Accomplishments

Tonight I will get work done. I'm trying a new trick that my friend Kelly told me about today on the bus back to school from Amherst: "Pretend your essay is due tomorrow, and do it." I replied "That sounds terrifying, but it might be just what I need to finally get something done." So that's the plan. I've got a pretty full plate with finals, and my professors are still assigning work that isn't finals. Also I need to procure a job for the summer. But stressing feels counterproductive now, and I just want to write about things I have accomplished. So here we go, a list of things I've done in recent days that need to be recorded for all posterity.
1. I put on false eyelashes. I went to a party last night as a "Moustached Victorian Pinup" and they seemed essential. At least for the pinup part. Because I've always wondered what it would be like to remotely resemble Brigitte Bardot for a given period of time. As if she needed false eyelashes. Anyway, I picked them up at CVS a while back for a rainy day, and last night was balmy and clear but like I said, they were aesthetically necessary. I stood in front of my mirror for about five minutes, and I kept gluing my eye shut without meaning to and getting white lash glue all up on the fake lashes and beginning to wonder if anyone would even notice if I wore these or not. But I persisted and finally got those buggers to stay on. My level of pride was up there with the time I got into my first choice college. I'm never the girl with all the beauty tricks. I like to play around with makeup but it never goes beyond wearing neon eyeshadow to a dark dance party where no one will see it anyway. I don't even own a hair straightener. So it was nice when I finally made those fake eyelashes stay on my face. I did a little dance after.

2. Crafted a delicious breakfast sandwich that I will very likely crave next year when I'm not on the meal plan. A fried egg, bacon, and Swiss cheese on a croissant. Breakfast sandwiches are the BEST. I will have to be stocked on provisions for them in the mod next year. I will make all the breakfast sandwiches all the time, and will drink coffee with them and read newspapers and be all domestic. Also I will listen to jazz like a proper grownup, and have dinner parties with place cards. But they'll have to be scheduled around VH1 marathons.

3. Discovered a giant used book sale under a tent in Amherst today. Can I just say that I love places that sell books perhaps a little more than I love reading the books themselves? I've always been able to spend inordinate amounts of time in bookstores. This one sucked me in like a literary vacuum cleaner. It had tables with books spread all out over them. Finding ones for me was difficult, because I'm very picky with books. I have such a short attention span, so if something starts slow it ends up collecting dust on my shelf. But the three books I carried home today look like they'll be read by me soon. They passed my test before I bought them. I read the first few pages and wasn't bored. As I walked out from under the tent and into the overwhelming May heat, I chuckled at how incongruous I must have looked buying them. In the crook of my arm, I had "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Decadent social commentary and run on sentences.), "House of Sand and Fog" by Andre Dubus III (a sad book, not to be read in public or strangers will see me crying like that time I watched "He's Just not that Into You" on a plane...) and "And I Don't Want to Live this Life" by Deborah Spungen (Nancy of Sid and Nancy's mother. Should probably avoid reading this one in public too, but because it will make people think I'm one of those women who watches "Nancy Grace")
I must scamper off now in search of sustenance for the coming hours, which will unfortunately not be spent in that lovely looking bedroom in the Shakespeare Bookstore in Paris. Maybe someday I'll be a wandering writer who crashes there, but for now I'm just a student at a small liberal arts college. So basically the gateway drug to being a wandering writer.

Peace, Love, and Semicolons,
Lisa