Feeling Old

I know that age is all relative and when you're complaining about being old at 30 there are 60 year olds to laugh at you, and then 90 year olds to laugh at the 60 year olds. There will always be someone around to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about, that you have no idea what ten more years on the shelf will do to your outlook. I think everyone has moments of feeling young and old, no matter how ludicrous or unfounded it might be in the given situation. Seeing my grandparents in Spain this Christmas made me think about aging, how it creeps up and takes your sight, or your hips, or your mind without giving you the slightest defense. Well, I suppose there is Viagra and botox.

Last night, hanging out with friends and friends of friends, I found myself in a conversation with a student from Boston. He told me that he'd been seriously considering coming up to Canada to finish his degree, confessing the usual financial woes of an American looking at 'good' universities. I told him good things about Montreal and Toronto respectively, having grown up in Vancouver and therefore comprising an opinion unsullied by the vicious rivalry between the two cities. He spoke about the things he didn't like in American universities and I agreed that frats and sororities were not my thing either --all the more reason to apply in Canada.

"So how much time left do you have in your degree?" he asked.

"Actually I graduate this semester," I said cheerfully.

His eyes widened and I felt all of a sudden conscious of a gap, some rift between where he saw himself and where he saw me. I felt old but wanted to assert the opposite.

"Well how old are you?" I asked, assuming we'd be more or less the same.

"I'm a youngin', just 18," he smiled.

"Oh yeah, I'm 21, me too."

He looked at me with eyebrows furrowed and I realized that 21 was not part of the youngin' club in his books.

"Oh wow," he said quietly, and in that reply I crumbled a little inside.

Oh wow? Does my age really merit that kind of gasp? I wanted to bust out a handstand or a cart wheel and scream, DON'T WORRY I STILL GOT IT!But of course the night carried on more or less the same while I pretended I wasn't completely horrified by his response.

My friend admitted to me the other night that he was worried --worried that he was maturing, or worse, growing up. He told me how he sometimes turns down nights of drinking just to go see a movie alone, a movie alone he repeated embarrassedly. I consoled him by confessing that I suspect much the same in myself, that lately I've been overwhelmed with thoughts of stability and the future.

But today is a new day. I woke up early and made my way to the rocking chair in the parlor. I told Mable and Betty about that silly whipper snapper at the bar who thought I was an old fart, and sipped gingerly on my prune juice.

Notes From An Invalid

I am so ill it's not even funny. I caught a cold that has really been kicking my ass and making me into a whining baby. For some reason Cadbury Mini Eggs haven't been a cure, but then again neither has the Cold Relief Duo medicine I bought last night at the pharmacy. I knew I shouldn't have trusted the generic brand!

I could go on in this vein, complaining and making a mountain out of a mole hill, but I'm feeling generous so I won't. Instead, here is great a story I just read for class, but is equally enjoyable as an extra curricular perusal.


No Joke, This is Going to Be Painful

The Real World

The winter semester has been swiftly kick-started into action and, as always, I'm wondering how I've managed to amass copious amounts of homework in mere days. The next four months will be about Beckett, Joyce, and the Upanisads --but for the first time they will also be about graduation. The last four years of full-time, mostly useless essay writing is culminating this April, so I take great pleasure in announcing that this is The Last Semester Ever*.

I have become a veritable essay writing machine, a reading maniac, an anxiety attack waiting to happen. I have learned that this degree will probably not help me get a job or make more money, though hopefully when I frame the piece of paper with gold writing (sweet jesus there better be some gold tint on that page after all the money that's gone into it) and mount it on my wall it will look downright majestic.

Initially, at the beginning of this year I was excited about graduation. For so long I have envisioned April 2009 as the grand and monumental end point in a very stressful journey. I realize now that it may be an end point, but also the very beginning of being thrown back into that ominous place I call The Real World. And no, I don't mean MTV.

So now what? I don't really know and I'm certainly terrified. At night I have restless dreams of being sent back to old minimum wage jobs with fat italian bosses who tell me to wash out the stained interiors of microwaves from the 1980's. I suppose I should take comfort in the four month buffer that still remains between me and harrowing soul searching and enjoy my last moments of student freedom.

Either that or finish off this bag of yogourt covered raisins and keep on worrying about my future AND getting fat.

*Okay, maybe not ever, because there will most likely be grad school but just let me relish in the moment God damnit.

Brain Explosion

Christmas came a bit late this year but it was totally awesome. After arriving home from Spain the boyfriend and I had a small little ceremony in honor of Papa Noel where we opened presents and drank blindingly strong spanish nail polish remover --I mean liquor.

I done gone made the Christmas tree all by myself!



Can you guess what I asked Santa for?

A little o this!



And a little o that



Hello Kitty bath set! It comes with "bath confetti" which I don't entirely understand. I like to tell myself that in Japan people were like, wait a second, this water isn't cute enough, you know what it needs? SPARKLE.



I've also been living on a steady diet of milk chocolate in various forms for the past week. At first I was eating bananas with chocolate and after a while I was just like, screw the banana, it's getting in the way of the exorbitant amount of calories I don't need to eat. I don't know if they make this in Canada but I'm telling you, it's like crack.



These things are also the bomb. The Spanish bomb. You think it's just gonna be a regular peanut covered with regular chocolate and then you bite into it and realize...oh lord they've also put painkillers in these things. And then you love life a little more.



These are Canadian and actually have drugs in them.



Merry late Christmas y'all, I'm gonna go spend the next few hours in denial that real life starts up again tomorrow.