Cold Turkey and Balancing Eggs

Five weeks left of freshman year? Impossible.

Spring break back in D.C. was fantastic, except for the jerk at the DMV who made my last day home torture by denying me my permit. A note to all y'alls out there: sometimes (often, like, all the time) bureaucracy sucks. You'll run around all over the city to a stuffy office to get a new copy of your birth certificate, which eats up two hours of a perfectly good day. Then you'll wait in line at the DMV until you go and take a super-cute picture for your permit, and you pass the test, and you declare yourself an organ donor, and then the doofus at the counter realizes that because you're 18, your mom can't pledge your residency. However, your husband can!

Oh, my husband? Excellent! He's just sitting in the car reading Wired. Let me go get him! Boy, I'm glad I got married so I have someone to sign off as proof of my Maryland residency!

Wait. Oh, that's right. I'm eighteen. The only thing I'm really married to is my commitment to chapstick and my iPod.

So no. I still can't drive. On the plus side, I can balance an egg on its pointy side. That talent earned me $20 this past week. But I haven't been paid yet. Don't let me forget! Jeremy owes me money for defeating gravity.

Work is amazing, speaking of defeating gravity --- despite having to wake up ungodly early and hightail it down to the edge of Manhattan, I haven't wilted --- and I'm getting a lot of nice amateur art and fantastic stories out of it. I look like one boy's ex-girlfriend, he said, with the same "ghetto booty." They ask if I've ever tried to assassinate George W. Bush, or if I miss my mom. Which I haven't, and I do.

And it's true, sometimes I do pilfer art out of the recycling bins there. One girl drew a huge crayon-and-marker picture full of hearts and easter eggs, and scrawled across the top "LOVE IS TUFF, BUT ITS WORTH IT." I guess seventh-graders really do know more about love than is expected. We certainly thought we did. Middle school was a terror at times, but those late-night romance-fests with the aid of Moulin Rouge certainly taught us a lot.

Tuff love and all, I think we're going to be okay.