2 observations.

1. My decision to start getting my jeans professionally altered has changed my life. This is not an exaggeration. I did it for the first time last fall, and I now I don't know how I ever lived before such things. I am a fairly short person at 5 feet 4. But the kicker is my incredibly, comically short legs. I am a Corgi in human form, just short, squat little stumps that support the rest of my body. If I could change one thing about myself it would be my legs. Oh what I would give to have someone, once, describe my long, luxurious limbs. This will never happen unless they invent some kind of non-invasive leg altering procedure, like the Botox of leg lengthening. I'm guessing that won't happen in my lifetime. And that's okay. But one of the things my comically short legs have necessitated is that I get my pants altered.

I tried to deny this for most of my life. Those pants that went a good 5 inches past the bottom of my feet were fine! I would just only wear them with heels, 7 inch heels. I don't know how many pants I bought contingent on me a) owning and b) being able to walk in sky high stilettos. This was not smart. But I was young and foolish. When the whole Gap cargo pants thing was in, it was almost like I was following a trend-the casual: care-free, ill-fitting trend that I made up in my own imagination.

I had jeans after jeans that were too long but which I never got altered. I wore them, because I was excited about my cool new Abercrombie jeans, which would never quite lose the scent of over-powering cologne and bitchiness. Who had time for such things as hemming? I needed to show those babies off at the MALL. I couldn't waste time getting my pants to actually fit me when there were Wet Seal trips to be made!

So as a result for years, I wore jeans that, at their bottom cuff, looked as though I had fed them through a paper shredder, then run over them with my car, then let them be tramped by a herd of wildebeests. I used to have to take scissors to my jeans every few weeks to cut off particularly long strands that had come apart. But still, I wore them. Oh for so long did I wear them.

But then on a crazy whim I took a pair of jeans to be altered. And when I picked them up, they were, well they were beautiful. It was like they had been made for me, because in a way they had. My tailor is sort of my hero now. She just nails it. No matter how intricate or distinct the seam is on the end of a pair of jeans, she exactly replicates it. It's like she's magic and has just figured out a way to shorten pants without ever having to cut into them. Maybe she is. Maybe I have found myself a magic tailor. That would be nice.

2) I am dying. Okay, fine that's a slight exaggeration. But that cold I talked about earlier. Well it's actually a nasty virus that is a distant cousin of the flu. And like the flu, this virus NEVER GOES AWAY. I remember when I got swine flu thinking that I would be sick forever. This was just my new state of being and I better get used to feeling like death all the time. And of course one day I felt better and suddenly the heavens opened up and angels sang and puppies danced and rainbows sprouted out of bags of skittles (isn't that how it goes?). Because normal, like the kind of normal I feel almost every day of my life and which I take for granted, feels like super-human strength after you've been sick for long enough.

And please let that day come soon. This semester is almost over. I was merrily on my way, could see the light at the end of the tunnel, felt so confident that the rest would be a breeze. And then that light was obscured by a giant train which ran over me multiple times. Now I am crawling my way toward the end. I am having to focus extremely hard on only thinking of one task at a time. Because if I let myself begin to think about the avalanche of work in front of me over the next 9 days, I will weep. I will weep and then I will start on yet another coughing fit that makes all of the veins in my hand bulge out so that I look like I'm 100.

So for tonight I'm not thinking of the 6 exams, 2 projects, one paper, and magazine section I have to somehow complete in a little more than a week.

I am simply crawling forward, repeating the mantra, "May 6th it will all be over", again and again like a crazy person.

But at least I have jeans that fit!