Dear D-man,

I have to pay the Love Card toady and I forgot my freaking password to the Bankone site, which is being taken over by Chase.com in a matter of days, and the bill is due tomorrow. Crap!

I’m on Spring Break!—which really isn’t a break from anything, with all the homework I owe. I’m behind what can be considered forty pages in my Fiction class, a few journal entries in my Critical Reading and Writing course….and a few responses to our online forums in my Poetry class… and its Wednesday…so the week is almost over…the only week we were given for spring break. So this morning, what I intend on doing, after I blog my fingers to a pulp, I am going to write some fiction so as I crawl my ass back to campus on Monday I’ll at least have something to turn in. Someone was telling me CTA, Chicago’s public transit system, was going on strike. Maybe that’ll bide me more “homework time”. I can only imagine the mayhem.

Anywho…I have this paper cut on the finger in between the middle finger and pinky. Does that finger have a name?—and I have a corn on my big toe, right foot. When I use to work at the ice cream shop, which would be the perfect opening to a novel, the markings of a good days work would be chocolate on the forearms and/or waffle cone batter on the sleeves and shoes, all of which were oblivious to you until you got home to shower because only when clean would you've been able to recognize how dirty the ice cream shop had made you... At the money factory, however, it seems to be the daily order of things to receive corns and paper cuts without ever having to exert yourself. So I assume when one does go above and beyond, and flip all the envelopes that desperately need flipping and count all the money there is to count, they’re hands are fixing to look like pulverized deli meats. And I have a paper cut. Yum!

Well, I was looking at my feet, which were pretty until this job, and had come to the realization that I could now never become a foot model. Which was really tough to get over (not)…but NOW I have a corn which means that NOW I can never make fun of “those other people” who have corns because NOW I’m of “those other people”. Crap! I’m happy this won’t weigh heavy on my self image, otherwise I’d be ruined. In essence work is okay. I’ve gotten faster at counting the money which is probably the highlight of my week. I prepped a 116 last night and a 157 on Monday, which means I managed 116 envelopes an hour yesterday and 157 envelopes on Monday…the money comes to us in envelopes. I don’t know if I’ve ever explained that portion of my job to you. Forgive the confusion. Just know that I’m getting much faster and much closer to “making rate”, which is another money factory term, of 200 envelopes per hour, per night.

RomiE and I are doing well. In fact he attempted a project I have due the Thursday I return from spring break, for my science class. What a man!—right?—so that’s well in to the works.

Last night, which is something I feel I need to address for myself more so than anyone else…last night I think I realized that we, RomiE and I “live” together or/ are living together. Shhhh!!! I’m still trying to digest it. I can't remember the last time i saw my mother, or that couch in the basement where I slept. This is heavy. The RomiE, the apartment, the bills, the solidifying a future—a wholesome future together. I think I’m thinking too much. But I saw the light in his face last night when I asked him were we, in fact, living together?... And the smile he gave served to answer my question better than any words he could have ever afforded. Yes.

Sincerely,

SunLyte