A slow day

I made mac and cheese today. It’s the Goodles brand, their deluxe version. The cheese sauce was thick and orange, like radioactive goo. That’s how it should be when mac and cheese comes from a box - as artificial looking as possible. That’s how you know it’s good!

While the pasta was boiling, I stood over the stove reading a novel. I really felt like a modern young woman, multitasking, reading a highbrow, “literary” novel. Someone should have taken a picture - I’m sure I looked very smart.

The book, by the way, is called Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu. It has all the characteristics of a debut novel from an MFA grad - minimalist prose, a neurotic MC character, just about 300 pages. I’m really liking it. There are some serious homoerotic tensions brewing between the 2 main characters, Ruth and Maria. I haven’t been able to put it down.

When my mac and cheese was done I sat on the couch to eat and read. I was focused, sinking into the couch - I didn’t even check my phone. I felt like a real adult, a real modern woman. This feeling has come more often since I graduated college. When I drive to work, when I have meetings, when I book my own dentists appointments. When I eat dinner, when I go to concerts, when I just do things. Obviously I am an adult, but it still surprises me, the freedom of it all, the fact that I can do anything, and no one can stop me. My only worry is, am I using this freedom I hold enough?

After eating I checked the mail, and saw that I finally got this season’s edition of The Paris Review. A real literary magazine for pretentious grown ups! Inside, there are advertisements for Bottega Veneta and Hermes. That’s how you know it’s grown. I would really fit in in New York, on the subway with my long black coat and my gold earrings and my hair in a bun, reading The Paris Review.

I ended the day watching the second Daria TV movie, Is It College Yet? It’s probably my favorite movie of the show, because all the main characters are graduating and growing up a little, moving into the real world to live their grown up lives. It’s a feelings that so familiar to me - the fear of leaving the sanctuary of high school (and college), but the excitement and allure of freedom tugging at you. Yes, I know people complain about “adulting,” and often I am nostalgic for the “easy” days of school (not that it was all easy, I was quite stressed academically), days spent in dorms rooms and cafeterias eating food cooked for you, not thinking about taxes and paychecks. But still, I wouldn’t trade the freedom of adulthood for anything.

My favorite part of the movie is seeing Daria and Jane discuss how they will spend their time together because [spoiler] they’re both going to college in Boston. And then I get sad, because this TV movie is also the series finale, and we never actually see their college adventures. Maybe this is why I like the Lonely Crowds book so much, because the friendship between Ruth and Maria shares a similar intensity as Daria and Jane’s friendship. And in the book, there’s lots of details about the pair’s college journey. In my head, it’s the spiritual successor to Daria.

During this simple days I feel very adult, reading my books, watching my shows, eating my mac and cheese, even going to therapy. I will be 25 soon. I wonder what’s in store for me next?