Packing for REAL

9:00 AM Earlier this summer, when I made a potential list of the books I'd be packing to take to school, it seemed like a manageable amount. I didn't want to pull them off the shelf until the last second, because my eyes twitch and skin crawls when my books aren't in perfect alphabetical and series order, but I leave tomorrow morning, so today is the day. And it, um, appears that eighteen books is a much higher stack in reality than it is in my mind. I'm going to have to close my eyes and return a couple of them to their places in my bedroom. I know it's only until late November, and I know I can get most of these from the library or online, and I know I won't have any time to sit around reading... but I feel like I'm being asked to selectively save only ten of my 200 children from a fire. Right now, my stack is made up of:

--The Bible

--The Complete Works of Shakespeare

--Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows

--Robert Masello's brilliant Robert's Rules of Writing

--Cion by Zakes Mda (required reading)

--The Year of Secret Assignments and The Spell Book of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty

--The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey

--"Le Petit Prince"

--John Green's Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns

--Megan McCafferty's Second Helpings and Perfect Fifths

--Pride and Prejudice

--The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

I was going to use this next paragraph to debate the merits of each book and then decide which to weed out, but you know what? Everything but the anthologies fits in a small tupperware container, I'm bringing a big bookshelf, and eighteen is my lucky number. SCREW IT, THEY'RE ALL COMING.

Less compact than my beloved books are the shoes I wouldn't even wear if I had the option, but society says I need to cover my feet, so I'll have to find a way to pack them. At the present, it appears that the following footwear will be making the journey to OU.

Flats: black, navy, red

Heels: black open-toed, brown maryjanes

Flipflops: teal, red, blue, sparkly navy, green, burgundy, brown, black

Tennies: white, grungy green, black running shoes

Boots: white Sailor Venus boots, orange Ugg(ly/disgusting and I can't believe I compromised my morals for comfort)

The lineup originally included four more pairs of flipflops, khaki blue heels, and white heels, but I couldn't bring myself to pack more shoes than books. As Barbara Novak once said, "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

11:00 AM It's a few hours later now, and while I'm now wearing a dress and makeup instead of pajamas and my own filth, I haven't made a whole lot of progress in the packing department. I've refolded all the clothes I stupidly tried to pack a week ago when I'd still need to wear them, sang the two-hour Rent soundtrack once through, and shoved all the shoes into a laundry basket. It looks like the final count is going to be: a giant hamper full of dresses, skirts and t-shirts, a tupperware container of sweaters and long sleeves, a big duffle bag of underwear/bras/pajamas/workout clothes/tights/hose/socks, a box of pants and shorts, a big shopping bag of food and toiletries, a basket of shoes, a container of books, a bookshelf, a printer, two lamps, a trashbag of bedding and towels. All of this is enough that I worry whether I'll fit in the car or have to be strapped to the roof with jumper cables.

2:00 PM I was sitting here, on the floor next to my bed, imagining myself tied to the top of an SUV, when I realized I was, first, starving, and second, all alone. I ran down the regular order of people I'd like to have lunch with. But. They're already back at school. I suddenly got really depressed-- the kind of depressed that can only be eliminated by filling the voids inside me with with Texmex. Needless to say, I just downed half a Chipotle burrito in minutes flat, and now I'm taking a break from eating to eat a giant mixing bowl full of sliced strawberries. I don't think health food has ever been so unhealthy without deepfrying it.

I already miss my friends, and I saw the core group of them just last night. Lor and I drove out to visit Jess and Sebastian. It turned dark on our way there, so it was freezing on the campus, but both of their roommates were doing homework and we didn't want to disturb them inside. We ended up having snacks and going to sit on a big couch in a mostly empty lounge area to talk. Sebastian was incredibly moody. He keeps having to pay masses of money for art supplies for classes, and he's no happy camper about it. I spent most of the evening skipping around and lifting the corners of his mouth with my fingers in an attempt to knock him out of it, but it was basically to no avail. Jess is combatting the Freshman Fifteen by constantly trekking the six flights of stairs up to her dorm, and even though she's only been there a week, it already looks like she's lost weight. Lauren's fitting in with her marching band (although there's apparently a Clarinet Nazi they kind of want to spork) and has commuting down, so besides some classes being boring and the constant struggle to find parking spaces on her campus, she's doing all right.

And as for me? I'm in purgatory. It's like someone hit the pause button on my life to take a bathroom break, and then went to the mall, the bank and the grocery store, forgetting about me, frozen in time and space. Then I'll leave tomorrow morning, and everything will speed up so quickly that I won't know what's going on. Fantastic.

I think I'm going to stop here and post this, because my blog is partially responsible for my poor sleep lately. I go out, and if I get home early enough, I practically rush to my bed to unload all my thoughts before the clock strikes midnight. Tonight, however, I'm going to savor every spec of my bed. I'm going to stretch out, diagonally, and let my limbs flail every whichway, and I'm going to sleep for eight full hours. I mean it. It's an unbreakable resolution.

Sexy: I've literally been staring at my blinking cursor for a good two minutes straight. I don't know what's sexy, okay?! I'm stressed!

Unsexy: The state of my stomach! I just consumed a day's worth of calories in less time than it takes to watch an sxephil video. Nervous eating FTL.

Chipotle burritos this year: 29

Subscribers: 20,014!

Bye, guys! Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow after I'm unpacked. <3