122 Days

I can’t believe that Fall is almost here.  I’m torn – I love autumn, but this year it’s enough to incite panic in my very soul.  It’s official, the count-down has begun.  I have 122 calendar days left before D-Day.  No more sleeping or eating for me, at least not for three months.  I wonder if any Ph.D. students have ever died trying to graduate… hmmm…

Now that it’s more or less September, the final, last-ditch push has begun.  Oddly enough, I know about how far I can push myself – it’s the computer I’m worried most about.  I’m not sure exactly how much I can abuse it.  Every time I walk by I see smoke seeping under the door and hear gears gnashing their teeth in utter hatred.  It’s an eye-opening experience taking a computer to its working limits.  One day I think I may hear a ‘pop!’, and that will be it.

When I hear the ‘pop!’, that will be my cue to go buy some seedlings and start my tree farm.  I’ll have to move to Washington State first.  I won’t have anything to do for the first few years while the trees are starting out, so I’ll sit around and learn a new trade.  When I took a vocation test in high school, it told me that I should be a mechanic.  I really don’t like getting greasy, though, so that’s out.  Plus, anyone who knows me will tell you that, for an engineer, I’m not the most mechanically inclined woman in the world.  No, I think I would buy some new paints and charcoals, and try to find work as a children’s book illustrator.  Maybe greeting cards.  Maybe freelance photography.  Mmm… I kind of hope that the computer pops.

I’d like to find a day to run away from the gnashing gears.  I’d find a big field with lots of very, very tall grass, and I would sit down so that I couldn’t see over the grass, and no one could see me.  The ground might be damp, but I wouldn’t even mind my seat getting wet.  I’d look at all the little hopping bugs.  I’d lie down on my back and close my eyes, and I’d imagine the clouds floating overhead.  The ground would smell rich and warm and the grass would smell sunshiny-sweet.  I would hide there all day.  

The east coast and the west coast are certainly more beautiful than the Midwest, but the Midwest has something else going for it.  It smells sweet.  Not like the blue mountainous beauty of the West or the greenness of the Northeast, but sweet like earth and growing things.    When I drive down roads through the cornfields of Southern Indiana with the windows open, I think it smells like the colors yellow and lavender would smell.  Those are sweet smells.

Home, Sweet Home.