november 1

Eleanor emerged from sleep at what she initially thought was 11:28AM, but was in reality 10:28AM on that first day of November. Daylight Savings Time had ended that night, but it wasn’t until almost an hour later that she remembered.

Blearily checking her phone she found two picture messages from her best friend Yasha. He was up in Boston for his cousin’s 21^st birthday and was keeping Eleanor informed of his state of drunkenness. The first was him lying on a sofa with a kid’s plastic fireman’s hat haphazardly skewed on his head. Caption: “i b a fireman.” Received: 1:07AM. The second was two shot glasses filled with what was presumed to be very good cognac on a counter. Caption: “So yea im still good like for reals when i start typing funny then im bad btw that was number 6.” Received: 1:47AM.

Curling up once more in bed, Eleanor tried to remember her dreams. It had been a while since she could actually remember her dreams. She recalled something about dragons coming from the ocean and being extremely vicious until their tamers were found. And the proper ways to brush one’s teeth. And locating a new apartment/townhouse for the next school year and it had a charcoal grill. And being sought after by a jerk-prince who didn’t understand the word “NO!” and would probably not mind raping her at all. But that might not have been the correct order of things.

She found her glasses on the bedside table and made her way upstairs for some breakfast. She pulled out a frozen bagel and thawed it, then toasted it. When the toaster – a white Hello Kitty one, courtesy of her roommate Cesley – popped, she remembered she left her bagel plate in her room. Rather than get a new plate dirty, Eleanor preferred to reuse the same plate over and over until it was noticeably dirty. She made her way back downstairs and brought her plate back up. She buttered one side of the bagel and put cream cheese on the other half. She went back downstairs to eat.

Surfing Facebook reminded her of Daylight Savings Time. She noticed her laptop and phone had already reset themselves, but her watch needed setting. But for the life of her she can’t figure out how to do it. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to remember it’s one hour fast. She set her two other clocks.

--

Realizing it was 12:30 and she had yet to really start the day, she put her laptop to sleep and gathered her things to take a shower. She shared the front bathroom with Cesley, letting Liz have the back one to herself. Their bathroom had an old free-standing tub and a door that didn’t really latch – they had a string tied to the knob and a nail in the frame.

--

She took her usual route to campus: down Clay, up Goshen, down Broad. She took her time, avoiding the puddles in the brick sidewalks because she decided to forego her rain boots in favor of her favorite Chucks. She liked to think she occasionally left a slightly pink footstep from the leftover red paint from the Zombie Walk two weeks before.

The bookstore was having its floors waxed, so everyone was shuffled over to the one carpeted side of the large space. Eleanor browsed a bit, looking for an opportunity to sneak over to the other side where the Moleskine display was. She needed a new journal and for some reason the bookstore had a larger selection of them than the art store two streets farther back did. She also picked up a copy of all five Hitchhiker’s Guide books in one and a small Fahrenheit 451. She had been meaning to read them for several years now, and this month seemed as good a time as any.

Glancing over the humorous book display someone called her name. Turning, she saw Anna and her friend who was visiting for the weekend. They traded Halloween stories: they jumped between friends’ parties, while she took a canal ride and failed to actually get into any of the other places she meant to go to. They looked through the books on display, reading aloud particularly interesting or ridiculous selections – Stuff White People Like, How To Take Over Teh World, Bent Objects.

She gets a text from Yasha.
Y: (picture looking inside a basket filled with candy) Day 2
E: No fair i didnt even go trickortreating…
Y: nor did i … little cousin love
E: Still… Tho im gonna hit th leftover candy sales today

But Eleanor had another errand to run, so she left them to pay for her books and hit the ATM before walking to the grocery store. It was drizzling, enough to notice and fleck her glasses with rain but not enough to make her get out her umbrella. It was cool, and she thought about how it finally felt like fall had come, not that half-assed bipolar weather of the last two weeks, but real fall.

She headed straight for the after-Halloween candy sale, having not had a chance to trick-or-treat the night before. She picked out a bag of assorted Hershey’s for Cesley, another chocolate assortment, and a bag of candy corn for herself. She went through the rest of the store backwards, hitting the freezer first and her favorite organic teas last. She filled her two reusable bags and headed out, six blocks back down Clay to the house. Her shoulders started to hurt from the bags, reminding her of the long trek from the library to the house two weeks before hauling those same two bags filled with free books.

As she was putting her groceries away Liz came down with dirty dishes from her recent lunch. They traded Halloween tales, lamenting the suckyness of their respective nights. Liz opened one of the bags of candy and Cesley came downstairs. Eleanor finished putting her groceries away and started making her own lunch. The other two went back upstairs, talking about the couch Cesley had found and whether or not the seller still had it available since the Craig’s List ad had been pulled.

Eleanor put the kettle on to start heating water for tea while she ate her sandwich. She took the trash out while the tea steeped. She carried it down to her room to drink while checking her email. But the plain English breakfast tea had a bitter aftertaste, even after honey, and she gave up. In the back of her head she kept reminding herself that she really should be going to the jewelry lab to work on her container project, but was kept at home waiting for her roommates to get back in case they needed help with a sofa.

She soon got a call from Cesley, asking her to come out back to help haul a loveseat inside. It was a sleeper loveseat, which the other two didn’t realize when they went to investigate. The three of them hauled it out and to the bottom of the back steps but the handrail made them too narrow and even tilting it didn’t help. So they took it back to Liz’s van and drove it around to the front where the steps were wider. They managed to get it up and into the house.

While Liz reparked in the back, Cesley and Eleanor maneuvered the little sofa in the narrow hall and into the living room. When Liz got back inside they were trying to get it over the edge of the carpet to push it to the far side of the room, facing the door they got it in through. Flipping it onto its back they screwed the feet in. They tested the pull-out part, making sure it functioned properly. Now Yasha will have someplace to sleep when he visits.

--

Later that evening, Eleanor texts Nicole about seeing Where the Wild Things Are.

E: Wild things @ 7?
N: Fucking yes. You gawt Cher’ money?
E: That i do
E: Should i meet u by th stopsign around 630?
N: Yes.
E: Cool cya then

They spent the next two hours reliving childhood and reveling in the freedom it brought.

"I can see why people would think this isn’t a kid’s movie."

"But it was so good!"

"It’s one of those universal movies."

"They didn’t dumb anything down for kids."

"Even parents could enjoy it."

--

A little after 8 she gets a picture from Yasha. It’s a Coors Light can. “Yea couldnt help it.”

--

Over the weekend Angela finally got a new phone to replace her old Razr, which had been on the fritz for several months. She wanted people to text her just so she could use it.

E: This is me txting u on ur new phone. R u back yet btw?
A: Yay now i get to use my phone! And yes i have been back since 8 actually
E: Well then. U missed nicole’s leprosy. & we hav a loveseat!
A: Yay for the loveseat. So was that pic on fb real? Or was that her costume?
E: It was her costume: latex on toilet paper & extremely convincing.
A: Sweet i wanna c better pictures. And for that matter I wanna c pics of all of u
E: I wll get around to putting my pix up at some point…
A: Good. My friend was dean for Halloween nd her friend was sam. I wish i had been there!
E: Nice! Surf mlia, theres lots of epic there
A: Yes!. More distractions!
A: Omg u werent kidding about the amount of awesome on mlia

--

Sometime after 10 that night Eleanor got a call from Yasha. Except it was his cousin Maria calling because Yasha was learning how to properly smoke pot and wanted to call someone to share in his experience. Laughing at the antics from over the speakerphone, she was jealous. The two of them had been planning to try it together, and she felt a little betrayed that he would do it without her, knowing logically that she was being unreasonably possessive of him again. She tended to get jealous of him doing exciting things without her because of how much of a shut in she became when he wasn’t around.

But at least he thought to call me. In a way she was being included without actually being involved. She knew her first time would be mediocre at best, having never smoked anything and likely prone to coughing fits and general failure – though if her first drinking experience was anything to go by, maybe she’d be a natural. Those shots had certainly been easy enough. Although, that may have been because she watched as Liz showed Ces the proper way to do it.

Half an hour later he called again, proclaiming that she had to try this stuff – though not this stuff because it was so strong and she was a small newbie and would likely be totally flipping out way too soon.

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