this post is packed with similes like reese's peanut butter puffs is packed with peanut butter and chocolate-y taste

The middle of the week is like a whirlpool that starts from the moment the alarm clock pierces my dreams at 8:00 am on Tuesday to the minutes my head finally rests somewhere during Friday morning.

Tuesday, especially, irks me like that first long, awkward dinner with your girlfriend's conservative family.

It begins first with the brief moments I switch clothes and pretend to have showered, where I feel as clean as I do during that first awkward, rushed greeting while I secretly ponder the sanctity of my utterly dirty intentions with this nice family's oldest daughter. I go to my first class, Acting, which, though exciting, comes a little too early in the day for my comfort, like that plate of expensive cheeses they have laid out just for me, obligating me to spoil my appetite so that I don't appear ungrateful.

This, of course, is but a preamble to the long, long bulk of time spent in the prop shop, which is as rigourous and consuming as my girlfriend's mother's pork chop recipe, passed from generation to generation to me, the only one whose sensitive teeth are too weak to chew the extra lean cuisine for less than an eon. By the time I leave it late in the afternoon, I find myself somewhere between trudging and running to my immediate next class, somewhat in the same way I sift the ladles and forks through the side dishes I neglected, but now must defend my affection for before my captors. All of this is capped off by my play rehearsals, an evening treat, which, like desert, would have the flavor of a blessing when the day was young but instead leaves me feeling like the Hindenberg after everything else has passed.

All of this is, of course, punctuated by the homework, the assignments, the outside projects, and my endless job hunts, like (if not constituting) the awkward dinner-talk that the whole excursion was actually for, leaving me wary of a father's if-you-knock-up-my-daughter-I-will-obliterate-your-balls-from-existance glares and a mother's I-sure-hope-this-boy-goes-to-some-nice-church smiles, as I wallow in double-standards and exhaustion.

Fridays are like when that girl's parents go out of town.