that may be all i need

I’m overstimulated to the point where I want to color in a coloring book, which is a coping mechanism I was known to employ in college as if I had some sort of  serious developmental delay. I stop short of whipping out the Crayolas and instead spend the weekend holed up in my apartment mainlining soapy Canadian cop dramas and baking loaves of Lahey bread. Also, some cookies. Also, soup.

K and L coax me out with the promise of the Harvard Book Sale, but even there I buy five Baby-Sitters’ Club paperbacks (the originals, not the late nineties reissues; there was a point in my life at which I owned the whole series, and I want that feeling back). They girl at the checkout says: “Oh, yeah.” We meet Tom for brunch at the Station Diner in Newton where we eat large quantities of potatoes and debate the politics of v-neck t-shirts on men: a Glamour Don’t, in general, with sartorial dispensations for rock stars and firemen.

On Sunday we go to the mall, which is another thing I used to do to center myself in college, the incorrigible  suburbanite in me finding abject bliss in rows of Bath and Body Works lined up in color order and glass vases full of lip balm from the Gap. We eat at California Pizza Kitchen and I put my feet up on the dashboard, watch the water whiz by and make plans. At night I write some silliness on my laptop, scratching idly at a perpetual itch.

By Monday I am wrung out and happy. The sun feels yellow-warm on my face.