rainy day at the museum

I’m going to try to read at least a little bit this summer. And write words so i remember how to type sentences longer than “free tv links game of thrones.” So i am borrowing my tumblr to journal some of the things going on in my life (starting with the previous post)! Right now on my desk are Love In The Time of Cholera and A Visit From the Good Squad, which i borrowed from jacob in nussbaum and wu yesterday when we were in the city visiting friends. i read the first chapter while eating a bagel alone because he had to go to midtown, which was slightly hipster of me. When i read the second chapter i realized that the book is actually several short stories pulled together into a novel form just so it can sell better, which is a slight betrayal in my opinion because i do like reading short stories, but i hate when they are forced into novels because you can always tell. Also it won the Pulitzer prize and it doesn’t seem amazing. But that only gives me hope for my chances of winning a Pulitzer prize! When I was in high school I tried to think of what my novel would be called if I wrote a bestselling novel, regardless of what it was about, and I thought the most badass name would be Dissent, by Linda Crowley. Or maybe it was Descent. I don’t remember, but maybe it could be a pun and mean both and that would be even more literary and badass. Anyway after getting a bagel i visited Caroline at her beautiful summer housing above ollies. It started violently down-pouring and it was cool seeing the rain bounce off fire escapes with her river view in the background. She said that she’s already climbed to the roof which slightly terrified me and reminded me of my slight terror of heights. She let me borrow her umbrella, which was nice of her, but it was raining so hard that jacob and i got soaked anyway. At least the rain washed away whatever soggy mush i stepped in at the marble hill station, which i assumed was a dead squirrel. My feet were wet for the rest of the day, even when we went to the museum of natural history. Some day I will return to that place and get the six dollars the universe owes me for the broken bonsai tree kit i bought there in november. But even if that doesn’t happen, it’s still my favorite museum and one of my favorite places in new york city. I consider the six dollars a donation, and when i am a rich aristocrat i will donate more and expect no bonsai trees in return. 

I really wish kids would stop setting off fireworks! I can see them from my window. Why is that a thing. Can’t you just smoke weed outside a deli or whatever like normal hoodlums. Even the rebels are nonconformist in this town. Today i saw kids walking to a party in the woods and i thought “i am not in the city anymore. take me back please.” i also had to kill a bug that was not a cockroach or a bedbug (God forbid) but i didn’t want to touch it, so i lifted my cat up to the ceiling and she swatted at it for me. Then I laughed at how completely ridiculous that was. 

livin it up in hoh

Last week my friend’s friends came to visit and we went down to the waterfront to talk because it’s pretty and there aren’t many other places to go. It was very quiet and I had forgotten how nice the old water tower looks against the palisades, and the sound of trees rustling and “the slumbering geese” as one friend pointed out. There were dozens of geese asleep in the stagnant water near the rocks, but at night the dirty waterfront is just blue and pretty, and there is a cool breeze that calms everything. In the city you know it’s safe when there is light and the sounds of many people around, but at home everything is supposed to be pleasantly dark and quiet, and coming back to that is a little unnerving, so I am skeptical of calm quiet places. We were talking and laughing on the rocks about old high school rumors, but I kept glancing over at a group of kids who were meeting by the fence a little bit away, facing the water. They kept running away from the spot they were at, and then slowly approaching it again, and then hurrying away. I had a feeling they were setting off fireworks, because that is a common activity for hoodlum children in my town. I mentioned that they might be setting off fireworks near us and that maybe we should move, but a friend said it was funny, and that the kids looked like they should be in a comic strip. He imagined panels of the kids running away from the spot in the dark, and then running back, and the caption would be “fireworks won’t light.” That seemed kind of quaint and innocent to me, and I almost felt for the kids working together on this failed suburban prank. But just then a firework did light, except not from our comic hoodlums by the fence, but by other kids by the stagnant pool. We all looked up in surprise, and one of our friends laughed, “they woke the slumbering geese,” because the birds flew off in fright into the cool blue river. Then we decided that we did not want fireworks going off that close to us, and we left. When we walked to the parking lot the river hoodlum’s cars had vanished, but another car pulled up with a grey haired couple giggling and smoking, and they looked kind of pathetic to me. Maybe kids probably knew the kids who were setting off fireworks. 

ONE WEEK LEFT OF THE SEMESTER

howdoiputthisgently:

Sad News Today

“Sink me in a river at dawn

send me away with the words of a love song.”

Rest in peace Sybil the fish. May you swim with Basil the fish in the pH balanced streams of fishy eternity. 

my senile history professor is giving us less that two hours to complete a final that is 60% of our grade, and he’s not telling us if it’s cumulative. literally the most disorganized class ever, i have an A+ right now in that class and i’m still worried about failing. HASHTAG REASONS BARNARD IS A BETTER INSTITUTION THAN COLUMBIA. SERIOUSLY.