03 October 2010

To Bed, To Bed Says Duimelot

This week will be hard with homework-- lots and lots and lots of hard homework. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, or maybe I'm being realistic. It would be worst if I'm being optimistic.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished homework for the night, and by homework I mean sleeping instead of doing homework. I took an accidental nap and woke up with my head hanging from my shoulders, a space-heater laptop on my thighs with the screensaver rolling. Beneath the screensaver, my assignment was waiting. It was started and never completed. I woke up and wanted to swear, and I don't particularly believe in swearing, but I wanted to because a nap dried up all the homework time that I had this weekend.

And then, then I smelled the rotten eggs in the kitchen sink disposal. It was 1:15 am. The sticky counters crept up behind the rotten-egg stench, and then the pile of clothes on my bed appeared out of nowhere. I spent the next 20 minutes in an ornery frenzy of cleaning. All of the fuss was fueled by my panic about to-be-finished homework, and even more worrisome, the to-be-started homework. I made him wash the counters with disinfectant. I gagged through washing soggy food off dishes, making the dishes clang and clammor extra loudly to demonstrate my frustration.

"To bed, to bed says Duimelot." That's what my mom would say at a time like this. Duimelot is the little thumb in a traditional Dutch finger poem. She'd send us to bed when we were in an ornery frenzy with the first line of the rhyme, in what felt like an order from Duimelot.

So goodnight ornery frenzy of mine, I'm taking my mother's advice.

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