Things I've been doing.

Every night, I return home to my freezing bedroom. It's the only part of the house that's like a freezer, because it's directly under the swamp cooler, which has to remain at full blast to keep the rest of the house cool and damp and breezy. I have a yellow patchwork quilt that I crawl under, and my desk lamp is on the floor next to my bed because the light is less harsh coming from below than from eye level.

Every night, I fill my humidifier in the tub, holding it under the faucet with one wobbly hand. I put warmer water in it than I am supposed to. I return it to my room, to its little plastic stand, I plug it in, and I close my door to the swamp cooler. I push my window two inches open and close the blinds. Lately, I've been unable to sleep as soon as the first sliver of sun creeps down the carpet into my room and pokes me in the forehead. To sleep long enough these days I have to trick my mind into thinking it's the middle of the misty, humidifier-filled night.
Sometimes I wear socks.
My throat has as of late seemed to grow one large, bean-shaped tickly spot on the right inside of it, about halfway down. It hurts. I had laryngitis last weekend which I initially thought was just a smoke-induced raspy Emma Stone voice that would make everyone be interested in listening to me talk longer. I learned my lesson by nine o'clock last Saturday evening, sitting at the gala, when the glands in my neck had swollen to chameleon proportions and it felt like a large damp tennis ball was lodged in between them. By most nights at nine o'clock I am coughing a lot, but during the day, I'm fine.

Every day but the last three of the week, I attend my last two undergraduate classes--one in which we discuss food and history, and smell and rub and taste things passed around, and one in which I am ecstatic to find that I can understand half of what my teacher is signing, even though I can probably only sign about twenty-five percent capacity. Last week in the food class we tasted a medieval recipe that was presented to help us understand the scope of spice and how much more important it used to be. The pepper and clove burned my eyes, and my nose, and my stinging throat, and I was delighted.

Every day I have frantically been trying to soak up as much of my coworkers as possible, been trying to play as much Super Smash and eat as many Cool Ranch Doritos as I can with them, because I lose my job with them as soon as I graduate. I love them with every tiny particle of my being. I imagine that it's similar to what parents feel when all of a sudden they have grownup children. I had no idea and every idea that I had so little time left with these people.

I arrived at my intramural softball game last week, ready to roll myself in as much mud as possible, only to find that only three of us had shown up. The rain had kept everyone else inside, sure that the game would be cancelled. It was heavy enough to soak me on the twelve-step run from my house to my car. But for some reason, I drove through the pounding downpour, just in case. And it cleared up as soon as I got there. I wore my cleats.

Every day, I have been at home, making a lot of those single-serving desserts you find on Pinterest. My favorites? Peanut butter mug cake and single-serving chocolate chip cookie. The first with a tall glass of milk, the second with vanilla ice cream. Both best before eleven AM.
I graduate in 31 days.