Essay Due Day

The turn-in essay-day process is a little intimidating. You "queue" up in the general office with the two copies of your papers and you have to staple different sheets to different things and get a receipt for your submission and everything. Makes it a much bigger deal, besides being 50% of your grade. On the whole, I'm proud of one essay, and indifferent to the other (meaning mediocrity is a certainty). The last essay, the one due Monday has the unfortunate luck to follow these two, and like the youngest child I both want to treat it well but don't have the energy to be strict with it.

I'm two-thirds of the way done with my paper-sweating. No thirds of the way done with homework for next week. Unbelievable. One night earlier this week I was so distracted I put someone else's toothbrush in my mouth and shampooed my hair twice without noticing.

The Christmas lights have been lit in the city centre, and all the streets have lovely, lovely Atlantic Station style lights hanging between the roads, but much rounder and prettier, I think. A German market comes to Millenium Square (the massive square in the center of town) starting tomorrow, which means its Christmas season. It's funny how, since they don't have Thanksgiving here, they get to start celebrating Christmas as soon as November 11th passes (the day of remembrance for the war veterans).

I have an empty cupboard. I need to go grocery shopping, but, again, no energy to walk into town for it. I'll probably be forced to sometime quite soon, but until then, it's off to bed to wake up to the library again tomorrow. I will say, I love my libraries. You start a relationship with something you spend so much time with, an intimacy with the least animate objects. Since I migrate from library to library during the day, I end up in Edward Boyle at the end. Brotherton, the closest to me, is first, for the mornings, the School of English library for the afternoon (it closes at 5). Edward Boyle for the evenings and nights (it closes at midnight). So I have a different walk home if I end with Edward Boyle, a walk past different take-aways, different potholes, different curbs. If it's early enough (not pitch black, before 7pm), I walk home through Hyde Park and I love it. Especially if its windy, especially. And I think that's my problem, or my gift, or my obsession -- the small things. I romance them, court them. With most things in my life. My heart just fills. I've romanced grief, undressed love layer by layer, courted the trees that line my Hyde Park walk home.