Author: michellejunot.com

Making Your Smoothie and Drinking It Too

Day 22: January 2

Stay in bed. Or on the couch. Or on the cold floor between the living room and your bedroom. Because the dusty wood feels good on your feverish face.

Oh, and clean your floor. You’ve really fallen down on the job (pun very much intended) lately. Where’s your OCD-perfectionist-type-A persona been hiding?

Don’t admit you have the flu just yet. Tell people it’s some kind of cold or something. But you’re still fine for the party you hosting on Sunday.

Translation:Twenty-five is sleeping on the floor. And being concerned about this only as it relates to your housekeeping habits rather than its larger implications of your life choices.

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Patient Zero

Day 20: December 31

Start the day early. It’s the last one in 2013 after all.

And hey, this was a big year for you. You experienced friendship and love, heartbreak and lasting confusion, and beautiful renewal and clarity. It was all confusing and exciting. Seriously, take a moment to think about that.

But then get moving. Because it’s 10am, and you still have 47.5 things on your “Gonna Finish in 2013” list. (Oh and ignore that cough and the tickle in your throat. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.)

Go shopping. Decide you need a new rug. And new book shelves. And blank canvases for your walls. Chalk it up to “fresh starts” and wanting to make your “outsides fit your insides.” (Note: you may want to revisit this with the “materialism” lens soon. Because you do this more than is probably necessary.)

By 5pm, realize that the tickle in your throat is building into something mean. Drink tea but ignore what feels like fever. It’s just you moving around…or something.

Bring in the new year with two of the greatest people in your life. Talk about the ways 2014 is going to be different, recognizing the cliche quality of your goals. But mean them anyway. Because fresh starts are gifts to be excited about.

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Going Home: Better Late than Never

Day 19: December 30

Brace yourself. It’s another day with Delta.

But this time, you’re too forlorn to make detailed notes about the experience. Because vacation’s over. It’s time to get back to all those things you’re avoiding back in Baltimore. It’s time to go home. Back to real life.

But remember, that’s joyous! You like Baltimore. (Even if you’ve yet to convince your landlord the value of a dog.)

You drag your feet through the airport like a pouting child, willing your four-hour layover to move quickly. It declines.

In the meantime, you continue with the email and hard drive clean up you’ve been pursuing all week.

You come across a folder labeled “for the blog.” You remember this as the folder you’ve been putting stuff in for the blog. You open it and realize that you’ve been slacking. You haven’t posted any of this stuff. And really, it’s not so much “stuff” as it is “photos that made you laugh.”

Whelp, better late than never, right?

Photo of Baltimore Roads
This is how our lanes are repainted in Baltimore. I’m in the correct part of the “old lane” at a stop light. When I go, I have to jump over to those newly painted lines. Yeah, okay.
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Puppies are Productivity Killers

Day 12: December 23

Sleep in. You read that right. Wake up when your body is ready to wake up instead of only after hitting the snooze button on your obnoxious alarm seven times. (By the way, there are other sounds you could choose besides “hateful buzzer.”)

Grab a cup of comfort-coffee (the kind of you grew up on), and cuddle up with your computer, a sleepy puppy, and a days’ worth of work. Get up to refresh your coffee and come back to this:

Puppies are sneaky.
Puppies are sneaky.
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A Day with Delta: Nothing Fancy

Day 11: December 22, 2013

6am

Arrive at the airport with luggage that is already falling apart, and make a mental note to get new luggage. Also, note that you have plenty of time before your flight is set to board. (Good for you! You are learning how to properly travel—minus the luggage.)

Make your way to the self-check-in counter. Go for your credit card, the one you purchased this ticket with, and pause when you realize it isn’t there. Michelle. Come on. You’re about to board a plane for the longest vacation you’ve taken in two years, and you don’t have your favorite credit card (read: the one that works) on your person.

Stand there for ten, twenty, thirty seconds, internally freaking out, simultaneously trying to remember another method of checking in and the last place you used your credit card: shout your name and destination until they help you and plaza art yesterday…

Focus. One problem at a time. (This is a good strategy for you; use this more in the future).

Remember the technology machine you pay to carry around in your pocket. Remember email. Remember something called a confirmation number.

Ask about the boarding pass that didn’t print. Nod when the Delta Counter Lady says, oh they’ll give you one in Atlanta, even though you’ve flown enough to know this isn’t how it works.

Make it through security amid nervous first flyers and the Amish. Think about the Amish. You don’t know much about them. You should Google that. Them.

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Seven Year Assessment

Day 9: December 20, 2013

Wake up, and remember an email you sent seven years ago. An email you sent to all of your family and friends of the time. Remember it being hilarious! And witty. And all kinds of smart.

Good thing you saved it.

Upon reading the seven-years-ago email, however, you remember significant disappointment. You’ve remembered this email incorrectly.

It’s not hilarious. It’s painfully honest about things you shouldn’t have said aloud much less committed to writing for all your family and friends to read. Luckily, they still think it’s hilarious (but not in the way you wanted it to be).

Write a new letter, because you’re better at it now. (Or at least, you hope.)

Remember the art of editing, and try to save the personal information for your blog and essays (because that seems more appropriate somehow).

Make a list of all the people that matter to you. Get email addresses for as many as you can. Click send.

And then find a typo.

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You’re Killing Me, Smalls

Day 8: December 19, 2013

Enjoy a belated birthday present from a good friend: a trip to the movies to see the Hobbit (spoiler alert: it was amazing).

You are both really bad at the timing thing, so you’re running late. Even so, you decide that you must have popcorn and a coke icee. Because you’re at the movies. And it’s your birthday (sort of). And seeing the Hobbit in IMAX 3D (!!) demands an extra serving of sugar (icee) and a bit of salt to cancel out the sugar (popcorn).

(You’ll want to question this logic at some point, as it is definitely not sound and you are definitely still hypoglycemic, but today is not a day for logic.)

You ask for smalls: small popcorn and icee, please! You say it proudly as if smalls make everything okay. But the girl at the counter gives you pause:

We don’t have small icees, she says, only mediums or larges.

Conundrum: do you explain that these terms—small, medium, large—in this context—containers of deliciously awful syrupy liquid—are relative terms?

She’s staring at you, asking if you want the medium instead?

Your mind goes to sophomore year biology and the terms “hyper-tonic” and “hypo-tonic” and the fact that they can only be used when comparing two things (this also makes you remember your alternating hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic conditions, and you try to remember which way the icee pendulum swings).

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