‘Twas the night before break and all through the dorm, lots of people were stirring and studying more than the norm.
I sat at my desk, bored and aware, that tomorrow I would be going home and Kristine would be there!
I crammed for my history final, and then went to bed, while it was hard to fall asleep with all that was in my head.
The next morning after the 8-hour nap, I wandered over to Old Main to take care of all the finals crap.
Not everyone showed up, as if the grade didn’t matter, and the thought of my friends dropping out made me even sadder.
As soon as I was finished, I turned in my test and ran back to my dorm in a dash, my speed quickened as if I heard a crash.
After packing all of my clothes, and cleaning off the window the fake snow, nothing was left but my lamp and my giant dog pillow.
I just read the original Night before Christmas, and it’s way too long to write about this weekend in the form of that story, poem thing. It’s getting excruciatingly annoying to come up with words that actually rhyme like the poem does. So I’ll just talk about this weekend like any other normal blog.
Like I was saying, as soon as my final was over, I got out of there as quick as I could, thinking that I had to go pick up Kristine at the train station at 11:11 in Tacoma…little did I know, she texted me during my final, telling me that her train didn’t get in until 3-ish. I thought, “Oh good, now I get to hang out in Tacoma for four hours! Yay!” But it actually turned out to be a pretty fulfilling day. I went to go see Laura at her work at the fish market. Holy crap it smelled like fish. I know, duh. I should have expected it, but it was nice to just talk to her. After she finished stapling all the boxes, we went to lunch at the Spar. They have really good homemade Spar chips. You must taste them.
But then it was only 1 o’clock ish. I had two hours left to kill, because I didn’t feel like driving over the bridge twice that day. So I went to the mall, by myself. It was a very odd experience, being at the mall alone. It felt a little like the first day of college. But with one less familiar person. I did get some very necessary shopping done. Not so much christmas shopping, but something that I was desperately in need of. And I’m not using hyperbole, I seriously needed what I purchased.
2:02 pm–Kristine had yet to call me to let me know that they were at the Olympia station, but I decided to make my way to my car. It’s a little bit of a trip to get to the train station, as it is to find your way around the mall alone. I arrived at the train station at about 2:45. Kristine called me 15 minutes later. It takes about 40 minutes to get to Tacoma from Olympia. I didn’t care. No more driving for me until it was time to go. I obviously wasn’t tired. So I took Izzy out and watched the live version of “Rough Around the Edges.” Dane Cook helps to pass the time.
After Dane finished his schpeel about the “herpolie urpolies,” I saw the crows all scatter. I knew that the train was coming. It was nice to see Kristine, and it was nice that she wasn’t even hesitant when I hugged her. I’d missed people. Not that I don’t love them, but I’d really only seen Andrea, Laura and Michael since school started. But mom got everything ready at home, and when we got back, my sister’s room was clean. It was glorious. Miraculous. There isn’t really a word to describe how I felt when I my sister’s room clean.
My house didn’t seem nearly as exciting as the new “Journalism lab.” No, it will always been the Outlook room. Room 530. The room that’s hard to explain where it is. Not the journalism lab. Don’t even try. It sounds cool, but it’s like “fetch,” it’s never going to happen! But once we arrived, people got so excited to see Kristine, mostly because I’d already visited a couple times already anyway. We stayed for 5 hours, I swear. Editors gave us jobs, and Loren shushed me. He shushed me, and I shushed. I never thought that Loren would have that power over me. Oh well. Omi, Loren, Andi and I worked on a headline for 2 hours…I’m pretty sure of it. We came up with ‘Fly-tying picasso finds future in fishing.’ They changed picasso to prodigy the next day, but hey, ours was pretty good.
Thursday was nothing compared to friday. I slept in so late, I felt like a selfish, lazy cat. I ended up sleeping on the couch because Libby slept in my bed and I did not want to have her getting up at 6:00 am while I went to bed at 2:00 am. So we slept in. So what? No school, no work. Nothing to do. So we sleep. It did help make the day a lot shorter. At 2:00 ish, Kristine called Elizabeth, and she told us that she was going to paste-up. But the time depended on the brownies. Typical Elizabeth. Just like old times. Once we arrived, Derek said that it was a cutest thing…and it pretty much was. We opened the door, and I’ve never seen Kristine move so fast. One would have thought that it had been years with how happy they were to see each other and how they hugged. I was kind of surprised that no one else was there, in terms of alum, but we stayed for about an hour, because we didn’t really have anything to do after Elizabeth leaved.
But later was better. Later was much better. After our misguided attempt to see a movie, we journeyed back to paste-up after Paula called us in an almost incomprehensible phone call. All I could hear was “Cassandra.” So I knew that more alum were there at least. The three of us, Kristine, Libby and I walked in, and there was Cassandra and Larissa, copy-editing in Leland Smith’s room. And in room 530, Callie and Mary Rose. And in Taylor Buck’s office talking to TK, Elaine. And a little later, Patrick came back, then Gibson. It felt like home. I’d been back to Outlook since the beginning of the year, but this really felt like I was back home. It made it official, school was out for Christmas. The only two people who were really missing were Caity and Missy. Once Mary Rose, Callie, Elaine, Patrick, Gibson, Kristine and I had made our way over to Smith’s room, it made me miss Caity even more. It almost felt complete. But for now, it was great. It honestly made my day…no, my week. It didn’t matter what we talked about, just as long as it was us. And you really do not want to hear what we talked about.
Seriously.
Don’t ask.
(Oh, and I know who actually reads this, so all of you who do–Smith’s slideluck potshow is a good idea. We do need to all get together in an outside paste-up setting. Plus, Caity can’t make it to paste-up anyway, so we must, must, must!)
I really don’t think that anything that happened today or anything that will happen in the next week can top last night.
❤ Abby
THIS IS A TANGENT. 