Fun in the Dungeon

Cataloging. Where we sit in a dark classroom with a 5-inch thick book of AARC rules and try to take notes on field entries and punctuation. As I was doodling in my notebook, someone mentioned Leda and the Swan and I wrote Leda and the goose. For some reason this seemed really funny, and I suddenly started laughing, burying my face in my jacket to muffle the sound. The girls who sit beside me are used to this, and ignored me. Sometimes I feel like the clumsy background character in someone else's movie.

After class, Yuri announced that there were unguarded donut holes in the diner, so I snuck into the quiet hallway, and as soon as the door closed behind me I started skipped loudly down the hall and skidded into the diner doorway like an ice skater. A group of students were staring at me. "Well that was embarrassing," I said, but only a stream of garbled syllables came out. Typical. I pretended not to notice, and went to my locker, eyeballing the tables. The donut holes were gone. My favorite bake sale sign-up sheet was no longer posted. Someone had signed up to bring "boiled frogs and bat spawn", next to which someone had scribbled, "don't you mean 'baked'?" to which a third person had added, "from the Triplets of Belleville cookbook?" You just can't get away with anything in library school.

The Root Canal

Yesterday, after waking up with only 15 minutes to head out for class, I found myself at the start of a long and painful day. After class (where we were reminded of the mid-term exam next week) I hurried to the dentist for the root canal I had been putting off. Used to the hand-holding of childhood, I was surprised when my mouth was swabbed and jabbed with the giant needle with no warning. My heart began to race and my throat started to swell closed. "Not to be an alarmist," I said, fighting back black stars, "but is it normal for patients to keel over and die after getting the pain killer? Because that would be a very anticlimactic end for me." The dental assistant said that I probably was not about to die, and that it was similar to an adrenaline rush because she had accidentally poked a vein in my cheek. Adrenaline, huh? So that's why I don't exercise anymore.

After that, the procedure was fine. I didn't like to see the drill bit pass over my head, because it looked like the kind that made holes in wood instead of teeth, and I could have done without the detailed narration on my gum trimming, but the pain wasn't too bad, it felt like a lot pain in a tooth many, many miles away. Today I was surprised to see my face looked the same as usual in the mirror, because it felt like I should have a giant purple bruise across the bottom half of my face. I hope the bone will heal by the time I have to come in for my second appointment in 2 weeks to be fitted with my gold tooth.

The day that never ended

My awful neighbors are soul-sucking ghouls. I do not want to go on another rant about them.


I sat shivering behind the reference desk, watching students bounce off the invisible shield and scribbling notes about medical journals for class. I was surprised later on to discover that Scott sometimes visits the academic library, and he stopped to chat over my mountain of encyclopedias. "Oh, yes, I'm making friends again now that I'm back in school," I said. "Oh? I thought you had friends. What happened to all the little gay people at your wedding?" He's gay himself, and thought John was cute. He seemed sad when I told him that the beautiful John was studying to be an accountant.

In the afternoon, as I inched home through the Honolulu traffic, I noticed that my hands were trembling slightly, I felt a bit weak. I wondered whether it was nutrition or homework that was causing a strain on my system. The fight with our neighbors immediately upon arriving home didn't help. I sank like jelly into the couch and poked my fingers into my ears as the argument outside quickly turned into a neighborhood-wide affair. We won, but I still find my fingers wobbling as I type. Nothing a shot of whiskey can't take care of, maybe.