Four days now....

Longest summer break EVER. I'm starting to feel like I'm still in high school, and I'm staying home sick. Probably due to the little kids on the playground that I can hear at recess, all their disjointed little voices reminding me faintly of 4th grade, and the damp September sand from the morning dew, and trying to get the good swing. Those memories are all a part of staying home sick. And then there's the isolation. And watching television at noon, mostly VH1 shows on Awesomely Bad Celebrity Hair and 41 Cheesiest Music Videos and other inane list shows. My head is full of silly string.

You'd think I might savor those memories, but actually they just really make me want to leave. So does that freaking recorded organ music from the Methodist church that goes off every 12PM and 6PM for 15 minutes at a time. I'm so sick of that.

It's weird, during the day I'm SO ready to leave, but really late at night I start to feel kind of scared. A little like subdued panic.. just because I won't have strings tying me to anything. Like Pinocchio learning to walk on his awkward wooden feet without his puppetmaster. Where would he go? Right now that sounds terribly ideal, refreshing, liberating - but at 2AM, it feels scary. But of course, 2AM is not a time to be trusted. It puts emotions on cocaine.

So now I'm just waiting. Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is good, but complicated. Taking 6-8 allergy pills a day, trying to keep my lately hyperactive sinuses in check. Drinking chamomile tea. Studying calculus (seriously). At least I'm starting to understand related rates problems, which is more than I can say about last year. So on the good side, I'm reading and learning math. On the bad side, my left eye hurts and won't stop watering, and my ears feel like they need to pop, but whenever I plug my nose and blow, which usually works, I just feel like I'm going to pass out. Opening my jaw really wide doesn't help either.

My body is such a machine of dysfunction. I think if I had lived in Victorian times, they would have branded me "sickly" and had me lay on a couch all the time. Or I could go back to 6th grade on some retro situation comedy. All I need are braces and thick, coke-bottle glasses to complete my look.

I wouldn't be feeling this insecure if I wasn't being so antisocial, and I wouldn't be antisocial if there was actually life around here. Instead it's just incoherent children's voices at recess and that obnoxious organ.