Indecisive Peach

I got back late on Saturday from my Find Yourself extravaganza after being thankful that in America a majority of people huff and puff while walking down a international gate corridor enabling me to race past them to catch my next flight.

And then I stole someone’s McDonald’s burger. No, really.

Delayed in Chicago by a hail storm that happened before we got on the ground (mmm, sharp circles in the air on a stomach filled with airline food), we were an hour late giving me, per the schedule I had, forty minutes to get through customs, recheck my bag, and find my next gate. Luckily using my ninja racing skills and thus getting to the front of all the lines, like a dirty American is wont to do, helped me out tremendously.

I don’t really sleep on planes given that my fused back won’t let me sleep while sitting [In hindsight, this probably made me a waaaaay better student in high school and college.], so when I landed in Chicago at about 2 in the morning German time, I felt a little dazed. My connecting flight was delayed to the weather for an hour and I spent time making obligatory phone calls and pacing the food stands. How better to celebrate a homecoming than with a big, unhealthy plain cheeseburger and large fries? I stood in line, ordered, and tried to keep my yawning in check. Suddenly a small girl behind the counter juts out this bag of food into the crowd which I absentmindedly take and meander over to find a seat amongst a group that is much more Hispanically oriented than my last flight.

A quarter-pounder with cheese and everything on it? A medium fry? What madness is this? I blink. I shrug. I eat. [Those last four lines are a pretty narrow and direct (albeit unintentional) explanation of the last two weeks actually.]

I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d type out a life sign that doesn’t include a whiff of what I actually did overseas just because I’m feeling cantankerous. I did have my door closed so that I don’t disturb J with the light, but Cat has a habit of nudging open doors like she owns the place. She blinked slowly at me, not the loving blink, but the “You? Awake? Typing cheerily this early in the morning? Tis a watershed moment this is.”

Yes, I do waiver between having her mentally speak in Kitty Pidgin and a slightly Elizabethan drawl.

Part 1

[Ed. Note: These next couple of posts were all written in an actual honest to goodness notebook first and then transcribed to the Internet. I’m spacing out the posting in relation to where I am in my trip. The internet availability at my "hotel" is a bit shoddy.]

I’m currently in Washington, D.C. My boss suggested a few moons back, seeing as I do not have a needed Master’s in Library Science, that I should look at going the trade route in advancing my career in archiving. Since I’m refusing outright to even remotely consider a second Master’s degree and have thrown higher education altogether into the pool of “Meh” options, I looked at the certification offerings.

Both coasts of the US have similar courses for archivists, one in San Diego and one in Washington, D.C., which is held at the National Archives itself. Given my exposure to the West (and perhaps my overexposure) I thought that a nice trip after graduation would be in order. I was able to get a spot in the class held every six months and booked my flight.

My original plan after graduation had been to go overseas for a couple of months, visit family, wander around aimlessly, and clear my head. While currently happy with stable employment, I do realize that my grandparents are not getting any younger. I asked my boss whether or not I could tack on two weeks in Germany with the D.C. trip. She and my department head consented and I booked another flight.

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Scooters – when you’re not hardcore enough for a motorcycle.

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- W.B. Yeats

It’s blissful the lack of homework. I get up, I work, I go home – and then… I do what pleases me. Not to say that’s been a whole lot in the last two weeks.

And my Sundays…how I’ve longed for Sundays. Sundays were habitual my days when during the sunlight hours I would wave my hand in the general direction of the homework and when the night came you’d find me stomping my feet into my room to do whatever busy work needed to be done. [Busy work including 10 page papers due the following days and literature reviews. *cough*]

And no homework.

None.

As it should be.

My have I loathed school for the last two years.

The beginning of last week still had my body chasing out the remnants of the adrenaline of the last couple of weeks. When your mother votes in favor of the shot Jager in a debate for one clutching one’s sanity, you know that you’re just damn stressed out. Everything had been coming to a head. It wasn’t just one thing – it’s was everything and once and then a little individual mental drama as a garnish. So not only was there a distinct loss of qualitative productivity, there was a sure-footed haze of KraZie.

I don’t generally mind The Crazy. (Ex-boyfriends will decidedly not agree.) I feel that it is, while for me a state of hazing, something that provokes some sort of change. It tends to leave me mentally volatile for sure, but I still think I’ll be able to cull some sort of change out of the feeling of instability. I look forward to it. Baby steps.
 

Four weeks of silence = graduation with my Master’s. Regular scheduled programming to resume shortly.

I have to let go of the phrase “linguistic glockenspiel” out of my portfolio’s introduction for a completely valid reason.

Damn. I loved that phrase. Just say it - linguistic glockenspiel - it’s amazing.

*sigh* For another time then.

Half written sentences have been the mainstay of my mental life lately. The severe apathy is welling up in several parts of my life, with a backlog of stress surrounding everything else with its halo. I had someone ask me once how emotion and apathy actually function together…well, that, baby, would be my life. I was not given a manual. Logic is not my foundation, and within the stream, I actually could not be happier for it.

I’m starting to get to the end of grad school, ever so slowly and ever so fast. I need to work on finalizing my portfolio and then stress about getting my committee together for my oral exams. A week ago I was told that a member of my committee did not have specially endowed graduate faculty powers. The documentation I handed in to them in December? I guess they hadn’t checked it that carefully enough, but the paper scheduling my exam at the end of April - oh yeah, that they checked.

Then on Thursday, two days after handing in the memos I had scrambled for to imbue my committee member with these X-Men-esque powers, my ueber boss tells me that the grad school called for me asking for transcripts. He shrugged and gave me their number.

“Hello, returning your call.”
“Why?”
“…You called my boss asking for transcripts.”
I hear the shuffling of papers, “Are you applying for a scholarship?”
“That would be a no.”
“Hmm, that’s strange.” More shuffling, “Oh here you are! Oh…you’re applying for graduate status for a commitee member?”
“That would be a yes.”
“Your papers were in the scholarship pile.”
Mentally sighing, “Am I in the right pile now?”
“Sure!”

Right.