So, I originally started an entry that was more in line with the standard kind of rambling entry that I normally do. I got about three sentences done, when I realized that this simply wasn't going to cut it. Mostly because I think I've been mildly sleep-deprived for the last few days, but also because I've been really sleep-deprived for the last few days, but mostly just because I'm in a good, rambling, story-telling kind of mood that I feel would work best as a more storylike entry. Rambling is so old-fashioned anyway... Which is to say I'll return to it soon enough.

This morning, I woke up. I use this phrase in only the most basic, simple conceptual meaning it can really ever hope to attain: I opened my eyes and stood up. I'm so used to my morning routine that I could literally sleepwalk through the whole ordeal. I have no doubt that I would succeed in my sleepwalking morning cleansing and eating up to the point where I'm required to equip a razor in my right hand and shave. I think sleepshaving would be an event best left to the professionals. Which I'm not.

I decided to actually wake up in the "Hey, I'm conscious, give me caffeine" sense. My eyes were opened, I felt like I had never actually gotten to sleep, but I knew that wasn't true. I absolutely knew that I had gotten at least forty-five minutes into sleep when my alarm went beep-beep-frickin-beep. This is perfectly acceptable at the time--which I realized was 7:30am (the intended moment of mental lift-off, which is to say waking up)--though, because I honestly have been feeling mighty good lately. Mighty good indeed. I won't say I feel like I'm on top of the world, because I have a quota for cliches that I know I'm going to use up by the end of this entry, because in the culminating scene of this stream-of-consciousness abomination, I'm going to live through my very own movie/television cliche.

How's that for tension?

So I get up out of bed, and I feel like my eyes are burning. Which is a typical feeling after a series of little-to-no sleep nights. It was nothing abnormal. I reach in my kind of pre-caffeine drunken morning state for a little bottle of Visine that has made a comfortable lodging at the base of my monitor. It wasn't there. I looked over to my cat, and he gave me some kind of faux-innocent glare, but that wasn't fooling anyone. I looked through the area near my chair, and sure enough, there it was. I try in vain to squirt a couple drops of this morning brand of Liquid Jesus into my eyes, and miss about five-six times in a row. By this point, it looks like I had just come out of seeing Pay It Forward after a month of incrementally more depressing days. Granted, that wasn't the case at all, but to the unknowing civilian, it looked like I just woke up and bawled my eyes out. I finally managed to hit the bull's eye with my itty-bitty bottle of Visine, and felt some kind of glorious redemptive mood flow over my retina. I think missed about three more times when I moved on to the left eye.

Oh shit, I realized, wiping the Visine tears off my face. I actually am starting a class today. Intensive Second-Year Spanish; putting the Intensive in Spanish since whenever the university decided to have a spring-term (ie, six week) class which covers thirty weeks of material in, just that, six weeks. It's roughly at this point in the story when our protagonist realizes that he's really, really stupid.

Flash forward two hours. It's now 9:30am, an hour into class, and I go into the bathroom due to what I affectionately call "Multiple Diet Cokes in a Short Time Span" syndrome. I get to the mirror and, no joke, it looks almost like my retinas had been possessed by the devil himself for a brief moment, but he had left, and had instead just left his red calling card in the whites of my eyes. I suppose lack of sleep, allergies, and wiping at my eye trying to get a rogue eyelash out of them for ten minutes can really have that effect though.

The next three and a half hours of class (yes, you read this right) are mostly just a blur of scenes mishmashed together into an incomprehensible mess. Something about Spanish and grammar and vocabulary and twenty hours of homework a week, I suppose. There was definitely a moment in the class when the students were asked to shout out stereotypical characteristics of Mexicans, Chinese, and Americans, though, I remember that segment of the day quite well. I especially remember someone yelling out "Le gusta cortar el cespid" as a trait for Mexicans. Which, for the uninformed, means that Mexicans enjoy mowing lawns. Didn't you know? Jeez, get with it.

What? I'm hoping that that entire segment of the day was just some kind of hallucination--an elaborate mind hoax which my brain was just creating to screw with me--but I know, yes know, that it actually happened.

And so I get out of class at 1:00pm. That last hour was killer, no joke. But I get outside, and it's pouring. We're talking cats, dogs, and their entire families just falling like a dove with a ten-ton weight attached to its right claw thing. I vaguely recalled that it had started to rain when I was going in to class. Being that I had been in a building for going on five hours, though, with a steady downpour occurring through the day, the puddles had begun to accumulate into big puddles. Quasi-lakes, if you will.

So, I walk up to a curb. This curb happened to be a necessary stopping point on my way across the street, and I was currently being shown the "Not a Good Time to Cross" signal ( Dane). So. I stared up into the rainy sky like a moron, and then I hear a sound that isn't good to hear. A car. Going fast. Now, I was no where near the road, so I wasn't worried about anything. And then, in a flash of the benevolent light of knowledge, I realized that the curb was housing a mighty fun mini-ocean. And, thus, the car goes zooming across the street. And I see a tidal wave forming in mid-air. Everything happens in slow motion. The tidal-wave approaches me. But I thought quickly, as I managed to stop the tidal-wave from breaching land by blocking it with my body. And then sploosh part two. I find myself dripping waiter all over the otherwise soaking wet pavement. My dark blue shirt was not only a darker shade of blue, but always quite a bit heavier and baggier on me in its recently-submerged state of being. And it was at this very moment that I realized something about these ever-so-overused Hollywood occurrence.

It had been a damn good day.

and i would have stayed up with you all night