HOW TO TAKE A VACATION

source.

1) Don't get out of your pajamas and offend your family with your presence for at one day.


2) Drink your morning coffee out of a porcelain mug and teach your sisters what it means to start the day right aka with coffee.


3) Take long walks with your sister around the neighborhood and discuss the future.


4) Watch all the seasons of Friends at your disposal. Then go back and watch them again with your mom and sisters.


5) Watch Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back at 1am and realize that Yoda, after 30 years alone on Dagobah is fracking crazy and not at all the Zen Jedi master you learn to love in episodes 1 - 3.


6) Read, read, read until you can't anymore aka never stop. Realize that you may never measure up and move on.


7) Indulge in all the fanfiction you've been avoiding to finish up your book for hours. This is the best type of guilty pleasure.


8) Flip through your moleskine notebook and realize it's not over, it'll never be over.


9)Sit at the dining room table with your aunt and discuss the difference between coffee connoisseurs and coffee drinkers - determine that your mother is a coffee drinker and mourn the fate of her taste buds.


10) Relax. Seriously. The beta comments will show up eventually. School will start soon. Revel in these last days. 

SURVIVING THE FINAL WEEKS

1) Junk food. This is your best friend. Cheez-Its, pretzels, chips, cookies, chocolate chips- these will make that final stretch before break bearable. Even a ten page paper seems doable when you have a bowl of cheez-its and a bottle of gatorade.

2) Advil: Finals will give you headaches. Those eight papers, two finals, and one oral exam you've got? They're going to make you want to bash your skull in against your keyboard. Do it. And then take Advil.
3) Quiet: If you're the type that gets roped into studying with friends or your campus doesn't have a quiet zone, invest in a pair of a) ear plugs or b) over the ear headphones that will muffle or (better yet) block out the sound around you. Some people like working to music, and the headphones are a good investment for when you're not cramming to save your life and writing to keep living.
4) Specialized Mug: It will be a light for you when all other lights go out. But seriously, looking at a mug that you (or someone special) picked out for you for sentimental reasons will be a small and tiny bright spot in a very dark couple of weeks.
5) Coffee: Looking into an empty coffee mug is no fun. Never be afraid to splurge on tastey coffee and creamers. Make your caffeine cabinet shine. It will make the remaining weeks of finals and papers fly by. Everything is more fun on a caffeine high.

7 HARRY POTTER MEMORIES

Source. Also: yes, yes I do.

1) Eleven: My fifth grade teacher takes me to the library to check out books. Harry Potter has its own shelf. I pick out the first, start reading, check it out. I finish it in a few days, go back, get the second and third. My dad looks disapprovingly at the Hippogriff on the cover, but doesn't take the book away and I read on in secret.
2) Twelve: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone comes out in theaters. My sisters tease me to no end for my nerditude, citing the tag line 'Have a very Harry Christmas' as further proof. I beg and beg and beg my father to force them to see the film with me. After sunset on a Saturday he turns into the movie theater parking lot silently, buys tickets and popcorn and watches Harry Potter with my sisters and I. My sisters are converted and I am a very happy eleven year old.
3) Fourteen: We're at a thrift store and I scour the book section for the fourth Harry Potter book. I beg and beg my mom to buy it and she finally relents, staring disapprovingly at the boy with a wand on the cover. She warns be to go to sleep later that night while I'm reading, shuts off the light and I pretend to sleep. Later, I shine my alarm clock over the book and read on until the harrowing end. A few hours later I crawl into bed with my mom, and say I can't sleep because of monsters. She sighs, says 'I told you, Sumayyah' then turns over and goes back to sleep.
4) Fifteen: My sister's fourth grade teacher loves me. For my birthday she buys me Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and a very pretty journal from Borders. I ignore the journal for the mean time and devour Harry's new adventures shamelessly.
5) Sixteen: The sixth book comes out, we pre-order it and my sister gets it for her birthday. She reads it first, cries, hands it to me that night and I read and cry. The youngest gets it last and by then she knows the ending is not happy, it is harrowing and horrible and so wonderful we cannot wait for the conclusion.
6) Seventeen: The seventh book comes out, but Harry Potter isn't finished it lives on and my sisters and I have a Harry Potter shelf in the basement with all the books. We have the films, they are a family activity.
7) Twenty: The first part of the finale of the Harry Potter franchise is released. It is the beginning of the end of an era. The beginning of the end of my childhood. I am not in middle school, the journal I got for my fifteenth birthday is filled, my Harry Potter books - hard cover and paperback - are frayed and beaten and old and I feel just as old as they are. I watch each new trailer, new television spot with goosebumps appearing on my arms and drink coffee while I watch and wait and wait and wait for my sister to come back from school so we can go see it as a family because it's a family tradition.

BACK ON THE WAGON

How you know when wonderful things are happening:

1. When you're writing regularly.
2. When you're not afraid of writing regularly.
3. When you're trying something new with you're writing.
4. Where things happen to come together without a mother effing outline (I KNOW GUYS I'M JUST AS SHOCKED AS YOU WHATTT??)
5. When Tumblr and fanfiction are not enough to pull you out of that chapter you're writing because it is going so well.
6. When you have four types of coffee creamer, three types of coffee (TWO OF WHICH ARE GODIVA OMG) and a bottle of coffee flavoring syrup (vanilla).
7. When your roommates partake in your coffee addiction and recognize it for its wonder. 
8. When great things happen in life.
9. When great things happen to friends.
10. When that apple danish isn't finished but it's all yours.

COFFEE: I HAZ IT

Credit for image goes to PushOK 12

OMG. THE COFFEE. IT IS BACK. AND GLORIOUS. MY MORNINGS CAN ONCE AGAIN START OFF NORMALLY. I CAN BE AWAKE. I WILL NOT FALL ASLEEP IN CLASS. I WILL WRITE AT WORK. 

AND I HAVE ONE HUNDRED FOLLOWERS. 

What an amazing end to an amazing month! 

Posts will return as scheduled at the end of this weekend. With the promised give away that I keep pushing back because I'm so DARN LAZY. But yeah. Giveaway. Followers. Thanks.

coffeeeeeee....