Northfield in May

It's cold. I'm at Carleton for the weekend for more of my volunteer stuff. And it's cold. Okay, yes, I'm the jerk who ran around California for four years saying, "If you can breathe, it ain't cold." And in a sense that is true. But seriously, a five minute walk on May second should not leave my knuckles stiff and my ears numb.

So now I'm sitting in the Goodbye Blue Monday coffee house - ah, Blue Monday. I've got my laptop on a sticky, yellow, Formica table, which is painfully retro in its coolness. The music is downbeat and inaccessible and I'm not quite apathetic enough to really occupy this space in any other than a sarcastic manner. Plus I need to go to the bathroom but I don't want to either leave my laptop unsupervised nor pack it all up for a four minute sojourn. So I'll have to make this a quick post.

I feel nostalgic and sad and very loving towards the campus and yet very trapped by it all at once. I remember being seriously bummed by cold weather in May, and yet thinking about snow this afternoon I felt almost homesick. I feel at a huge crossroads with lots of options down very unknown paths - mostly career-wise, but also in terms of what city Matt and I should really lay down roots in. Just when I thought I had made my peace with being in So Cal for the foreseeable future, my tremendous capacity for indecision rears its ugly head again. I finally told Matt that with anything more important than dinner or weekend plans he should wait to hear the same answer out of my mouth four consecutive times at least a day apart each before he believes me. I mean, ask him what my current top priority redecorating purchase is. Go ahead. Poor guy. The good news is I almost never act impulsively on anything more momentous than shoes.

So you can see how I ended up in dire need of this cup of hot cocoa I just slurped down. I always find myself drinking the cocoa faster than I meant to in an attempt to get the whipped cream before it melts. Didn't think to get a spoon until I was half done with the cup.