Sunday, April 20, 2008

on being done

My oral exam was on Friday. After Alex said "congratulations, you passed," he said I should take the weekend off. Which I proceeded to do.

Friday was kind of shot -- after decompressing with Jill and Meredith over sangria, I came back and *tried* to take a nap. It didn't work: I kept thinking about the questions and how I'd handled/not handled them. So I got back up, and had soup for dinner. It had to be soup because my voice was failing: after practicing my 15-20 min. talk twice, giving the talk, talking for like an hour and a half after that, and then decompressing, and then talking to Mum and Andrew, it was becoming painful to speak. So soup and internet tv: I watched the Medium and Desperate Housewives that I had missed earlier in the week.

Saturday was blissful. I woke up with nothing to do. I decided to take a walk through campus and down Palm Drive, to Anthropologie, where I proceeded to waste money. Shopping is therapeutic. I bought two sale things, and one thing full price (which I rarely do): but it's a flowy white shirt with yellow flowers, and how could I not? I decided that I can wear yellow as long as it's with another color that doesn't have a tendency to make me look cadaverously white.

Then I took my happy shopping bag with my parcels wrapped in pretty paper and went to Whole Foods: which is *also* therapeutic. I love trying new things.

And then I caught a bus back home, where I had time to watch Bill Maher and do laundry before taking a little nap and getting ready for dinner at Bridget and Nicki's.

Dinner was a dream -- Bridget and Nicki are delightful, and Nicki made *way* too much food, all of which was vegetarian and yummy. And between the steamed artichokes and homemade pizza and watermelon with mint, I got excited about returning to cooking. [Because food before orals was getting ridiculous: I relied upon cups of soups for evening study sessions at school, and by the 48 hours before the exam, I was eating bread with a hard boiled egg and tomato -- not together, just a whole tomato, a whole egg, and bread with brummel and brown, because what was the use of making egg salad sandwich if I could barely stand to eat, anyways?] I sorely needed the inspiration. So tonight I made green curry.

Today I slept till 10:30, went to the farmer's market with Jill, made lunch, watched Our Mutual Friend and took a nap, took a walk and caught up with Andrew, made dinner, started leisurely reading The Old Curiosity Shop because Dickens is my favorite, watched Desperate Housewives, cleaned my shower (it needed it: the homemade solution of baking soda, vinegar, and soap that Mum recommended worked wonders on the soap scummy layer that I had just about given up on -- thanks Mum!), took a shower, and now... I think I'm gonna eat some chocolate.

This is kind of how I feel (and probably what I would have been doing today if it had been just *slightly* warmer):


2 comments:

Ricki said...

Indeed you did celebrate, and in style :-) Anthropologie!! I'm glad you're eating again. Stress is absollute hell on one's body. (It's good you got the 18th or you'd still be starving)
And just maybe, you'll get your cleaning deposit back.

Claudia said...

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! You win at life, Becky! Or at least at the oral exams part of life!