the grim month

in my experience, august never lives up to july. august is a slow, sweaty, uninterrupted march out of summer and back to the real world, until now signified by skool. the transition always unnerved me a little because i didn't appreciate not knowing what would happen in tenth grade, or eleventh, or my senior year. but at least i had the foreshadowing of a brother one year older.

now this is a much bigger august. i keep looking around for the foreshadowing, since adam isn't there to provide it for me, and read the details like tarot cards: a bird! maybe i'll have a ... cardinal year! or, bad food in the cafeteria yet again! maybe this year will be like a cheese quesadilla that's burnt around the edges and mysteriously void of cheese!

(meals this ridiculous make me question being a vegetarian. twice a day, i'm shooting myself in the foot, limiting my options to three instead of, perhaps, six -- and for what? cuz i think it's gross or wrong to kill something and eat its carcas? is that even how you spell carcas? people don't even read me a vegetarian, so i get the limited food options without the silent admiration of the weaker folk. once, when i revealed my dietary preferences to someone, she furrowed at me and said, "but you're so cynical!")

since things are winding down here at camp cty, i have more time to angst these things, to worry, for example, about what kind of body image issues new york is going to instill in me if being surrounded by thirteen year olds is enough to make me feel doughy and short. what will i wear to work in new york? will i have to buy shoes? makeup? is my unairbrushed look going to be cute and collegiate or simply painfully out of it? is sex and the city any indication of what's expected of me?

what the fuck. if jamie can handle a year of the unknown in ethiopia, surely i can handle middle manhattan. i'll just be sure to stay away from the financial centers.