End of an era....

No, not quite THE era. But the end of the terrible reign of Andrew the Tyrant. GONE, sleazy passes at every girl who walks through the doors of Micklegate House! GONE, the random "cell toss" (what I dubbed his ad-hoc criticisms which he would lash out whenever his morning tea wasn't enough of a morning pick-me-up)!

Fearing the possible repurcussions of Sleepy Female On Door Shift + Drunk Andrew, I stayed awake most of the night...that and Christine and I got hooked on YouTube. Either way, I went to sleep sometime between 5 and 6am, and had to wake up at 7:15. I was awake when Andrew left because I heard the noise of a suitcase being pulled down the stairs, and the big front door opening. I was groggy and didn't give a good goddamn so I just faced the wall and went back to sleep. I suppose he's on his way to Indiana by now. It doesn't bother me that he'll now be polluting America with his shady green-card presence. We know how to deal with sleazebags like him in the Land of the Free--in the words of Toby Keith, "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way."

I am at work right now, trying to get by on just over one hour of sleep. I have been managing alright, but I almost forgot to take the mail downstairs (I was almost 15 minutes late with it) and I'm having trouble enunciating at my normal level of crispness. The word "Benenden" is starting to sound something like "burger" and I'm not even bothering to try and say "medical benefits." It's all I can do just to remember where I am.

Being tired brings up all sorts of thoughts and ideas that probably would be best left unsaid. Just for sanity's sake--I mean the sanity of anyone reading this. But, you see, I spend a lot of my time here at work reading the writing of others. They run the gamut from travelogues (people I know are in Paraguay in the Peace Corps, year-long trips around the world, teaching English in Shanghai...) to observations on the benefits of meditation to deep emotional outpourings to inane online surveys asking who I last said "cowabunga" to. I just finished reading a rather long blog of a friend of mine and my warped, tired brain seems to be rather on the impressionable side today...so here I am writing. But at least he was writing about places he's traveled to; I'm writing about nothing in particular.

But no writing is bad writing. Look, this is my true writing voice. What thinkest thou?

Anyway, I have exactly two weeks left here. Well, 13 days after today. It is very possible that these will be the slowest 13 days of my existence. I am trying so hard to stop my brain from fantasizing about going home....I'm trying to remind myself that 13 days is still a significant amount of time and that I should stop getting so excited because that only makes the time go slower. I should find something to do and concentrate on that. But I can't think of anything, and I have slipped into a daily routine of go to work, come home, eat, watch a movie with Sue and/or Amit, sleep. Rinse, repeat. And after this weekend I won't even have Sue to hang out with anymore, because she's moving in with the family she's nannying for--trying it out at least.

A lot of things are going through my head at present--the fact that my great-uncle just passed away two days ago and I'm the only one not at the funeral...the news that there is a chance Erin may yet be moving to Los Angeles after all...the fact that this and next weekend are CHOCK FULL of fun things going on at home in the USA (parties, recitals, get-togethers...) that I won't get to be there for but i was SO CLOSE so it's killing me...the fact that I'm going to have to organize some sort of goodbye soiree for myself and I'm not really that energized about it--part of me wants to just slip out the door!

I guess I'll do what I always do when I can't think of anything else to do. I'll make a list.

Things I most want RIGHT NOW:
hug
kiss
bed
Family Guy
sleep
cuddle
bath

....I miss.

Tired now. That's all for now, faithful readers (What a joke. Can you hear me chortle?)