crisis

I'm grappling with my age a lot these days. It's been going on for about a year and a half, actually. Quarter-life crisis, perhaps? I just can't believe that in less than 6 months, I'll be 25. I know, I know, 25 isn't old when you're 50. But in my head, I'm still 8, so 25 seems old.

Sunday night I had Tara and Eve over for dinner, and I was telling Eve some stories of my wilder days. I never did anything too crazy, but I did find myself in some bizarre situations. I feel like I've aged much more than 2 or 3 years in the past 2 or 3 years. I grew up against my will.

It's good, I've got my shit together. It feels good to have a little road-map of your life for the next few years. Wedding, school, baby (eek!). But I can't help but feel like I'm a kid playing dress-up, and somebody is going to figure out that I'm not old enough to be on this road.

Being a grown up sucks. There are all kinds of worries: what's my credit score? Gee, my parents are starting to get old. Will I have one of those ADHD kids? I miss the days of, "If I leave the bar now, I will get 6 hours of sleep for work tomorrow. Will I be sober by then?"

The thing that sparked this current existential crisis is an invitation to a teacher party. Some teachers at the school Dan is long-term subbing at are throwing a party. I CAN'T BE OLD ENOUGH TO PARTY WITH TEACHERS. Teachers are old and I am young. But according to Dan, one girl is my very same age! Gah!

There's a less for all of y'all in this blog post: late night coffee consumption=existential crisis.

Great day

The first thing I had to do this morning was get a cavity filled, so I assumed that today would suck. That part did, in fact, suck. I hadn't been to the dentist in 6 years, as that's how long I've been without dental insurance. I'm still without it, but decided this year I needed to go. As the dentist was drilling my tooth, I thought to myself, "Oh, yeah! This is one of the reasons I haven't been to the dentist in 6 years." I came home and went to sleep until the Novocain wore off, which was 12:45. 12:45! Now, maybe some people would say, "Yeah, you slept until 12:45, what of it?" but waking up at 5am for years does something to your brain. It makes you a morning person, and it's quite unsettling to sleep past 9. I've been sleeping in for 6 or 7 weeks at this point, and I'm still not comfortable with it.

So, anyway, I get up at 12:45, all groggy and off because the day's more than half over, and accomplished next to nothing. The only thing I did was call the business office of my school to inquire about my TAP grant, where I faced the same ridiculous cunt-baggery that I experience every time I talk to someone in the business office. Sorry that you are sitting on a $600 grant that belongs to me and I, a full-time student who works only twice a week, want it. I can't believe how crazy I am!

Ugh. Bad day, just like I expected. Then this amazing thing happened. My day suddenly started to turn around. I made chicken, acorn squash, and quinoa for dinner, which was exciting on it's own because I generally don't have the time/energy/motivation to make a truly nutritious meal anymore. While that was cooking, I checked my email and found this in my inbox from my public speaking professor:

Lindsay,    I just wanted to send you a note congratulating you on a wonderful speech.  I saw such improvement in  your delivery (and after reading your self-eval,  I know  you worked  consciously  on that). It was a solid speech  all around --in terms of research, argumentation,  organization, and delivery. You should feel proud  of yourself!    Laura A.

Holy crap. I was just like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes and breaks the measuring device. I was stoked after giving the speech because it went a lot better than my previous speech, and it felt really good to have my teacher email me about it. Eeee!

I then went to my college health class, which is never boring because the professor is a riot. I got the highest score of the class on last week's test, which was awesome. The class was good, as hilarious as usual, and we even got out early.

My days are generally better now that my focus is on school instead of work, but today was like a bonus good day. Now I'm going to have some tea, relax, and pretend that I don't have tons of homework to to tomorrow for the rest of the night :).

Burlington

We had a great trip! I love Burlington, and should really go there more often. Just like last year, we were insanely lucky with the weather. On Saturday, it was a bit chilly and windy, but it only rained while we were taking a nap in our hotel. As soon as we got in our little car to go back downtown, the clouds parted and the world dried up. Sunday was beautiful; totally warm and sunny. And even though it's past peak foliage season, we were able to peep at some leaves.

We went to lunch at Madera's, which is where we had dinner last year. We were asshole door-busters, so we were the only ones there for most of our meal. The meal was delicious. We then walked around the water, where we saw a SNAKE! I'm convinced it was Champ, visiting the shore in his shape-shifted form. After walking around the lake and shopping on Church Street, we headed back to our hotel for a nap.

When we headed back downtown, we walked around more looking for a place to eat dinner. Burlington has a surprising number of Asian restaurants, and we went with Pacific Rim. They had various types of dishes, and the restaurant was super cozy. I had peanut noodles with chicken and some drink that involved club soda, cranberry, vodka, and ginger. It was yummy.

On Sunday, we spent some time in this Museum/Aquarium (although, I don't think you should call yourself an aquarium if you only have some big catfish and some turtles. I want to see SHARKS AND WHALES AND MAYBE CHAMP). They had a hurricane simulator, where you got into this little phone booth looking thing and the wind quickly went from nothing to 78mph. I did not like it. But then I got to pet a starfish!

On the drive home, we were looking for this Robert Frost trail that was supposed to be "6 miles east of Middlebury" but we couldn't find it. We did find this interfaith/spiritual path, which turned out to be pretty funny because all of the paths were named after different religions. We followed the children's path because it was supposed to be like 40 minutes long and we didn't want to be there forever, but it was only 10 minutes long. And at the end of it, there was a tree with a sign that said "Guess what kind of tree this is? APPLE! Bears eat apples off this tree!" and I got all freaked out because it's fall now and maybe some bears would be in a feeding frenzy and eat me. We followed some other paths, and it was a nice hike. I was in charge of bear lookout. We didn't get eaten.

The end!