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Old Faithful

Last night was my last session of class, which makes me alternately sad and relieved because my GOD, it is not easy having a full time job and a part time freelance gig and a graduate class and also be the mother of a growing (34-year-old) boy. Anyway, I barely finished my term paper, mostly making the page requirement by changing to a better font (because of course professors have NEVER seen that trick, although technically, I wasn’t cheating because I did not change the default 12 point font, or mess with the margins, and maybe I really LIKE Garamond rather than Times New Roman, ok? OK?) because I spent most of my time taking apart my story, removing characters (who had their little tentacles all over that thing), changing some details, rewriting three pages, and then pasting it all back together again. Gah. The whole thing makes me feel like I’ve just been through surgery, only instead of a scalpel, I had a machete and instead of sutures, there was an old crusty tub of mucilage, and the blood was squirting everywhere, except by “blood” I mean subordinate clauses and prepositional phrases, which of course, aren’t nearly as dramatic.

It was a somewhat jovial class. We started extra late because there was a writer auditioning for a job, so instead of starting class, my professor redirected us to the reception where we attacked the crudites like wolverines. The funniest thing was seeing brie and Krispy Kreme doughnuts sharing a table, but my professor explained they were in honor of the writer, who is something of a Krispy Kreme junkie. I replied that I also enjoy Krispy Kremes, but I had given them up for’I was about to say Lent, but instead said ‘the millennia’ which he thought was clever and laughed just as Dr. Frank sent a withering glower in my direction.

Later, as we were leaving, Dr. Frank was seen to be scavenging all of the oily hard cheese old maids and left over vegetables and dip to bring to his next class. Dr. Frank and botulism’ a winning combination.

In all, it was the perfect ending to a semester. Surreal girl said something surreal, I mumbled a quip about coffins having ‘an exhume-by date’ on the bottom, which was heard by the two clever boys in class who were sitting on either side of me and burst out laughing, and we spent the last half hour of class watching the beginning of Dracula. Later, the girl I think is so cool walked me back to the parking garage. And then, on the drive home, I saw no fewer than three shooting stars and had to keep reminding myself to watch the road and not the sky.