These Legs, They Are Itching to Run

Last night when I went to bed my legs ached. They were heavy. They felt water-logged, thick, impossible to lift. They felt like they used to feel after I pulled a long Friday night waitressing shift, a shift where I delivered no less than seventy billion fish frys. They felt like they used to after I'd had to dash between kitchen and dining room after having conversations like this one:

Customer: You didn't bring me any tartar sauce.
Me: Yes, I did.
Customer: No, you didn't.
Me: The container is right there on your plate. You've already used some.
Customer: Oh, that? That's butter.
Me: No, that's tartar sauce.
Customer: Oh. Well, I need some more. I put that in my potatoes.

Yes, last night my legs felt like they used to feel after I'd come home from work having dealt with customers who couldn't tell the difference between butter--yellow in color, served in foiled pats--and tartar sauce--white with large green hunks of relish, served in a tub that sits on top of the fried fish, right next to a lemon wedge.

When I got into bed last night my legs felt like they'd run all day, like they wanted to keep running, like they wanted to pick me right up out of bed and send me down the hall, out into the night, down the cooling pavement, through the back roads of this small town until I came to something else, something different, something new.

There's a panic in me right now. This is partly because the semester is over and the summer is stretching out in front of me, blank and dangerous. This is partly because I had a really busy, really nice week last week. New Boy cruised into town and we showed him all that Buffalo has to offer (which, really, was The Anchor Bar and Niagara Falls), then Josh left for his summer job in Wisconsin. Before he left, we had a long day full of things like shooting a BB gun out his bedroom window and drinking shots of Southern Comfort at 2:30 in the afternoon. Now, though, it's quiet. And it will remain quiet until it's time for all the sinning we're going to do at Becky's Bachelorette party this weekend.

The quietness makes me feel guilty. It gives me time to think about things, things like I still haven't landed a full-time teaching gig, things like I probably could've done more to land a full-time teaching gig (I sent out another fifty applications? I should've sent out more! Seventy-five! One hundred!), things like I need to find a summer job, things like I think I'm a bad granddaughter, things like I want to get out of this town. There are crazy thoughts in my head right now. I want to get up and go. I want to pack my car and drive until I find some new college, some beautiful, ivy-covered college in New England, and convince the English department that it needs me, it needs me bad, and they just won't be able to live without me so they should just hire me now.

I think, though, I probably just need to breathe and wait. Breathe, breathe, breathe, and wait.