To the four people who read this, bear with me.

Leslie, my dearest friend since 7th grade, and Caleb came into town for the Wilco show. I made them marginal whiskey-lemonades and exceptional guacamole and we all got pink-shouldered sitting on the back porch, the dull roar of Athens, Ohio on the first near-hot day of the year like the lapping of the tide. But with more woo!s.

I found out that Leslie is scurrying off to Asia for a year, most likely because she does not value my company and wants to be fourteen time zones away from me.

Seriously though, there's absolutely no way I will be able to afford a plane ticket to Korea in the next year to visit her. Secret benefactors of the world? Now is the time to contact me in an old-timey, mysterious way. I'm thinking something sealed with red wax or maybe a map (on parchment paper, obviously) affixed to my front door with a letter opener. Preferably the map leads to a wad of cash in an old patina-ed music box. But those are just suggestions. You're the secret benefactor here, I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job.

I've been creeping along at a slug's pace these past few weeks, a million things to do and not a drop of motivation.

I was always able to dubiously justify past cases of "senioritis". When I was a senior in high school, I was already accepted to college. When I was a senior in college, I was already accepted to grad school. I skipped classes and wasted weekends sans-guilt. But now? I'm so tired of school and isolation that I can hardly bring myself to do the things to get me out of school and isolation.

Coffee used to fix this problem. I keep imagining my brain as a crappy apartment building where the roof is leaking and the hot water is out in the bathroom but the landlord (me) won't return any phone calls.

Sorry, brain, you're gonna have to keep showering at your sister's place until I get all this sorted out.

From my forthcoming etiquette guide, "Cycling in Heels And Other Inadvisable Activities":

On occasion, it becomes prudent in the course of an evening on the town for a young lady of distinction to eat all the pizza in the world.

My journalistic duties took me to this lovely place today. It made me feel a pang of guilt that I will likely depart Athens having left tons of cool, vibrant, cultural stones unturned.

And then I remembered the glory that is riding my bike to Goodale Park on a cloudless summer day and reading on a blanket until I'm sun-dizzy. And then sitting sitting on Ana's porch with a glass of iced tea the size of an oil drum.

And then I felt okay about it.

I made a resolution a couple years ago to avoid talking on my cell phone while holding a cup of to-go coffee, because it's important to me that I not look like an asshole. That's not to say this doesn't still occasionally happen. After all, I am a person who would carry around an IV tree with an espresso drip if I could, and also a person who occasionally receives phone calls.

But this is exactly the reason that I made that silly resolution, cause there I am on the front page of the Messenger, in all my asshole glory.

Also, to anyone who came upon this site by googling "asshole glory", sorry to disappoint.

So I am "in charge" of "planning" a "high school reunion" this year and I have no idea where to even start. In a momentary lapse of judgement, I sent out a corny e-mail en masse via Facebook (I know, I know) to get a feel for people's expectations. Did I secretly want people to say, "naw, let's wait til 2014, I need five more years to become impressive"? Well, yeah. But honestly, after a lot of great responses and a few unexpected ones ("I was in a terrible accident this winter but maybe by this fall I'll be able to walk with the help of a walker!" "Sure, just gotta make sure I can find a sitter!" "Five years? Seriously? I guess I better get a job or kill myself"), I am actually sort of looking forward to it.

Mostly I just felt uncomfortable sending an e-mail to people saying HEY HIGH SCHOOL REMEMBER REMEMBER AWESOME when they are just trying to live their regular lives. That being said, don't people get on Facebook when they are trying not to live their lives, and so they can idly wander through a vacation photo album from that girl who sat next to them in AP Chem?

Also if you are my best friend and your names rhymes with Schmleslie, you are required to go to this thing.

I'm going to go ahead and admit it, this is the first time I've driven from Athens to Dayton to visit my parents all year. I went home for Christmas for a week, and met up with my parents once in Columbus after my mom's marathon in October, and once again in Columbus in February. The 2.5 hours from Athens to Dayton is much more daunting than the 70 minutes from Columbus to Dayton when I was in college.

What I'm getting at is that it took a lot of self-convincing to go home for Easter, but I'm glad that I did. If I didn't I would have missed my mom's awesome coconut-pineapple cake and a head-scratching Easter sermon (Top three things that seek to squash your Easter joy!: 1. Terrorism 2. Addiction 3."Difficult people". Really.)

You guys, I wished on the Easter bunny that I would get a job or an internship this summer, then I wished for the Easter bunny to grant me the wisdom to seize the looming uncertainty in my life and rebrand it "adventure". Then I wished for the discipline to get a passable thesis proposal finished in eight weeks.

The Easter bunny helps those who help themselves. Anyone up for some adventure?

My parents moved when I was a freshman in college, so I have never "lived" in the house they live in now. I don't know where anything is kept, so sometimes when I am looking for a suit for an imaginary interview, I come across weird artifacts of my past and it's like stepping on a landmine. In my room in Athens, I know exactly where old journals and pictures are kept and I usually don't go looking for trouble. But here, I'll open a drawer and there will be a friendly note from my ex-boyfriend's mom, a birthday card from a friend I've lost touch with, a goofy photograph and I don't know why - these are not sad things - but that shit knocks the wind out of me.

And every once in a while, I'll come across something tangentially from my past, but that I haven't seen before, like my sister's elementary school scrapbook-cum-sketchbook. And I'll smile.

Nick's brother and sister-in-law, who don't usually embrace on the beach in matching clothes, hence why they needed direction.

Nick visited his mom and stepdad in Florida last week, which means I got lots of picture and text messages documenting (affectionately) how strange it is sometimes to visit your parents. The chain restaurants, the board games, figuring out what to do for the four hours between everyone else going to bed and you getting tired.

His mom signed them up to get family beach portraits, which are those ubiquitous vacation photos where everyone wears white Oxfords and khakis and kneels in the sand, all stifled and tense in their "casual" poses. I sort of feel bad because, in my family, this idea would have never even gotten off the ground. I can just hear my mom trying to suggest it, and the three of us getting in our simultaneous 'no's before she could even finish. We're just awful. Maybe when/if the three of us start having babies, there can be costumed beach pictures. But just of the babies.

Before I could stop myself from writing a passive aggressive memo, the damage was done.

My street has "24 hour parking". This means that every day a very short, toad-like woman (dead ringer for Officer Shrift from the Phantom Tollboth) cruises the length of my street in a slow-moving Jeep, holding a device that basically amounts to a very long stick with a piece of yellow chalk at the end. Leaning out the window, she chalks the tread of each car's front driver's side tire. The next day, when this ritual happens again, cars with chalked tires will be ticketed. It sort of looks like an incredibly slow-moving, shitty version of polo. I rarely drive, and to avoid tickets I have to move my car every night, even if it's just eight inches forward to get rid of the condemning blemish on the tread. Each transgression is a $20 fine and I've probably coughed up around $120 since I moved here for my parking sins. Infuriating.

When I found this ticket on my windshield today, I threw my keys on the road and dramatically kicked my tire. Something that will make you feel even worse about your stupid parking ticket is kicking a well-inflated tire. It's not quite punching through dry wall or breaking a mirror. Your shoe just sort of soundlessly bounces away, like the tire is whispering, "stop".

I used Michelle's mom's pancake recipe to throw together some breakfast for me and Sjanneke this morning. I am a little embarrassed to admit this is the first time I've ever made pancakes that weren't from a mix.

Oh, I didn't get the internship I applied for. It's okay. Life is long and there is lots of coffee in it.

How are the resolutions I brought back from LA going? Well, I haven't made it to the Athens farmer's market yet, and thus, have purchased no flowers to keep in the house. I guess a small-scale massacre of the front yard could mean hyacinths and tulips in the kitchen and at my desk, but I like 'em right where they are - lined up like tin soldiers guarding the porch, surprising me on my walk home from class with new petals unfolded and smears of bright color.

I have, however, been successful in laying off nearly a third of my wardrobe. Oversized jeans with holes in the crotch? Too-small sports bra dyed pink in the wash? Sweater that hasn't been worn since high school? Your service to this company over the past few years has been invaluable but I'm afraid there isn't a place for you here anymore.

On the first marginally warm day of the year, everyone loses their shit, including me.

In an uncharacteristic fit of spring-weather-inspired domesticity, I line-dried all my linens yesterday, pee-my-pants excited about how starchy and fresh-smelling they would be. I admit that before I got a hold of myself, I stood with a mug of coffee in the backyard, more or less watching them dry.

After the sun got my towels all good and unwet, I brought them in.

I missed one though. And then it got rained on. And then it froze stiff.

This is why the midwest is the home of people who constantly say "if you don't like the weather, wait a minute!". Also the home of frozen bath towels.

My mom used to say "bloom where you're planted", which is good advice, but something that, laid bare on this Internet, I am obviously not great at. I'm going to go with "eat what grows in the side yard", especially broiled in olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar for acid and topped with sea salt and black pepper.

Every so often I'm stunned when I remember that I only really had my life planned up until "finish college", which happened nine months ago, and that I'm going to be kind of winging it from here on out. And sometimes I remember, if only for a fleeting moment, that this is my life, that I'm inside it, that while I can more or less do as I choose until I bite it, I am stuck doing those things as myself, as this brain in this body. The bad news: I am someone who, when things feel bad, they feel exceptionally, tragically bad. The good news: I am someone for whom a plate of perfectly seasoned vegetables is akin to rolling on ecstasy.

I am still sort of dumbfounded that my friends trek across southeastern Ohio - caulking the wagon and floating it, fording the stream, what have you - to get drunk on my porch and sleep in my bed. Not once, but many many times over the last six months have I been so delighted and relieved to have visitors that it was all I could do to not curl up in their lap and smell their neck.

I've realized that there have been several occasions during my Athens tenure, and they are often weekends, where I go an entire day without uttering a word. I wake up and study and run and make dinner and do laundry and watch TV and go to bed. Maybe Nick is sleeping later and going to work early and our relationship maintenance is relegated to monosyllabic inside joke text messages. Maybe my roommate is spending the day at a friend's. And a full 24 hours passes without me uttering a peep, which for someone chronically afflicted with what my 5th grade teacher called "diarrhea of the mouth", is a very troubling thing indeed. So you can understand why when Lauren drove to visit me today my left arm went numb and I was pretty sure "the big one" was sure to strike. You hear that, Elizabeth? I'm comin' to join you.

Today my dad called me and urgently decided that it was now or never to get my taxes in order. I'm 22 and my parents still claim me as a dependent, and as much as I'd like to get this stuff in order myself, something tells me that my dad is a teeny bit soothed by being in control of all the tax stuff. He was in Columbus for a meeting and so we met halfway at a Panera in Lancaster so I could sign things and write checks to the gummint. He ordered a hot chocolate, which is hilarious to me. There he was, gray-haired and clad in sharp business attire, getting whipped cream on his nose.

We talked a little about my "career" and "options" (emphasis on the scare quotes there) and I am pretty lucky that my parents have never put a ton of pressure on me to take a cookie cutter career path or buy heavily into institutionalized notions of success. Although sometimes I wonder if the reason I'm not being hassled to get my life together is because I'm the baby and they keep forgetting that I'm at an age where that should be expected of me. So I'm gonna ride that out til at least senior prom.

Matt crashed here tonight on his way from Cincinnati to D.C. We drank beers and swapped stories about life in retail/food service hell. Matt told me about Half-Price Books' "one bug policy". Your box of water-damaged, yellowed, spine-cracked sci-fi books can have one dead bug in it. Any more dead bugs and you'll have to peddle your goods elsewhere.

Also, guys, remember to remove your nudie polaroids from the books you sell. Book store employees will not be laughing "with" you.

Nick and I saw Morrissey tonight at the Palace Theatre and I'm pretty sure my sixteen year old heart still can't believe its eyes. But there he was, mere feet in front of us, pompadour and cowcatcher jaw and all, whipping his microphone cord around like a ribbon dancer.

The enormous backdrop image was a shirtless sailor, fat stogey in his cheek, flexing both biceps. Across his chest were the words, "refusal". It was so very Morrissey, the kind of thing that is endearing if you're a fan and very corny and stupid if you aren't. He did just enough Smiths songs to sate the very diverse crowd and the encore ("First of the Gang to Die") was far more surreal than seeing Steven Morrissey "in person". So many people were trying to rush the stage to hug him (or rub him..or feast on his flesh) that there was a fleet of bouncers, crouched like wrestlers, clotheslining and tackling anyone who dared to hop on stage (and there were many). It was hard to concentrate on Morrissey's fey flirtation with his mic when such an entertaining melee was unfolding in his midst.

We ran into Chris and Erin downtown after the show, and the four of us had drinks at TipTop, all star-addled and buzzing on beer.