Chicken pox, snow and faulty tape

Knowing that I can't go home - but that I'm SO CLOSE - makes me want to that much more.

Granted, I did miss home while in London - that would be the first day. But after that, I was pretty much set and content. Whenever I even thought about home, I would unlock the balcony door and step outside, take a deep breath of polluted London air, and I'd be fine. Or I'd engage in retail therapy on High Street Kensington or lay down prostrate in the cereal aisle at Sainsbury's. Obviously I'm going to need a new strategy for dealing with Columbia.

It's not that I'm homesick; it's just that I'm bored. I am currently laying on the floor in my room, a pillow propped between me and the wall, my knees bent with my computer and my little sisters' Bratz Dollz blanket on my lap. I've alternated between this and my loft all day. The only problem with the loft is that I tend to fall asleep up there. However, I'm finding myself increasingly immobile here on the floor and my neck is starting to ache.

I planned my escape route all week. The original plan was to go home on Friday. I had made plans to hang out with Maddie on Friday night, but then I had the brilliant idea that I could take her home with me. My dreams were sufficiently shattered when my sister Amy informed me that my brother Kevin had come down with the chicken pox. I was pretty sure the chicken pox were in the same category as measles and mumps and dysentary - diseases you would only expect to come across while playing the Oregon Trail - but apparently I was mistaken. It wouldn't hurt me to go home and be exposed to it - I've already had them, and besides, time away from school due to illness? Okay. But I couldn't infect the star of the Missouri women's golf team with my brother's super contagious red spots, so chuck that idea. No going home Friday night. We went to dinner and saw Dreamgirls at the cinema.

My second idea was to drive home after my copy desk shift. Granted, the shift started at two and lasted eight hours and was filled with coma-inducing nitpickery. But maybe, just maybe, I reasoned, the anticipation of going home and escaping the copy desk would work its magic like three Red Bulls and a 180-volt electric shock. By the end of the night, however, I was shattered. But the real nail in the coffin was the fact that I could hardly find my car when I walked outside because it was buried under a foot of snow. Gah, I hate Missouri. Big fluffy flakes were falling as I drove home with my windows rolled down so that I could check my blind spots. I felt like I was cruising the streets of Columbia in an igloo.

So here I sit, two plausible plans foiled. A day filled with church and cereal, Super Wal-Mart and The Brother's Karamazov. I can't let the hope die, so I keep thinking to myself - "maybe tomorrow..." My poli sci class is canceled so I get done by noon. Three hours in the car puts me home at 3 p.m., so I would have 16 full hours home before I would need to drive back for my 9:30 a.m. class. RAWR! I just want my stuff. I told my family that I wouldn't be home until my birthday, but inwardly I was thinking that it would probably be just a couple of weeks. Now forget my birthday - I'll be lucky to be home for spring break.

I have three pairs of shoes here to my name. A pair of multi-striped flip flops. A pair of metallic silver pumps with a 3-inch heel. Both rendered completely useless by a few layers of snow and mush and ice, leaving me with my super stylish used-to-be-white Nike tennis shoes which I am now forced to wear with everything. Not to mention that I have absolutely zero room decorations - although God knows I've tried, but I can't get the tape to cooperate with me. I bought mirror tape today - you know, the kind you'd use to hang mirrors. I thought that would work perfectly for a bulletin board. Up went four strips of tape and up went the bulletin board. Fifteen minutes later, down came the bulletin board but the tape still stayed on the wall. I added two more strips of tape, a piece on each side, and up went the bulletin board again. Right on schedule, fifteen minutes later, it came crashing down and almost broke two of my toes. The tape, irritatingly enough, was still intact. To break up the monotany of the sleeping in loft/sprawling on floor routine, I'll lean up against the wall and scrape at the bits of tape that still furiously cling to the paint job.

And when that gets tiresome, I'll pull myself off the floor and take a bathroom break for fun, or blow out and promptly relight the abused candle that sits on my desk.