Hey there!  I’ve had a very busy past three weeks!  You?  …Oh, you want to hear about mine?  Well, how kind of you!  Tune into this:

The day after my last post, I and one of my future roommates found our apartment for next year.  MY GOD, how I wish I could move in after Christmas break, because I am so unbelievably ready to be up out of the dorms and into some place that is conducive to real-food-making.  I am typically not one of those people who is concerned with what she eats on any given day, but just listen to the straits that I am in: 2/3 of a parfait, Starbucks, and mozarella sticks intended to be cooked in an oven but actually amateurishly heated in a microwave instead.  IT IS 7:00 AT NIGHT.  Christ on a crutch, I just want a real meal!  I would even settle for being forced to make it myself in my own apartment, as long as it meant meat and potatoes!  So you can see why, after two and a half years of dorm life and dorm food, I am jonesing to move into that apartment, like, yesterday.

The week after was intense and hellish and unbelievable.  Like, just when I thought things could not get any worse, oh wait!  Something else climbed right on top of my load of stress and worry.  I had a major paper/project/exam/presentation every day all week and so was getting less than healthy amounts of sleep, was minorly sick, homesick out to HERE, dealing with apartment ridiculousness, worrying about my job, and ignoring a boy situation that needed to be addressed.  Have you ever had the type of interaction with someone where you go into it thinking, “Oh this is surely just a minor misunderstanding!  I am calm and capable and reasonable and will absolutely be able to deal with this situation effectively and in a timely fashion!” and then you talk to the other party involved and they are just BATSHIT CRAZY?!  I had one of those that week, one so bad where i got off the phone and hyperventilated a little, and then called my friend Morgan and laughed nervously/crazily, because if I didn’t do that I would have launched into hysterics, and I absolutely did not have time for that because I had to be at work in half an hour and hadn’t even eaten dinner yet and ohmygodcanijustbefiveagainthanks!  And then, a solution was offered to the situation, but it was the kind of solution where you’re like, “Well… that’s an option, sure, but it’s like asking me whether I’d rather go blind or deaf.  I know which one I’d choose, but I don’t really like or actively embrace either one”.  I remember lying in my bed on Friday, trying to cry silently because my roommate and her boyfriend were in the room being all cutesy and I just wanted them to leave so I could sleep, and I was stressed out about the aformentioned situation and just wanted to go home, but instead knew that I was going to her house that weekend for her birthday celebration and I would be expected to be happy and cheerful and fun, and those were three things I was not up to at all, all week long, and LORD was I ever a sloppy, sad mess. 

And then, because I strongly believe in the wheel of fortune taking people down and then bringing them right back up, nearly every issue that I had been struggling with that week resolved itself Friday evening.  Academically, socially, romantically, professionally, emotionally.  Better.  And we had a lovely time at my roommate’s home for the weekend, wherein floorboards were ripped up, Twister was played and bruises were accrued, real food was secured for all, babies were brought over, an old friend “surprised” us (except I totally knew beforehand that he was coming because I’m sneaky like that), camels appeared in a parade, awkward relationships were patched, and a LOT of fratty music was listened to.  It was precisely the weekend I wanted and needed after my week of stress from the depths of hell.

And then it was two short days of school and home for Thanksgiving break.  I didn’t get home til almost midnight Tuesday, but when I did, Letterman was on and Time magazines abounded, and one of the first things my dad did was assure me that the new hand-crafted Oriental area rug in our dining room “isn’t from no K-Mart parking lot” in a fake corn-pone voice.  I love home so much.  Break was absolutely perfect: I had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, enjoyed listening to the men in my family watch football together more than I enjoyed the actual game, hung out with my sisters, went out Friday night, only to find myself in a hot tub in Brookville at two in the morning, drunk on wine, had waffles made for me the next day, slept late all the time, flipped my homework the bird, saw people at Coldstone and secured myself hours over Christmas break, and most importantly, was fed real food again some more.  Seriously, you’re underestimating the food situation here.  It is threat level orange. 

This week has kind of been full of minor annoyances and irritations, including rain on my drive home and the worst night of sleep last night I’ve ever had at school.  I literally slept in fits and starts and 20 minute catnaps for five hours.  But things are looking up, as they always do!  I didn’t have to work and am currently engaged in a Billy Madison quote-off with my friend Genna, and am now toying with the idea of lounging around and watching an old episode of Alias or something.  I’m working right now on really appreciating the fact that I have very few actual responsibilities in this world, and those that I do have are easily blown off or simple to deal with.  it won’t be like that much longer, so I might as well live it up while I can.  Stress is for people in the real world, and I’m not living there just yet, so I need to just chill the fuck out.

Mission accomplished, I think.

General Update

Pros:

• dinner with my ex-roommate, in which we talked about salsa dancing, stutterers, and the Medieval Club
• also, when she hugged me goodbye, she paused while pulling away and said “Whoa.  You smell like a Cabbage Patch Kid!”
• no class on Fridays next semester, officially!
• our room smells like chili right now, which is one of my very favorite smells of the fall ever
• there was this commercial on TV just now with pipes speaking in crazy Eastern Bloc accents that cracked me up
• Bones reruns on TV right now
• shout out to my main man Glenn of Glenn’s Shoe Repair for fixing my brown flats, making them better than ever for a mere $8

Cons:

• it is hotter than the depths of hell in this room, JESUS GOD
• Bones might or might not be making me tear up a little right now; I blame the Christmas music, so shut up
• my intestines or something are revolting and attempting to scrabble their way out of my body

But really, my life isn’t even that bad right now.  Sometimes it helps to get that shit into perspective real quick.

Working Some Magic

Below is the entry I wrote, ohhhhh, I don’t know, less than seven hours ago, and I was going to publish except that I was so distracted and aggravated that I couldn’t think how to spell “tyrannosaurus” and I wanted to call it “Tyrannosaurus Tuesday” because that was the first alliteration I could think of that went with Tuesday.  Right.  Anyway, because I double-checked the spelling of the old title (I had the double n as a double r) and my mood was vastly improved after going to work (unnatural, highly), I thought, “Eh, why the hell not?” and went on ahead with the publishing.  This is, to warn you, fairly stream of conscious, frustrated, angry, irritated, upset me, not bothering to censor myself or make anything funny or well-articulated.  And because I’m also kind of sleep-deprived, I will tell you that it took me a minute to decide if I needed “accept” or “except” up there.  All the English majors say heyyyyyyyy!

Today has just been full of frustration, and it’s the kind of frustration that makes me feel lame for even complaining about, because it’s silly stuff that normally wouldn’t get in my way, but I’m getting hung up on it, for some reason, today.  I’ve had this feeling before, like my insides are unsettled and are shifting against each other, grating and trying to right themselves, and while they do that in there, out here I’m a raving bitch.  I am usually slow to anger and slow, even, to annoyance, but today everything is setting me off on rampages.  It starts with being awake too early, which guarantees grumpiness, then with not eating regularly, another way to make sure I’m irritated, which then leads to feeling sorry for myself because I always have a weird eating schedule, I never get to eat with my friends because of schedule differences, and nothing is ever going to get better EVER.  Adding to the two surefires are minor roommate issues, a bitchface TA, and the fact that I can’t even really finish this entry properly because I have to go to damn work and be pretend-happy, and the thought of forcing myself to act cheerful and fake is making me nauseous.  What I know would make me feel better is going to bed.  Unfortunately, after work there’s German sentence revisions and a reading quiz for Biology yet, plus a shower and possibly Stats homework.  Yikes.  This day has been fucking bleak.  I desperately need to have a sense of humor about all this, but that which is usually quick to come to me seems out of reach too.  I don’t got jokes.  Not today, at least.

Rough Sleddin’

Hello.  I feel like I’m reporting from a war zone or something, because things here?  They are rough.  I woke up yesterday already feeling like I had lived the longest week of my life, and it was only Tuesday.  Here are some things from the past few days that make me feel like my soul is slowly being sucked from my body and scattered on the four winds that blow across the frigid plains of BG all day long, right in your face, never ever ever stopping, no it doesn’t matter if you turn around, the wind will still be blowing DIRECTLY IN YOUR FACE.  Ahem.  Sorry.  The list:

• I have this cough, and it’s not like I’m even sick or anything, it’s just that I have this nagging cough, and it only chooses to be really horrendous when I go to lay down and make an attempt at sleep.
• My German teacher seems to think it’s totally cool to give us 30000 things to do, all to be turned in Friday, including: a take-home exam, a listening exam in class Friday, and three pages of homework.  Why does she seem to think this is at all an ok thing to do?  Dude, I don’t know.  Maybe that’s how they operate in Austria.
• I’m really just worried about a friend from home, and I got distressing news Monday that just reinforced the idea that , man, break cannot come soon enough.
• Along those same lines, my room has been the scene of an awful lot of tears recently.  Like, at least three people cried in here on Monday, and at least one of them was me.  We’re falling apart at the seams, all of us, and just trying like hell to not to go flying apart in all directions days before finals.
• So, Monday is called Pasta Monday around here, which is extremely inventive of us, because Monday’s the day they serve pasta at the Dial.  So anyway, this is usually a highlight of our otherwise crap-ass Mondays, but this week?  This week was sent straight from hell, so of course this is the week where a boy I rejected romantically ends up as the pasta server, thus leaving me with a measly one and a half stuffed shells to eat for dinner, because apparently this is prison camp junior high, where you torture those that heartlessly refuse to go out with you by withholding food from them, even though it’s your job to do exactly the OPPOSITE OF THAT. 
• Five hours of sleep the night before what will probably be the hardest exam you take this semester?  Not the best idea you’ll ever have.  And then, when I came back from classes and took a nap for an hour and a half, I woke up with a headache that morphed into a migraine while at work and ended up putting me to bed at 11:30 last night like soemone’s grandma.
• It poured all day long yesterday, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rain when there ought to be snow.  Plus, I spent way too large a chunk of the day yesterday with soaked socks and frozen toes.
• I don’t care to discuss the details, but yesterday also saw me stick my hand in my own pee.
• And then today I come to find out that the bookstore doesn’t buy back lab books.  Motherfuckers, I spent over $100 on this fucking book to do eight experiments out of it?  We didn’t even get halfway through the damn thing!  Are you kidding me?  And you can’t even give me like $20 for it?  And really, the person I should want to cut right now is really my asshole professor who insisted we have the manual and not just make photocopies of the pages, for some unexplained reason which will remain forever locked inside his 87-year-old head.
• I also accidentally skipped ou mandatory floor meeting last night because items just flit in and out of my head at random, and it’s never a sure thing just what will stick in there and just what will go flying out my ear, never to be remembered again. 

I realize all of this is pretty depressing, or maybe just irritating, because I guess most of these are pretty white bread complaints.  I do find it important to note that whenever I yell “There is NOTHING good about this day!” my neighbor Cassie makes me name at least three good things about that day.  Some of them are pretty scant, like “I did not wake up dead” or “I like my socks” or something, but some of them end up being pretty legit.  Today is better than yesterday because I got to sleep in late, remembered that I had a check from work that I hadn’t opened, and realized that I can stay up late tonight because I don’t have class until one tomorrow.  So it looks like, against all odds, things might just be looking up.

Thanksgiving ‘08

Man, my Thanksgiving Break was pretty great.  I spent the majority of it either with the people I love or curled up in my favorite chair at home reading TIME magazine and watching football.  I saw one of my sisters whom I hadn’t seen since Wedding Weekend, and I ate lots of food not purchased from a school cafeteria.  I woke up early Thursday morning to watch the parade, and I have to say, one of my favorite experiences of break came that morning when, amongst all the other “Happy Thanksgiving” and “Eat lots of turkey!” texts I had already received, I got one from my best friend Emily saying “Rick Roll is on the parade!”, which is something that probably only makes sense if you a.) are in my group of friends, or b.) play World of Warcraft online.  These two circles don’t generally overlap.  Seriously!

Anyway, the day itself was pretty nice, lots of cousins and food and football.  There was family crossword-puzzle bonding time, Sudoku with my sister, an adopted brother stopping by, and lots of talk about Christmas and the perfect gift.  Friday night I went downtown to see our annual Chistmas tree lighting at Courthouse Square and got caught up in the freaky, theme-less parade afterward.  I mean, what do unicycles, Star Wars, and trolleys have in common?  Historical roots in Dayton?  The capacity to conjure up fond childhood memories for, like one person each in the crowd?  I…don’t know.  Come on, Dayton!  Don’t make me make excuses for you!  Anyways, so Saturday night I acted like a 40 year old and got together with three great friends and drank sangria and played with a baby and was home by midnight, which is great because I was falling asleep.  Should have my hip replacement scheduled aaaaaaany day now.

And, since I feel like this is absolutely worth noting, my roomie just yelled, “I can’t stand it anymore!  I’m taking my pants off!”  You have no idea how often I want to say exactly that.

Weighing My Options

Reasons I Should Not Work At BG Sub:

• shitty pay
• I’d be working with food
• it’s a bit of a walk from my dorm
• I already have a job
• I can’t even stand the way they write the name (technically BGSUb; how clever)

Reasons I Should Work At BG Sub:

• Man, the boy who works the register has a nice smile

Highlights

Just a few of my favorite things that have happened in the past several days:

• my English prof using the term “Hegemony Cricket” in class
• meeting a very kind and charming professor in the Universty sauna
• a poster going up at the end of my hall featuring a life size skeleton clutching a cane and saying, “It’s not lupus”
• getting a job and possibly (fingers crossed) $400 “tuition assistance”, which, let’s be honest, will go towards beer and food, if I’m lucky enough to get it
• the promise of my mother’s meatloaf for tomorrow night’s dinner
• remembering where I was a year ago today, and realizing where I am now, and the inevitable joy that came from comparing and contrasting the two