It's a sad truth that no matter how well the rest of your life is going, you feel compelled to complain. I'm going to ignore that urge today and focus on the positive. Good Lord it gets exhausting. I still don't really think of myself as an optimistic person; the majority of my life has been spent feeling sure that something horrible lurked just around the corner and it's only recently that I've tried to ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive. It certainly takes practice and the songs aren't nearly as good. Right now I'm getting kind of tired of keeping the ol' chin up, but I don't want to slip into the Slough of Despond just at the moment, so let's brainstorm.
The weather is lousy...but nice if you're indoors. The grosser weather becomes, the more fun it is to stay indoors with a cup of tea making playlists and doing homework. (Especially when your professors have a sense of humor and put jokes in your exams.) Today I sacrificed breakfast for 15 extra minutes of sleep, so after Chem when I found myself downtown in the disgusting sloppy rain, I went to Woodstar and got a bagel and hot chocolate. They drew a heart out of cream on my hot chocolate, the bagel was delicious (and I think it was homemade), and if I had had a copy of the Times I would have been completely at peace. All around me were folks having late breakfasts: trim older ladies wearing neutral-toned fleece, twentysomething guys with laptops, one or two fellow Smithies, and several people taking their coffee at a leisurely pace over the morning paper. It was very pleasant. I rarely get to people watch in the morning, and in any case people watching at a college isn't very interesting because people have similar things going on and there isn't much to wonder about. I'm far too cheap to frequent coffee shops, but when I do get to one it's a nice change of pace.
Yesterday, a restaurant downtown that's going out of business held a tag sale, and I got a 10" cake pan (no springform, unfortunately--I was so close, but it was already sold.) and a large saucepan that's completely metal and won't melt in the oven! Before you say anything, family: I'm going to enter the Friedman lottery in my senior year, so these purchases are a lot more practical than they seem at the moment. Plus, restaurant-quality kitchenware isn't something you get for $3 every day. In honor of our new purchases, Alice and I are planning a dinner party a few weeks from now (scheduling is tentative). I'm so excited, partly because we haven't had a dinner party since last year's Emily's-going-on-med-leave shindig, and partly because for the first time ever, we don't have any crazy allergies to work around! We can cook whatever we want! More details to follow; I'd hate to give everything away all at once, but suffice it to say that I'm very excited for how it turns out.
Looking ahead, I have a good day before me. Today is ballet class and Dance in the New Millennium, then in the evening I have hours in which to study forever, alone or with my friends or maybe both. Tomorrow I have an exam that I'm bringing my A game for, Leading Ladies dinner, and a run-through of the first half of the show. I get to sing my song and clown around and generally have fun with nice people. It's a great way to end the day.
There we go, I feel much better now. What do you know, this optimism stuff really works!
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