Her eye inflammation is bothering her this morning, for once involving both eyes instead of just the left one. Eye drops. The small bottle is running low and there’s little hope of getting a new prescription anytime soon. She is not looking forward to relying on regular eye drops, but knows she won’t have much of a choice while at school.
She checks her phone. From Yasha: “Imm so chill right now like the beatles rockband i am the walrus chill.” Received: 1:30AM. The coherency of the text is amazing, considering just how much he smoked. She goes upstairs for her morning bagel, cinnamon raisin this morning. She forgot her plate again, and went back down to get it while the bagel toasted.
At 8:30 she put her laptop to sleep and finished packing her bag for class that day: Biology and English notebooks, planner, wallet, clicker, laptop, external drive. She headed out on her usual route to Biology, bundled against the cold and iPod playing. As usual, she makes it almost 10 minutes before class starts.
The professor continues the lecture about protein synthesis. Eleanor is only paying marginal attention, given that she already learned this in Biology lab several weeks before. She takes notes anyway, knowing that her poor test scores will mean she had to take the cumulative final and needing to make sure she would actually do well on it. She had set her sights on taking Anatomy back in freshman year, but Biology was a prerequisite that needed to be passed with at least a C. At midterm she had an F, due to being still mostly asleep for the first month and a half of the class. She had started taking caffeine pills three weeks ago and was improving, though it was be an uphill battle to make that C happen. She had recently resigned herself to taking math the next semester instead, hoping she wouldn’t have to repeat Biology over the summer ju
A quick quiz and the class is over. She makes her way over to the library to wait out the hour between classes. At the beginning of the year she used that hour to nap, because getting up at 7:30 (though not really) was ungodly. She continued to nap even when she noticed her Biology grades slipping, not wanting to sacrifice being awake for one class for her naps. But in the end it became necessary to change her habits. So she started taking caffeine pills to wake up for Biology and bringing her laptop with her and using the library internet, wasting away the hour.
10:46 rolled around and she packed up and left for English. It was a review day. Wednesday was the Realism/Naturalism test, though the professor had yet to reveal if it was a take-home or in-class essay. She was secretly hoping it would be an in-class exam because she wouldn’t be in class to do it – though that would mean she’d have to take the final. In her two academic classes there were five exams, including the finals, but only four would count. If the first four were As or Bs, the student didn’t have to take the final. Otherwise the lowest of the five would be dropped. She already knew she had to take the cumulative Biology final, considering her first two were 75 and 65 respectively.
The review managed to take up nearly the entire class for once. And at the very end the professor posted the exam question online: take-home exam. Eleanor groaned. She would have to read the stories and write the paper that night, having skipped on the readings when they were actually due. She would have to give her paper to someone in the class to turn in for her since she would be missing the class. Jessica, a girl she tended to sit next to and who was also in her jewelry class, would be the lucky recipient of her finished paper. She walked home.
--
It was 1:30 before she decided it was time to get dressed. Morning classes were boring lectures and not worth the effort of getting dressed, so she had been going to any class before noon in her pajamas. Quickly, she pulled on clothes of dubious cleanliness and loaded her sewing bag for beginning textiles. It was perhaps her favorite class, especially now that they had moved past felting.
The previous class the graduate student teaching the class, Adrian, had given a demo on crocheting – something Eleanor’s mom had taught her to do when she was still in elementary school. A sudden revelation had showed her that a person can crochet onto anything with loops, and with that suggestion she had quickly ventured off into experimental territory. There was no worry about getting the actual coursework done, she was easily the fastest and most experienced crocheter in the class.
After a short slide presentation on tapestry in contemporary art, the students were released to work on the large group project that would progress over the remainder of the semester. Titled “Parasitic Growth” by the professor of the other textiles class, the two groups would be crocheting the banister and gridded railing over the first floor. Building off of another student’s chain stitches, Eleanor double-stitched a long section that would loop over one rail, around the top and attach to itself. When she started there wasn’t enough space to physically flip the yarn to go back and forth, so she improvised: she switched hands and slowly taught herself to crochet left-handed and upside-down. It was hard going and loose at first, and she had to switch hands after each row, but by the time it was long enough to flip she felt a bit better about the whole process – and more than a little proud of her improved skill set.
The long section finished, she began chain stitching loops that attached to each other and the grid and the already complete ‘scarf’. She changed colors at one point, accidentally taking the other end of a ball someone else had started – and that was still attached to where they had stopped. She worked rapidly, making loop upon loop and impressing Adrian, who was slowly crocheting bits of thread. At the end of class she clipped the yarn so her section wouldn’t interfere with someone working on the attached section. Stepping back, the bit she had done vaguely resembled an octopus.
Since she had failed to venture out the day before to the jewelry lab, she knew she had to spend some time that evening working instead. The crit on the containers was Thursday, and she still had a ways to go before she could be satisfied with what she made. Her container was copper and barrel-shaped with rounded ends. It would sit on its side and there was a square opening on the other side. The lid would have a small Sculpey Clay sand dollar fit in a prong setting and plastic pearls would be riveted to the bottom for feet. At that moment the main container was done – it just needed the feet and to be polished to a high sheen. The sand dollar was done, as was the base it would be fit to, but the tension lip that would hold the lid on wasn’t even started.
She set to work filing away the solder that still remained from when Sheal showed her how to do it, then going over the whole outside with 220- and 320-grit sandpaper. The second round of sanding was done with the flexible shaft drill and a bit of sandpaper taped into a dremel bit. It made the most obnoxious noise and coated her fingers in fine copper dust. But it was shinier and smoother, on its way to a high polish finish. She planned to solder one end of three pieces of copper wire to the bottom before finishing the polish, with the pearls being the last thing to go on.
Flattening the curves at the top so the lid would fit more flush, she measured the inside edges of the opening to fit the tension lid. She cut out strips for it and sanded the edges to be smooth and square. Deciding she had made sufficient progress for the night, and planning to go to Angela’s to watch House at 8, she packed her tools up and headed back to the house.
Dinner that night was two chicken patties with ketchup and ranch dressing for dipping, a mango, and a glass of chocolate almond milk. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have milk or soy, that wasn’t why she had the sweet drink. It just tasted good. Her mom had introduced it to her, a byproduct of working at an organic supermarket for almost two years. In the over breaks Eleanor worked there as well; it was her only experience in the work force, and it was a fun place to work. She missed it when she wasn’t there.
--
It’s 9 before she starts reading the stories for her paper. Going upstairs she puts the kettle on, dropping a bag of her favorite mango Ceylon tea into a mug with dancing hippos in tutus. She sits down and props her feet on the table while she waits, beginning to read. The kettle whistles before she gets very far. Must be because there isn’t very much water in there. She goes back to reading as the tea steeps. The timer goes off and she pours two full spoonfuls of honey in.
Coming back downstairs she sees a rather large cricket pressed into a corner, between the wall and a small spider’s web. She tries not to think about all the other bugs in the house and goes back to her bed to read and drink her tea.
[1713]
[3558/50000]
No comments:
Post a Comment