A strange shifting of worlds: last Sunday I woke up in my brother's apartment.  One sister was sleeping beside me.  The other was on the floor beside the bed, looking at a book (she had fallen asleep on the couch so we left her there, but waking in the middle of the night she had apparently decided she would rather sleep on the floor).  I got up, made them breakfast, and took them to the Exploratorium.

Today (Sunday) I woke up in my own bed, squinting at the sunlight, in a house with cupcake-frosting-smeared floors and sixty fading gold balloons.  We had a party last night, and I got around six hours of sleep.  I shuffled into the kitchen, where my roommates and our out-of-town guests were eating leftover M&Ms from the party.  We attempted the Sunday NY Times crossword, cleaned a little, read aloud funny snippets from blogs and from the paper, debriefed on the party and told each other about what had gone on in the rooms we had not been in, and later went out to brunch.

Conclusion: There are different kinds and levels of adulthood.

Second conclusion: I love my sisters, and I want to be a mother someday, but at the moment I am happy that I am 23, and that I stayed up until 3:30 am last night dancing in my kitchen with a bunch of unknown Germans.

The day after a party is always a letdown.  I am groggy and out-of-sorts, even though I had a wonderful time.  My apartment is now a perfect metaphor for my mood.  I went to a movie by myself this afternoon, because I couldn't be bothered to call anyone and make plans, and when I came home, all the balloons had fallen down.  (Backstory: we rented a helium tank yesterday and blew up 75 gold balloons and an assortment of balloons of other colors, some of which have been popped or sent home with party guests or punctured this morning in order to inhale the helium and talk in strange voices for 10-15 seconds a pop.)  Once clustered in two rooms, the balloons have now made their way into every room in the apartment, where they float, discombobulated, between two inches and eight feet off the floor.  As I sit in my bed writing this, a balloon hovers next to me, golden string making a circle on my sheets.  If I touch it it rebounds, bouncing up before settling back just above the bed.  It has a little life left in it, but not much.

According to my computer it is 1 pm at home.  That makes sense, since it is 9 pm here (in London).  My body does not understand this distinction however; it doesn't understand much right now besides the desire for sleep.  Unfortunately, my dear host bought an air mattress "with a built in inflation device" only the inflation device turns out to be a pump, which you have to pump by foot, or hand, in a really careful and specific way, for at least a half an hour.  I have already been pumping, taking turns between various limbs, for about twenty minutes, and the mattress, while puffed up, feels like there is nothing inside if pressed on.

My host, Christian (a friend from San Francisco who is now attending the London School of Economics) went to a movie with his roommates, at my urging, because I thought it best to go to sleep early, and it would be quieter and easier to do so if he was out.  He appeared to be under the impression that the mattress would inflate itself.  I am approaching the end of some kind of very very short rope.  It's my birthday, but feeling bad for all the trouble I am already putting Christian to, I found no easy way to slip this into the conversation, and so I didn't tell him.  I will celebrate in Dubai with Rawaan and Annie, and have already celebrated in San Francisco with my friends there.  Still, I am tired enough that this feels fairly disastrous at the moment: sitting alone in a strange house on my birthday with aching arms and legs and a half-inflated mattress between myself and sleep.

But.  I am in London.  My flight went well.  I found Christian's house easily.  We had a nice dinner at a Singaporean restaurant that happened to have replaced a restaurant Lily and I went to once (the old one had a better name, something about the people's revolution, but this one was still delicious).  On the way home we walked across Westminster Bridge, which has the best view: Parliament and Big Ben lit up against one side of the sky, and St. Paul's against the other.  Tomorrow, assuming I someday get to sleep, I will be rested and happy again, and I will spend all day wandering around the streets, thinking about Victorians and discovering Edward Monkton cards, and drinking tea.

Okay, enough of a break.  Once more into the breach: I will inflate this mattress or fall asleep trying.

Feist sang her cover of "Inside and Out" without a back-up band, and trilled words she should have said into incomprehensibility, and danced in her short white dress. Bright Eyes made me happy, though he probably should have made me sad. He sang you say I treat you like a book on a shelf and
When everything gets lonely I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper; have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
...which is how I feel sometimes.

So here:
"Lua" by Bright Eyes
"Inside and Out" by the Bee Gees (I think) covered by Feist

I'm back at school, in my room. My birthday package from home was underneath my mat this morning (which was very funny looking - I guess the mailperson thought it would be safer under there? though being... a package... it was rather obvious that it was there, even "hidden") and is now sitting by my desk looking at me.

My final essay for creative nonfiction is due yesterday. Most of it is stolen from this blog, but all crammed together:

( The London Skyline )

My parents have officially moved to Salem. I don't know my permanent address anymore. Maybe I don't have one. I am much calmer about the situation than I was last spring. Even though I am closer to graduation and therefore upheaval, I think I feel more rooted here than in London (when I was even in London, since I did a lot of travelling in my time there). I am better able to deal with losing "home" when I am in a place that is also "home" in a way. Not that London wasn't - but it didn't have the same solidity that Brown has and I knew I would be leaving it very soon. At least I have another six months here.

Six months. Oy.

I need to practice my Hebrew. That is, learn even a little tiny bit of Hebrew, since at the moment I have none at all.

I love mini-vacations. I have spent the last three and a half days sitting around in my grandparents' house, reading, talking to Laura, watching Queer as Folk, and eating.

On Thanksgiving we went to Philadelphia to my step-grandfather's daughter's house - or should I say, gorgeous apartment. She has the second floor of a building right in downtown Philly, with fourteen foot ceilings, a beautiful kitchen, huge windows, not to mention the biggest and comfiest bed I have ever seen. It made me want to be grown-up and have money (though it didn't make me want it enough to go into consulting, which is probably the only way I could get from where I am to there). Margot, whose house it was, and her sister Rebecca made a really great meal and we all overate, of course, and dozed in the car on the way home and were generally very content.

I feel very lucky and thankful, for all of this and more:

Tonight Laura and I are going to see Bright Eyes, and Feist is opening - I think it should be a great concert.

Next Friday is my twenty-first birthday.

...and saving the best for last, I am definitely going to Israel over winter break. Elly is not sure whether she'll be able to come, but hopefully she will - and Robin, Doug and I are going for sure. Wow! I can hardly wrap my mind around it, but I'm so, so excited.

The only problem (and this is not a complaint, just me trying to figure out how things are going to work) is that I really need to go to San Francisco over winter break to do research for my thesis - and I'm not sure how that is going to happen now. I'll be getting back mid-January, so I'd still have time, but not a lot of time - and flying to San Francisco for a couple days seems silly, not to mention I'm not sure I'll have the money. But this is a small problem and I'm sure it will work itself out somehow - more importantly, I'm going to Israel!

Right now I am going to go help Michael bring the Christmas tree inside, and then I'm going to 1) try to do homework or 2) more likely read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.