one

The day started with my obnoxious alarm clock blasting me awake. "6:30," the bright red lights screamed at me. As usual, I woke up groggily, with a body infested with a toxic mixture of sleep deprivation and aching muscles. It's competition season at the rink, meaning everyday, I'm forced to teach talentless eight-year-olds overdone routines, which we all know, they will never get right. After teaching the brats for a couple of hours, I then have to focus on my own routine. By the time I get home each night, it's at least midnight-one o'clock. Five hours of sleep is alright every once in a while, but for three weeks straight, my body's acting like it's about to brake down like an old rusty car. 

Reluctant to apartment's tundra-strength cold air, I try to convince myself to force the covers off of my body. Like everything else, our thermostat is broken, turning the apartment into an icebox. I fling the sheets to the end of the bed and sprint to the bathroom. I jump across the frozen tile to heat up the shower, trying to limit my time in the bathroom to a minimum. As the shower slowly began to heat up, I rush to my bedroom window to pry it open.

The window was one of those where, at some point, someone decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and just paint it shut.  Although we finally managed to break the seal, the window never opened past a couple of inches.

As I pried open the window, an off-putting scent rose up from the street and filled the room. The odor wasn’t particularly pungent, but I gagged a little bit. It reminded me of the locker rooms at the rink - a combination old socks and somebody else’s sweat. The worse part is, what made me gag wasn't the odor, but rather the nostalgic familiarity I had to the scent. I guess all of those years at the rink were starting to make their mark. Disgusted with myself, I closed the window and walked back to the, now warm, shower.