Today was the last official Monday of my undergraduate career.

Watching the film “Precious.”
My heart is breaking for every teen mother.
Grateful for everything, even my little annoyances.
They’re not quite the same.
Think of twelve things you’re glad you have:
-cat  (for company)
-a warm bed
-education
-food (fresh fruit, especially)
-health (mostly)
-simon (every day)
-clean water
-fruit (my brother, not the food)
-my mom
-good friends
-clean clothes (usually)
-my own space, and thoughts, and dreams, and hopes

“It’s not you,” she begins, hesitantly. Silence. She doesn’t finish. Instead, she grabs the latte, still steaming, takes a sip and then, wincing as the liquid burns her mouth, stands gracefully, turns slowly, calculatedly, and exits.
He sits, left behind, left alone. He sits and sighs. And then he grabs her uneaten danish and, taking a bite, turns the page of the newspaper sitting in front of him and begins to read.
There will be another. He swallows the bite of danish.
She’s watching him through the window, hoping he won’t look up. Hoping he might. But he doesn’t. More bites, more page-turning. A sip of black coffee, no longer steaming, cooling as the minutes pass.
She realizes she might look like it really was her and so this time her turn is definite and abrupt. She turns into a man passing by, whose arm catches her now-cooled latte and upends it.
And thus it really is her and she really is soaking wet, covered in the cup of coffee she only bought to buy another few minutes of futile frustration at the end of a benign courtship.
His lips curl up, but barely.

As much as I’d like to preach productivity and responsibility to your readers, alas, I cannot.
We are coasting in to the last week of regular classes and then after that, the week of finals and then I feel as though my life can begin again.

Exhaustion is the tip of the emotional iceberg at the moment. Other than that, it’s as though someone threw every emotion that it is possible to feel into a blender. That was a horrible metaphor.
Everything and nothing, all at once.

So I will be back soon enough, stealing time to write things. Hopefully during night class tonight I will be able to get some stuff done.

The train pulls into the station slowly as passengers stand and progress toward the doors. We wait patiently, or not so much, either standing stoically or tapping their feet in time to unheard music. The very second the doors slid open, they burst from the train, turning right toward the stairs. The stairs are where everything becomes streamlined, a steady progression of down, down, down, down, but a careful one. Metal bars that were once painted white but now show spots of rust provide access to the street. Turn, turn, turnstile, the people slowly beg. They don’t stop moving, not for a single second as they wait their turn to exit.
And then we disperse, a silent collection of lonely individuals on our way to better things.
I walk past the chain link fence that holds the trash and equipment, past the dark alley, past the crumbling building bearing barely used storefronts. I see a nearly homeless looking man with a cane, wearing baggy cottons and a hat limp out to meet a dark Escalade, parked glittering under a street light. The rims on the tires gleam, winking at me. They shake hands, a quick exchange, and then the car pulls away and the man limps toward his companion.
I smile to myself, staring at the school bus ahead of me unloading a soccer team home from a late away game, staring into the tree-lined, dimly lit night and think, I’m going to miss this place.

I arrived home and found a long-awaited piece of mail: Simon’s registration tags. I am no longer on the run. However, I have waited longer than two weeks to contest this ticket, so that shall be first on tomorrow’s agenda. Oh dear me, let’s please fast forward until May 7th. That is when I shall be done (for the most part) with my undergraduate career.

Graduation party will be held at Maddie’s house in their backyard area at 11am the morning following my graduation. We will be doing a Costco run to get the necessities and such, so don’t expect anything too lovely or wild. But it should be quite communal and pleasant.

Much apologies for the delay: this has indeed been the week of all things crazy.

However, today I am going to take some deep breaths, go for a bike ride and do some laundry. Perhaps I shall even read a book for fun.
I slept late, probably an indicator that I should not stay out until three in the morning.
It was a weird night. I drank a bottle of wine and felt only anxious, tense, out of place. It wasn’t pleasant drunk, or really even any drunk at all, just a disconnected reality growing in front of me. I talked and talked, and there was talking and maybe some laughter, but I wanted to go home.
And so finally I did.
Checking the mail at 3 am is something you do when you’re expecting a special envelope from the state of Colorado, but alas, I have never been so disappointed to see the Economist in my life. There it was. That and the RCN (cable) bill.
I was happy to curl up with Cat and sleep.
Lately, he’s been a better snuggler. He now has a spot right by my shoulder that he curls up in and then I wrap my arm around him and he buries his head in my hand. It’s adorable, to say the least. Currently, he’s stomping around my bed trying to get comfortable. Yesterday, he sighed the cutest cat sigh ever.  He loves to walk all over my computer keyboard, probably just to annoy me. Perhaps today I’ll take him for another walk and let him get some exercise.

Alas, school is winding to a close. The graduation party is going to be a wildly informal affair: we’re going to do it at like 11am on the Saturday after graduation (so it will be the day after, May 15) at Maddie’s apartment. There’s a picnic table area in the back of the apartment next door and we’re just going to do some chair arranging, etc. and get dip and trays.

But yes. Last night I had Ethiopian food for the first time. I disliked the bread, but I really enjoyed what I ordered, which I’m assuming is standard fare the world over, beef with peppers and onions. You are served the food in a large, round metal dish. The bottom of the dish is covered in a spongy, flat bread. On top of the bread is piles of food. And so you rip a piece of bread (there are also separate servings of the bread) and then use it as if it was a utensil to eat the food.
Delicious, but I found that I’d prefer to eat the food without the bread. It was a bit sour for my taste.

Surviving the week, but pulling in with a lost cell phone charger, I’ve found that perhaps I’m going to attempt to stay away from all things mechanical this week.
Bike rather than car, etc.

I fixed my bike all by myself! (It has no front brakes, btw. No one told me that last summer….good thing I checked before I started riding.) I took off the back tire and had to deal with the chain and replacing a tire, etc. all of which are things I’ve never done before! Feeling incredibly proud of myself at the moment, don’t judge me.
It’s something, right?

Oh my. It has been a wild week indeed.

After the fiasco that was the plane ticketing, I got a last minute babysitting gig. Thinking, yeah, I’ll be fiscally responsible; I won’t go play trivia; this is going to be alright….

And so I went.

And then my keys got flushed down the toilet by a 2 year old.

And now I’m out more money than I made.

On the upside, I bought Cat a little harness and leash. We went for a walk today. I don’t know that it was necessarily a walk; it involved a lot of him rolling around in dirt and wandering around smelling things. But I think he was happy about being able to be outside. Taking him inside was like taking a toddler home from the park. There was sad cat meowing and a hesitancy to climb the stairs. But at least he got to go out.

Exhaustion. More of this later.

I should like to buy a new camera.

I’ve been holding off since my last (how many have we been through now? 4?) camera broke on Halloween. Usually, it’s my fault (sand, it getting stolen at a bar, more sand…) but this time it was nobody’s fault and that upset me. I take responsibility (I don’t know why, it’s my own sense of responsibility to myself, I guess) and then buy a new one. But this time I held off.

Now that I’m realizing that my time here is numbered (cue heavy melodramatic music), I’m wanting to document my life here. My college-self isn’t necessarily dying, but she’s being pushed aside for real-life-grown-up-Katie and I’m nervous to lose the things that I love here. My routine. The funny things I see every day. My neighborhood.

And I’ve realized that the very first thing I buy when I graduate (because I’ll still be here, still be in school, but at least I’ll have the hopes of summer in my mind and heart) will be a new camera. That way I can document my life here and keep it safe.
I miss picture blogs, and I hope you do too.

I’m not going to buy a point and shoot and I’m not going to buy a super nice one either, I’m going to go straight down the middle. Perhaps a digital with a nice lens?

Also, it snowed today in Chicago. That was lame. A little cold. A little tired. This week stretches on, but I’m excited to get to Denver tomorrow. It will be a quick break and then a quicker slide to graduation. And then a break, for which I will be back in Denver for the obligatory doctor’s appointments and settlement figured out, and then summer classes and then home.

Where is home?

I want to travel. I want to pick up and go somewhere. South America?

Ah, the things one learns when one lives in Chicago.
Unlike Colorado, Illinois does not have a 30-day grace period for vehicle registration.
Alas, I woke Monday morning to a perfectly placed parking ticket bearing that oh-so-familiar orange coloring. My windshield and those things are well acquainted.
Funny thing, though: I had parked legally.
Pssh, idiots, I thought. Then I looked at the date of registration. 3/10.
It’s now 4.
Shit.
It had totally slipped my mind. So the past few days have been a blur of frantic attempts to get an emissions test (finally accomplished this afternoon), faxing papers and registration, googling the exact statute for Colorado that gives me extra time, etc. etc.
And so, I have been hiding Simon from the police.
Hiding in plain sight.
That car cover that I bought so long ago, which has been languishing in the closet, was pulled out and put on. He looks ridiculous. He’s the only car on the block that is buried under a white (now dirty brown-white) sheet. But, hedging my bet that I’m legally bound to Colorado law and not Illinois, I’ve managed to escape ticketing by assuming that the police are too lazy to pull back the sheet in order to look at the license plate. And thus far, I’ve been correct. Since Monday, I’ve remained ticketless and Simon has managed to be covered through the first hail of the spring.
Ha, take that Chicago.

I’m fighting the first ticket based on the registration laws but also based on the fact that no circle was filled in about why the ticket was being issued. Stay tuned for updates on that ordeal.