I'm seriously going to miss the hell out of clara. Last night I was totally panicking about my Friday lesson. Not just because it's phonology and there's no textbook and I have to pull it straight out of my butt every week. This was way worse. See, two weeks ago, my beloved Scary Boss Lady informed me in her usual chipper tones that she would be observing my lesson that week. I'm all, gulp, but I had a pretty decent lesson prepared, so I was cool with it. She then proceeded not to observe any of my lessons that week, nor the following week. So when she finally told me, ok, definitely on Friday, I was totally fucked, because I'd already blown what meager ammunition I possessed on making the previous two lessons into things of grace and beauty. Anyway, I spent all of Thursday night freaking right out about what to do the lesson on, and I finally gave up and went to bed at like 10:30. *

Or so I thought. I lay down, with the taste of fear in my mouth, and just then clara got back from the Eastern Tour and buzzed my room. She told me her adventures, and I do mean all her adventures. After half an hour of shooting the shit, I was way more relaxed about the lesson. Which is why I'm going to miss her so much. It's not just the whole having the companionship of your good buddy thing. It's that when you find someone with whom you can stay up late at night discussing the peculiarities of the human digestive system, in great detail and with personal examples....well, you don't want to let them go.

Heh. "Go". Clara has to "go". Holy shit, I am such a child.

So the bottom line is, I guess we'll just have to keep on telling poo stories by email. Or via text messages, like this one she sent me last year: "i just got out of the usa gas bathroom, and i feel TEN POUNDS LIGHTER!!!" Comedy gold, y'all.

* yeah, it wasn't that late, but that's been my time-honored strategy...I'd rather sleep than think hard, and if I get up early the next morning, the rising tide of panic will break the writer's block.