Humility

Not yet August, but already the temperature has crossed into "unbearable" territory -- especially from nine in the evening until one in the morning, when it seems that all of the heat absorbed during the day by the sun-baked skin of this apartment building seeps into my room and forms thick, brackish puddles around my bed until sunrise.  For the past three nights, this has made sleep pretty much impossible.  I finally broke down and moved my sole fan, cheap white plastic the size and shape of a cereal box, to the foot of my bed, securing it in back with the giant plush Snoopy doll I'd found on the street two years ago.  The strategically-placed stream of cool air helped cut the heat, but within minutes it began to gnaw at my ears, which have always been sensitive to drafts.  I grabbed an old orange bandana and tied it around my head, Amy-Winehouse-cum-Slavic-Grandmother-style, and flopped back into bed.  Dirty feet hanging off the rickety second-hand bed, single sheet twisted and tossed to the side, boys' soccer shorts and a ragged T-shirt from high school, face full of bandana and glistening night cream.  Just another night watching the waning glow of the computer screen attract a cloud of spontaneously-generated summer fruit flies.  

O hai, I go to Harvard and am married to a lawyer.