Missing the womb

Back in my undergraduate days at Seattle U's Honors College, Becca and I knew a neurotic friend who had difficulty confronting its life-draining demands. He unsuccessfully tried managing his problem with copious quantities of pot, beat poetry, vodka and spray paint (mostly of an atomic bomb exploding next to a giant phallus on his dorm room walls...pity the summer cleaning crew...). Then, he discovered the one trick that worked: a return to the womb.

The womb, in this case, consisted of one's dorm room bed: insert self deep within its covers, pull blankets over head, and think calm, blank thoughts while the afternoon ticks away slowly.

We laughed about it at first, but soon both of us were unable to resist its alluring, white-noise call...and the Honors Womb became a fixture in many a dorm. What this says about the mental state of honors students, I prefer not to ask.

Today, I find myself longing to return to the womb again. My tortoise is gone, my best friend is moving to Kansas, and I've managed to accomplish just shy of nothing in my summer grad school prep. Seriously, this is ridiculous. I've never been so stressed out. I went to the dentist a week ago to find out why I had a new gap in between my molars. He looked up from the chair and asked, "Have you been under a lot of stress lately? You've managed to clench your jaws hard enough to work your teeth out of alignment."

Just remember that when you see me three or four years from now, wandering the streets with my second set of braces ('cause I'm sure not getting them in England!). I'm the girl who managed to clench my teeth into a whole new position. Somehow, I find this entirely amusing, which is probably appropriate for a frantic grad student.

Seriously, the womb sounds pretty good right now. Anybody have a spare mattress?