Life has a funny way

of just biting you in the ass without warning.

For instance, I get to work this morning and I am not feeling so great--for several reasons.

1. I don't like being up early. I intentionally won't let them schedule me for 8AM any more; it's mental suicide. So what happened? I was the only student to agree to work during Fall Break, so they put me on the schedule from 8AM to 5PM, meaning I had to drag my sorry ass in here mere minutes after sunrise (which happened at 7:40 this morning, for those of you who, like my roommate, were pleasantly asleep at the time).
2. Fewer than five minutes after waking up, as I was brushing my teeth, my mind decided it would be a great idea to start the day pissed off. How did it do that? It went, "Hey, remember that shitty email you got from that bitchy group member last night?" And from there it was a downhill battle. "Yeah! I remember that! Oh. . . I am so gonna tell her off when I respond. Let me spend my morning thinking of ten different ways to bitch-slap with courier new, size-ten font without her even knowing I've done it because she's too dense to pick up on subtlety."
3. As I was leaving the building, running late for work, knowing that I was going to be even later because I was stopping at Starbuck's on the way, I ran into this idiot kid who lives in my building and thinks we're friends because we happen to pass each other in the lobby several times a week. This kid also happens to get great joy out of asking me to join him for a cigarette. So at 7:55AM, as I was folding my copy of the New York Times and shoving it into my mom-bag, I was verbally assaulted with, "Hey! I remember you! Wanna cigarette? You know you do! Come on! It's a Camel Turkish Silver!" Well, no shit, I want a cigarette. That's the nature of nicotine and the social aspect of smoking that becomes habitual after two years; but I'm still gonna say no, so fuck off; it's early.
4. After sipping my over-priced, over-commercialized, and over-sweetened tea, I was feeling a little sick to my stomach. My mind instantly registered the problem: "My roommate must die." She spent the weekend dying on the futon, insisting that her stomach hated her. So now, with the weekend gone and my to-do list growing exponentially, of course I would have to spend my week dying (preferably in bed with all my pillows, but I'd settle for the futon too). I was ready to kill her (what's new, huh?) when I remembered something: I'm up and at work at 8 in the fucking morning. Perhaps my body isn't sick at all; perhaps it's rejecting reality (hey, why not take a tip from the Bush administration once in a while?).
5. So I paced the office. I made numerous trips back to the water cooler, thinking that if only I kept moving I could make it go away (I don't know what "it" is, so don't ask). I did stretches and yoga poses behind the receptionist's desk. I stared at the informational pamphlets stacked in the receptionist's area. I tried everything and nothing all at once until it dawned on me: I'm addicted to caffeine; that's the cure! So I got a caffeine pill out of the mom-bag, grabbed my paper cup of water (courtesy Culligan's water cooler), and proceeded to swallow the pill.

Only, life couldn't resist the opportunity to smack me upside the head. I know I shouldn't take caffeine pills, but I also know that I function better when I take them. So of course, I would just have to choke on the pill instead of swallowing it on the first try. And if you've ever had a pill perched right at the top of your esophagus, then you know the horrid feeling that provides. You want to gag or vomit, but then again you want to swallow the pill to reap its benefits, so you quickly down more water, cursing life for reminding you once again that addictions are bad. Very, very bad. Almost as bad as taking on unnecessary responsibilities.