Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004

hermit

I refused to leave my apartment.

After a week of running around, getting up at 5:30am and working out, not getting home from work or errands until after 6pm every night, and just being plain old busy, I needed a day to stay in my apartment, catch up on cleaning and grading papers. I could have left; I could have run errands or do other things. But I refused. I was invited a few different places and politely declined. I became a hermit for a little over 24 hours.

The only time I left my apartment on Saturday was to take out the trash. I cleaned my apartment. (Somehow it already looks as if a detective has come and ransacked it looking for clues to a murder mystery.) I washed dishes until my hands were so dishpan they were disgusting. I even mopped the floor.

And now I look at my apartment, which definitely does NOT look as if I spent 5 hours cleaning it and think, “I should have gone shopping”. Who wants to go the mall the Saturday before Christmas? Not I!

Which brings me to another important factoid about my weekend. I’m broke. Not just, “I don’t have money to spend on stuff I want” broke, but, “I hope I have enough money to pay my bills and I better not spend the cash I have on me just in case I need to put it in the bank” broke. I dug in my change today to find quarters so I could do laundry. I don’t know how I seem to forget I’m broke all the time when I want to buy something, like pictures from a street vendor in NYC. (Which was well worth it to me.) At least I haven’t reached the “Does Dunkin Donuts take credit cards?” phase yet. Or should I say, again.

So today came the end of my hermitism and I left the apartment. I went to church. I went to the laundromat, I went to my work Christmas party and kicked ass playing taboo. I came home and here I am, in front of my computer, wondering what I’ll eat all this week because I don’t have any groceries and I refuse to get some since I’m going to MN on Thursday. Plus I’m broke. I do have food. I won’t go hungry. I’ll just have to eat cereal the next four days or be very creative with what I have in the house.

Speaking of Dunkin Donuts, which I did a while back in case you didn’t notice, I am going to help teach an English Language Learning class to some people that run a DD down the street from my place of employment. When I went to college I wanted to get an “English Language Learners” certification but at the last minute decided not to because of the extra time it would take, but more importantly, the extra money it would take. I took all the classes, just didn’t do the student teaching. So I’m looking forward to helping teach this class, and finally putting to good use some of the things I have learned.

After Christmas I would like to get a part time job somewhere. I don’t want to work with food and I don’t want to work on weekends. Any ideas? An occasional weekend would be ok, but definitely not every weekend.

Well, that’s all for now. And my New Years Resolution is to do better on doing my Friday Finds!

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