Time Warp

"Responsible adulthood" is an odd concept. Sometimes I feel like one (a responsible adult, I mean), but plenty of times I don't--and when I go back to hometown, the feelings just compound themselves. Being home for five days made returning to my Big Girl Apartment very hard. Which seems problematic--I can navigate airports by myself, but living by myself (and cooking for myself) is sometimes too hard? Why? Why?

Cases in point:
--I seem to have acquired a cold or a flu somewhere between the Erie airport and my apartment and all I want is for my mom to apparate here and give me some robitussin and a ginger ale. I HAVE ginger ale. But the thought of getting it out of my closet and putting it in the fridge seems like too much work. I am boiling Mrs Grass soup as we speak, and I would give some non-essential toes for someone to just do it for me. I stared at the pot for awhile, hoping it would just fill itself with water. This is ridiculous. I suspect that deep down inside I am not very good at taking care of myself. AND, the only reason I have Mrs Grass soup and ginger ale in the first place is because when my parents moved me out here my mom insisted I get some for when I inevitably got sick. And she was right.

--I went to the grocery store with two of my friends after class and we all just kept staring at things we couldn't afford. "When I was home my dad made steak," one said wistfully, "and two kinds of potatoes, and wine that didn't come out of a box." I have been longingly thinking of my dad's chili all chilly afternoon. I have had dinner parties with these two friends, and I know that all of us can cook. Granted, none of it involved meat, but we're not hopeless. So why does it seem like we are? We were discussing it and decided that you revert back to yourself, but your high school self, when you go home--the self whose parents cooked for them. It's hard to snap out of that and back to "responsible adulthood."

--My friends from my hometown all have Big Girl jobs and one is engaged and I feel like I'm in some other weird plane, where I read 10000 pages from books that no one has heard of, about things that are so esoteric that even I have trouble sometimes explaining them. We all still get along wonderfully, of course, but it does make the dynamic slightly odd. They can talk about office romance, while I can talk about...Titian?

--Oh, and lest you were curious, I am now eating the Mrs Grass soup and didn't let it simmer enough (why why why??) and the noodles are not soft. I can't even boil soup. Even with the overly al dente noodles though, it's hittin' the spot. Mostly what I ate today was cough drops. Lots of them.

So I miss my bed in my blue bedroom at home, and I miss the lap cat who decided my lap WAS worthy enough to sit on over break (usually he ignores me mostly because I'm not the one who feeds him.) I miss my fam and my friends and my old familiar, but at the same time, it's nice to be back.

And in less whiny news, my flight was delayed in Detroit yesterday and everyone was SUPER NICE. The people working, the people in line, everyone. I like it when that happens.