Day One

Since I've been crazed for the last month, I decided to spend my first obligation-free day in any old lazy way I pleased. Let's see how I did:

6am: Make breakfast and pack a lunch for n.o.c. Linger over two cups of coffee and read the entire Times and all blog subscriptions. In my bathrobe. While others travel to places of employ. Eventually transition into sweatpants.

9am - 12pm: Read Perfume, taking frequent nappish pauses and drinking an entire pitcher of green tea. Decide that the book may have been better read in small doses, since by the end I am far more bothered by the feasibility of Grenouille's distillation techniques than by his callous slaughter of twenty-five virgins.

12pm: Deem the day too unpleasant to venture outside. Beat down feelings of smug superiority.

12pm - 1pm: Eat Italian tuna with kalamata olives, followed by a large bowl of cherries. Cruise internet in search of perfect graduate program to end PhD hiatus. Disappointing. Mostly impressed by the wide variety of bio photos - blurry cocktail-holding snapshots, meditative beach scenes, uncomfortably casual poses with too much chest hair, mugshots, etc.

1pm - 3pm: Begin to reread The Practice of Everyday Life. Feel disturbed by the extensive marginalia in my handwriting, since I remember nothing about the book.

3pm - 4pm: Vacuum and mop entire apartment, an unnecessary, though pleasurable, activity. Worry about becoming a sick person in the manner of my mother, the only woman I know who was thrilled by the receipt of her own personal carpet shampooer.

4pm - 5pm: Decide to shower. Remember, randomly, that a sweet woman named Mary once fixed me a heaping plate of saltines that had been pan-fried in butter. Imagine circumstances that would allow me to serve pan-fried crackers. Immediately plan to hold a New South party, replete with sausage balls, cheese straws, and aforementioned saltines.

6pm: Actually shower.

Tomorrow, I may try to leave the house. Or not.