The Geritol Diaries

Goddamn. When did I get so old? Moving to Knoxville and starting graduate school has instilled such grandmotherly ways in me, I'm not sure what to think about myself anymore.

I am 22-years-old. I am single. What I lack in the looks department, I more than compensate for with my razor sharp wit and general knowledge of a few interesting subjects that enable me to engage someone in sustained conversation. I like people, I'd much rather go out that stay home, and in my past life, I was known to be quite the life of the party. But it seems like all of those qualifications have been nullified, specifically this weekend.

Here's how I spent my Friday night.

After a long (and wonderfully tiring) day reading, coffeeing, and lunching with friends, I got home at 6:30. I was beat. Usually I catch a second wind after a few minutes to relax, so when my friend Jenny called around 7 to see if I wanted to go have dinner with her and some other first years, I accepted. I figured being around people would energize me, like it normally does.
Man, was I wrong.

Though the conversation was good and lots of laughs were had, I found myself nodding in and out of consciousness. I'm not exaggerating. Get this picture: me and three other people roughly my age in a not-so-crowded family style restaurant, Friday evening, around 8:30. The group of twentysomethings is laughing and eating and thoroughly enjoying each other's company, when BAM!, the balding one of the bunch drops his fork to his salad plate with a rapturous clank. His head jolts up, and he rubs his eyes. Uproarious laughter ensues.

That's right, I fell asleep while eating last night. It wasn't deep sleep, mind you, and I immediately recovered my fork and wherewithal, made a joke of it, and resumed my meal. But I was so tired I nodded off in public. Old men do this at bus stops. My grandmother does this in her recliner while watching Divorce Court every afternoon. Spunky 22-year-olds who are out with their friends, however, do not.

I was home by 10 last night, much to my friends' dismay because they wanted me to go out on the town with them, in bed by 10:45, and slept through the night until I bolted wide awake at 6:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Believe me, I tried to doze off again, knowing full well that Saturday is my only day of the week to sleep past 8 a.m., and by god, I was going to do it. I have principles.

Well, principles be damned this morning. I gave up my struggle, got up and put on a pot of coffee and one of my wide assortment of ugly thrift store cardigans, read the blogs and the news, ate a piece of toast, all while muttering curses at myself for not being able to stay out late and sleep til noon like I used to.

Of course, because of the interruption in the normally scheduled programming of my life, today has been a total bust. Instead of using the extra 3 hours this morning to do anything productive, I lazed about and sipped my coffee, waiting for the used bookstore to open so I could go by B.H. Fairchild's Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest a friend gave me a hot lead on yesterday. (hardback, only $5!) Wonderful poems, y'all. I really haven't been disappointed with any of them (and I've read them all, instead of working on my Shakespeare paper...), but the whole book is completely worth "The Follies Burlesque, Market Street, Kansas City."

This afternoon I decided to go for a walk in the cemetery down the street from my apartment (procrastination is an evil, evil bastard), convinced that some exercise would inspire me to write my paper. Instead, I want to write about some of the things I saw. Some doosies were to be had, including a section of the cemetery called "The Garden of Crucifixions" (yes, more than one, and I'm hoping its the place where those criminals so heinous to be crucified by the Knox County Department of Corrections are interred), a sign reading "Special Price Mausoleum Limited Time!", and this name I lifted off a child's tombstone who died in September 1993: Alexandria Samoan Gass. If any of you writers want to borrow one of these bits of inspiration, feel free. Just let me read what you write after you're finished.

I'd like to tell you that I'm going to publish this post, girt my loins, and work on the paper whose deadline is menacingly staring me in the face. But it's after 6, almost my bed time. And to be honest with you, I am pretty tired.