How do you spend a cold Sunday in February?

I have a few different methods for dealing with the world on days like today.

When possible, I like to ignore all responsibility and hide under the covers with my boyfriend. I like to pretend that Monday isn't around the corner, waiting to be acknowledged. In the confines of my bed, we control everything--from what to watch on TV to the amount of sunlight to let in through the shades. There's beauty in focusing on the small scale decisions and nothing else, if only for a day.

We pull the covers up to our eyelashes and trace patterns into each other's hands. We talk in the special voice we made up one day while we were bored. We talk abstractly about the future. We have nothing but the thin barrier created by my purple duvet separating us from the rest of the world, but in those moments it feels like we live in a parallel universe, one in which only the two of us exist.

By the time we've finally decided that we're mentally prepared to get out of bed, we've constructed a plan for the day. We get a late breakfast somewhere with good coffee and plenty of pastries. We walk downtown; he explores while I take photos. We wind up at the library or at another coffee shop. Sometimes we keep walking until we find a street with pretty houses, and then we imagine the life we'd live specific to each one.

Some Sundays Danny heads off to work and I find myself alone. When I'm left alone with my thoughts, it's too hard to ignore my personal responsibilities--so I don't...I just prolong them. I give myself a leisurely start to the day, free of alarms or scheduled events. I shower slowly. I put on quiet, melodic music to listen to as I do my makeup. When I'm completely dressed I treat myself to breakfast and coffee. It is only then that I force myself to sit down and get to work. Because while I want to be successful and graduate early, I also don't want to look back on my college days as the years that caused the bags under my eyes and the gray in my hair. I want to have peaceful days and happy days to remember fondly. Days I spent giggling under the covers with Danny and days I spent sipping tea and writing thoughtfully in my journal.

I think it's important to remember that while good grades and future plans are valid things to worry about, they aren't everything. A missed assignment won't lower my self worth or ruin my college career. And so when I have a Sunday to waste, or at least partially waste, I go ahead and waste it every single time.