the seldom seen kid.

I'd like to be able to sink into our quicksand pit of a couch and make it through an entire hour (or two or five) of mindless tv without feeling some sharp worry pangs about all the work and studying and reading and planning I should really be doing. I'd like to not worry, and then not worry about not doing anything about the worry, and then not worry about worry about worry about worry. I'd like to stop snowballing.

I'd like to finish school and travel, finally, again. I'm not lacking for experience: I've lucked out on a bunch of easy vacations in the past, and I took them for everything they had to give. But this winter has been this fucking winter and now I'm itching to get away again. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm moving to Toronto this fall (it isn't home, exactly, but it is only a short subway+bus ride away from home). I'm not moving to London, England (The Big Life Dream), and I'm not even moving to Montreal (The Substitute/"it'll do i guess" Life Dream). No, Toronto it is, and I'm sure it'll be good for me, and I'm sure I'll be good for it, but, really, I just need to get out of here at least once before I have to settle come September. I'd like to jaunt to NYC for a weekend. I'd like to go to Chicago for the Pitchfork fest....yes, again, so long as they add at least one more band worthy of giving me the chills to their roster, and so long as I'm not forced to stay in that horrible hostel again (I'm pretty laidback, but those shared bathrooms were the proverbial final nail-- I awoke one morning to find an unclaimed boy sleeping on the communal couch, and the sink clogged with someone's soaking wet weave. HIYA, HI-Chicago Hostel!)....I'd like to go back to England, as ever, as always, but I guess I'll just put that one in my pocket for now.

I'd like to finally finish the last few lagging pages of my thesis. It's my baby: I wrote the first page on the third day of October, let it germinate over the course of the year, and then finally hunkered down and poured out forty+ pages over reading week (I didn't leave the house and survived on coffee and arrowroots, exclusively) until I was nearly at the end. Now it's my postpartum blues: I haven't added more than a few sentences onto it since the start of March. It's just sitting here on my hard drive, steaming away, waiting for the conclusion I'm more than ready to write. In time, baby, okay? Gotta watch some more tv first.

I'd like to reach that day where I listen to "Someone Great" for the four millionth time and finally get sick of it, because it's been months and months and months and I'm still not there yet.

I'd like to march into a crowd of Western Girls dressed in salty UGGs and droopy sweatshirts and pooch-leaking leggings and scream out "you all look like Tony Danza circa the first season of "Who's the Boss?"!!!" But I never would, because they're all pretty scrappy.

I'd like to be the anti-Western girl: redder curlier hair and paler frecklier cheeks and faster walk and pencil-ier skirts and tougher face.

I'd like to drink white wine straight out of the bottle (20 year old Leslie's poison of choice) and then toddle over to the Keaton and puke in their Pepto Bismol pink ladies bathroom. Yeah, that's right, that's what I think of you, Alex P. Keaton: I love you to death but you make me sick.

I'd like to read as many books as possible while my eyes are still in reading shape and my spirits are still up reasonably high.

I'd like to trade my diabetes with someone else for a week, a day, even. I just need a break from needles, is all. Any takers? We can do a swap. I'll take what you got.

I'd like to not leave you behind.

I'd like to stop writing? I'd love to sleep.