The UW Chronicles: Volume X: Homecoming and Christmas Coughs

Well, I’m sitting here, my back up against a pillar in the SEA-TAC airport watching people talk on cell phones, grade papers, stare at me. And for no particular reason. I look like every other college student on her way home and there are a lot of us, it's like the exodus out of Egypt or something. I’m tired, the day has worn me out. First of all, I hate packing. Second of all, I got to the airport about four hours early because everyone thought it would be insane, and that it would take me about two hours just to get to the airport. It took me half an hour and I’ve got about an hour left to wait. Oh well.
I’ve been getting over a chest ailment too. I had a dry cough for about two days, then I started hacking stuff up and my throat was dry and very ticklish. It was very unusual, I’ve never felt that way before. Then I noticed that everyone was coughing. I even saw an older man with an inhaler out as he walked along Stevens Way. I found out what the problem was…pollution. It hasn’t rained for a week and a half now and it has been very still. The pollution from the city just hangs out and mixes with the fog that creeps in from the Sound. It just hangs there and makes everyone sick. I hadn’t experienced this in Marin, and I was outraged. Why do we drive vehicles that produce noxious gases that make us sick? Why do we condone the release of tons of harmful gases into the atmosphere by factories? Harmful gases that filled my lungs with gunk and made me cough uncontrollably in lecture…why do we hurt ourselves like that? Why do we hurt the Earth like this? I just don’t understand it. My roommates were surprised at my outrage and frustration and said that I would get used to it. I don’t want to have to get used to it. I want air that is clear and free of toxins. I want everyone to be able to breathe clean, sweet air, the air that I took for granted in Marin. And now I’m going home to that air and the beauty of Marin, the crickets and the sounds of the creek outside my bedroom window, instead of the ROTC doing drills and the buses screeching, instead of the people above me playing with rubber balls at 2 am and the drunk students swearing outside as they walk home from Greek Row. I have gotten used to these sounds and no longer rely on my earplugs. These sounds have become the background of my college life, and I expect that the silence that exists in Woodacre will keep me awake now.

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving,

Erinn

P.S. Back home from home now (say that five times fast, and yes, I did have trouble getting used to the silence in Woodacre) and the dry cough spiraled out of control into a full blown hack until my ribs hurt cough. I think I was sick and the dry, polluted air exacerbated my lungs. Yuck. But home (home home in San Francisco) was wonderful and fun. It was strange to have come from this totally different world of college and staying up until 2 am, and having papers due the next day world to the barking dogs, nine year old sister, driving my car back and forth over the hill, cooking on an actual stove with my mom world. Strange, parallel-ish realities. Coming back from SEA-TAC in the shuttle was beautiful (by the way, not having a car doesn’t kill you, it’s actually quite easy when you live in a city and is quite gasoline guilt-free and empowering.) Seattle really does it up for Christmas. The whole city was lit up, from the Christmas tree on top of the Space Needle to the lights strung on radio towers, it was amazingly beautiful. The water of the Sound was black behind the lights and the fog glowed orange. The next day rumors flew that it was going to snow, but you could already see the snow that had fallen on the Cascades, it was so clear. Mount Rainier was bright white and beautiful against the crisp blue sky, and the mountains that had a few weeks earlier been dark are now brilliant with the whiteness of fresh snow. It didn’t snow in Seattle, but it did snow three to four inches everywhere BUT Seattle. We were disappointed, but oh well. It’s almost the end of the quarter (eight days of class left) and I have a presentation to do tomorrow and an astronomy quiz and a paper to turn in for English on Friday, and I’m sick so I’d better get some sleep. See most of you very soon. All my love.

The UW Chronicles: Volume IX: Sunshine, Sickness and Swelling

Our cluster could be a study in virus transmission. We went to Ikea to buy the necessities (microwaveable Tupperware, mugs and can openers) and came back with colds. Damn Swedes. I woke up this morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck. Runny nose (funnily enough the nostril that was clear was the pierced one), soreness and all over ickiness. I stayed in bed and got my astronomy lecture notes from my cluster mate Elissa and dragged myself to English 198 and then sat through a Geography lecture with the sniffles. We're all sick and making soup, drinking tea and complaining about how icky we feel.

And I always seem to get sick when it's sunny. It was a thin sort of sunny today. Watery, like a thin egg yolk. It made me smile and then grimace at how pale I've become. My forearms used to be tan and the hair blonde, but they're becoming pale and the hair's darkening. I've become even more of a ghost than I was before. I tried to sit on the balcony and enjoy the sun, but the brisk cold drove me back inside. The leaves were so yellow and crisp and the trees looked even more bare without their customary shroud of fog or cloud cover. It was pretty, even through swollen eyes and the pounding of a sinus headache.

In other news, our dorm room door got swollen shut. I gripped the doorknob with two hands and braced my feet against the closet door, to no avail. Finally we were knocking on our own door and I even contemplated calling Jessica one room over on my cell phone.

Finally, Audrey heard our desperate cries and kicked the door open. We tried various remedies to ease our door's constipation. Audrey hung all her six foot tall, 180 pounds on it and eventually I attached my hair dryer to an extension cord, jumped on my bed and blow dried the top of our door. Pretty soon the blow dryer overheated and shorted out. The top of the door was warm to the touch and the slight bulge that I had felt earlier was gone, so we went to close it and it worked! It even closes quieter than before. Halleluia ingenuity! Living in a dorm (a "ghetto" one as my roommate puts it) and being a very cheap college student teaches you that necessity really is the mother of invention. We invent all sorts of ingenious ways to make life more bearable. I make wonderful black tea in my plunger pot, and cook pasta in my water boiler, and Patricia makes stuffing by pouring boiling water into a bowl of ready made stuffing mix so she can feel like she's at home. Our shower rod is held up by duct tape and we hooked up a sound system in the bathroom so we can sing in the shower to Frank Sinatra. It all works out, and we have a lot of fun molding our strange habits and hobbies to dorm life. And I'm certainly a better, more adaptable person for it. We're like Darwin's finches, we all have our own little ecological niche.