Black-Eyed Susan

The GPOY to end all GPOYs.

I AM FINISHED WITH SUMMER CLASS.

And I finally had something to eat!

LET THE REST OF SUMMER COMMENCE.

Getting Shit Done: To-Do List 7/26/11

• Finish paper
• Take paper to the writing center
• File accident report at University Police Station
• Nap
• Gym
• Work on final draft of paper
• Eat at some point

Can Susan accomplish all of these thing even with no sleep and a massive throbbing headache? Will she fail at life and end up dying alone as anticipated by her peers and family? Or will she overcome her forever aloneness and get a job?

Don’t touch that dial!

Saturday.

What a great Saturday!

I woke up at 12:40. I was supposed to go to the gym but on a whim I decided to call Katie and take a trip to Lake Sardis for some much needed Vitamin D. I packed a bag, dodged the Orientation crowd that was collecting in the lobby, picked up some food, and headed to Katie’s house. 

We tried a couple of the beaches that were closest to Oxford (there are like 6 total) but they weren’t open. :( So we took the long way and went to the regular public beach. We laid in the sand, talked, and listened to the Beach Boys. After an hour or so we decided to leave before we got to crispy, although somehow we didn’t get sunburns despite being pale beach goddesses. 

Just in case a burn made itself apparent later we stopped by Walmart and bought some Aloe. I dropped Katie off and went back to the dorm to ready myself for Kimmie’s arrival! Kimmie was my Freshman roommate and soon-to-be apartment roommate. She is adorable and Vietnamese and enjoys eating as much as I do. 

After a hasty shower I met up with Kimmie and she, myself, Katie, and Alyosha went to Ihop for some pancakes. We ate heartily and talked about cheesy French class videos (Allons-y textbooks in particular), crazy teachers, and how awesome it would be to have a karaoke night.

We went back to Katie’s house for a bit. Kimmie and I had fun messing with Kitty and making her dance.

Later we were invited to Edy’s house to hang out with a large group of people. Ooohhhh, but there was a Ouija Board there and Susan DOES NOT MESS WITH THE SUPERNATURAL.

I just don’t, it’s policy. Like childcare, the supernatural makes me uncomfortable and… I don’t know. How can I trust some unknown spirit? What if it’s actually malicious and it attaches itself to me? Sure, it can say it’s a “positive” force or my long lost ancestor or whatever, but people lie all the time. The dead can lie.

Being dead doesn’t make you some sort of all-knowing spiritual guru; it makes you dead.

So I make it a habit to never trust ghosts. Or spirits. Tarot, palm reading, tea leaves… That stuff is fine. Summoning ghosts? No, thank you.

But Katie DID have a really positive experience with her grandpa. Still, I feel as though my doubt would attract negativity.

Anyway, that was fun. We chilled for a bit and then headed home. Alyosha lent me this book called House of Leaves that’s supposed to be creepy but amazing. I’m saving it for safer daylight hours, perhaps an afternoon of reading in the shade of the Grove or in the depths of Square Books.

All-in-all? Amazing Saturday.

This always happens.

I end up having a paper due on Monday but I spend all of Sunday sleeping off Saturday.

Then I decide to sleep until 3:30 a.m. and work on my paper until class at 8 a.m.

But instead of working, my brain takes a detour and I get on Tumblr and fail life.

I’m just going to tell you about my weekend.

So Friday I was cooped up in my room reading and that was really nice. I actually slept. Saturday I went to The Square with a couple of my friends. My list of purchased items includes:

• one cute dress
• one bottle of wonderful perfume
• one delicious steak sandwich from Newks
• one big-as-yo-head ice cream sandwich from the weird pottery store that I’m pretty sure no one actually buys pottery from
• Stephen King’s Desperation
• Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
• By George by Wesley Stace
• The English Major by Jim Harrison (I felt like the title was speaking to me because I’ve always felt like I’m just putting off becoming an English major)

It was a successful trip. Armed with books, I went home (read: the dorm) and started eating my lunch. My friend and I had plans to go to Memphis that evening to see a band. I felt invincible.

Of course something had to go awry. 

When I paused to get my ID card out so I could scan into the dorm, I must have placed my car keys in my Newks bag out of convenience. I forgot about this until later that evening when I was getting ready to go to Katie’s house to get ready for our big night. I suddenly remembered throwing away my bag because my room is absolutely trashed and I was trying to be a clean, proactive human being. 

Our dorm has a trash chute that leads to a dumpster located behind the building, hidden from the public eye. No body wants to go back there, so I made sure I wasn’t missing any obvious clues. A quick double-check of all of my usual “lost spots” (desk, chair, open suitcase, car, pockets, front desk of Stewart Hall) confirmed my worst fears:

My keys were in the dumpster.

I knew the maintenance staff was off on weekends but just to be sure I asked the front desk clerk. I called Katie but I knew she didn’t have a car. I called my mother but immediately regretted it; she panicked and claimed I should call the police to get it out for me. I quickly lied and told her I had found them underneath my desk before hastily hanging up. The last thing I needed was to become the laughing stock of the Oxford PD.

I don’t have a lot of experience diving in dumpsters, and personally I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In fact, I make a point to avoid dumpsters at all costs. Dumpsters contain (or could contain) lots of scary things: raccoons, feral cats, homeless men, serial killers, or all of those things combined into one monstrosity. They are also smelly and unpleasant to look at. However, I knew what had to be done.

I decided the best way to go about this was to fish the Newks bag out of the dumpster with some sort of stick or stick-like object. Luckily I have a Swiffer in my car. Even more lucky was the fact that I have a key pad on my door so I could get into my locked car without keys.

I approached the dumpster and looked for a way to climb inside. This dumpster was at least nine feet tall and at just a little over 5 feet I was dwarfed. I was about to scale the damn thing when I found it: a sliding latch on the side of the dumpster that reached a little above my waist. I was overjoyed, or at least as overjoyed as I could be standing next to a dumpster. I carefully slid open the latch and realized there were worse things than homeless feral catcoon serial killers.

There were giant swarms of bees.

I’m really glad it was summer and campus was practically deserted, because a chubby blonde girl brandishing a swiffer sweeper mop like a medieval weapon and running wildly away from what to the naked eye looked like a normal dumpster probably seemed a little off. I dove into a bush (which in hindsight seems like a more likely place for bees to hang out). I knew I had to regroup. A single bee I could handle, but a swarm of them? Not even I, with my perfect kneecaps and sickly Aryan skin, could win that battle. 

I did what I normally do in situations like this. I called Brannon.

Brannon is my best friend/ex-boyfriend of four years. We have a complex relationship and far too much in common. I like to think of him as my male doppelganger. Mostly, however, we lean on each other for support and play video games/watch movies/go out to eat together. 

Brannon picked up on the first couple of rings. I explained the situation and sought his counsel. Honestly I just wanted him to drive to campus and help me; however I am a prideful creature when it comes to Brannon. He knows this (intuitively at least), and after twenty seconds of giving me useless tips for fighting off a swarm of bees, he asked if I just wanted him to come over and get the keys the himself.

“If you’re not too busy, it’s whatever,” I said in my best cool kid voice. This is hindsight, though, so it may have sounded more like,

“WOULD YOU PLEASE I AM SO SCARED I WAS EXPECTING RACCOONS BUT I GOT BEES AND NOW I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO urghblurghurgh.” (The last bit was me crying.)

I remained in the bush for an undetermined amount of time until I heard Brannon calling my name. I emerged from the foliage and he jumped. Knowing better than to ask why I was crouching in a shrub clutching a Swiffer he asked me to take him to the dumpster. It’s right there you brave wonderful jerk, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. As we approached what I am now positive was a portal to Hell I formed a shield between the dumpster and myself using Brannon’s body. 

He glanced into the open door and then looked at me. “There’s like three bees in there.”

I looked past his shoulder. The dumpster looked like a bee pit. It looked like Narnia if Narnia was full of shit and bees and Aslan was a giant bee.

“Are you blind?! LOOK AT IT!” He gave me that expression I was by now conditioned to. I wouldn’t call it disbelief or disappointment or even frustration. Maybe it was all three.

I’m going to call it love.

I’m pretty sure Brannon isn’t as bothered as he lets on by my misadventures. In fact, this is the first really terrible thing that has happened in a while. I suspect he was getting restless from my lack of fail anyway. In a way I was doing him a favor.

He gently took the Swiffer from me and asked which bag was mine. I pointed to (what I hoped) was my Newks bag. In one graceful motion he fished out my bag, grabbed the keys, and returned the bag to the dumpster. The bees did not seem displeased. He shut the sliding panel and that was that.

I threw myself at him, thanking God or Dumbledore, whomever had provided him with the magic to subdue bees and speak Beetongue. 

We talked for a bit, then he left. I felt like a wizard.

I recounted this tale to Katie, who did not seem as amused as I was. This is normal. We left for Memphis, saw a couple of bands, then headed back to Oxford to eat at Ihop. I stayed at Katies talking to everyone that was there until 5 in the morning. I slept all Sunday.

And now here I am, my paper (rough draft) is due at 10:45 and I have not even finished the introduction.

I am drowning in a sea of schoolwork.

WHY.

Can I stop procrastinating and go home now?

That awkward moment when you go to the laundry room and some artsy hipster chick is sitting on a machine and playing her ukulele and singing

… And she glares at you when you start your load of laundry.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE LAUNDRY ROOM IS FOR HIPSTER GIRL, CATS? CATS IN MONOCLES?

No, laundry room hipster girl, that would be Tumblr.

There is a massive heat advisory until 10 PM TUESDAY.

I walk across campus to class and the gym at like 12, when the heat is the strongest.

Shit.

At least my room is freezing cold.

In other news, I FINALLY finished my paper. If you are thinking about taking summer classes, DON’T. DO. IT.

You will regret it.

Also, don’t go to college. Become a blacksmith, join the circus, travel, eat yourself into a coma, ANYTHING ELSE.

(Source: lookbook.nu, via iwannagossipgirl)

Summerboy…

Let's get lost, you can take me home
Somewhere nice we can be alone
Bikini tops, coming oh oh off
Don't be sad when the sun goes down
You'll wake up and I'm not around
I've got to go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
We'll still have the summer after all

I'M SO READY.

Bring on the freckles!