The Pink Shoe Diaries

today was a day of blazing self awareness:

1) i am amazingly and undeservedly self-assured. in one of my classes, i had an epiphany regarding the book we are dissecting (Richard Russo's Empire Falls). i was so sure that not only was i right, but everyone would be relieved that i had solved the great mystery of the meaning of this novel, and of life in general, and i could not wait to blow everyone's mind. i almost prefaced my statements with "this will make many of you understand this book alot better". i raise my hand, and proudly state my thesis with various textual references and a whole lot of assuredness.

professor stares at me blankly. blinks. someone in the back row sighs.

i look around nervously and think "perhaps they misunderstood my brilliant point, i will restate" which i did. this time i am met with a raised eyebrow and a "hmm". i then, convinced that my brilliance needs to be broken down into the simplest components to be conceieved of by these philistines, proceed to reiterate once more my original point and only then do i realize the truth. i choose to believe that i am over their heads but in reality, i am simply dead-ass wrong.

2) i am a terrible gossip!! (this should shock no one). the group of girls i am involved with in my women-as-writers group is unabashedly catty and mean. we sit along the left hand row of seats and spend all of class time giggling behind our hands and writing awful things on each other's notebooks about what other people are saying, and rolling our eyes. i hated these girls during the first week of class, but since i am neither a militant feminist, nor an angry lesbian, my peer groups in this particular class are limited. so catty girls on the side it is!

3) i am non-priority oriented: tonight, instead of doing the copious amounts of homework i have due tomorrow, i watched Amelie. twice. then i downloaded the soundtrack and listened to it while writing a story about a little girl trying to save doomed jellyfish on a beach in Maine.

despite all this self-reckoning, today was a remarkably good day. i got an A on my european political development midterm and a new carpet for my room. the midterm did not take me long but picking out the rug, on the other hand, took forever. i must have stood between my final two choices for twenty minutes, looking back and forth between them, before deciding which one i liked best. it's beautiful though, i watch TV while sitting on it even though it means having to crick my head at a weird angle.