life is a cabaret, old chum.

i haven't been feeling well. i think kyle gave me something, which is an unusual thing to happen. his immune system is very weak and mine is very strong, so i don't normally worry about whether or not he's going to get me sick. but this time, i think he did. it was the weirdest sickness i've ever had. screaming headache, sore throat, queazy stomach. my body craved liquids and nourishment, but the thought of eating made me gag. monday night, after a severe bought of head pain, stress & anxiety, rushing to get places, eating poorly all day, crying, and writhing in tummy pain, i managed to get down a jr. roast beef sandwich and an applesauce cup from arby's, but i think the ibuprofen i took with it helped more than the food. either way, i still felt kinda bad on tuesday so i stayed home to recover.

however, tuesday couldn't be the perfect sick day. you know, box of kleenex beside you, movie marathons, soup and 7up. i actually had to run a crucial errand. i had to go to rock valley college to pay an ancient parking violation so that they would take my account off the stop list and give me my damn transcripts. i need these transcripts in order to keep my job at ellis. they need to have complete records of every employee's business, and they have been harrassing me for a while to get it taken care of. while i'm on this topic, i need to make a quick statement about how everything is only open from 9-5 and how everyone works from 9-5. how can we get anything done besides our JOB?

so that's where the sick day comes in. partially sick, partially in need of a DAY (i.e. 9-5pm) to get this taken care of. so over to rock valley i go. whatever. drive in...see students. notice changes. remember what it feels like to walk outside farther than a parking-lot-to-front-door trek between the hours of 9am and 5pm. i remember really enjoying that about college. it was a chance to experience life as it happened to you. sometimes when i sit in my windowless room hour after hour and day after day, i can't believe that months go by. but when you can park your car and get out and physically move yourself somewhere by moving your legs and breathing the outside air, you're reminded that its february. or october. or may. or raining. or hot.

haha. i got to the student center. it was all bustling with a million 19 year olds eating pizza and sitting on the internet. different than when i was there and the student center wasn't remodeled. plus i was never the kind of person to stay on campus all day. but anyway, i walked around for a while trying to find the stairs, and then i found them. the same stairway that was there when i was there. heavy double doors. wide wooden staircases. slushy, salty tile on the landings in between. always smelling sort of sweaty and musty. and i remembered how much i hated - HATED - trudging up those god-forsaken stairs. i would have just come in from outside, where i had just walked as quickly as possible in my winter wear to get out of the frigid weather, only to begin sweating immediately once inside. ugh, i remember really hating how i would get all sweaty climbing those stairs. i would have to stop and peel off all of my winter wear and then carry it all.

and then i was just there again. 2002. rock valley college. mr. beert and choir in building A and alex mcintyre and cabaret and size 2 jeans and robert quinn and mike webb's theater class. snowy walks with eric after acting. rob and JB the potheads. prime-time parking spaces. 9.11.01. french (irish?) drinking songs. getting my belly button pierced. voice lessons. no facebook. holy shit i'm old.

i started to think about college and how it's pretty tragic that i was so immature for most of it. what a waste. i would be SO good at college if i could go back. it seems so easy. much easier than paying bills and reporting to work every morning. just sit and absorb. take it all in. spit a little bit back out.

i'd still hate the stairs though.



i was a size 2. and life was a cabaret.