Compliments.

So, there's an old thread on Shakesville (which I've been eagerly sifting through ever since I discovered it) that is now close, in which people are supposed to reveal the best compliment they'd ever received. I have many, all rather strange. Bear in mind this is not me bragging; rather, looking through the things people have said that really made me feel good or meant a lot, so I can store them away for bad days.

Most recent, probably, was my friend Sarah telling me I was brave. That might not seem like much, but this was at the beginning of last fall when I was just facing having to deal with never living in my old house again, not knowing a damn thing about what the future held for me, and generally feeling marooned and alone in the worst sense of those words. Her telling me that was something I'd never considered before, because I sure as hell didn't feel brave, but it really meant a lot to me.

Then, last spring, we were all saying goodbye to our main professor from London, Lyndon, and when he came to me he said "I'm going to miss working with you. Somehow, you manage to turn a simple question into an interrogation." It was a rather weird compliment, only obvious as what it was from the context, but I liked the idea that I had that capacity.

Once in the fairly recent past, I got in touch with one of my favorite teachers from elementary school, and when I went to visit her at school she told me privately that I was her favorite student. Ever.

Also, back in the beginning of college when I got into my first German class here at school, I spoke with the professor (who was actually native German) and she asked me how long I had lived in Germany. The truth was, I never had, but apparently my accent was good enough that she thought I had.

I used to work at a fabric store and had a fun exchange with a couple of women over the summer; they didn't know much about a project they wanted to do and I bounced around some ideas with them, helped them find materials, etc. They were in a very good humor, laughing, the whole works. When I was cutting material for them, one of them asked where my manager was, because she wanted to tell her I deserved a raise. That made my day, since it wasn't often people were that visibly appreciative of the employees at that particular store, and I like knowing that I really helped someone out.

When I was a freshman in high school, I went to my first formal dance in a dress that I really loved. The guy I was crushing on at the time - a senior, no less - was talking to my group of friends when I came to join them, and he looked up and just said "Wow", in a tone of obvious admiration. No idea whether he was actually impressed or just pretending to be, and nothing ever worked out with him, but at the time it made my entire night.

Two things I always enjoy: 1) Getting rave reviews from a professor on an assignment I didn't expect to do so well one (which has happened twice in the past year), and 2) when small children like my oddly colored hair. It's also nice when I'm wearing a costume from a specific fandom and members of the public recognize it.

EDIT: Thought of one more. Once my friend Paige put up pictures after a speech & debate tournament and one of them was me in a sort of weird but very colorful outfit. Paige captioned the picture "She's such a work of art. :)" But then again, this is why we all love Paige because she just radiates happiness from her all the time, and is therefore amazing.

Disney + politics?

There's this class that's offered in the Honors College here on a regular basis called "The Disney Mystique". I'm kind of sad that it slipped my mind to sign up for it for the spring semester, because I have some interesting ideas about Disney, the main one being that everyone out there seems to either worship the Disney company as a god or decry it as a menace to society. There doesn't seem to be that much middle ground there.

Of course, like all debates, both sides of the issue tend to see and hear what they want to see and hear in the movies, articles, etc. I'm an avid Tumblr blogger and I see at least two or three graphics a day that fall on either side of this issue. Personally, I think there can be middle ground here.

Let's start with the unavoidable: yes, the Disney corporation outsources much of its labor to overseas countries where workers are paid far too little for the amount of work they do; at least with their merchandise. This is definitely a problem and something the world should not be happy with. However, since I doubt people are going to start completely boycotting Disney anytime soon, I think a better way to address this issue is with awareness.

Another thing people tend to bring up often when they're arguing against Disney is their portrayal of minorities and women. This is somewhat of a problem, but not quite as large of one as people make it out to be. For one thing, many of the movies cited for racism (Peter Pan and the deleted scene from Fantasia, for example) are old movies; they were made during a time when those kinds of portrayals were commonplace. Same thing with many of the portrayals of women; the majority of the anti-feminist plots in Disney movies were pre-women's lib, when feminism wasn't even a concept.

Just as a discussion point, I'm going to look at a sampling of Disney movies from across the ages and look at how they approach women and (sometimes) minorities. (If there wasn't much treatment at all of either one, then I'm just going to skip it.)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Personally, I think Snow White is an annoying and atrocious movie, but again, it was made in 1937. Not gonna fault it for its horrible treatment of women because it made sense for the time period. It's still annoying.

Fantasia - The only real scene in this movie that involved women in any sort of substantial way was the Pastoral Symphony number. Sure, it showed the lady centaurs as superficial bimbos who only want men, but it also showed the male centaurs being nothing but huge horndogs, and the androgynous cupid-babies as being voyeurs. I'd say there's about equal sexism here. And yes, there is that one scene that they cut out of the film at some point where they have a black centaur happily polishing the white centaurs' hooves, but again, this was made in 1940. And they did cut that out eventually.

One thing that interests me about this movie is the fact that it has a couple of instances of nudity in it. "Night on Bald Mountain" is the most obvious example, with the bare-breasted harpies flying around on All Hallows Eve, but I'm pretty sure there's at least one topless scene with the lady centaurs as well. Obviously, you'd never be able to get away with this today, which begs the question of why they were able to get away with it then, in what we think of as a much more conservative age. Was it because this was before Disney was regarded as just a children's company?

Anyway. Moving on.

Cinderella - You know, this isn't a half bad movie for 1950. I mean, yeah, you've got the servant girl who runs into the arms of a prince, but really, if you think about it, it's not the prince who ultimately saves Cinderella. It's her fairy godmother.

Alice In Wonderland - I wonder if anyone has ever theorized that the different Wonderland creatures are supposed to represent minorities in any way? I bet there's an article about that somewhere. Anyway. Alice is a pretty decent heroine; plenty of curiosity and spunk. She does have that line about not wanting to read a book with no pictures, but she is a child, after all.

Peter Pan - Okay, this one's kind of a tough one. The most obvious thing to look at here is the portrayal of the "Indians", which is...painful. It's blatantly racist and is a popular example of Disney racism. But...well, once again, this was 1953. Not exactly an age of tolerance and enlightenment. I think we just have to acknowledge this one and move on. It's unfortunate, but you can't change the past. And it's not like the Fantasia scene that's just a few seconds long and can be cut out.

Lady and the Tramp - it's been a while since I watched this, so forgive me if I miss anything. We've got two things here - the relationship, which is more about class differences and the nuclear family than it is about gender, and the Siamese cats, who are portrayed as very stereotypically East Asian, with buck teeth and almond-shaped eyes. I think I'm just going to stop talking about time periods here, though; the point should be obvious until we start getting into the 70's, 80's and beyond into a time when the racism should theoretically be getting better.

Sleeping Beauty - I...don't remember much about this. I always thought it was a boring movie. Of course, I do remember thinking Aurora was stupid for going after that spinning wheel, but if it comes to that, why couldn't her parents have just told her "Hey, you know those three fairies who take care of you? Well, there's an evil one, too, and she's fixed it so that if you touch a spinning wheel on this specific day, you'll die. So just...stay away from them, k?"

Or maybe they did do that. I don't remember.

101 Dalmatians - The only real problem I see with this movie was the scene when Cruella tries to run a guy off the road and he says something like "Crazy woman driver." But...that's one thing. And it could just be that character's a jerk, I don't know. (By the way, I also happen to love the live-action version of this movie. The sequel, not so much.)

Mary Poppins - See, now there's a fun and powerful female protagonist. Although they did tone her no-nonsense attitude down considerably from what was in the books. Also, we have Mrs. Banks as part of the English suffragette movement.

The Jungle Book - I'm not sure what to say about this one. I feel like there's something to examine there, but I don't know what it is.

The Aristocats - We have the tom's tom Thomas O'Malley rescuing the females and children, and then we have the caricature Siamese cat again. (Seriously, what is it with Disney and using cats for Asian stereotypes?)

You know what, I got tired of writing. I might finish this up later, but I might not.

Just a note:

I think a large part of Disney's "race problem" is that a lot of the time they seem to refuse to acknowledge the fact that racism or race relations even exist. I remember being very surprised the first time I saw Princess and the Frog, because the movie was supposed to take place during the Depression and shortly thereafter, and was set in New Orleans, and yet they showed an obviously integrated trolley car. I feel like Disney could have used that movie as an opportunity to make a good point and they didn't. Buuuut, at the same time, I also feel like if they had made race relations a part of the plot, they would have been vilified for using that in a movie with the first African-American princess. (That's another question; why the hell did it take them until 2009 to do that? Disney is very whitewashed and that's a problem in and of itself.)

Tonight will be such a relief.

I've spent the past week in varying stages of discomfort, stress and other miseries.

It started with a hangover. I overindulged on Mike's Lemonade Saturday night - sending off Thanksgiving break in style, I suppose - and so was forced to drive back to Muncie on Sunday with a headache and an upset stomach. Luckily, it was only an hour or so drive, and I had Aviva to keep me company, so it could have been worse. The overall effect was that I barely ate anything all day because of the nausea, and what little I did eat for breakfast I lost shortly afterward, so by the time I felt 100% better in the evening, it felt like I hadn't eaten in days and I was craving every kind of food ever. The catch was, I was at work by the time that happened, so I couldn't eat until I got off at 8, after which I went to the store. Never a good idea when you're starving; I bought all kinds of food and somehow deluded myself into thinking I would eat it all at once. (I had leftovers, of course. But at least I got my food.)

Monday, the cold I caught from Dad over break came into full swing. I spent Monday night writing an extensive poem using as many words as possible from a list I found called "100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language". I was quite pleased with it. Tuesday was worse, the first of several evenings in which I spent hours at a stretch trying to put together my manifesto, the capstone project for my major. After I spent five hours on the formatting and finally getting it right, but still having a substantial amount of work to do, Teresa severely annoyed me by coming home and complaining about the skit she had to write for Japanese. I have no sympathy, especially considering she had just come home from hanging out with classmates because she "didn't feel like" doing her assignment.

The cold complicated things; if I was up until 2 doing work and then crashed, you can bet it would be 3 or 4 before I was actually asleep, due to the distractions of not being able to breathe through my nose and having to sniff or blow my nose every minute or so. Hence, I've spent the majority of this week in a soup of exhaustion.

On Wednesday, it was my day to present my manifesto to the class, which was nerve-wracking; when I picked my abusive relationship as the basis for my manifesto, it somehow hadn't registered with me that I would have to do this, and as such I included a lot of personal information that I hadn't even told my family, my friends or my boyfriend. Luckily, it got a good response, and one guy actually thanked me for sharing my story.

That night and last night are a bit of a haze, to be honest. All I know is I spent six or seven hours at a stretch each nigh working on perfecting the actual books of my manifesto, four copies in all. Luckily, I finished them in time to turn them in today, and I'm quite proud of the results. (My professor pronounced them "groovy".)

This week, my sleep schedule has been totally fucked, my immune system has been overtaxed, and my eating has been haphazard, depending on when I had time to eat and whether I actually felt like doing so. (Yesterday, however I did take the time to throw together a lovely pasta with chicken livers, mushrooms, onions and artichokes, which was delicious.) A couple of times, I had even sunk to the point of hallucination - nothing major, but I was definitely seeing things move that shouldn't have been moving. Also, I've had this vague sense of disorientation and detachment all week.

Tonight, I am going treat myself to a luminaria walk at the local arts center, and maybe a nice dinner at an organic cafe downtown. Then I will go to bed EARLY, and I will probably end up sleeping for twelve hours or something, but that is okay. I look forward to this weekend with eager anticipation.

This is old - I first put it up on Tumblr - but I feel like I need it here too.

Dear Junior High Choir Teacher Whose Name Sounds Unfortunate When Chanted,

Remember the days when your shows were free? I do; I was in one. You’d have people standing at the exits at the end of the show to collect donations and make a joke about “it’s free to get in, but you have to pay to get out.” Nobody minded that. The shows might have been in libraries and cafeterias on roughly constructed sets, but everyone involved clearly had thrown themselves into it, and the quality was pretty damn good for a junior high show.

After the schools did that shift and the junior high moved to the old high school, you had a stage, not to mention double the amount of people to draw from, since now 7th and 8th graders were in the same school. You did The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, which went with your long-standing theme, but then you decided to break out of your usual mold of doing stage adaptations of Disney movies, and instead you decided to put on Annie. Everyone was astounded in a good way; it was an amazing production, with actual choreography, talented performers, and the technical quality was understandably above and beyond anything you’d done before. The only catch is, you started charging admission to cover the cost of the new technical work. I think the admission price was like $5 at this point, the same as the high school charged for their productions, so nobody cared.

The next year, you went a step further and did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Once again, people were impressed. The year after that, Beauty and the Beast, breaking your own hard-and-fast rule about not repeating a show until the people who’d been in it the first time had graduated. But it was different, you said, because this was the stage version, not the adapted-from-a-cartoon version. This show was good, but not nearly as impressive as the previous two years.

It had begun, and I’d been able to see it coming ever since you set yourself such high standards with Annie. You were starting to one-up yourself again and again, and sooner or later you would reach the point where you couldn’t do that; couldn’t go any higher than what you’d already done.

The next couple of shows made me think that I was wrong. Cinderella, the Rodgers & Hammerstein version, was okay. The Wizard of Oz was, well, cringeworthy. I could tell that you were starting to cut some corners; the backup tracks for the songs still had the words on them half of the time. Not to mention that you cast your daughter in the lead, which I’m sure got some jealous grumbles from her fellow students. But, I was okay with all of this, because it seemed like you had reined it in a little and kept your shows within the bounds of what a junior high production could reasonably attempt.

Then, last year, you did The Sound of Music. Not the worst thing you could possibly do, but the idea of listening to a 13-year-old girl whose voice wasn’t nearly mature trying to hit the high notes in “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” made my head hurt just thinking about it. Not to mention, how many guys do you get in junior high whose voices have broken enough to sing Captain von Trapp? It seemed like a bad idea, and for the first time I deliberately did not get a ticket. I ended up helping with makeup one night as a favor, and the little bit of the first act I heard from backstage confirmed that I’d made the right decision.

Then, today, I get the news that you are doing Cats this year. I could explain to you why this is a bad idea - namely, that I’ve done this show with a bunch of junior high schoolers before, albeit as one myself, and although it might be something to do purely for fun like we did, if you want to have any sort of a professional-looking show, it’s just not going to work. It involves heavy dancing, for which I doubt you have a choreographer who’s up to par. The singing is constant; there is no dialogue, and you will completely exhaust these kids’ voices. Also, have you thought about the teasing the boys will endure when you tell them they have to wear spandex body suits?

This decision confirms for me a suspicion I’ve had about you for a long time - that you now care more about the lucrative potential of a show than the actual quality of the performance, or, indeed, the well-being of your students. If you force kids to sing songs that are not in their range - which, by the way, I’ve seen you do not only in your productions but in your cute little fundraiser revue shows - their voices will be damaged, maybe permanently. Furthermore, you seem to either not realize or not care that as your ticket prices have gone up (last one I checked was $12) the actual value of the ticket has gone down. More effort has gone into the spectacle of the show than into the performance, leading to a disappointed audience.

People get frustrated with you, sir. The high school drama department is frustrated with you because you constantly upstage their shows, or try to. The audience is frustrated with you for the reason stated above; if you sell someone a ticket for $12, you’d damn well better have the entertainment worth that $12. And I personally am frustrated with you for personal reasons, because you are a hypocrite and a sellout.

You act like I was one of your favorite students, and if you introduce me to someone, you usually include some hyperbolic claim about my vocal abilities; once you said something about how I was one of the top 5 voices you’d ever seen in one of your students. That can’t be true, since I was never the lead or even a character part in one of your shows, and you never asked me to be in one of your fancy “Sing America Sing” shows. You don’t really believe what you say about me, or you’d rather cast people based on something else, so stop pretending that I impress you so much.

And yes, you are a sellout. Rough as they were, I can say definitively that I enjoyed your shows much more when they were being performed in libraries and cafeterias with 2-dimensional sets and costumes that were only barely recognizable as what they were supposed to be. Rough is what a junior high play is supposed to be; it’s part of its charm. When you tried to upgrade these shows to Broadway levels of excellence, you must have known you were going to crash, but instead of admitting defeat, you’re going to crash your program into the ground trying to prove something to yourself and to the world.

You disappoint me.

Ranty McRantface, aka Why the Hell Don't People Read?

So, I've been trying for a bit to order a specific Etsy item for a couple of my friends for Christmas. I've been conversing with the seller about construction time (since it's custom) and shipping time and what information I need to include, etc.

We finally get to the point where she can set up a custom listing for me that includes the total price of the items I want to order as well as shipping, so she does so and sends me the link. When I click on it, however, it says the item has sold; I mention it to the seller and she says someone must have bought it without looking too closely at the price (significantly higher than other items of the same type, obviously) and creates a new listing, this time titling it "Reserved: Do Not Purchase".

You can see this story playing out, don't you?

Somebody disregards the title very shortly after she posts the listing, and buys it anyway. Seller sets up yet ANOTHER custom listing, this time including the "DO NOT PURCHASE; RESERVED FOR [myname]" in large letters in both the title and the description.

Someone buys it AGAIN. Seriously, people, what part of "DO NOT PURCHASE" do you not understand? I've been trying for about a week to buy this thing, and because of other people's idiocy and inability to read instructions, it looks like I'm not going to get these in time for Christmas.

TWO POSTS TODAY OH MY GOD

Sometimes I feel like I should be in culinary school instead of a liberal arts college.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like what I do. But I have this really strong emotional connection with food; not only am I an emotional eater (which I should probably stop), but I'm also an emotional chef, to some extent. Had a bad day and there's nothing good in the house to eat? Go to the store, grab ingredients and make a giant pot of borscht! (I did this earlier this week; it says something about my love for borscht that I've eaten six or seven servings since then and haven't even gotten close to being tired of it.)

Of course, the parts of me that probably shouldn't be a chef are 1) the lazy part that doesn't like to do things like sift flour, and 2) the selfish part that sometimes doesn't want anyone else to share what I've made. I mean, I like cooking for parties and things, but if I intended to make something for myself, nobody else better touch it.

THIS HAS BEEN A POST.

Sometimes I really miss London.

Particularly on days when I feel like I'm in such a rut with my life and can't get anything useful done. I'm on Tumblr a lot, as well as DeviantArt, and people on both of those sites seem to love taking/posting marvelous London pictures.

Muncie, as much as it has going for it at times, is really a boring-ass town; in London, if I needed a break, I could get on the tube and within half an hour or less be somewhere really cool. Even if I didn't feel like spending money I could go to a museum, or I could go to one of the shopping districts and just take pictures, or sit in the park and read and watch the locals and tourists merge with their million languages. If I wanted a fantastic crepe or a jacket potato or a shawarma, I knew where to get one.

I miss Kir Royal truffles from Hotel Chocolat. I miss Classy Chick crepes and Ben's Cookies and frozen yogurt from Covent Garden. I miss mushroom soup from Pret. I miss half-price theatre tickets. I miss wandering around Selfridge's and Harrods and getting sticker shock. I miss getting lost in Camden Town and connecting with the colorful people there. (I also miss the lovely vegetarian restaurant nearby.) I miss Regents Park Zoo. I miss Borough Market. I miss day trips on Wednesdays with Lyndon. I miss watching the BBC on Tuesday nights. I miss watching "Come Dine With Me" and "How Clean Is Your House?" every hour of the day. I miss getting off the Tube and being able to get anywhere I wanted to go by walking. I miss grocery shopping at Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer. I miss clothes shopping at Primark and Top Shop. I miss walking over Westminster Bridge on an April morning.

I regret not going out to more bars and clubs. I regret not traveling more. I regret wasting so much of my London time on the Internet. I regret not making the most of every moment I had in that city. I regret the one foggy shot of the London Eye that I missed.

Maybe I wasn't there long enough to be a native Londoner or anything, but I sure as hell am no longer a tourist. I have my favorite spots; I can identify the Underground line from the inside of the car; I know not to talk on public transportation and how to keep from being robbed during rush hour. I have this pseudo-English accent that tends to slip into conversation whenever I'm ordering coffee at Starbucks and the one English barista is behind the counter.

I will return. I don't know when, but I will return.

A therapeutic list of reasons my roommate annoys the fuck out of me.

Warning: This could get long.

T is on my bad side right now because she basically screwed me over on the party weekend (see previous entry) and when I finally confronted her about it she basically ignored the entire point I was trying to make and made some totally bullshit excuses instead. So I'm definitely predisposed at this point to look for things to be annoyed about. I think this is a human reaction.

1) She leaves her dishes in the sink for forever. On that same note, she's constantly making remarks about how "we" need to clean up something or other, but never does it or makes any attempt to arrange a time when we can.

2) She makes random remarks in Japanese and always expects me to ask her what they mean, I guess so she can show off her AWESOME JAPANESE SKILLZ or something.

3) She comments on things like jokes in movies that EVERYONE gets and therefore nobody else feels the need to comment on. She acts like it's the first time she's seen any movie joke ever. (For instance, in Ghostbusters, when the marshmallow man comes on: "Oh, that would be a really silly way to die!" And then she laughs hysterically.)

4) She is apparently completely helpless, and so her mom or both her parents will show up at random intervals, unannounced, to do things that she could easily do herself or don't need to be done. Like taking down our Halloween decorations or helping her clean her room. She basically has her parents jumping at her beck and call. Also, if she goes home for a visit, her mom always sends her back with tons of useless shit that takes up room in our kitchen. (Her mom annoys me too, but that's another list.)

5) She does not know when to end a conversation and cannot take a hint. She'll come into my room and start talking to me about something, and will keep going on and on even when I'm obviously busy doing something else, like homework.

6) In the same vein, she'll talk endlessly about some new anime DVD or something she got and expect me to show the same level of enthusiasm even though I know nothing about it and have no interest in it.

7) She apparently is one of those people who still believes that going outside with your hair wet will give you a cold. GERMS EXIST, OMG. Also, she apparently thinks "Susan B. Anthony" is spelled "Susan Bianthony", and that a silver dollar is the size of her palm. What.

8) When she makes a reasonable request of me, like placing a DVD face up when I take it out of the player, she'll spend like the next five minutes explaining why she wants me to do that.

9) She sits in the living room doing homework and she'll have the TV on, but she won't actually be watching it; like, maybe it will be paused. So she's hogging the TV for no reason.

10) She has very faulty cause-effect logic. When we first moved in, she thought the mildew buildup in the bathroom fan was a result of us leaving it on all the time.

11) She will text me from the next room about something totally inane.

12) She's always complaining about how she never sees or talks to her boyfriend and talking about all these other boys she flirts with at parties and things. I want to tell her to just break up with him already if he's such a burden.

13) We had this conversation the other day about how I don't want kids because I just don't have the patience, even when they're someone else's kids that I can give back when they get cranky or annoying. She went off on this whole spiel about how it's different when they're your own and sooner or later the maternal instinct will win out because EVERYONE has one and it's IMPOSSIBLE to fight. It really pisses me off when people make that argument. I told her if everyone had that unstoppable parental instinct, there wouldn't be a single child abuse or neglect case, and you wouldn't have those crazy moms who punt their kids in the river or kill them for interrupting Farmville time. (Also, this isn't an annoyance exactly, but I found out through that same conversation that she is very anti-abortion while I am vehemently pro-choice. Awkward.)

14) She texted me today asking if I had any Raid because she found ONE spider that she perceived as too big to hit with a flyswatter. Dude, we do not have to pray pesticides all around our apartment for that. I don't want to be asphyxiated in my sleep. Just hit it with a boot or a big book or something.

15) She turns up the baseboard heaters as high as they will go, so I come home to a completely sweltering apartment.

Edited to add:

16) She found a ring at the mall that appears to be valuable and instead of turning it in, she kept it and is now calling it her gift from God.

17) She stands outside the closed door to my room and tries to talk to me without raising her voice at all. I pretend I don't hear her at all.

I'm sure I can think of more, but my supply is exhausted at the moment.

Worst fall break ever.

Yeah, did I mention this was supposed to be my break?

Friday I literally spent all day grocery shopping and preparing food for a party my roommate Teresa and I were planning to have. Meanwhile, she was away at some animation presentation and was supposed to be back by 6:30 (the party was at 8). She didn't end up getting there until ten minutes before the party started, which meant I ended up doing all the setup and cleaning for the damn thing as well, kindly assisted by an early arrival guest, and didn't get all the work done on my costume that I wanted to. And after all that preparation, only one friend of mine came, even though I invited like 35, 40 people. All the rest of the guests were Teresa's, and more than half of them left after one movie, after which she had the nerve to get annoyed when I wanted to go to bed at 1 instead of staying up till 3.

The next morning I showed up for the 8 a.m. shift a complete zombie, having gotten maybe four hours of sleep due to my inconvenient insomnia. I had a headache that lasted a good 24 hours hours at least (I still can't shake it), and I found out after my shift that if my boss had waited five minutes to call me, there was another guy who actually wanted it and would have taken it.

So I went home to take a nap. Teresa was awake, but I was so tired I didn't stop to chat. I napped for about three hours and got up in time to shower and get a bite to eat before my next desk shift, which was at 4. Teresa was still in the living room watching Dragonball Z or something, and everything from the party was sitting out untouched. I got the uneasy feeling she wasn't planning to do a damn thing about it, but I had to go to work, so I didn't have time to worry about it.

Work was fine, but I really didn't want to go home afterward because I was mad and upset and didn't really feel like dealing with people, so I went to the secondhand bookstore instead and poked around in there for a bit. It made my headache worse, since the place was so dusty, but I did find a couple of cool things, the gem of which was a cast-off t-shirt from a defunct Rocky Horror cast called the Hoosier Horrors. It had a drawing of the lips logo on the front, a pretty well-done fabric paint portrait of Frank on the back, and said "I Lost My Virginity At the Vogue" in drippy red letters.

After that I went to Qdoba, got a quesadilla and read some Harry Potter. (I'm trying to re-read the entire series before the next movie comes out.) Then I had to go home finally, because I had to get at least one load of laundry done before bed or I'd have no clean underwear.

Lo and behold, when I got home, Teresa wasn't there. She never tells me when she goes anywhere, and it was kind of a relief not to have to talk to her at that point in time, but it made me wonder if she'd just gone home for the weekend - and yes, the party aftermath was still untouched. I covered the cupcakes and put away the punch, since I actually cared about keeping those leftovers, but I left the rest of it alone.

Meanwhile, my guy Paul was having a hard time too. I always hate when both of us are having shit days at the same time, because it means neither of our attempts to cheer up the other person really work very well. I tried to clean up my room a little bit while I was waiting for the laundry to finish, since the chaos of the past couple of days had made it a literal wreck and you couldn't see the floor, but my heart wasn't really in it and my head was killing me. I tried to take a bath in the hopes of improving the headache, which often works, but apparently there was something up with our water heater because I had a sort-of-warm bath instead of a hot one, which helped next to none.

Finally, I went to bed around 11:30 - way earlier than usual, but I had to; I couldn't stay awake another moment. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning for no apparent reason, still with a headache, and couldn't get back to sleep for a good while. Finally, I dragged my ass out of bed this morning in time for my second 8 a.m. shift of the weekend, to discover that Teresa was still gone. Which means that yes, she went home for the weekend without telling me and left me with a massive mess to clean up, never mind the fact that I did all the work to prepare for it as well. We are going to have a serious talk when she gets back, let me tell you.

Can just one thing happen to redeem this wreck of a weekend? Please?

Oh hey.

Haven't been here in a little while. It's kind of hard to keep up the blogging habit when there are a million other things to worry about, although that's really no excuse, since the shit really only started hitting the fan in the past couple of weeks.

Anyway. I'm sitting here at work; I'm on the desk staff at my old dorm. Normally I really like this job; it's pretty much the cushiest way to earn money that I've ever heard of. I basically get paid to draw and do my homework.

However.

This weekend is fall break, and let me tell you, my plan for this morning was NOT to be working an 8-noon shift. My plan was to sleep in and then go to the last outdoor farmer's market of the season. But yesterday afternoon I got a call from my boss, and basically, the upshot was, nobody else could or was willing to take this shift that someone had asked off at the last minute. He called me because I was already taking shifts for two different people this weekend (one of which was another 8-noon shift on Sunday), so he knew I would be in town.

I took the shift because it seemed like I kind of had no choice. But this whole situation pisses me off. Number one, I already took two extra shifts this weekend; why should I have to take this one too just so other people can relax? Number two, why did that dude wait until the last minute to ask off for this shift? And he didn't really "ask off"; what he did was send out a message to the other staff saying "I will be gone this day and time and I need someone to cover my shift."

Personally, I think if you can't be buggered to plan ahead for the vacation time that you want, you need to buck up and not go on vacation. It's your own damn fault if nobody can cover your shift; most people who were going to be gone over this break planned their shift changes weeks ago. Instead, this guy decides he's going to just leave and let the rest of us take care of his problem for us. That's not cool.

tl;dr: I get to work 8-noon both days this weekend because one of my coworkers is lazy and couldn't get his shit together.

I'm such a fucking hipster today

with my skinny jeans and Converse high-tops and owl socks and denim soldier jacket and fingerless gloves and artificial ginger hair.

Seriously though, I don't get the whole hipster thing. I actually like the movement quite a lot, since I like many of the things that hipsters like, such as vintage fashion and owls and the sexiness of nerds, and the hipster movement means it's now easier to find those things. What I don't really get is the mentality; particularly the idea that if something is too popular, it's no longer cool. Personally, I like it if more people start listening to a band I like, since it means I can talk to people about the music and I'm more likely to hear it on the radio. (That's what happened with Owl City.)

Another thing, though, is that this whole mentality, kind of like the emo mentality before it, is inherently contradictory; if there are certain bands that all hipsters like, then technically, those bands are probably too "popular" for their standards. But they apparently choose to let that slide because the people who like the bands are the "right" people; THEIR people. (Also, with that rule, why the hell is Lady GaGa so popular among hipsters?) Same goes for fashion; both the emo subculture and the hipster subculture have this idea that their particular style makes them totally unique, when in reality, people within the subculture are all dressed in basically the same style.

What's wrong with just wearing or listening to something because you like it? Does it have to have the approval of your group - or, conversely, the disapproval of the rest of the world - before it's acceptable? And if you do like things that are really obscure, great; just don't act like you're superior to everyone else because of it. Get some variety; you might discover you actually like listening to Daughtry. Or whatever.

This may have some merit.

I'm taking this class in the Honors college called "What do I want to do with my life?" Which is appropriate, because I really don't; I'm an English major with about ten million hobbies and interests and no idea which one of those things I'd want to turn into a career.

Anyway, one of our assignments yesterday was to do this activity called "potential lives", where we basically would write out in a web any career we'd ever considered doing, even if it didn't seem feasible, and then see if we could find themes between those. When I looked at mine, almost all of them involved 1) something creative, and 2) being my own boss. In fact, quite a lot of the things I might consider for the future involve running my own small business.

I guess I like the idea of working for myself because I hate the corporate mindset; corporate bullshit was the reason I started hating my last job, something I had previously loved, because the new policies were contradictory, basically saying that we were supposed to kiss customers' asses, let them return anything, etc., but also harass them with suggestive selling. I like privately owned businesses because if customers are being assholes or trying to scam you, you don't have to suck up to them; you can tell them to leave or be an asshole right back. There's no corporate, so you can make your own rules as to how you handle things, and probably your non-asshole customers will be happier as a result.

It might be worth thinking about, anyway.

I know I can't be the only one who does this.

After confirming with Lauren that no, I am not the only one who rehearses the way I'm going to describe major events to people, I'm beginning to wonder if there is also someone else out there who frequently narrates their life in their head.

I don't do this all the time; just when something fun or out of the ordinary is happening, or I think of a particularly fun descriptor. After this weekend, I have the insane urge to write out the entire experience, probably starting with the drive down to Cape and stopping for gas at a seedy joint in southern Illinois (which is really a story all on its own). Partly it's because this weekend was crazy and fun and exhausting and combinations of the three, but also partly because going home is always emotional and I kind of want a chance to lay that all out for future perusal.

I will probably post it here if that happens, but not all in one go.

I've been having more weird dreams lately.

The night before last, I dreamed that the dude proposed with this really neat ring (which, by the way, I wish I could find a facsimile of on Etsy or wherever, because it was SO AWESOME) outside of a cafe that doesn't exist anymore. Except in the dream I wanted to hide the ring from everyone because I thought they would judge me for rushing the relationship.

(Just to be clear, I don't actually want to get married. Not right now, anyway. But it was still an awesome ring. Kind of like this, only it had this tiny little red stone. And it wasn't made out of a fork.)

And then last night, I had this dream that I solved a bunch of problems with people; I apologized to my brother and sister-in-law for being such a jerk the last time I visited, and I ended up yelling for a long time at this dude who used to be a friend of mine before he got an online girlfriend and cut every other female out of his life.

I guess these dreams aren't that weird; just more vivid than usual.

Edit: Actually, this is closer in my head to what that ring actually looked like. But I'm keeping the other example up because I think that's cool, too.

I am wondering now

if I have been misplacing the blame for my social anxieties all this time.

It's no secret that I've still got some severe baggage from my last relationship, and for good reason; part of my mind is still convinced that I'll be walking down the street someday and he'll just randomly jump out at me. During that relationship, not only was I severely isolated from anything other than classes, but was also made to feel like some kind of idiot when I tried to strike up friendly conversations with people on, say, the bus. Now, for the past year, I've been fighting the overwhelming feeling that nobody really wants me around, that people invite me to things out of pity, and that my presence is just a burden on everyone else. I have to force myself to attend social gatherings, and even if I'm having a good time, there's still that nagging doubt.

When I explain this to people, I always amend it with, "I was never like this before he came along." But now I'm wondering if this is really true; to be fair, if there was an existing problem, he no doubt made it worse, but I've always kind of preferred doing my own thing than going to group gatherings, unless said gatherings involve the right group of people. True, I haven't always actually felt UNWELCOME in group situations (with the definite exception of cast parties, but that was always because there was this dramatic distinction between the cast and the crew, and as a lowly usher, I didn't feel like I really belonged there) but maybe uncomfortable?

Here's the scary part. I can't answer this for sure, because I CAN'T REMEMBER how I acted around strangers and new people before I dated Jason. (That's another thing; I find it hard to say or even type his name, although seeing it in other contexts isn't a problem. Go figure.) That relationship took up almost the entirety of the first half of my college career, so I never really had a chance to see how I would do on my own.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess maybe even though it's easier and more satisfying to blame my ex-boyfriend for all of my hang-ups, I might have to accept some of my own part in this, as well. Although I really don't think I used to be this uncomfortable around people. Back in high school I might have been kind of weird, but at least I didn't feel like people didn't want me around. (Well, except for a few people, but that was more their problem than mine.)

Webcomics are SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Okay, if any of you actually know me pretty well, you know I have this rather unhealthy habit of getting too involved in the lives of the webcomic characters I follow regularly. In fact, I frequently have to remind myself that these are not real people, that they are not friends I just happen to stalk through a one-way mirror.

With that being said, this latest story arc of Questionable Content is really hitting a nerve with me.

[SPOILERS ALERT although really you should just go and catch up with the storyline if you actually care about these characters.]

The one that just went up in the last hour or so is basically one long monologue from Marten about the fight he just had with Dora, ending with a pervy punchline by Sven. The thing is, everything Marten says about Dora's trust issues could very well have come from me during the last few months of my last relationship, if I had been able to articulate the problem.

In particular:

"Every one of our fights has been about her crazy insecurity. I'm just so tired of having to convince her that yes, I'm ACTUALLY HAPPY WITH HER and I wouldn't rather be dating...someone else."

That was entirely the situation I dealt with. I was fighting with this guy every other day because he was convinced I was cheating on him; he didn't want me to have any time alone or spend time with other friends (not that I really had any other friends by that point). I spent all of my time and energy defending myself against a constant attack that I had done nothing to deserve, and even though it was making my life utterly miserable, I somehow just put up with all of this until it came to the breaking point, when he tried to make me choose between him and my trip abroad.

I guess my point in all of this is I don't really know what to hope for in the Dora/Marten situation. On the one hand, seeing them break up would be like seeing my best friends heartbroken; on the other hand, I don't want Marten to have to put up with the same thing I did, and if it looks like Dora is never going to budge on her position it might be time for him to move on.

OH GOD WHAT AM I DOING THESE ARE FUCKING CARTOON CHARACTERS NOT REAL PEOPLE

I had an epiphany.

So this class I have that is about manifestos and bookbinding - obviously, our final project involves hand-binding our own books and filling them with our choice of manifesto. Ever since the topic was introduced, I have been racking my brain for something I could talk about, but couldn't decide; I have a lot of things that I feel strongly enough about to rant about for several pages. (Although admittedly, not all of them may be things that people would find interesting.)

Today, though, I had an awesome idea. It started today after Rai, my prof, gave a couple of examples of past students that had used the manifesto as an opportunity to inform people rather than persuading them, maybe to clear up misconceptions or stereotypes. So I got to thinking about this, and decided the best possible thing I could write about in that situation would both inform people about a (probably) unexpectedly common situation, and give me some major catharsis at the same time.

I am going to write my manifesto about abusive relationships, and how they are not usually as obvious as you might expect. And I'm going to use my own story to do so.

After I figured this out, I started brainstorming and in just a few minutes had come up with a long list of quotes and implications from my last relationship that could make up a cohesive graphic storyline. I've got ideas about how to set it up, what the drawings might look like, even what I'm going to call the thing.

It's going to be hard, admittedly. Some of the things I'm planning to put in there are things I never even mentioned to anyone because they were just too hard to say out loud or because it took me a long time to figure them out or admit them to myself.

But, I think this project could be the best thing I've done for myself in a long time.

Have I picked the wrong path?

I'm going to preface this post by saying I have had a shitty week, all told. What with the craziness of classes, various annoyances I've had to discuss with people and may or may not have resolved, the paranoia of possibly running into my evil ex around campus, my general anxiety surrounding the major changes in my life and the re-assimilation into what could be considered routine, and the underlying feeling that I've done absolutely nothing useful with my life this week, that's not really a surprise. Plus, I made the mistake of reading creepypasta for hours last night, which meant not only did I have trouble getting to sleep in the first place, I also woke up about every two hours and finally had to sleep with the lights on at about four in the morning, and consequently slept in about three hours later than I'd planned.*

My point is this: I was talking with my guy Paul last night and came to the conclusion that I need to draw more often for the sake of practice. So today, I sat down, hit the "random" button at Questionable Content, and spent about forty-five minutes or so drawing different versions of Faye Whitaker. They weren't perfect, but I was pretty satisfied with what I ended up with. And here's the weird part - while I was drawing, I was concentrating so fully on it that I forgot everything that was bothering me. This hearkened me back to high school, when art was my favorite class because I could spend an hour every day doing something that was calming and distracted me from whatever else was going on in my life.

How in the hell did I forget about this?

Now don't get me wrong, I love writing; I'm an English major for a reason. But the difference between writing and drawing is that even if I enjoy what I'm writing, it's hard for me to stay focused on it at the best of times, unless I'm really on a roll or on the tail of an idea. Conversely, when I start drawing something, I get really into it. Maybe I'm not the best artist, but it doesn't really matter at this point.

I'm wondering if I picked the right career path. Maybe I should have started out in the art department or something. Or is this really what I want, and drawing as a side hobby is enough for me?

GAH EXISTENTIAL CRISIS



*That's the thing about creepypasta. It's not usually that scary when you're reading it, if at all, but it has a nasty habit of sticking random visuals in your brain just when you think you've forgotten about it.

What is my subconscious doing?

These are some recurring themes in my dreams of the last few weeks:

Teeth falling out

Being someplace that would normally be really cool, but there's some negative aspect (ex. no way to get home, stuck in a hotel room with lots of people)

Plans disrupted because of being in the wrong place/time (ex. I want to do something in Muncie but I'm in Cape, forgetting t0 make my Halloween costume until the day before)


The last two aren't really that surprising or hard to interpret, since I have sort of been forced out of the normality of the life I knew for 22 years. But what's with the teeth falling out?

Pierogies? Pierogies!

So, since this past week has been one of nearly unremitting craziness and today has been spent with farmer's markets, kittens and a rather deadly photo/glue combination, I will refrain from giving you all the hairy details of above and instead concentrate on this week's new recipe - pierogies!

The first - and by far superior - pierogies I ever ate were at Pike Place Market, at a little Russian food stand that also serves a delicious borsch and many sides and salads whose names I can't remember. The ones I love there are potato and mushroom, but they can be filled with just about anything, as long as it's something you can fit into a dumpling.

The recipe I used was found at About.com, of all places. (Man, I remember watching commercials for this website on Channel One news in junior high; who knew I'd actually use it someday?)

So, first I washed and peeled the potatoes for the filling and set them aside, then put all of the dough ingredients in a bowl. (This dough has sour cream in it!)



The dough ended up to be a pretty stiff dough not unlike bread. Once mixed, it had to be set aside and put in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.

While the dough was firming up, I started the potatoes boiling (which I probably should have done at the start) and sauteed the vegetables for the filling. The recipe called for onions, but I also added mushrooms because I just love them.

I used red onions because the store was out of green onions (my favorite) and that was the next choice. Although the recipe called for a whole onion, only about a quarter of it actually ended up going into the pan, because it was a GIANT onion. (In retrospect, I probably would have used more of it.)

The potatoes took FOREVER to boil. I had never cooked them that way before, so I had no realistic idea how long it would take; I ended up scooping the potatoes out after a while, cutting them into pieces and then boiling them some more. When they were finally finished, the next step in the process basically involved making mashed potatoes with the sauteed vegetables and some cheese. (I used a LOT of cheese.)


The next step was rolling out the dough to make the dumplings. My two major problems here were 1) I had no rolling pin and had to make do with a tall glass from the cabinet, and 2) The dough was extremely elastic, to the point where it absolutely would not stay the thickness I was trying to get. I'm not sure whether this was just a characteristic of the recipe or something I did wrong; as it was, the dough was supposed to be about 1/8 inch thick, and it ended up being almost twice that thick.

I cut out the dumpling circles with the same glass that had served as my rolling pin. (No cookie cutters? No problem!) Because of the thickness of the dough, I had a lot of leeway as to how far I could stretch it around a large amount of filling, but I still ended up with a good amount of filling left over. The mushrooms may have been part of that.




After all the dough was used up, all I had to do was crimp the edges with a fork (both for practicality and attractiveness) and pop them into some boiling water.



They cooked surprisingly quickly. The recipe called for frying the pierogies after they were boiled, but I skipped this step for three reasons: 1) My favorite pierogies from the market are boiled, not fried, 2) I generally don't like fried things anyway, and it's healthier, and 3) I was getting damn hungry by this point, since the recipe was supposed to take an hour to make and it had taken me nearly three.

Luckily, they still tasted good not-fried. They probably would have been better had I been able to roll the dough thinner, but not bad at all, particularly with sour cream. I ended up having a total of seven pierogies for dinner, and there were enough left over for at least two more meals.

I see potential here.

I just encountered a bright light in the bog of my day so far. Now I just hope it doesn't turn out to be a hinkypunk.

Said light is my first class of the semester, an English senior seminar entitled "Manifestos and Book Binding'. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be just as awesome as it sounds. Our final project is to make four copies of our personal manifesto and hand-bind it; it's more of an art class than an English class, which is fine with me, since all of the actual art classes on this campus are majors-only. Plus, I can probably use the cool scrapbooking supplies I have lying around.

On another note entirely, today has been fucking crazy in my head. I'm attempting to get into one English class that sounds cool and fulfills a requirement, which, if I get into it, will require me to drop a different class that conflicts with the time, which means I will have to take that class in the spring. This doesn't really bother me requirement-wise, since a t least ten variations on this class are offered every semester, but the one I was going to take looked like it would really helpful to me; it's called "What Am I Going To Do With My Life?" Which, you know, is fucking PERFECT for me right now.

Complicating this situation is this honors thesis I have to complete sometime this year, which I didn't realize I actually had to register for and not just talk to the dean about it. (Which I did.) so now I have to try and register for this "class" which it turns out requires prior permission, so now I have to call the honors department and figure out how exactly I would go about obtaining permission so I can register.

At least I know what my thesis is going to be. I'm going to research what necessities (availability, preservation, etc.) led to the distinctive ingredients used in various world cuisines. Of course, I'll have to include some recipes and try them out as part of the project!

Great.

So, since my sleep schedule has been summer-fucked and I've somehow been unable to muster up the willpower to actually get up before 11 a.m. in the past week, I was unsurprisingly unable to fall asleep at the proper time last night despite a glass of Moscato that I took as a soporific. Consequently, I got about six hours of sleep rather than the eight I had planned on, and I woke up this morning for work with a headache I can't shake, and I just realized I haven't seen my iPod in the past few days. (This is a new iPod that I went through hell to get, by the way.)

Oh, and I forgot my lunch.

Great way to start out the school year.

Carne Asada!

Well, her mom is still here. So until we can have a talk about guests and proper notice, I'll regale you with this tale of cooking success!

(Cross-posted to Flirty Food.)

In the spirit of my new-school-year's resolution to try a new recipe every week, a couple of days ago I made a dish that I'd tried many times before in restaurants, but never made - carne asada. I love this dish partly for the fact that it's steak - and I love steak - and partly for the things it's traditionally served with. (Avocado/guac, beans, pico de gallo and sour cream.)

The recipe, which I got from Simply Recipes, goes as follows:

Ingredients

2 pounds flank or skirt steak
Olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Marinade:
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed (best to lightly toast the seeds first, then grind them)
1 large handful fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the stems)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 limes, juiced
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup olive oil

I eliminated the salt and pepper (because I'm lazy), the jalapeno (because I don't like it), and the cumin (because I thought I had some and didn't). I also used dried cilantro instead of fresh, because that was what I had already, and garlic from a jar. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Spice World marinated garlic. It packs the same punch as fresh garlic for a lot cheaper, and you don't have to go out and buy a couple of cloves every time you want to put garlic in something, which for me is a lot of the time.)

The rest of the marinade ingredients went into a mixing bowl along with the steak, which I had to cut into a few smaller pieces for the sake of not being so messy.

The bowl then went in the fridge for an hour and a half or so while I went to go do online homework or, more likely, poked around Tumblr for a while. The recipe recommends 1-5 hours marinating; I would have liked to let it sit longer, but I was getting hungry!

While I was waiting, I also prepared some of the things I was going to eat with the steak itself - plain old avocado (guacamole is sometimes just too much effort) and beans, plus some prepared pico de gallo from the grocery store. (For the record, the Marsh here has amazing avocados; I couldn't stop myself munching while I was cutting them up.)



To get a facsimile of refried beans without the effort and added calories involved with actually frying them, I put a can of pinto beans in my food processor with some salt, garlic and lime juice. They were great!

Finally, it was time to grill the meat. The recipe called for either an actual grill or a cast-iron frying pan; I only had a newfangled Teflon-type pan, so I went with that. I don't think it was a mortal error.



It took a little longer than I anticipated to cook the steaks, but luckily I like my meat pretty rare, so it could have been worse. Here's how they turned out:

Finally, after slicing the meat, I made up a plate with some steak, avocado, beans, sour cream and pico plus a few mini tortillas.

Shortly after finishing dinner, I emailed my dad to tell him I'd successfully grilled my first steak. He was proud.

Unexpected guests.

Yesterday, I told my roommate that I was going to make beef stroganoff for dinner; we'd talked about this previously and she seemed all for it. So now I have all of the supplies I need to cook dinner for two people.

Today, I come home at around 3 to find that a friend of hers came over; whether she knew about this before the fact, I have no idea. To further add to the confusion, within the hour, her mother had also arrived unexpectedly (to me. Apparently Teresa knew about this on Thursday, but neglected to mention it to me).

Problem number one: I probably have enough extra supplies for the extra people, but I don't think I should be expected to cater to these new people if I wasn't prepared to do so or informed of the situation at all.

Problem number two: We moved into this apartment on Monday. Her mother (and sometimes her father) were an ever-constant presence on Monday and Tuesday, both roommate and parents were gone on Wednesday, but then they all came back on Thursday night. Yesterday was the first time my roommate and I had been alone in this apartment, and I thought maybe we had gotten rid of her mother for the time being, but here she comes showing up again and doesn't seem to even really have a purpose for being here other than just wanting to "hang out".

I don't want her mother here anymore. I don't feel like I have a single shred of privacy in my own apartment except if I barricade myself into my room, and that's not cool.

I want to know when people are going to be here.

And I definitely wish she had mentioned this potential visit to me yesterday when I had discussed making dinner in the first place.

I was already angry today due to situations beyond my control, and I really do not need this right now.

I must begin my life anew.

Let me explain what I mean.

I've lived in the Midwest all of my life (although my family's well-traveled); I grew up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and I go to school in Indiana. Now my parents have decided, now that they are both retired and my sister has graduated from high school, that it's time to do what they've talked about for years and move to Seattle, where they can be closer to my brother and his family and take advantage of what is admittedly a spectacular city.

That's all well and good for them, but this creates several problems for me and my sister, the first and foremost of which is that while we're still close enough to home to go back for a visit...we kind of can't. I mean, I could go back to Cape Girardeau and stay with a friend for a few days, but my house? The one I've lived in all of my life? Empty, locked, off-limits, waiting patiently for a potential buyer. Somehow, it's not the same.

Also: unless by some miracle the parentals find her a home with someone we know, I will most likely never see my cat again. We've had her since I was maybe five or six; she's got to be honing in on sixteen years or so now, but Molasses is a tough old bird. But since my brother is highly allergic to cats, my parents can't take her with them to Seattle. My apartment at school doesn't allow any pets that aren't fish, so my taking her was out of the question, and my sister, of course, lives in a dorm. So when it was goodbye to my old house, it was also goodbye to good old Molasses.

Complicating matters further, but an inevitable part of anyone's life, is the fact that nothing with my friends is certain anymore. The youngest of them are going off to college as I speak, and the older ones, like me, are getting into their senior year and gearing up for internships, graduation, and proper employment if all goes well. Not all of them will be coming back to Cape anytime soon, and who knows when, if ever, we will all be in the same place again even long enough for a trip to Denny's?

In short, my life as I've known it ever since high school is swiftly falling to pieces and there's nothing I can do about it. So, this will hopefully be the chronicle of a year in which I get my shit together and deal with these changes. I might have to get some serious counseling to do it, since I apparently deal with big change like a child with its hands over its ears, but I will do it.

Hey, at least I know I have a problem.