up doing was Murph sitting up long enough for me to slide behind him to put my back against the wall he used as a headboard. There was a pillow shoved in the small of my back and another under my shoulders, and then I had roughly two hundred pounds of football player against my chest, lower body wedged between my thighs. Thank God for my wide hips.

Most of Murph's weight was still on the mattress, though his upper body was supported by mine. I carded my fingers through his hair, softly rubbing the tips of his ears and asking him at least fifty more times if his belly was still alright.

"Yes, Ol," he said, a big palm on my thigh, the warmth easily felt through denim. "My stitches are fine."

"Don't want you to die or anything." It was oddly reminiscent, in that moment, of the first night spent in this bed following the first ER trip.

"When are you going home for Thanksgiving?" he asked, turning his head to press his nose into my neck.

"Oh, shit, that's tomorrow, isn't it?" I'd completely spaced on that fact. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. No wonder Mama had called to ask when the hell I was coming home. Also no wonder she'd been suitably confused when I'd said no idea.

Murph snorted. "Yeah, Ol, that's tomorrow."

"Then either tonight or tomorrow morning. I haven't started packing." Because a major holiday had totally, utterly slipped my mind. Who does that? Me, apparently. "When are you going?"

"Colby, Liam, and I are heading out tomorrow morning. We're driving separately because Liam wants me to be able to stretch out. Colby's car's gonna be the pack wagon." He snuggled closer. "And Liam likes to drive in the daylight more than the night."

Which was understandable. Most of my family - myself included - was shit at driving after dark.

I snuck my hand down the back of his shirt to rub his shoulder.

"I still have to give you your birthday present."

Took almost everything in me not to freeze. "Oh. You didn't have to."

"I know." His fingers tightened briefly on my thigh. "I wanted to, though. I even wrapped it."

I pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Thank you." All I could say, really.

He lay there, simply breathing, and still enough to make me wonder if he'd fallen asleep.

"What are you excited to eat tomorrow?" he asked.

"Stuffing." It was a no-brainer. Stuffing was awesome. "And broccoli." Broccoli smothered in cheese. Fantastic. "You?"

"Sweet potatoes and sliced cranberry."

Hopefully not together.

"But we shouldn't talk about food right now," he said, making an abortive move to lay on his side.

"Can do." Went back to running my fingers through his hair. "I'll go home sometime tonight. I'm not overly worried."

"'Kay." His head got a little heavier.

I'd stay here until he got up - figuratively speaking - from his nap. Then maybe go pack some of my corner single into Fred and start the forty-something miles home. But for now, this was the definition of contentment to lay there and be Murphy's pillow. Not like it was a hardship.


Lugging shit down four floors of stairs sucked. Didn't care that it was dirty clothes - most of my closet - but it still sucked.

What was going to suck even worse was hauling the mini fridge down at the end of the year. But that was in the future, not now. Now was piles of dirty clothes, textbooks with homework that probably wouldn't get done anyway, and the laptop, phone charger, and cord to the mp3 player. That should have been sufficient to survive at home for three or four days.

I packed Fred and then went back to the third floor fishbowl to say one last goodbye before heading home. There were quite a few voices in the fishbowl - more than just Murph and Dev - and I almost decided to forgo knocking. Almost. But not quite.

It was quite the off-key, not totally in unison "Come in" in response, and pushing open the door revealed all my boys. With the amount of bodies - and luggage present - the room did feel a bit crowded.

Murph sat on his bed in the much same position I had earlier, still much too pale. Colby was leaning against the windowsill and Liam hovered by Murph's dresser. Dev was haphazardly throwing a multitude of things on his bed and into a duffel bag, computer already packed out of sight.

"Hey, guys." I hopped onto the foot of Murph's bed. "Gettin' ready to get outta here?"

"Dev is," Liam said, jerking his head to his left. "Where you goin' again?"

"Rockland, Maine." Dev muscled the duffel closed and leaned against the bed frame. "We decided to go to Aunt Sarah's for Thanksgiving, and Pop and Papa decided to wait until after Pop got home to leave. So we can all take turns driving through New England at two in the morning." He seemed incredibly thrilled with this idea.

"So, you and your dad and grandpa?" I ventured.

The room went oddly still. Cue wanting to shrink through the floor. How off the mark was I?

"Chill, guys," Dev said, reaching for a photo taped to the wall. "She doesn't know." He handed me the picture. Dev resembled neither of the men in it, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the one on the right was African-American. "Papa's on the left and Pop's on the right."

"Cool. And you have siblings, don't you? Sisters?"

"Yup. And we're all adopted."

I handed the picture back and the tension bled from the room. "I have one sister. I can't imagine how you deal with multiple."

Dev shrugged. "It's a gift. We're swinging by Logan in Boston to pick up Claire and Mackenzie. They're flying in from California. University of San Francisco." He re-taped it to the wall. "When are you heading out?"

"When I say goodbye to you guys. Car's packed."

"Yeah. We watched," Colby mentioned casually.

I stared. "You watched?" Didn't know whether to snark at the creepiness or the fairly ungentlemanly behavior. Settled on appropriately scandalized, instead.

"You were doin' great," he said, fighting a smile.

"Asshat." It rolled out before my brain could say otherwise. I turned to Murph. "How you doin'?"

"Ready to go home." He rubbed his eyes.

"You need another pill?" Liam asked.

"No." He reached for Edgar, wincing. "Here. Smokey's going to Lake Placid."

Moved closer to get Edgar. "He probably needs to go back to Townsend." Sat back, the stuffed animal in my lap. "I should probably get going before it gets later."

I left Murph for last, starting with Dev and doling out hugs. Murph got a little more than a hug, along with the suggestion to actually rest this time, and I picked up Edgar on my way to the door.

"Hey, Ol?"

"Yeah, Murph?"

"Text me when you get home?"

"Will do." Waved one last time, swallowed those damn three words, and managed a relatively normal, "See you in three days." I'd probably worry about him until he, Liam, and Colby got back to Lake Placid and didn't bother to fight the feeling. Not this go 'round, anyway.

Fred started first time and with both Henry and Edgar in the front seat, we pulled out of the mostly empty parking lot and started for home. The radio was one - as was the heat - and there was hardly anybody on 14 with the exception of the truck traffic. Got lucky enough to get behind one of those and we ran 70 all the way to the village limits.

It was going on eight when I backed into the family parking lot. Computer, Edgar, Henry, probably just locked the keys in the car and didn't give a damn.

Home. Sweet, sweet home. Nothing else at this point mattered.

Doors were a bit tricky with full hands, but once in they could be kicked shut easily enough. Fired off a text to Murph once inside the kitchen and had set everything down without breaking it or myself. There were giggles from the stairs. El sat on the second step, face pressed between the slats as much as possible without getting her head stuck, grinning madly. She had a few more teeth, too.

"Hey, kidlet."

"Ollie."

I picked her up on th way up the stairs. She wrapped her arms around my neck, still giggling in between asking me how long I was home for and if I knew tomorrow was "Thanksgibbing."

Damn it was good to be home.

Murphy and Me Insert: Registration

[So, back when I was first doing the beginning of November scenes for Murphy and Me, back around when they were playing for Liberty Leagues and the right to go to the NCAA tournament, that's also when HWS does registration for the next semester. It's fairly important, more than slightly frustrating, and does deserve its own scene. Here it is.]

I'm not a fan of tedius things and my ability to keep a schedule is...lacking at best and nonexistent at worst. Schedule meaning keeping track of important dates that don't have exams and/or labs due.

Like registration.

The first reminder it was that time was the course catalogue that appared in my mailbox. Next sign was the advising week sign-up sheet on Montrose's office door.

Yep. Time to sit down and figure shit out.

So, while procrastinating on physics homework yet again, I sat on my bed and tried to make a cohesive schedule. Mostly, I tried to figure out what to use as a fourth course that would entertain me.

Putting it together was like a puzzle. A rather annoying puzzle, but still. A puzzle.

There was some shuffling in the hallway - Jo was by the partially open door. She stepped around it when I motioned her in. "You got yours done yet?"

She smiled. "Yeah. Can I borrow your orgo book?"

"Yeah." She was already borrowing my intro book, so it made sense. And was fine by me because I didn't have any intention of selling it back. It was going in my "reference" library. "I don't have a fourth yet." And it was bugging the shit out of me.

"Anthro, maybe?" she suggested, climbing up onto the foot of the bed.

"Eh." Anthropology was no entirely my style. "Maybe I should do a Bi-Dis. Izzy says those are good."

"Bi-Dis?"

"Bidisciplinary. Two subjects, two professors." Probably twice the work and twice the fun. Most likely not in that order. "This Two Cities idea sounds pretty cool."

"Sociology and economics." Neither of which I had any experience with except for ACE Economics back in high school. Hadn't gone too badly, either. From what I chose to remember.

"Go for it." Jo glanced at some of my attempts at scheduling. "Who teaches 280?"

"Krugen." I scrubbed a hand across my face. "Physics two might be the death of me. Bensen."

"I've heard he's good." Jo put the paper down. "What classes do you have with Murphy?"

I leaned back against the pillows. "No idea." We hadn't talked about classes, mostly because he had his own degree to fulfill and I had mine. If we overlapped that was great, but we weren't going to be one of those couples who had classes together by design. There were times I didn't want to see Murph, despite how much I lo - liked him.

Where the hell was my head lately?

"No classes together?" Jo fiddled with the hem of her pants.

"Not by design." Just wasn't us.

"Oh."

"Yeah. I think I'll go with this." Handed her the schdeule with Two Cities in it. "Physics, the second half of intro, Two Cities, and Craft of Fiction." Oh, the life of an unofficial creative writing minor and chemistry major. Positively joyful. "When do we register, again?"

"Wednesday. Seven."

Great. Had to be up early anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. Could register and then head to breakfast and have plenty of time.

"Okay." I fumbled for my phone. New messages. Two from Izzy. Two from Murphy. Ironically, he was reminding me about registration. Bless that boy.

"Wanna do dinner tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sure." Glanced around at the array of papers on the bed with us - none of them physics related. "I think I might actually need to do homework now." Also might pop in a movie. Maybe The Princess Bride. "You're more than welcome to stay."

"I need to go call my aunt. She leaves for Turkey later this week." She slid off the bed. "Maybe some other night."

"No problem." Or maybe it was a Ghostbusters II kind of night.

Jo left and I looked at my physics book. Better yet, let's just go with the first season of Leverage. That should work.



These were the mornings I desperately wished for a coffee pot. The Fire Marshal would probably take it, but it would be worth it. So worth it.

At five minutes to seven I - and the rest of the sophomore class - booted up the computer and logged into PeopleSoft. Registration was done online and two minutes before go time, and waiting at the last stage before actual registration, I clicked open another tab to, predictably, Facebook.

Pop.

Murphy McRiley: hey
Olivia Karizslowski: Mornin' sunshine!
Murphy McRiley: devs already swearin

Checked the time and clicked back to PeopleSoft. The trick was to be neither too early nor too late. The clock in the bottom right of the screen hit seven and sophomores clicked almost as one. The page gave me the loading symbol and I sat there, staring stupidly at it.

It froze.

"Shit!"

Clicked out of the tab. Tried to, anyway. The entire browser had frozen. Double shit. Mozilla popped up with a happy fail message to which - like most others in the building and across campus - shrieked, "Shit!"

Firefox finally closed and I clicked open a new session, going first for PeopleSoft and secondly for Facebook.

Murphy McRiley: ol?
Olivia Karizslowski: got closed out by firefox
Murphy McRiley: shit
Olivia Karizslowski: no kidding

The system was a sad combination of every synonym for slow ever created. It took forever to keep back to my academic shopping cart in the program, two which I got bumped again from the last stage and literally growled at the screen. Damn it.

Third time must have been the charm because it went through with all green checkmarks, despire the fact none of the prerequisites for Two Cities were there at all.

Olivia Karizslowski: Bumped twice, still got everything. You?
Murphy McRiley: 2 for 4 gonna need to sign as overload. friggin juniors
Olivia Karizslowski: Backups?
Murphy McRiley: make that 1 overload
Olivia Karizslowski: That sounds better.
Olivia Karizslowski: I gotta go. Breakfast. Bye.

At least that was over for another semester. And I did need to go since I was currently roughly ten minutes behind getting my ass out the door for breakfast. And nothing was ready to go. Damn it.

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.

For All This Life

I've been on this earth twenty-two years. In those subsequent years, the toughest things I've had to do have been walking away from a great relationship with a wonderful person because I was going away to college, getting stuck in an airport for a single night due to a sudden monsoon in Philadelphia, having unexplained belly pain resulting in surgery my first semester of college, leaving my mother in an airport twice, only this time it was her that was leaving and me that was staying (not that it helped), calling my mother a few weeks later to tell her I wasn't coming home and didn't know when I could even think about getting on a plane and getting across the Atlantic, and the following five days of living in the Virgin Atlantic terminal at Heathrow Airport.

It's a toss up of whether all of the previous - collectively - trumps the past four months.

It's been difficult. That could be the understatement of 2011, truthfully, if sitting in my professor's office and, after going over the last exam and talking about where to go from there, fighting on three separate occasions not to cry is any indication. I've done really well since the first month of the semester to not let the center of my brain hijack the rest of it, which is the sort of scientific way of saying I haven't let myself panic as badly as I used to. It's probably not good for my heart, either, the amount of caffeine I ingest on a regular basis.

I don't want to use the word overwhelmed but that's really what it boils down to. Between what's going on up here - no need to insert the laundry list of stuff as that's already been done - and what's going on at home, it's difficult to get the distance required. 45 miles doesn't feel like 45 miles. Even if it were 3,000 I don't think it would work. Sometimes there's just not enough space on the planet to get the distance that feel necessary.

It's also difficult to not let the distance you need hurt the people who need you.

Yeah, that's one I'm still trying to wrap my head around and there are days when I'm successful and days when, well, I'm a giant fail at it. Lately, it seems that my failure days outnumber my non-failure days. It's a struggle, more often than not, to find my motivation and my Focus (slippery little bastard), and to do all I need to do when the only thing I really want to do is curl up in my amazingly comfortable dorm bed and block out the outside world and sleep for a solid eight hours. My beloved sister insists I can sleep when I'm dead, which I think has taken root in the back of my head because it's ten past midnight and I'm working on homework. I'm hoping - more or less planning, actually - to be in bed by three. Which means I have some things to get done right the hell now.

The bright side is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There's the fact that spring semester is going to be glorious. There's also the fact that I will be returning to Wales two weeks after graduation for three weeks. Yup, I was accepted into the summer program, and will be returning to a place that grew to be a second (third, maybe?) home.

But there's a lot to do between now and then. A lot to do. Still, there are days when you sit there, think, get a little lost in your head and wonder can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Have I gotten in over my head? The next thought you think is the true kicker.

Is it really worth it?

There are days when I go cross-eyed looking at my own reflection in the mirror really wondering if the ends justify the means. I've been assured by numerous people they do indeed, but here, right here in this hot as hell corner room, you wonder. You really, really wonder.

Sitting here introspecting isn't getting my lesson plans done. And you know how much I love those damn things.

15 Reasons to Love Knitting

(These are in no particular order.)

1. It's like a reset button for my head.

2. Imaging poking vital areas of the body with a bluntly sharp object - especially someone you're not quite fond of - produces a rather shark-like smile.

3. Something has to bring me out of my coffee induced delirium for me to actually get some decent sleep.

4. Repetitive motion I don't really have to think about does wonders for my blood pressure.

5. Revisiting #2 is also quite good for my blood pressure.

6. It's a fairly productive way to procrastinate.

7. Knitting is soothing.

8. When you finish a product, people look at you like you've actually accomplished something worth talking about.

9. Two very important concepts: Pretty colors and something shiny.

10. It's not a miracle cure by any means, but it works.

11. Teach someone to knit and you've possible taught them to clothe themselves for the rest of their life.

12. Revising #11: Or until their attention span runs out.

13. I'm really a 94-year-old woman at heart.

14. It's fun. (Yes, that's all there is to this one.)

15. If you're really good at it, you can do it both sober and drunk.

Hysterics

I dunno whether it's because I'm in that kind of mood or because it's quarter after midnight, but I found this to be more than slightly hysterical. The only reason I went looking for this particular song? It's been stuck in my head since I heard it this afternoon after taking my grandmother to get her car from the repair place.

It's okay to headbang a little. You know you want to.

This is when I think I should probably get out of this chair and crawl into bed.