Sunday, May 15, 2005

and we’re winding down

You’re going to get tired of my “we’re almost there” entries… but there’s just a lot of tying things off right now.  Blowing off steam.  Relaxing too much.  Cleaning apartments.  Farewell lunches and dinners and coffee trips.  Oh, yeah, and final exams, which are supposed to be the major focus.  I nearly forget about them, although my roommates don’t have that luxury of forgetting… I, however, have a light load this week.  Lucky me!

So… I’ve been having a lot of final get-togethers with friends… Karen and I met for lunch last week, and we went to church and coffee for the last time this morning.  The last time!  Because she is going to Washington University next year, as part of Calvin’s occupational therapy program.  They have some way of working out the degree in conjunction with Wash U, so she’ll be in St. Louis.  Which is fun, since she’ll be near my family… but sad because she’ll be far away from me.  Still, as vacations overlap and such… we’ll meet up.

Anyway, this morning after church, we went out for coffee as usual.  And I was thinking: this is the last one, so let’s do it right.  “Doing it right” somehow translates to me ordering a double mocha and a chocolate-filled croissant.  The croissant alone should have been illegal before noon… and the filling!  We’re talking real chocolate, like my mom’s homemade hot fudge sauce.  And the whole thing was warm.  Add the double mocha… (what was I thinking??) and you have a recipe for a high-energy, hyper-charged Jenn Langefeld. 

I had about six hours of a sugar-high, which was great for my apartment-mates (assuming they could put up with my running around and making elaborate, random jokes).  But since I was bouncing off the walls anyway, I decided it would be best to bounce around with a rag and cleaner—so I helped Rachel clean our bathroom and kitchen. 

I scrubbed the floors, singing songs from The Phantom of the Opera, a recent mega-favorite of our apartment.  I won’t tell you that we watched the movie three times in three days… you might think we’re obsessive or something.  (We all feel a bit convicted anyway, for liking a somewhat homicidal, crazed villain.  Who is good with a sword.  And has a great singing voice.  Plus he has a cape.  And half of his face doesn’t look at all bad…  Enough said.) 

Cleaning was great fun, though.  (I might feel differently by the end of the week, but for now…)  It’s just great to do something with your hands, and watch the spots and stains fade away.  A good break from memorizing terms and adding punctuation to a manuscript.

Rachel checked out at four this afternoon—done for the year!  I won’t see her until the fall…  She’s the first to leave in our apartment, but it’s looking really bare now.  We’ve all been taking things down, boxing things up.  The posters are gone, the extra lamps are mostly gone… microwave, TV, main stereo… gone.  Becca and Sandy will be leaving on Thursday…

The funny thing is that I’m here until next Sunday.  At which point, I guess I’ll be sitting on the floor, staring at walls.  (Not true—I have a ridiculous amount of books in our apartment.  I always get so inspired, and I think that I can actually read, oh, say Ivanhoe, in and around all the other work of the semester.  I really do pick it up now and then.  Read a page and feel educated with myself.  Nice little collegiate buzz.)  If I’m terribly bored, I can start my summer reading list… But my family will be here Thursday, which is awesome.  So, no, there’s no chance of boredom.

Anyway, this evening I went out to dinner with Sarah and Laura, at this great Chinese place not far from Calvin.  (The fried rice was amazing!)  As soon as I sat down, any sugar/caffeine-induced energy left me.  All three of us were so mellow… but it was really nice just to sit, breathe, and eat rice.  Our servers were especially sweet—maybe because we looked like three frayed college kids?  Ha ha.  But I should only look frayed from scrubbing floors on hands and knees… I haven’t been doing much study-work lately!  Despite that, my to-do list is getting shorter daily—which is how it ought to work, hmm? 

All that’s left?  Running a few errands tomorrow: I need to check out the previous honors thesis proposals that have been approved by the English Department.  Mine will be due the first week back from summer, so I need to know what it’s supposed to look like before I go.  Then there’s studying for my Sociology 151 exam on Tuesday… but I’m not too worried about that.  The lectures have been very understandable, so I feel like I know it pretty well.  Just have to brush up. 

Then there’s a final meeting with my poetry professor on Wednesday, and my last internship project due to my boss on Saturday.  That’s it!  Of course, there are countless goodbyes and more cleaning in and around all that… but a week from now I should be home!  And that’s really hard to wrap my mind around. —jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 05/15 at 08:54 PM
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