Midterms and Halloween!

Okay! I got through midterms. I studied my butt off last weekend! ALL WEEKEND. I didn't go to DnD, I didn't go see Obama on my campus (actually somewhat regret that, but the crowd was around 30,000 so maybe not my cup of tea there) and I sat upstairs while a bunch of people in my living room giggled and guffawed while watching a movie. POWER TO MY BRAIN! Also I am in the process of having coffee this morning so I'm VERY AWAKE. All that remains after two essay tests and a 6 page paper... is waiting for the grades. But I know, know, that the studying I did of those 30 freaking cities in Latin America paid off for that Geography quiz, because I filled it out instantly and had to sit for five minutes with half the class agonized over it some more. Hooray! I feel accomplished! And I still remember all the countries down there. I had to get some mail from my Dad's house and Miss Crazy-Pants freaked out when I listed all the countries to my Dad. She thought I was speaking a foreign language. But...but they're just places! They exist! Cripes. She also is making rather obvious attempts to harass my Dad into marriage. It's terrifying. TERRIFYING. That is one of the last things I would wish on my Dad. She also repeated herself several times about how she'd gone to the doctor for the first time in like 20 years. I shit you not. 20 years. This woman is grossssss.... She's younger than my Dad by almost ten years be she is the one who has dentures. Dentures. In her forties. The level over hygiene this woman has (lacks?) repulses me occasionally. And she is very huggy, and it's always at the opposite point in time that she should... bah. Why did I let this turn into a rant about her? Oh, right, because it's so easy. Seriously I will never run out of fuel for that fire. So crazy.
Anyways.
I am having a Halloween party this Saturday and I'm so excited! I'm going to make pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting! I shall post pictures! I'm actually going to have a party at my own place with real people and the place will be full and I'm so happy about it! And I am making friends with the people in my Latin class and I think a couple of them are coming to the party, we had lunch yesterday and chatted and did Latin and such. I'm looking forward to seeing the costumes... and my costume is almost done. I'm being a firefly/lighting bug! I've made my antennae and my yellow butt, still need to make the wings-cape. And then I wear black. Simple and cute! And my Bestest friend will help me clean and make decorations on Saturday, and I'll make the cupcakes, far too many of them. This should be an excellent weekend.

Yay Dinner

Last week we had a nice impromptu dinner gathering. My friend Woz walked back to my apartment with me, where we found my Bestest friend still there playing video games on the giant-ass TV. I was contemplating dinner as Bestest and Woz chatted about games which sounds like a foreign language to me. I realized I had an overabundance of eggs from various "I'm making this thing! Oh it needs eggs, I don't have eggs, I'll just grab some eggs here..." which happened for three different things recently and resulted in three different cartons of 6 or less eggs chillin out in the fridge. What the hell to you do with that many eggs when you don't want an omelet? Make quiche, that's what. Having never made a quiche I decided it would just be the newest step in my culinary adventure and I embraced it wholeheartedly. (Granted I haven't made much of anything, so pretty much anything is a culinary adventure, but I like it that way.) Woz and I went to the store while Roomate was on his way home from his real-person job. I got an onion, mushrooms, and swiss cheese. And threw in the rest of the leftover broccoli for some color. Oh and hooray for pre-made pie crust. It doesn't sound like my idea of fun to mess with the lard or shortening necessary for good homemade pie crust. Eugh. I'm such a wimp. Whatever. Quiche takes a while to make, by the way. We were all pretty ravenous by the time it was done... also note that in typical me-fashion I also managed to have too much filling (resulting from too many eggs in the first place goddammit) so I made two quiches. It's just TOO HARD to cook in small portions! It's just impossible to cook for just one person some days. Augh. I eat like crap mostly because of that. Anyways Woz had bought a cake at the store (it was cheap and looked good at the time) so roommate, bestest friend, Woz and I had quiche and cake for dinner. With Virgil's root beer, also provided by Woz. 

I was practicing my cake-writing skills. They have not improved. 

The quiche might look like nothing special in this picture and more like vomit-pie, but I am assured it was quite good. Well until a few days ago when my Roomie and Bestest informed me that the quiche gave them stomachaches. Woz and I escaped this somehow. I don't quite understand. I think they are stomach-wusses, because Roomie takes meds for serious-business heartburn and Bestest gets tummy aches from fake pancake syrup. That, or Woz and I have the Iron Stomach feat, and get +2 to poison resistance. 

Oh, I pull Dungeons and Dragons references to real-life situations all the time, by the way, so if you're not interested in that sort of thing, you should probably not read this here bloggy thing. 

Don't mind me, just a little romantic mood...

All these people getting married around me and all I really want is to be able to hug him.
We've been doing long-distance for 2 years and 3 months so far. We've been to five weddings together and hypothetically have five more to go next year. You can imagine there is a lot of subliminal peer-pressure going on here. Statistics are saying fewer people are getting married; I disagree, I say the marriage age is dropping. People are getting married far younger. Why, that wedding we went to in September? They were both younger than us. And my boyfriend is 26 now.
Today I just really miss him. I finally got this nice double bed right at the end of the summer... when school started up and we had less time, longer times between seeing each other. It was a chilly morning and that just made me wish he was here even more. I wish I could just slip back in bed with him and ignore the world for a few hours. Wake up slow, like we did this summer. Put on some coffee, wander the internet, and laugh at his latest crazy hair morning. But weekends go by so quickly now, especially when I have to work one of the days.
But big changes are coming. I'll be graduating this Spring, just before June. It's going to be the moment of truth. Realizing that I'll be moving again this summer makes me even less likely to put things up in my room... But it's going to be the time were we decide what the hell we're doing. Who is moving out of state? Where are we going to live? Who is going to get the job that determines that? ....will one of us find something in time? My Roommate basically said he wants me out by August so he can "start my transition to married life." Yeah, he's getting married too, great isn't it? Granted he's getting married to my Bestest Friend and we've known they would for years, it's that the timing fits in just the wrong way with everyone else. The "out by August" was a tiny smack in the face making me realize I gotta get my act together. So you're graduating. Now what? History with Latin? What'cha gonna do with that? Well fuck if I know.
I just wish it were simple, sometimes. That I found a guy who lived here. So much less strife. But it wouldn't be Him, it wouldn't be My Guy that I have now. And I love him. So I'm willing to go to hell and back for him. And I'm a stubborn idiot about things and I'm not giving up so easily dammit.

Epiphany

I don't think I can begin to say how much of an Epiphany I've had today, thanks to two bloggers I've stumbled upon.
http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/
and
http://daddyscratches.com
Have just led me to some important moments of self-realization. The latter blogger led me to the former, and his myriad of posts about being an adult with ADD. This was the first I stumbled on:
http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/2007/05/hallowell-and-rateys-diagnostic.html
I fit so many of those things... I've always had problems with procrastination. I never want to get started because I know I won't do it as well as I want, that I'll be bored and hey, well I'll be a monkey's uncle, if those aren't more indicators. Sense of under-achievement regardless of what you've actually accomplished and intolerance of boredom. So much of this speaks to me I can't even express it! And it's all resonating so much today because I took two exams today and just beat myself up about it the whole time and worried and spazzed out. Which is another thing on that list! "Tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers." God, that explains so much of my behavior. So many problems I've brought to my relationship with my boyfriend, when he thought I was pulling things out of thin air... maybe I was, or maybe I just looked so hard for problems, so much expected there to be some because I expect myself to screw up (those self-esteem issues, another indicator) that I found some. This can probably explain why I get anxious in an empty house, without people around for too long; not enough stimuli for my brain. I have crippling bouts of self-doubt about nearly everything in my life! No wonder I've struggled in school even though I understand everything perfectly. Between ADD and mild dyslexia and nobody really telling me outright that I have them and not having good ways to cope... it's a wonder I didn't just give up and drop out or something. It makes sense, too, looking at my friend with severe ADD. She keeps herself ridiculously busy, or did while she was in school, and she loved it. The need to always be doing something... my mind is racing on everything I've just read faster than I can put into coherent thoughts. 
And now I've just wandered back to his writing, and found another amazing piece of helpfulness: How to Write Daily. Or close to daily. And that writing in your head thing? That focusing on a turn of phrase? God do I ever do that. Sometimes I interrupt my whole train of thought just to focus on changing the way I just said something to myself in my head, changing the phrase so it sounds better even though nobody but me is going to hear it. 
Ah. I just have to get this out there. I disengaged partway through but here's my truncated thoughts for you. 

Well, there's this thing called Dagorhir...

I wonder how long I will ignore the pain in my knee before I actually bother to call and go to physical therapy...
The pain started about last year in the winter and has really just gotten worse. It's because I play Dagorhir which is a Medieval-style foam sword fighting and combat game. It's like a sport for dorky people and I love it to pieces. (I did meet my boyfriend through it, after all.) Dag (for short) was originally inspired by Lord of the Rings, but it's become its own beast these days, with Romans, Narnians, and Orcs all in the same game. There's also groups all over the country and even in Puerto Rico. (I'm friends with one of them on facebook, and he's always posting about Dag in Spanish which is cool but always throws me off a little bit.) There are other groups that have branched off from Dag as well, like Belegarth (rules-lawyering led to a big fight between the founders and there was a split between the groups over a few choice rules, but plenty of people participate in both.) or Amtguard or... I could go on for a while, there's a lot of groups these days.
But anyways. As a result of trying not to be a wussy girl, I've pretty much always used a sword and shield combo. This means I get my leg "chopped off" on a regular basis and have to take a knee, which is a large amount of repeated impact. This has led to... well, I'm not sure precisely what is wrong but my Doctor originally said it was arthritis. That's right, arthritis at 22! Awesome! I went back to her again recently because the pain has become more frequent and worse, so she wrote me this prescription for physical therapy... but I be poor, and having of very little time, so I have no idea when I'll get around to it.
Man. This post doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what Dagorhir is or what it means to me. I guess I'll have to talk more about it later, when I'm not trying to study my face off and write a 7 page paper by Tuesday.

Adventure in boxed cake

I decided to make a cake for my boyfriend's birthday last week. I've never made any sort of cake before, and since I was short on time, I figure it would be better to make the boxed type rather than from scratch in case I were to mess it up. So I went and picked out a nice box of chocolate mix and some vanilla icing and some green drawing-icing. And more eggs, because I forgot that we still had two other containers of eggs from previous incidents of "oh this recipe calls for eggs, I don't have those right now." Obviously they made these for stupid people, which is great, since I don't know what I'm doing with cake. Dump all ingredients in bowl, mix. Grease pan, that's probably important, I'll do that too. I hope my oven likes me today, doesn't burn my cake... I've learned now that I set my oven slightly below what it says, and put the timer for possibly even less than the recommended time, and slowly add time on until it's done or it even the littlest burn becomes a screechy-fire-alarm problem. It's interesting cooking here. Stupid electric oven. But the cake came out fine. Granted it looked like a small hill rather than a nice flat sheet cake, but whatever. I waited to ice it, because that's what you do, right? I even waited longer than I really had patience for. Alas, even with my extra patience, I failed at icing it nicely. It just picked up all the crumbs and distributed them even thru the icing, making it look as though there were sprinkles on my cake. Sigh. Then the "happy birthday!" Turns out that's hard too and sorta blobbed at points... it it's the thought that counts when making a surprise cake for someone, so it really doesn't matter, especially since my boyfriend will eat just about anything.
Cake:

I don't know, I think it looks edible at the least. I thought it tasted fine. For boxed cake.

What almost was a very bad idea.

So the second or third day of classes this year I decided I would roller-blade to the bus stop. Seems like a harmless idea. But then, after putting on my blades and wrist-guard-thingies, I stood up shakily and remembered that I hadn't roller-bladed in years. I overcame the small wave of panic and took off. I immediately almost crashed. There are these weird deep footprints in our sidewalk from when some idiot walked across it while it was wet. A few of them have been filled in, but most haven't. Trap #1 narrowly avoided.
I rolled down the little ramp to the street, didn't get run over, and was on my way. The route I take to school is through the apartment complex across the street from me, and they take pains to make sure no one speeds from one end to the next. I.E. speed bumps. (Or speed humps, if that amuses you more.) There are two of them directly in my path... Trap #2 successfully passed by slowing down and bending my knees and squeaking in fear. Then I power through the small hill and into the next parking lot. Trap #3: big puddle. This I had no idea was a trap until after I was through it and nearly did the splits because of my wet skates. Onward down the sidewalk... time to cross another road! But wait... Trap #4! Gravel on both sides of the road! Awkward walking-scuffing-shuffle and I'm still on my feet. Next parking lot. There's a little more gravel, but I'm all pshhh whatevah I got this. Then I nearly fall on my face from a full-stop jerk of my right leg as a twig is caught in the wheels. Nearly. Trap #5 now watched for keenly as there is other random debris on the road/sidewalk. From there it's smooth sailing. I make it to the shuttle bus stop, take off the skates and throw on my flumpy shoes, and head to class.
But in the end it wasn't the small amounts of terror on the way to school that made me not want to skate to school again. (Plus slightly larder amount of terror going down the hill too fast on the way home.)  It was the carrying the bastards around all day on campus after I got there.

Looking back on the decision to skate, it was probably more of a bad idea than I thought. I remember some traumatic events with those very skates...
My best friend from middle school and I both got these new skates, and wanted desperately to go be fools outside. So we suited up - helmets, wrist guards, skates - and went off down the paved bike path. It was going fine for a good while, but she got a good bit ahead of me, so I decided to hurry up. Then I Spectacularly crashed and smeared my flesh on the pavement. A nice long slide. She didn't hear me fall and kept going. I was wearing shorts. NEVER ever EVER do this while skating unless you want hamburger for legs. I immediately started to cry. Some kind passerby stopped and helped me sit on a nearby bench until she came back. She was horrified and helped me skate painfully back home to get cleaned up. And if I hadn't been wearing those wrist guards? Probably would've seen bone on my hands. The gouges in the plastic are pretty deep. I had hardcore roadburn for a couple weeks.
This event probably should have put me off skating forever, but kids bounce back well. Another friend and I decided to skate from my house to her house. Which is over a mile. Plus up and down many hills. It took us twice as long to get to her house as we thought, and her Mother was super pissed. At one point to stop myself I wanted to pull a really cool move like in movies, where people use stop signs to swing around. Well I swung around. And around. And around until I was flat on my butt. Luckily I didn't hurt myself and we giggled insanely about it.
I should probably never try to be athletic in any way. I'm just not cut out for it.

Bad luck with cars.

Well not really bad luck entirely. More like mixed-bag car luck. Because while I've gone through three cars, I haven't been hurt. So that's a plus. Yeah, by the way, three cars, only 22 years old. WTF, you might ask? Well!
My first car I just loved despite the fact that it was a total lemon. It was a used Honda civic, and I think the previous owner just drove the thing into the ground. Part of the driver's seat was ripped, so I used my super-powers (sewing) to lovingly fix my dear car. Pretty much the whole passenger side didn't work right. The window never rolled down the entire time I owned it. Before we had it fixed, when you tried to open the door it would lock, so you had to hold up the lock while opening the door to get out. Oh, and the engine died on me. You think that would be the the end, but no, we replaced it. Should have given up then, but damn did I love having my little red car.
Then one day I was on my way home, paused at a red light, fiddling with my necklace. I had maybe two seconds to look up into my rear view mirror and have the realization "he's not stopping?" Then next 1/2 hour is a bit of a blur. But what I have pieced together is this: drunk-and-medicated-man rear-ended my car into the car in front of me. The airbag went off, punching me in the face. I dazedly manage to turn off the car because the car was filled with smoke. (power from the airbag.) I got out of the car (forgot to put the car in park, but it was so fucked up it wasn't going anywhere on its own anyhow.) Friends of mine coming from the same place stopped to help me out, thank whatever higher power might exist. Mr. Fuck-up was out of his car too, stumbling over, head bleeding, eyes glazed over, to ask if I was okay. I was like, yeah I'm good, but you're bleeding dude. At this point I still hadn't realized I couldn't see because the airbag had punched my prescription sunglasses into oblivion off of my face. It gets fuzzy from there but I remember sitting in the grass by the road for a good while, cops showing up, paramedics showing up, and the failed sobriety test by Mr. fuck-up. Then the tow truck, and going home. Looking at the back end of the car, it seemed like the tailpipe has tried to become a part of the rear axle, and the whole thing tried to be part of the trunk. I would put a picture up from this, but I don't know how to get things from my phone to here yet.
Edit: Hey I learned! Here 'tis: 

  Complete with man-yeti Dad!
Then I acquired my next car from the insurance money. Nice little silver Kia, very cute, no immediate problems. I had it for about a year before the breaks sort of failed on me on the way to school. On the highway. And then I drove home again. On the highway. Because I'm a safety-minded person like that, I guess. Then in the winter, while I was a commuter student, my car decided it didn't want to let me in. I tried everything. Hairdryer on the door, lighter on the key, defrosting stuff on the lock, even body-slammed the door. It remained resolutely frozen shut. I went back inside and emailed my Latin teacher "Um. Frozen out of my car. can't make it to class. Can I meet with you tomorrow to go over the homework?" That happened maybe three times or something.
Then one night, sounds asleep, I am woken up by knocking on the door. It's 4am. Who the hell is knocking on the door? I go cautiously into the living room, and see the reflections of red and blue cop's lights. Oh god, I think to myself. Some shit has gone down and now the cops are here. What in the hell is going on? So I woke up my Dad. Then we answered the door, it was of course a cop. "Is this your car out here?" I hurry outside and look to where my car should be, to the right of the driveway, and slowly pan left, so where my car actually is, on the left side of the driveway. From that angle I don't see why it's over there. Then I run out barefoot, in Winter, to my poor car, and see its right driver's side mangled beyond belief. There's a giant spring just sitting on the ground, glass everywhere, and half of the other guy's bumper. Unfortunately, not with his license plate. We figure a drunk driver came along and smashed into my car, freaked out, perhaps because he didn't have insurance, and drove off. How you would be able to drive away after hitting a car so hard it moves 35 feet I don't know, but the asshole managed it. Needless to say my poor little car was toast. But the good news? I wasn't hurt this time either. Mostly because I was asleep in bed. One of the funny parts about this was that the old license plates from the Honda were on the Kia too. The back plate of the Honda was the front plate of the Kia... I declared that plate CURSED and got brand new plates for the next one. But as you'll see... it's not the plates, it's me.

 See the giant spring on the ground to the left of the tire?

Then came my third car. Light blue Saturn L300. Sunroof, 6-disk CD player, seat warmers (required when you have leather seats), the works man. But of course... I get a hold of it... the engine overheated on a trip out of state one day. In winter. It overheated in winter. So I'm stuck in a random-ass tiny town, get towed to a little bigger college town, and have no idea what to do. Eventually I realized I had a friend who went to the college, so I called 'em up and crashed there for the night, missing two shifts at work, which sucked. But the car recovers and I get to go home. Then there was the problem with the brights not staying off, then there was the problem with the breaks, and then there was the problem with the hole in the oil pan.... and then finally on the way home, again, the car broke down for the final time, and so close to the border of my state too. Well I still had three hours left to drive but at least I was almost in my own state. This time the timing belt broke.

Notice all the terrible little red and yellow lights? That means bad news, folks. 

Which meant death for the engine, because the pistons hit the valves and there was no compression and it was just came over, son. There was no way for me to afford a new engine this time, let alone a new car, being a poor college student, not a privileged high-school senior. So I scrapped my car for $100. Pathetic. Still bitter about that. The new oil pan on its own cost $600, not counting the labor they charged to put it in...
And now? Well for some reason, despite my poor track record, my wonderful, amazing, generous Mother is loaning me her car for the year, while she drives my Grandpa's truck. Dear god you have no idea how paranoid I am about this car. My road rage has increased to record levels and I have nightmares about hurting Mom's car. Literal nightmares. I've only had it about a month and already something... oil leak. Granted it was the fault of the oil-change place for not screwing in the oil filter properly, but really? I think it's my Anti-Technology Field. Just glad that nothing bad actually happened this time.
And that whole mess, my fine friends, is why I should never, ever, be allowed to own a car.

Why working at an ice cream store is not as fun as it might sound.

This might be more of a rant than a story. I have a crap little minimum wage job at this particular ice cream place. I don't want to mention the name in case there is the possibility of getting in trouble with the Big Bosses. The ice cream itself is delicious and I've loved it for years, but working there isn't so much about the "eat ice cream for free on the job" and more about "corporate says we need to do this." Recently we have promoted a couple movies. Forced to hand out little activity booklets, put a poster up in the store, etc. The first one made sense, because there were little cat and dog picks to put on kids' ice cream. Okay, fun, yay! But the second movie was about owls. No owl-themed things for the ice cream, just extra b.s. they make us hand out and point out. When did we start caring about things not-ice cream or candy related? It just makes no sense and every time I just want to go "New job!"
However that's not as bad as my coworkers and boss. My manager still, after many months, has not gotten the hang of scheduling. When classes started this fall, he scheduled me 1pm-7pm, when I had given him my class schedule which said I wasn't even out until 3:18pm. But I didn't get as much of a raw deal as my coworker did. He scheduled her the exact opposite of the days she requested off for highschool sports. Bravo, dude, bravo. Plus my boss is just generally a huge spaz as a person, so giving him high levels of pressure and responsibility is just not a good idea to me. He really only got the job because he'd been there for seven years or something. He needs to get out of the place... almost all the workers at the store are 16-18 year-old high-schoolers. I got asked to help at a different store once. I answer the phone: "Hello?"
"Hi, I want to leave a message for (name)?"
"Um this is she speaking."
"Oh, sorry, I thought you were a high-schooler and I would be talking to your parents."
Mentally I'm just screaming "NEW JOB! I'm 22! Need new job!" but I ended up working over there. Never again will I help close somebody else's store. The people were bizarre and the store was just totally backwards from mine and all the people were the rich type that live in that area who buy expensive things but won't tip you for shit.
Plus my pants don't fit so well any more after a whole summer of working there. I have developed a booty and still don't know what to do with it. I keep knocking things off of shelves and tables with my ass because I'm not aware of how big it is. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if I wasn't kinda too poor to buy new pants. Goodwill time I guess?
I am tired of smelling bad from this stupid job... mop water and old ice cream and bleach and whatever else... But I'm sure I'd hate working at the grocery store across from my house more.