What to do?

So, the semester is over. I emailed my last assignment this morning and now I'm sitting here wondering what to do with myself. It's about noon and all I can think to do is watch tv, which I refuse to do because watching daytime television is a sure sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

I think I will find myself waiting tables this summer, preferably in a fancy place with white linen, real silver, and talented bussers. I haven't waited tables in close to ten years, but I think it may be easier now than ever. There's a degree of calm and composure that comes with a decade of experience, and there's a good deal of task-management skill that develops over ten years of administrative work, not to mention grad school. I could be wrong, though. Waiting tables this summer could end up being the most difficult job I've ever held. It could end up causing me stress and I could end up slapping some corpulent bastard who insists on calling me Babe and touching my hand when I serve him. It could.

For now, I will just sit here and think about what other things I'll do this summer. Read a novel? Finish knitting that damned shirt that I started working on more than two years ago? Become a competitive cyclist? Or a marathoner? Take yoga classes? Learn to juggle? Take up drinking again?

So many options. None of them inspiring. Oh, the ennui!

* * *

Just as I was writing that last sentence, I watched some thug steal my neighbor's lawnmower right out of her fenced-in back yard. How's that for excitement? I went out my front door to see if he was actually leaving with it or, although landscapers don't generally wear muscle shirts and basketball shorts, if he was planning to mow her lawn. I saw him and his buddy scrambling to get it into their back yard a mere three houses away. What fucking idiots.

I'm not sure how smart this was, but I walked closer to them and asked, "Did you all just steal my neighbor's lawnmower?"

Thug #1: What? What lawnmower?

Silly city girl: My neighbor's lawnmower. Did you all just take my neighbor's lawnmower from her back yard?

Thug #1: No, what? I don't know no lawnmower.

Thug #2 (coming around the side of the house, looking very big): You gotta problem?

Silly city girl: Whatever... (turn and walk quickly back home).

J thought I should call the police, right away. But I was afraid the thugs would vandalize our house if the cops came and roughed them up. Besides, I called the neighbor - the lawnmower wasn't even hers. She found it in the alley last summer and had been keeping it in her yard, planning to sell it. She wasn't upset. I just hope those two baddies didn't get a good look at me - I walk my dog around here all the time and I don't fancy the idea of being messed with by a couple of small-time crooks.

Oh, the city life!