180 Degrees...

I am only 1.5 hours past completing a gruelingly long accounting exam. It took me three and a half hours to get my numbers to balance, and it dulled my brain to the point that a late-evening excursion to Marble Slab was necessary to restore it to working order... Nothing revives those brain cells like coffee ice cream with Heath Bar and slivered almonds. Yes.

I try not to eat too much junk food. My metabolism is such that I have to generally be very health-conscious or I notice extreme differences. It's annoying and sometimes burdensome to require a meal every four to five hours, when often food is not conveniently available and always I have to be careful about how much I eat--because whether I eat lightly or pack my tummy full, it's a guarantee that in just a few short hours I will feel like I haven't had a bite all day. Anyway, I like to eat healthy--I like believing I keep my body in as close to creation order as I can. I enjoy vegetables and fruit and yogurt and whole grains and water and green tea; I enjoy stretching and Pilates and walking and running (but only when the weather's nice); it's too bad that I also enjoy chocolate and coffee and Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke so much too.

Anyway, to change directions entirely, I was not very happy with my paper about a threat I had encountered from nature. It's hard to write about a jellyfish attack and make it interesting. And it didn't seem quite fair either--after all, I was on their turf. Only a couple of hours after class, the idea came to me that I wish I had written about instead. I should have written about the surf washing away my sandcastles and my childish doodlings at the seashore. I can remember the feeling of impending doom as I watched the tide creeping closer and closer to the marks I had made; I can remember writing things in the sand and hoping that somehow they would stay forever, or at least long enough for another to see them. But the ever-dependable tide would always encroach upon "my" turf and completely efface anything I dared to lay bare in the wet, malleable sand that always yields to the tide.

Part of me wants to rewrite the week's essay and send it out to everyone again. Perhaps I will. Or maybe I will just save the idea for a longer project.