Right about the time I wrote the last post on here, my last semester of grad school suddenly turned from spending weekends gallivanting around downtown (and spending weekdays planning said gallivanting) to a mad, mad blur of headline writing, PhotoShop fumbling, InDesign layouts, screaming at iWeb, stalking industry contacts, and a few token panic episodes. I had one foot in Austin and school and the other foot in Dallas and job networking. And straddling 180 miles of Texas country, it turns out, turns me into an even bigger ditz than the one I was that time I stood in front of the door to the stairwell, wondering why in the hell I couldn’t find the elevator down button.
Which means that I’ve spent the last two months on an extended, two-city ditz-crime spree. There was the day, for example, that I decided to stop by Einstein Bagels to pick up some cream cheese. It wasn’t the shop that I usually go to, but they’re all about the same, right? So you can imagine my shock to find that there were no cream cheese coolers in this one.
But I’d come to Einstein’s to get some cream cheese and I WAS GOING TO GET SOME CREAM CHEESE. So I went up to the counter to get it there.
Him: How can I help you?
Me: (brightly, of course) Hi, I’m just looking for the cream cheese.
Pause as man looks at me for a long time. So long that I start wondering if I have spinach AND lipstick on my front teeth.
Him: (totally straight-faced) We don’t have cream cheese.
The voice inside of my head: AN EINSTEIN’S BAGELS? WITHOUT CREAM CHEESE? Where do I call to get THIS taken care of? This is like a butterfly without wings, a car without wheels, a man without his-
Him: Now, there’s a bagel place next door. They probably have cream cheese.
(Which is when the God-given ability to evaluate and deduce that got me into graduate school finally kicked in. I looked at the food they were serving. Green beans? I looked at the menu. Rotisserie Chicken? I looked at the guy’s uniform. Boston Mar-)
I gasp and put both hands over my mouth.
Me: (like a genius) I walked into Boston Market!
And then the entire restaurant got completely silent and the diners watched in wonder while the universe pushed the slow-motion button and I skulked right out of Boston Market to go next door.
And that, y’all, was just one of the many, many events that could’ve ended with the graduate school police handcuffing me, throwing me into a big yellow school bus and putting me on trial for STILL TRYING TO ACT LIKE SHE BELONGS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL.
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