Yep, I said it. I feel old. Today is the last day of my last summer vacation ever, and I’m not sure it even counts because I have a meeting later for which I’ll have to at least shower and leave the house. Iowa City is once again overrun with just bodies: bodies in the streets, bodies in droves pouring out of the liquor stores, tomorrow bodies getting lost, meeting for Mesa, cramming the Cambuses. I refuse to believe I’m one of these bodies, that I’m some how removed from the masses and am better than their mundane summer stories and 21-ordinance griping. I have a very “been there, done that” attitude, and I’m secretly kinda let down that I’m old enough to buy my own beer. We’re now entering the Get a job, get a job, get a job phase– no, thanks. If I’m told one more time that the job market has us all fucked from the get-go, I will scream and secure my sleeping bag space under the Benton Street bridge. I hadn’t given class starting tomorrow even a minutia of a thought until I had an inbox full of emails from professors with attached syllabuses. There’s so much reading. One of my professor is taking attendance. I have to give a speech on my first day of class tomorrow. Apparently I’m quite enjoying the bold HTML function today. Quite frankly, I feel completely overwhelmed. Three months of carefree summer loving has been beaten to a bloody pulp by course packs, a schedule already full of appointments, and general chest-gripping panic attack-inducing anxiety. So basically I’ve gone from feeling old (yes, I wrote the first part of this post this morning, pre-wheretheeffdidsummergo breakdown) to feeling incapable and infantile and stressed. I promise that was my last bolded word for today.

My suitcases are full, the Post-It lists on my wall are mostly checked off, the Hawkeyes are on TV in six hours.  I’ve been much calmer today than anticipated, kind of like the night before studying for a final when you just can’t care anymore about what grade you’re going to get.  I did have one mild to moderate breakdown (not for any particular reason, though being in a cemetery may not have helped) in which I found myself in a vehicle with no tissues and resorted to using my new scarf to wipe the streaming snot from my face.  But other than that, pretty freakin’ excited.  The German foreign exchange student my brother went to prom with lives in the town I’ll be studying in and although (I’m fairly certain) we never met, she’s excited for me to come and show me around and take me out on the town.

Internship application 3/3  was sent today, the one I’m most excited about, the one I’d PEE.MY.PANTS. if I got.  Maybe I’ll get ambitious and apply for more while abroad (HA).  Apparently with my spending habits, I need to find more than 10-15 hours at a sandwich place a week  to supply some cashflow.  I’m predicting around mid-March or April I’ll start freaking about my nebulous summer plans, don’t worry– I’ve accepted my self-diagnosis of CRIPPLING NEUROSIS.  I think when my mom and I went to the mall last week and I wouldn’t go up and ask the hair salon lady if I could get an appointment she realized that her daughter is a social FREAK (perhaps a new spin on the blog could be WhatMentalIllnessIsBrittneyOnTheCuspOfToday.com)

NPH keeps telling me to calm the truck down (<–see?  2010 resolution of swearing less), that “everyone loves Americans” (blatant lie) and “you’ll make friends so fast you’ll freak” (blatant Jimmy John’s rip-off.)  I’m no longer talking to him however because currently he and three other of my good friends are drunk in Miami for the Orange Bowl.  When he asked if I was just “chilling all day” and I said AREYOUHIGH today might be one of the most critically busy days of my life he responded “Oh yeah.  Well I just have drinking and football.”  I’m just SO happy for you.

My layover tomorrow in Chicago is four hours long.  I will not have a cell phone, thus it’s really a crapshoot as to whether I’ll have my sanity.  My trusty shiny new blue laptop will be with my however so I will be blogging, Facebooking, Twittering up a storm– how excited are YOU?!