Procrastination Post

I have never not wanted to do something as much as I do not want to do this paper. Seriously, it's literally causing me pain. I have 893 words written so far. I need 2000 in all. How the hell am I supposed to write 2000 words on eggplant?!?

Danielle is due to arrive in 59 minutes. I keep just wanting her to be here. I'm nervous and have been all week but I DON'T KNOW WHY!! What reason do I have to be nervous?? I totally don't! I just am for some reason. I'm definitely excited. I've been waiting for her to come to Florence pretty much since this trip started. It's going to be nice to show her around and take her to my favourite place in the city (Piazzale Mechelangelo) and have a picnic and take awesome pictures. I'm not afraid of my friends not liking her or anything like that. People can't help but like Danielle.

If anything I'm afraid they'll like her more than me and want to trade me in! I jest.

Help me if you can I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being around

Help me get my feet back on the ground

Won't you PLEEEAASE please help me?

31 minutes now. Haven't gotten any more writing done. This is going to suck. I guess I'll just stay up and do it tonight. I definitely can't focus and do it now. This paper is going to have hella big margins, that's for sure.

I guess I should address what a major-epic-fail I am at BEDAing or whatever the long acronym was that I came up with. I honestly couldn't come up with things to write. That's not entirely true. I could have posted these angsty posts but I didn't really want to put anyone through that. Also, I didn't even think anyone was reading them so it seemed kind of pointless to blog just to get something out if it was for nothing. Blogging isn't really therapeutic for me like it is for Hayley. It is sometimes. Like right now it's keeping my mind off of the fact that Danielle's train is supposed to arrive in 26 minutes. Usually though I'll just blog if I feel like it or like I want to type something. I read Will Grayson Will Grayson over the weekend and David Levithan's version of Will Grayson put me in a really angsty mood so I have a pretty long post that isn't exactly happy. Basically I was in kind of a mellow/sad mood and I blogged about it. I guess that's another example of blogging being therapeutic. I knew I wasn't going to post it so that helped. It's just a saved draft and that's probably (unless I'm feeling particularly self-destructive) how it will remain.

I can feel my temple throbbing. Is that normal? It's the right side of my head at my hairline and I can feel it moving. Weird. I don't know why I just wrote that. I'm basically just typing for the sake of typing now. 19 minutes.

So, this coming weekend I will be traveling to Barcelona, volcanic ash permitting. Ryan Air hasn't cancelled our flight yet so that's good. I'm pretty excited to go. I'm not however excited to fly. Flying sucks. Always. I know the physics of it but it doesn't help. It's stupid. Why I agree to get into something that huge and heavy and then let it carry me across oceans thousands of feet in the air I don't know. I guess I'm just crazy. At least I'll get a chance to show Danielle the frescos of Ryan Air. That will give us a few moments of entertainment before the freaking out starts at least. Maybe she'll tell me a story while we're taking off or something. That will help.

15 minutes. We're having tacos tonight. Michelle, Alex, The other Lauren, Danielle and I. It was originally just going to be Danielle and I because Danielle told me that she misses taco bell. I'm glad the others are joining in though. We'll have fun. Then for dessert we're makin Nannertots!! Wahoo!! This shit is bananas! Oh yeah!! What the heck am I nervous for?! This is going to be awesome!

Alora... I'm gonna go to the train station now. 12 minutes, you know. I hope her train is on time. My train to Paris was a whole hour late! Efficiency isn't really Italy's forte (more on that later). If you've made it this far then thank you for reading my therapeutic-slash-completely-pointless-blog-post-to-pass-the-time. I'm sure I'll have stories to tell you soon.

Gelato count: 16

: )

Late Night Kebab Runs

I just realised how much I am going to freaking miss being here after this semester is over. I kind of had a brief stint of home-sickness in the middle of class today but then I just wrote a postcard to my friend Kelsey and I was mostly better. Now I'm realising how much it's going to suck to be back home. I'm sitting on the foot of Alex's bed in their apartment and we are all three on our computers. 12 minutes ago I don't even know what we were talking about. Kim was sitting on Michelle's bed and we were having some sort of conversation. I was looking up recipes on Jamie Oliver's website because I do weird things like that sometimes (seriously though, his website is awesome. You should check it out sometime). It was then that I realised that I hadn't really had much to eat today. I voiced that looking at his website wasn't helping the hunger factor and Alex said that she wished the diner down the street was open so that we could get burgers and I looked at her and said, "the kebab place is still open for another 9 minutes". She looked at me with that wide eyed excited look that she has sometimes, shut her laptop and said, "let's get one!". We then proceeded to stuff money in our pockets, throw the nearest pair of shoes on and run out the door and into the stairwell of our apartment building (making it a literal kebab run). Kim was a bit inebriated from having drank almost an entire bottle of wine all by herself so that was entertaining.

We saw the cute kebab man and he smiled when he saw us and gave the kebabs to us for 1 euro off since he was almost out of ingredients and since it was the end of the night. Kim said something about missing us and that made me realise how much I am going to miss these people. Anna Lee, Kristen, Michelle, Alex, and Kim. We've all shared in this experience and it's going to suck being apart. We've already started making plans to roadtrip the country together to see each other. The only problem is that I don't really know if it's going to happen. It's the same with my high school friends. You always say you are going to keep in touch and see each other over the breaks and visit each other at school and it just doesn't happen. Sometimes you can tell if it's just words. It's easy to just throw the comment away when you know that. But sometimes it's someone you really care about and they don't make an effort at all. That's when it sucks. To realise that you still fully intend on keeping in touch and make the effort only to not have the effort returned. I hope it happens. These people are seriously awesome. We are all going to feel the same thing when we get back home too. Going to miss each other like crazy and going to hate the feeling of no one really caring about our trip and experiences when we get back.

I'm starting to sound like an angsty high schooler, I know. I don't mean to. I just realised though that it's sort of like we are in high school. The classes aren't that hard. We're all together pretty much all the time just like high school. Personally the transition from high school to college sucked and I was kind of depressed for a while. I loved my high school friends and I didn't have that many friends in college. Pretty much the only person I knew was Sarah. Thank god for her. I don't know what I would have done to be honest. It was really difficult going from the ease of having your friends around you all day every day to having them spread out around the state and sometimes thrown in other states. It sucked not seeing them every day like I used to. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it putting myself through these things just to have them end. I know it is. This is an awesome, once in a lifetime opportunity. I just wish it could keep going. I have a month and a week left. That's it. I wish I could tote these people around with me every where I go but I can't. I'm unfortunately going to have to leave them behind. Let them move on with their lives like I'll have to move on with my life.

I'm kind of bad at moving on. Like the London trip that I haven't really posted about yet. The last full day in London with Danielle was kind of brought down by my own sadness that it was the last day I got to spend in my favourite place in the world with my favourite person in the world. She told me not to think about it but it didn't really work. I was still sad that I had to leave though and that the experience had to end. I just wish that I could press pause and that I could keep living in the moment. No pause button though, unfortunately. I have to keep getting older and moments have to keep ending until I eventually end. Wow that was depressing. And sadly true.

I can't really think of anything funny to add to this. I'm really sorry about that. This whole post is just going to have to be sad and dead depressing. You don't have to comment or even read it if you don't want. Don't really blame you.

OK, here's something funny. Kim is singing slash dancing to this song right here. Too much drank for Kim. Good times.

B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L

So it has recently come to my attention how stupid it is for me to not be writing in this thing everyday. Honestly, why did I start a blog? Why did I start a blog with this title/username if I wasn't going to actually write about the wanderings of an anglophile. I want to change this. Which is why I am hereby starting B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L. or Blog every day in April + The First Week of May To Make Up For Lateness. It would just be regular BEDA if I hadn't forgotten about this project thing. Honestly April really took me by surprise this year. I was so surprised in fact that I went to Grom (best Gelato place EVER!!) and asked for the flavour of the month which was a delicious green tea with bits of white chocolate in it and was surprised/horrified to realise that it was the first of April and that the flavour of the month had changed to some kind of fragola (strawberry) milkshake! Not a very funny April Fools joke at all. Also I spent the first weekend of April in Paris with Danielle for Easter and was away from a computer. Enough with the excuses...

So I last left you off about a month ago before leaving for London. Wow. That is just unacceptable. Well, I already have a blog post about London in the works and it should come up after this one. In the interest of keeping this blog in sequential order I will not talk about Spring Break or Paris in this particular post. Instead I will talk about... get ready... Florence (!) since that is where I am living and I have yet to really do that. Pretty ridiculous. I am really sorry about what I put you, my lovely readers, through sometimes. You have probably been contemplating un-following me for the past month and a half because the only reason you started following me in the first place was to hear me talk about cool places. And I haven't even done that!! I'm so sorry!! I love you all and I will try and make it up to you!

OK, here I go...

So far I've told you about my classes, my crazy roommates and friends, nannertots... and... sadly that's it. It is tourist season in Florence right now. I guess that means that everyone is on spring break at home and abroad so they are all coming here. It is also really beautiful outside. It is sunny and getting warmer while still maintaining a colder temperature in the shadow of the Duomo. I am sitting inside at the kitchen table of our apartment. If I look to my left I can see the buildings and apartments surrounding me. Down below is some sort of courtyard. I can see the roofs of the buildings. They are the red ceramic tile sort. The tiles sort of layed haphazardly on top and next to each other. Weeds are starting to sprout between some of them. The building across has chips in the cream painted concrete and you can see the red brick show through. The green shutters swing open and shut with the wind. The Terrace across the courtyard is full of flowers which are just now starting to bloom a brilliant fuchsia and canary yellow. The top of the Mercato Centrale is visible and at around 19:00 I can hear the venders outside the market pack up there leather jackets and scarves and other souvenirs and pull their carts down the streets toward home for the day. For now it's quite silent. A sparrow is sitting on my window sill and twittering but other than that I can hear an occasional distant Italian voice apart from the sound of my own typing. Oranges are going out of season. Now it's strawberries and pears. Tonight for dinner I will have a fruit salad consisting of apples, oranges, strawberries, and bananas drizzled with a small bit of sugar to make the fruit sweat and the juices mix together. Fruit salads are lovely. They never really get old for me. I can always enjoy them.

Every day on my way to class I pass this clothes shoppe on the corner of my street. In the window are two manikins. One is without hair and is always, and has been since I've been here, dressed in some sort of Oriental purple dress. The other's outfit changes quite frequently. Always the same pair of plaid black and gray straight legged, high-water trousers and black wig. Sometimes she is sporting a black plaid coat with some read in it and other times its this very conspicuous red plaid coat of exactly the same style. It's basically the same coat but with different colour focus. The one is mainly black and the other is mainly red. As I said, I walk past this every day and every day the coat is different. Now I'm not silly enough to imagine that it is the manikin that can't make up her mind. Instead I like to believe that there's some sort of power struggle between two different shop assistants. Both of them fancying themselves world class status when it comes to clothing shop displays. I imagine them silently feuding by changing the coats. It's been the red one for a while however. Either the black coat enthusiast has been recognised for her full potential and offered to join a special school or even league for fancy clothing shop window displays or her red coat loving fiend of a colleague has hidden her beloved black coat in the depths of the shop basement so that the red coat will never again be usurped from it's rightful place in the display. I return to the drama of the clothing shoppe display window tomorrow to find out what has happened during the night or early morning of the shop's opening. Until then I can only wonder. I can also finish the blog post about London. Yes! I think I will do that!

Until next time, Arrivederci!!

Gelato count: 13

Nannertot escapades: 8

PS. Sorry this was so weird. I have a cold and am kind of drowsy so my musings are a bit weirder than usual. You can tell me how crazy I am. I won't be offended. : )