Friday, 18 May 2007

• Five syllables. Sounds like. Spools trout or drummer.

  I am enjoying a homemade lime soda in my new apartment. I don’t know what Stephanie eats around here, because when I opened the fridge for the first time on Monday afternoon, all I found were the leftover mojito fixings from the bachelorette party. Minus the rum of course. But yes, two lime wedges + two squirts of bottled lime juice + four glugs of club soda + one packet of equal = the beverage of the week. Perhaps of summer 2007. Perhaps of my adult life.

   

  I have graduated and moved to Logan Square to live with my high school friend, who is a year older and already well versed in the ways of being a young Chicago professional. Hence the spacious apartment and mojito fixings which I am currently enjoying. I am trying to savor my first and last week of floaterdom in a long time, before starting up a summer job at the Field Museum, for which I am supposed to edit 150 hours of newly digitized tape, all narrated by the same British sea captain, all recorded in 1958 on this now obsolete machine.
  
  
  
  School really had me there for awhile. The past two months consisted of holing up in my increasingly disgusting room for increasingly long hours, finishing my research and radio projects, studying for finals, and pausing only to play a frantic round of charades with Kate while Laura studied flashcards on the couch. And then there were the free pizzas, which were delivered to our door night after night by one of Kate’s connections, a kind Minnesotan named Murph.

   

  Considering what a nostalgic person I have been in the past, always reaching out and lovingly touching an old tree or book or candy wrapper or something like that, I was surprised to find myself hardly caring about the transition from college. I used to commemorate this sort of thing with a large number of doodles, photos, or other scrapbookable items, or at least try to start up some teary conversations on a sofa with someone. But this time I just put on the put on the cap and gown and tried not to fall asleep.
  
  My only tear, in fact, came when I put Kate on her train back to Springfield. Though it was mostly induced by something hilarious we had just found in my purse, that’s when it hit me that we’d reached the end of an era. I am going to miss that girl, my partner in bean-based recipes and charades, when she is sweltering in a trailer full of volunteers this summer down in New Orleans. While I am highly enjoying my lime soda and the notion of building good credit, I know there will never be anything quite like the late night freakouts, both fun and miserable, that I shared with Kate and Laura at 1246 W. North Shore.
  
  As a small tribute my former roomates, I will now publish some selected items from our past charades, all of which were guessed correctly, with no verbal cues aside from the occasional frustrated scream, most within three minutes or less.

  
  
  A group of palm trees go to a bar and meet on a pillow filled with eyelashes while on their way to the Million Man March in Rio de Janeiro. (Kate)
  
  Beautiful, pregnant, hip moms at Deluxe Diner eat French toast fried in my brain fluid while I wash dishes in the kitchen on my 47^th birthday. (Katie)
  
  Jack Kerouac goes on the road with Jordan in the minivan to Mt. Everest while singing “Wheels on the Bus”---Kerouac flips out and hits Jordan with a box of Zingers, and the van falls on the belly of Michael Jackson’s baby. (Kate)
  
  An old Ukrainian woman at your wedding, threatening your husband with a broken bottle of PBR. (Katie)

  
  An Italian man licking beef-flavored gelato off the streets of Jamaica while Elvis looks on in disgust. (Kate)

  
  Laura riding on a sled of fried tofu through Poland, interviewing elderly people about their sexual past while Sporty Spice throws spoonfuls of chocolate pudding into their eyes. (Katie)

  
  Mao and Gandhi covering themselves with cocoa butter and reading Dorothy Parker from inside a snow globe. (Kate)

   

  Steve and Benito Mussolini lost in the lingerie section of K-Mart in Topeka, Kansas, while Art Garfunkel frantically pages them over the PA system. (Katie)

   

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