Out with 2008,

While not everything has been bad in 2008, I'd like to say GOOD RIDDANCE to the year 2008.
Things went funky early on in the year and just went downhill from there. I know it was not just me and many people had a rather unpleasant year. But for me, here are some of the things that made 2008 a year to forget:
~February 24- spending time with my parents on their 30th anniversary when we received a phone call that my cousin --my dad's older brother's daugther-- had committed suicide. We weren't close-- I remember meeting her a few times when I was still in my single digits-- but suicide always messes with me. Having it happen in my family messed with me more.
~On top of my emotional issues (which are gradually improving over time...) this year was also fraught with physical issues. I started having joint problems-- the biggie was the ankle that hurt on the bottom and went numb on the top. That one has not been resolved yet. Others just randomly decided to hurt on random days. Whatever. Then there were some other issues that came along on top of the ankle issues leading to me not getting that resolve. These issues are being examined over time (yippee...) to see if anything changes. Then there was the tummy trouble that started with not just milk products, but other random foods as well-- eating is not enjoyable when nothing seems to agree with you. Then of course there was my clumsiest moment in the history of my existence, leading to my elbow injury-- that was fun. Amazingly enough, the month or so that my elbow felt really bad, everything else felt GREAT. Weird. And then there was the fact that for the two months prior to hurting my elbow as well as about a month and a half after, I was waking up at least twice a night. With all of this going on, my weight has suffered and my doctor is apparently not concerned by any of this. Well that's special. Particularly given that my mom has been diagnosed in the last three years with Type II Diabetes, a thyroid condition and Rheumatoid arthritis. All of which I am at risk for and all of which will hit me harder and sooner if I can't get my weight under control. But apparently this does not matter to my doctor.
~ I really did not want to move until I could afford to buy a place and moving was made even more complicated by the whole stupid elbow thing. I couldn't have done it without such fabulous friends.
~ This year has been the most difficult yet to be alone. The hardest part has been watching all of the new kids arriving to their families. Of course it is a joy-- but it is also painful for me because I worry that I will run out of time. I know that 29 is still young, but I also know that it is going to be VERY difficult for me to have a child if and when that time comes because of the "other issues" mentioned in the above section and so each year that goes by that I'm still alone is another year that I've lost.
~ I have struggled with hope and with trust. I have watched my parents' marriage continue in its destructive path of not communicating and the blame game. At the same time, I have watched my brother struggle as his wife goes out on the town with friends and leaving him at home. All the while, he brought in the only income for most of the year as she was unemployed for six months and he still was left to do much of the housework despite being the only one working and despite being out of town frequently for work. As far as trust goes, I have found that because of many past experiences, I am having a hard time trusting men to do anything they say they will do-- which may keep me from getting a date should anyone be miraculously interested.

But 2008 hasn't been all bad. Here is some of the good:
~ I made several great new friends and reconnected with a couple of old friends.
~ I got a better position at work- working in claims rather than customer service. My co-workers are much more friendly and accepting and much less catty and gossipy. I also feel much more appreciated. Not only do they say it and show it more-- I also received an unexpected promotion which resulted in a 9% pay increase. It's not a different job-- just a higher level of the same job because my boss thinks that I'm doing great.
~Smokey is still the cutest cat ever. And since I got my digital camera, it's easier for me to prove it. :)
~Now that I've moved to the new place, I'm starting to see the pluses-- I have much more space than I used to. It is walking distance to the grocery store, coffee, dollar tree and several food options. Also it is walking distance to the park where there is a beautiful walking trail.
~I've started to learn to believe and accept that the people who say that they love me really do love me-- it is not just an act and it is not pity.

Next Post: In with 2009-- My goals and hopes for the year to come.

A Post About Nothing.

I am here to post about nothing. I, like some others, have been experiencing a case of the blog BLAHS and have not posted anything for a while. Don't worry-- I haven't posted anything on the emo blog either, so it's not because things are bad. I just don't have much to say.
I generally do not enjoy the holidays as much as I should because it means extra extra time with the family and my mom tends to make drama out of everything that goes wrong this time of year. She has been much more mellow this year-- I'm not sure what to attribute it to, but I am grateful.
I received a fifty dollar gift card for Wal-mart from my boss because of all the overtime I worked a couple weeks ago to help clean up the claims we had. Since I do not shop at Wal-mart, I offered to give it to my parents. My mom would not take it. I offered to sell it to them for forty dollars. My mom said that she wants me to spend it. The good news is, the gift card can ALSO be used at Sam's Club. I know it sounds weird, but I don't boycott Sam's even though I boycott Wal-mart even though they're essentially the same company-- the main reason being that Sam's has a much better track record on employee relations since they have to remain at least somewhat competetive with Costco.
So soon, I will be purchasing some items of bulk goodness. Perhaps some potsticker are in order. And I could definitely use some more individually wrapped chicken breasts (very convenient for a single gal cooking for herself). And some Laughing Cow Cheese. Yes, that sounds good. We'll see what else I get.
I am glad that Christmas is almost here. Because I will be very glad when it is over with. I'm not saying that to be all anti-holiday spirit or Bah-Humbug-y... It's just that all of my gatherings with friends are after Christmas, and I am rather looking forward to spending time with people who love me the way I am-- as cliche as that sounds, it is the truth.
I think that's about all the nothing I can write about right now, so I am going to eat breakfast now-- a cinnamon streusel muffin and perhaps some coffee.

Beauty: A Fallacy in My Thinking AND Roommates Part 5 of 6

This probably not news to most of you, and it is most certainly not news to me, but I've never though of myself as a beautiful, or even a slightly pretty person. I've just never had that sort of confidence. I've had days or moments when I felt pretty but as a whole, I've never seen myself this way. But as of late, I have come to realize... Or instead let's say that I have been beat over the head with the fact that this is a lie. That it is a fallacy in my thinking and it needs to stop because God is not pleased with the way I've always seen myself.
Here's where the fallacy comes in: It is sort of like the "if/then statements" that you learn about in high school geometry-- like "All 4 sided shapes are quadrilaterals. IF all 4 sided shapes are quadrilaterals and a square has 4 sides THEN it must be a quadrilateral. But in this case it goes something like this:
Everything God makes is beautiful. IF everything God makes is beautiful and God made me, THEN I must be beautiful, too.
I have believed for quite some time that everything that God makes is beautiful. And I apply that to nature, and to other people and to music and to everything I can think of except for myself. Somehow I've always managed to exclude myself from the everything. And in the past it has been pointed out to me that this is an insult to God. And even though I always knew this in my head, I could never translate that to my heart. But recently my head and my heart have started to find agreement-- I have started to recognize, with the help of many people I love, that I am not the exception. God did not make everything beautiful EXCEPT for me... I am included in EVERYTHING.
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Roommates Part 5 of 6 - The Extremist
The Extremist was the most... let's just say interesting... of the Christian roommates I've had. We'll call her Dawn for the sake of the story. That is not, of course, her real name.
Dawn was, as I said before, a friend of a friend who moved into our three bedroom apartment on the day of my graduation ceremony. She did not have a car, but she borrowed her mother's for the move. We later found out that she also did not have a bed. Apparently she sold these things a few months prior because she wanted to live more simply. She told us that she wanted to sleep on the floor so that she could more easily relate to the suffering that was felt by persecuted Christians where they are not free to worship Jesus. We just nodded and smiled and went with it for the time being.
So for about a week after Dawn moved in, she slept on the floor and so on. But then one night I came home from work at about 2:30 am and there she was, sleeping on the futon in the living room. So much for getting a little snack before bed. This continued for about a month until she finally went out and bought a futon of her very own. Well, actually I think her mom bought her bed because she wasn't working at the time, but whatever...
During this same period of time that she was sleeping on the floor/living room futon, she was also doing the Daniel Fast as a full time diet. She would concoct strange soups in my slow cooker and leave them in there for days. All the while she would nibble on whatever food Becca and I had purchased for ourselves. Actually perhaps nibble is not the proper word. One time she ate a half a loaf of wheat bread in one sitting. Another time she ate a box of taco shells-- just the shells. And still another time she consumed a container of DRY OATMEAL. She said that she was doing the Daniel Fast because she had a wheat allergy, but she kept eating our wheat products in mass quantities. At one point she accused me of being a bad Christian sister. She told me that by buying wheat products and keeping them in the house, that I was causing her to stumble. Because apparently she was never supposed to have to develop self control.
Ah, and if only this is where the entertainment ended. But alas, there is still more to be said about Dawn. During that summer, the fifth Harry Potter book came out. Now I know it's not uncommon for Christians to be opposed to Harry Potter, and I'm fine with that. But when the fifth Harry Potter book came out, Becca and I had my niece, who was 11 at the time, come with us to the release party and then spend the night at our place. The next morning Dawn comes out of her bedroom, asks what we did the night before, and the instant that we tell her she goes into a rant about the evils of Harry Potter and how I am corrupting my niece and she can't believe that I would be such a bad influence on her-- all of this in front of my niece. Then when after her grandma came to take her home, the lecture began. She pulled out her Bible and started reading me verses and following me around the apartment ranting about how horrible Harry Potter is. I asked her if she'd ever read any of the books to which she responded with a resounding NO-- at which point I asked her to kindly butt out because she had no idea what she was talking about. I told her that her issues are not always going to be mine and she needed to just deal with it. Eventually she left me alone on the matter.
And now for the final piece of entertainment for this tale-- I guess this roommate is more a series of stories rather than one continuous one-- the trip to the emergency room.
So shortly after Dawn's 30th birthday, we had planned a trip to go to Great America for Joyfest-- I invited her because I didn't want to go alone. At the time, I was working the 4:00pm -12:30am shift and had split days off. In order to accommodate for my trip, I had to switch shifts with a coworker, which put me in the position of having to work a long shift on the Wednesday before we left. So instead of my usual 4:00 start time, I had started at noon that day. By the time I got home, I was exhausted and I went to bed immediately. I barely even took the time to change into my pajamas before falling asleep.
About an hour after I fell asleep, there was a pounding on my bedroom door. And then another. Then a yell-- "Jeni! Jeni! I think I need to go to the hospital. Jeni? Can you hear me?" And then some more pounding. After a couple of minutes I'm able to drag myself out of bed, and there is Dawn outside of my door with a blood soaked towel wrapped around her finger. So I put some shoes on-- I was not about to change out of my pajamas-- and we headed for the hospital. Turns out, Dawn had cut off her finger tip while cutting an apple. As we left the apartment, I couldn't help but notice that all of the lights were out in the apartment. I thought it was strange that she would turn out the lights after cutting herself-- but of course this is not what happened. She cut her fingertip off while cutting an apple IN THE DARK because she was "afraid that she would wake us up" if she turned on the light. Eh, whatever. So while we're on the way to the hospital, she tells me that we will have to throw away the towel. And the sponge in the sink. And we should probably bleach the sink, the knife and the cutting board. Because Dawn had Hepatitis B, which is spread through the blood-- so we needed to make sure that there was no blood lingering anywhere.
So we go to the hospital and I hang out in the waiting room while Dawn gets her finger taken care of. And by the time I get home, I am COMPLETELY wiped out-- but not so wiped out that I forget to babysit her while she tosses the towel, sponge and APPLE and takes them to the dumpster then bleaches the sink, knife and cutting board.
Fortunately, a month later our lease was up and Becca and I decided that the apartment in Lemmon Valley was no longer the place for us. And since Dawn's parents lived in Stead, she decided to go back to their house. And on Thanksgiving Day (yes, again!) Becca and I moved to an apartment in Sparks where my brother joined us. Turns out my brother was the BEST roommate I ever had. Who would have thought?

And I'm Back With Roommates Part 4

To anybody who is still reading, sorry for the delay. I'm back here with more stories of roommate rendezvous--or whatever you want to call them. There will also be new poetry posted on my emo blog--it's not exactly emo, but it's more emo than the roommates story, so that's where it's going for now. So without further ado:

Roommates (Part 4 of 6) The Time in Between:

After my ex-best friend's sister moved out in November of 2002, my remaining roommate (now known as my SIL, also known as Becca) and I signed another year lease in the same apartment and decided to try to find a perfect third roommate. The problem with this was that neither of us could actually REALLY afford not to have a third roommate.
It seemed as though things were going to work out well when a friend of my SIL's that she knew from work got kicked out of his parents' house. It seemed like the perfect situation-- we needed a third roommate, he needed an inexpensive place to live-- perfect, right?
He moved into our apartment on Thanksgiving Day when Becca and I were hosting a murder mystery dinner for our parents for Thanksgiving. So the roommate number 3 and his friend show up, make a couple of trips to get his things, and when they finally come back for the murder mystery dinner, they are carrying beer--I'm not sure how they got it, since they were both 18. This put me in quite the awkward position being that I was the only one living at the apartment who was legal drinking age. I told roommate number 3's friend that he could not bring the beer into my apartment where I was the only resident of legal drinking age. He got all huffy with me, and went out to his car where I'm sure he downed at least one of the beers. He came back in for dinner and was basically snarky with me the entire night about how uncool I was for not letting him drink. Whatever.
After that night, things were not bad with roommate number 3. He mostly kept to himself and spent all of his time on the internet. This was a bit of a problem since we had dial-up back then and Becca and I were both in college. We occasionally had to ask him to stop the games so that we could get online for school related things. There was also the debates. Some nights, Becca and I would have these conversations where we just sat up debating things-- politics (which she is very good at, now having her degree in Political Science); religion (which I was very good at due to passion and persistance); hot button types of issues (abortion, gay marriages, etc.). We sometimes got a bit loud during our debates and would eventually end up crying and laughing and baring our souls about things that have made us who we are. And roommate #3 was freaked out by this. He just thought that we were always fighting.
Needless to say, roommate number 3 did not last long. Shortly after Christmas, partway into January, he decided to move in with his beer drinking friend in an apartment closer to town. Lemmon Valley is not a good place for the beer drinkers to live should they have to make a quick escape for more beer.
After roommate #4 moved out in January, we began the search for a new roommate. We put up fliers at UNR since it was just before the beginning of the spring semester--right when lots of people are looking for a new place to live. We got a few phone calls, but most people didn't want to live in Lemmon Valley. We weren't terrible worried for the rest of January because roommate #3 had paid a partial month's rent before he left, so we were okay for money.
We posted our open room on one of the roommate finder sites online, but really had very little luck there. It was a stressful time. I had changed my major from education to English writing in November and that left me needing 5 writing classes and a social science to graduate. So in the spring of 2003, I was enrolled in 4 writing classes, working full time at the Evil K and I had no idea where my future would take me-- I just knew it wouldn't be teaching. That decision was a long time in coming and came after I received a swift kick in the butt from God after two years of nudging had failed. But that's a story best left for another post.
In March we finally got a response from someone on the roommates site. He was a recent college graduate who was going to be doing some science thing with little kids for Americorp. He was moving from Indiana and wanted to have a place lined up before he made his move. So he came to visit the apartment in early March, and we didn't hear from him again. Finally, two weeks later he sent us a message saying that he wanted to be closer to the campus, but that he had really enjoyed meeting us. So we continued into April in the same frenzy we'd been in for most of February and all of March. I was particularly frenzied with graduation looming near. That semester I had 150 pages of final portfolio work due at the end of the semester and every paper I'd written for the entire semester had to be reviewed and revised one more time. And things were exceedingly tight with just two of us paying rent-- but emotionally it was a very easy time. During that time Becca was quite a good roommate even if it was a little weird having my brother stay the night every Friday.
Finally, at the beginning of May a friend of mine let me know that she had a friend who was looking for a roommate. We eagerly took her information and made contact. She came to look at the apartment and decided to move in ASAP. So she gradually moved her things in and while I was receiving my unofficial diploma at UNR's graduation ceremony (I wasn't officially done until August), she was moving the last of her things into our apartment.

Stay tuned next week for Part 5 where you will learn all of the terrors of the new Roommate #3.

A New Blog

So, since I generally stop blogging when I'm feeling emo, and I've been encouraged not to do so, I have created another blog that will be all about those emo days. The link is in my menu on the left and it will include all my emo rants, poems, songs, etc. If you are into emo, then you can pop over there every once in a while to get your dose-- and if you're not then you can just pretend like my emo blog doesn't exist and just hang out at this one. The current feature on my emo blog is a lament-ish sort of poem. If you visit, then I hope you enjoy!

Random Thoughts-- And Roommates Pt 3 of 6

Random Thoughts:
*Right now, my seven favorite people in the world are the people who came to help me move yesterday. I am all moved and my old apartment is already completely cleaned and ready to go. I suppose that the one person who offered to come but was unable due to circumstances beyond his control can be included, therefore making it my EIGHT favorite people in the world.
*My dad and my brother are the most dependable men that I know. I owe them a fabulous Mexican dinner and some beer.
*I can see cows from my kitchen window.
*Bowling left-handed is challenging. It's helping me learn to laugh at myself a lot more. (I know that I already laugh at myself a lot-- but usually only with friends, not strangers.)
*Earlier, I was watching TV and there was a commercial on about one of those expensive programs that is supposed to prevent identity theft. It's good to know that our most important identity, the one of "Child of God," cannot be stolen from us.
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Roommates Part 3 - My ex-best friend's sister and my brother's girlfriend

After the special experience I was treated to my second year in the dorms, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. Then I realized that I am in Nevada, and therefore the pastures are BROWN. While the dorms were not the most pleasant living experience, they were still a vast improvement over living with my parents. So during the seconds semester of my las year in the dorms, I started looking for roommates to share an apartment with. Conveniently, my brother's girlfriend (also known as my current sister-in-law) decided that she wanted to move into an apartment around the same time. To keep it affordable, we decided that we should find a third roommate and get a three bedroom apartment. The third roommate wound up being my ex-best friend's sister who was the same as as my brother and his girlfriend, and who'd had a crazy crush on my brother since they were about 12, though she would never admit it.
To make it clear, the ex-best friend wasn't an ex-best friend because of anything bad that happened. She just moved away for college and we drifted a part. She was actually quite a good friend for most of high school. She was the friend I went to church with occasionally. The trouble was, both her and her sister, who would become my roommate, were raised in a rather legalistic Christian home and were not really allowed any sort of freedoms. So when my friend went off to college, she rebelled and became a bit of a wild child for a few year. These were the same few years when I was beginning to find myself and my identity as a Christian-- We drifted apart because we were headed in different directions.
I have to admit that when I found out that her sister was looking to move out of their parents' house, I was excited for several reasons-- The first was that I had hoped that it would bring me closer to my friend again. The second was that I had hoped that she wouldn't feel the need to rebel against her parents if she had moved out of the house and was living with someone she felt comfortable to be herself around; afterall, she had known me for about eleven years by this point. And the third was that I thought that maybe if her and I went to church together, we could get my brother's girlfriend to go with us, too.
As I'm sure you can guess, I was overly optomistic. By the time we all moved into the apartment in May of 2002, she had already rebelled, though I didn't know it yet. It turned out that she was dating a guy several years older than her and after a few weeks, we basically acquired a fourth roommate. Her boyfriend started spending the night most nights. She never warned us when he was going to be there, she never asked if it was okay and she let him eat all of our food. At first, my now SIL and I tried to include her when we made plans for dinner or nights in, or whatever, but she always turned us down. Then her boyfriend would show up and they would lock themselves in her room. There were several problems with this plan:
1) He was practically living with us, but was not paying rent.
2) He would oversleep, then try to rush to take a shower in our home, where he was not paying rent, or utilities, and would wind up making my SIL late, even though she had woken up in what should have been plenty of time to get ready.
3) She asked me to lie to her parents if I happened to see them at church. That if they asked I should tell them that she was not sleeping with her boyfriend and that he didn't stay the night. I made it clear that I would not lie for her, but fortunately her parents never asked me anything.
4) There were three shows that my SIL and I watched together every week at the same time every week. And every time the other roommate's boyfriend would be playing video games and would get pissy with us when we asked him to let us watch the show, and then even more pissy when we suggested that if he paid rent then he would have the right to decide what the living room TV was to be used for.

Who would have ever thought that it would be more awkward to have her boyfriend stay the night than to have my brother stay once a week?

Fortunately, we had only signed a 6 month lease, and when that 6 months was up, the third roommate decided to leave (sigh of relief) stating that she just didn't feel welcome because we didn't include her in anything and because we didn't like her boyfriend (aka the leach). Good riddance!

The Dorms Part II (Post 2 of 6)

Fall of 2001
I returned to the dorms for a second year in the fall semester of 2001. I remained in the same room because my friend T and I had decided we wanted to continue living in the same suite. We didn't really know anyone else that we wanted to live with, so we decided to just wait and see who we wound up with. This may not have been the best idea. This was my first experience with Christian roommates, and I am quite sad to say that it was not a good one.
I had started attending Intervarsity Christian Fellowship during the previous school year and had met quite a few new people. Four of those new people wound up being my new roommates, and they were all best friends to boot. This would not have been so bad had it not been for the fact that this was the year I was working graveyard at the Evil K and they were VERY loud best friends. But of course that was not the worst of it. I was used to not getting much sleep-- that's what college is all about. There were several other quirks that made this an interesting year-- though nothing quite as umm... let's just say special, as the previous year.
For example-- all four of these girls were from Las Vegas. To them it was cold when the temperature got down to 80 degrees. They started wearing sweaters in early September. And that was their choice to make-- but they also started turning on the heat and setting it to 70 degrees around the same time. Since I was trying to sleep as much as I could during the day because I worked at night, we developed a heater war. I would turn it off in the morning when I laid down to go to sleep so that I wouldn't melt, and I would wake up a few hours later covered in sweat because it had been turned back on. And there's more:
As you may have inferred from the previous post, my best friend at the time was a male. If you have known me long enough and well enough, you may even know who the male is. This is only relevant because he was also a part of the Intervarsity group that I was a part of and therefore all of my new roommates also knew who he was and had an opinion about our friendship. They had decided amongst themselves to create a set of rules regarding how they felt they needed to behave around males, and they claimed that this list of rules were the way that all Christian girls (I say girls and not women because they were 19...) should live. The rules, as best as I can remember, were as follows:
1) Girls shall not spend time alone with a guy at any time.
2) Girls should not be in mixed company (ie, guys and girls together; same place, same time) after midnight
3) Girls should only have friends who are girls.

Needless to say, I broke each of these rules-- I did not feel that it was inappropriate for a single girl and a single guy to hang out together in public, nor did I feel it was inappropriate to be in mixed company after a certain hour. For this, I was never really accepted among them and was constantly being "confronted" (because that's what people did in Intervarsity) with claims that they were "concerned" with the choices I was making. What this really means is that I received numerous lectures about the dangers of having a male best friend-- primarily that even Christian guys could not be trusted to control their urges, and the fact that I trusted my best friend implicitely was somehow an indication that I was not right with God.
Now, you would think that a group of girls who were so anti-guy would be above the drama of celebrity gossip... Not so. These girls were obsessed with celebrity gossip-- who was dating who, who was having a baby and who was the daddy. Apparently, it was okay for them because they weren't Christians. Why a group of Christian girls who were deadset against relationships would condone the glamorization of celebrities' rocky romances is beyond me. It didn't really bother me most of the time.
But there was just one time when it went a little bit far. I came home one afternoon after class and I found the four of them in the living room with a box of tissues, all of them crying. I got worried. Had somebody died? Was somebody sick? Was it somebody I knew also? I waited a minute and then I asked what was wrong. A couple of them blew their noses, rather dramatically, before one of the girls opened her mouth and sobbed, "Justin and Brittany broke up," which was followed by some more nose blowing. (Keep in mind that this was back when Justin Timberlake was a boy-bander dating Brittany Spears who was likely just as trashy then as she is now...) This rather unimportant and predictable event elicited almost as severe of a reaction as what these girls had on September 11, which we all experienced together that year. How can anybody feel that this was an appropriate reaction? How does the end of the relationship between "Justin and Brittany" affect us? And that was pretty much how the whole school year went. Between the lectures about my "inappropriate friendship" and the overdramatization of the impact of celebrity relationships on our everyday lives, the noise, the heat, I was quite relieved when the school year was over.

After a Monthlong Delay...

I am proud to present my series on roommates as promised before my life momentarily imploded. Reconstruction has begun, and I am now ready to write these stories, which I hope will be entertaining if nothing else. The series will be six parts and will only include the most entertaining roommate stories. These stories are really about my crazy roommates--not the roommates I enjoyed my time with. I will be changing the names just because that's what writers do when they write about real people. :) I hope ya'll enjoy the series, and I hope they are worth the wait. Just as a teaser, the six parts will be as follows:
1) The Dorms, Part I
2) The Dorms, Part II
3) My Ex-Best Friend's Little Sister and My Brother's Girlfriend
4) The Time In Between
5) The Extremist
6) The Faux-Vegan and the Gamer (Or 4 Evil K-er's in One House?!!!)

The Dorms Part I

In the fall of 2000, I did something quite out of the ordinary and moved into the dorms for my first senior year of college. It had originally been my mom's suggestion, but somehow I became really excited about it. I moved into Canada Hall in August of 2000. My roommate was to be a Japanese student, which I had hoped would be an interesting experience. When I arrived on the day we were able to move in, my suite was already completely occupied. The living room was already set up, the kitchen shelves were all full, the bathroom counter had things piled all around and on my first day I was already feeling shut out. It turns out that I was moving into a suite with 4 Japanese students and a student athlete who had already been there for the whole summer together.
After about a week, I had a small space on the very top shelf and a drawer in the kitchen, a part of a shelf in the bathroom and of course my half of a bedroom. I also had three Japanese suitemates who were extremely shy but talked to me a bit, a Japanese roommate who wasn't shy, but who didn't talk to me and a student athlete suitemate who spent almost no time in the suite. I don't even remember my roommate's name, but I do know that she was a biology major. She was planning on going to med school because it was what her parents wanted, and she was dating a black man because it was what her parents didn't want. This much I got from the shy suitemates during our limited conversations. I'm also not sure whether she actually ever finished college because she was quite the party animal.
Unfortunately, there was nothing terribly noteworthy about these suitemates, and I was not making any friends. So when a space opened up in my friend's suite across the hall for the next semester, I jumped at the chance to make the move. I would not be roommates with my friend-- neither of us wanted to jeopardize our friendship in that way-- but I would at least have a friendly face in my suite. Plus I'd met a couple of her suitemates and they also seemed nice enough. It was looking like the spring semester was going to be MUCH better.
Fall semester drug on and on, and finally it was December and my new suitemates had told me that I could start moving my things in before it was time to go home for Christmas break. We set a date and I prepped myself for the move across the hall. Come moving day, they had cleared two full shelves for my food in the kitchen, plus one smaller shelf for my dishes and a drawer for my silverware and other similar things. My room was supposed to be ready for me to move in. My future roommate had been told that she needed to gather her things and get them all on her side of the room so that I could move in but when I opened up my room, I discovered that she had made no attempt to prepare for my arrival. Her clothes were strewn all over my side of the room and there was a blanket covering some boxes on the bed that would soon be mine. My friend came in and helped me toss her clothes over to her side of the room. She stepped out after that was done, and I proceed to remove the things from the bed. I picked up the blanket and before I could toss it across the room, I realized what was in the boxes on the bed. It was her umm... let's just say her personal pleasure toys. I was startled and disgusted all at once. I didn't know what to do. So I covered up the boxes with the blanket, wrapped it all the way around and tossed the whole package across the room and onto her bed. And then I considered burning the mattress, but I figured I would probably be charged for it, so I just settled for flipping it over.
I wish I could tell you that was my only encounter with her personal pleasure toys, but unfortunately it was not. We would meet again soon, during the spring semester, in a much less subtle way. I know that this first encounter was not at all subtle, and yet, it gets worse.
When we all returned for the spring semester, I almost never saw my new roommate. The suitemates said she spent a lot of time at her boyfriend's house in Carson. What they didn't tell me, was what she did with her boyfriend when she stayed at home in the dorms. So about four weeks into the semester, I came home late one night after hanging out with my best friend and my roommate was already asleep. I left the lights off and went to my computer and was instant messaging with my best friend (yes, I know I had just left him, but we were bored college students awake at 2am with nothing better to do) while I was working on an assignment for the next day. I heard my roommate's phone ring and I heard her answer. I expected it to be quite brief since she had been sleeping, but then I heard her start moaning. I continued my instant message conversation, thinking that maybe she'd just been yawning because she was tired. But then I heard a buzzing noise and the moaning proceeded to get louder and louder, until it became screaming. I called my best friend on the phone thinking that maybe she just didn't realize I was awake and that if she heard me talking, she would be embarrassed and stop. But instead, I wound up giving my best friend a sneak peek of what was happening in my suite, because she just proceeded to get louder and the buzzing persisted. I decided to go back to my best friend's room for a little while and left the room just as she was saying, "And now I am touching..."
The next day, she started up a conversation with me, as though nothing abnormal had occurred. I played nice, all the while just wanting to hurl as I tried to block out the buzzing sound.
Fortunately, that was the last time I saw her. Apparently she moved to Carson to be with her boyfriend, ditching her student housing contract and leaving me with a room to myself. I didn't find out about this until two weeks later when I came home after a weekend at my parents' house to find all of her things cleared out of the room. And by all of her things I mean everything that buzzed or hummed was gone, but she did leave me an unopened bottle of Kahlua, so I guess the experience wasn't all bad.

Breaking Free from Unforgiveness

Over the last few weeks, I have started several posts about the fabulous "Growing Up" series-- particularly about the need to break away from the ways of our families. I have found several unhealthy ways of living that are passed down through my family, such as secrecy, shame and self-sufficiency (that was actually the title of one of my prospective posts). But today I realized the one that is the most crippling, and the one that I drew the line on several years ago--unforgiveness and holding a grudge. That's not to say that I am always perfect at forgiving, in fact FAR from it, but unforgiveness is the biggest thing that I have drawn the line on and said "NOT IN MY HOUSE."
I have talked about my family and their lack of communication skills on my blog before. This was a major roadblock in my life for a very long time. I used to keep everything hidden, to myself-- but my tongue was let free almost immediately when I accepted Jesus' gift. The unforgiveness was a harder one to deal with. My whole life, my mother had used her unforgiveness as a punishment. She would scream at us so that we knew that she was mad, and then she would punish us with the silent treatment until we caved and apologized, whether we were guilty or not. And my dad stood by and went along with it, but when she was not around, he let it be known that he didn't agree with her ways. I, on the other hand, was always the vocal one, always making it clear when I thought something was not right, always trying to get what was fair and right, even if it was somebody else that my mother was angry with. As I'm sure you can imagine, this meant I got more than my fair share of unforgiveness. And I eventually always caved and apologized for whatever I had not done wrong. Actually, simply apologizing was never enough-- it was actually more like grovelling.
I drew the line on this about four years ago, not realizing at the time what a difference it would make. It was about a week before Thanksgiving and I was at my parents' house for a visit. My mom was making dinner and she went to the sink to fill up a pot and found that there were dirty dishes from the night before in the sink. At this point, she began to scream at my dad, berate my dad, rant at my dad, etc about how lazy he was and how if she hadn't married him her life would be so much easier and so on. This had been going on for weeks before this, every time I came over, my mom would ruin my ability to enjoy my time with them by flying off the handle on my dad. I'd had enough-- and I will admit right now, this was FAR from my finest moment--I stepped in for my dad, since he never stood up for myself... Only it came out totally wrong and I asked my mother, "If you are so f---ing miserable, why don't you divorce him." Now let me make it clear-- this was a very poor attempt to make my mother realize that she was being overdramatic and that dirty dishes in the sink were not cause for divorce. I am fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I immediately apologized. However, my mom would have none of it. She turned her wrath on me. But it wasn't the suggestion of divorce that had made her angry as I would have thought, it was the fact that I used the f word in her house. I am aware that this was not a good thing to say, and I have only let it slip a handful of times when I was EXTREMELY angry as an adult. I apologized again, quite sincerely, crying of course, as is my nature, but still she would not even take a break from her yelling. And this is the important part-- I am, and was immediately, fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I made my attempts to seek forgiveness. My mom told me to give my house key to my dad and get out. I did as requested and went home. For a couple of days I was miserable. I made my attempts to apologize, to seek forgiveness, and I fully understand my mother being angry for what I said, but she was not open to hear my apologies-- she hung up the phone each time I called for the first couple of days. And then she told my sister-in-law (though then she was just my brother's girlfriend) that she was having Thanksgiving dinner at her house and that I probably wouldn't be coming since I still hadn't apologized. At this point, I decided to break the pattern. I had made my apologies, several times and I was not going to grovel this time. I had said all I could possibly say, and there was nothing left for me to do. So I just let the situation be. I made my own plans with friends for Thanksgiving. After all, being miserable wasn't going to make my mother speak to me, and holding a grudge against her for holding a grudge against me wasn't going to do anything but make me unhappy. So for the first and only time in my life, I had Thanksgiving separate from my family. And I enjoyed myself.
Several days later, my mother apparently realized that I was not going to grovel this time and she sent me an instant message. We talked that way for several minutes and then she called me. She talked as though we hadn't fought-- I had let it go several days before, and since she was ready to let go, we were back on track. Since then, I have made it clear that I will not tolerate the dad-bashing, and I have also made it clear to my father that I will not tolerate mom-bashing. It is their relationship and I should not be expected to pick sides. They still do it, but I remind them that I don't have to come to see them if they are going to put my in that sort of situation. Additionally, as my communication skills have improved, both of my parents have come to communicate better with me. This doesn't mean that my mom doesn't occasionally fly off the handle, but I don't really fight back anymore. If she wants to be miserable and angry, that is her choice, but that is not something I want for myself. If only they could extend this improved communication into their relationship with one another. They both need it, especially my mother, but they just continue in their old ways.
I wish I could say that the effect of this unforgiveness in my family is only emotional, but there is definitely a physical aspect as well. My mom has a slew of health issues and most recently has discovered that she has rheumatoid arthritis-- this is important because it is aggravated by stress. I have noticed that when she hurts the most is when she is angry at my father for some thing he has done or not done that he was supposed to know on his own that he should do. If I could, I would explain to her that by getting angry with him for every single unintentional slight, the only thing she is accomplishing is causing herself pain, both physically and emotionally.
So the train stops here-- I am not willing to cause myself pain by holding a grudge.

Finito

Processing the Emo

Things are starting to catch up with me. I don't like not doing things I would normally do the way I would normally do them. I don't like feeling inept and I don't like needing help. Yes, I know this is an issue and yes I am working on it, but I don't like it. I don't like asking for time off from work in small amounts twice a week. It makes me feel like a nuisance. And I feel like an idiot. I feel like there should have been something I could have done to prevent myself from tripping on my pajama pants and making a mess of my life at the moment. My head knows that it could not be prevented, that it was just one of those freak things that could happen to anyone. But the enemy is telling me that I screwed up big time. That I've made a mess, dug a hole that's going to be hard to get out of. I feel like I'm not getting better fast enough, even though I'm still within the time line that was given to me. I just want this whole thing to be done, and yet is nowhere near being done-- I have at least two and a half more weeks of therapy left, depending on how things go, and we are just starting the grip/strengthening on Thursday of this week, depending on how I feel. Mostly my pride is hurt. It's stupid, I know, but that is the reality of the situation. I'm tired of laughing it off and I'm tired of the pajama jokes and it's probably just because I'm cranky right now, but that's part of the emo that I'm feeling right now.
I have 18 days before I move and I am freaking out. I am being quite bad in that I am not trusting that I will be taken care of. I'm kicking and screaming and trying to hold onto the control that I'm simultaneously trying to let go of. Ugh. What is the matter with me? Why is it so difficult for me to accept that the people who truly love me are genuine in their desire to help? I have a genuine desire to help those I love, so why should I expect it to be any different on the flip side? How did I get this stubborn and controlling? I think it is a bad habit picked up from my family, and the hardest one by far to move past--particularly as a single individual. My head knows all of this and my heart is trying to get in line with my head.
I am physically and mentally drained. I need to stop worrying, because all it is doing is making me more tired. I don't know why I'm telling ya'll this, except that maybe seeing it in writing will make it easier for me to do.
At any rate, it is time for bed. Tomorrow is another day, a better day. :)

The little things

*My elbow dimple is starting to come back, and it's barely yellow now-- almost back to its pasty off-white color. Yay!
*I started my physical therapy today. It was pretty crappy, but not as bad as I thought, which I guess is good. We are working on getting comfortable with the full range of movement right now. My next appointment is Thursday and I will only have to request 15 minutes off from work. I'm sure the scheduling lady will love that one. :)
*I ate sushi left handed today. It was quite entertaining. The kind man at the sushi place gave me the chopsticks like the kids use that are kind of like big tweezers...
*Right now I am watching Dancing with the Stars. It is almost time for Mr. Tasty, I mean Rocco.
*This week I am hoping to start the series on my roommates of the past that I had promised. I had intended to start that a few weeks ago before the whole moving/elbow/everything going wrong fiasco. I'll probably get to that about Thursday-ish.
*Two more contests I'm intending to enter this year. The first is the Writer's Digest Short Short Fiction contest, with a December 9 deadline and the second is the Glamour magazine essay contest with a December 31 deadline. Mainly, this is about setting goals and meeting them.
*Another thing I am (being forced to) work on is asking for and accepting help. I am quite stubborn and do not like handing over control. I like to know exactly when and how things are going to get done and I'm having to let go of that for this move because I cannot do everything. I have to just have faith that things will be okay and everything will get done. I have to be patient with myself which is also not something that I am good at. I tend to expect much more of myself than I would of any other person that I know. Me and my darned unrealistic expectations... :P
*I am looking forward to moving and going jogging in the park across the street from my new apartment. Because the industrial jungle on the path I follow here at this apartment does nothing to motivate me to keep on pushing--Not that I've been going out for the last few weeks anyhow, but still... I am also looking forward to the indoor hot tub at my new apartment complex. And good, non-Starbucks coffee within walking distance.
*The fortune cookie that I ate this evening (they gave me three with my Chinese food on Friday-it was the only part of the order that didn't make me sick...) said "The hard times will begin to fade. Joy will take their place."
*Happy Monday!

Elbow-gate 2008

So I just got home from having my Jolly Green Giant appendage removed, and I have to say, doctors irritate the crap out of me. Last week, they told me that they did not see anything on the x-ray but they were treating it as a radial head fracture based on the symptoms, type of accident and lack of being better. They said that with that type of fracture, it is commonly not seen on early x-rays and sometimes not seen at all if it's small and they just treat based on the symptoms. Today they say no fracture after all, but a moderate to severe sprain which apparently works out worse for me because apparently elbow sprains are not at all common and it takes an especially talented person to do such a thing. Apparently elbow fractures are more common than sprains and that's why they go there first. (Click on the links above to see the items I found online supporting what they told me... Okay, so I'm too anal for my own good...) Then, just a couple of minutes later-- the fracture could be there, but it would heal more quickly than the sprain... Make up your minds already!!!
So, now the Jolly Green Giant appendage is gone and replaced with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I thought I would be happy to be free of the thing, but honestly, it feels worse to have no support-- except of course the happy little sling from the ER that the PA told me to use-- is it normal to be nervous about being liberated? Because I'm terrified! I guess that freedom can always lead to fear...
So my physical therapy starts on Monday and I am on lifting restriction for 6-8 weeks. No lifting, pushing, pulling, turning-- just bending and straightening exercises along with rotations. Oh yeah, and apparently it's best not to drive because this can result in lifting, pushing, pulling and turning, even if you try to avoid it. And to quote the PA that I saw today-- "And no lifting means no lifting. Not even so much as an empty coffee cup." Hmm... I wonder how I'm going to pack those empty coffee cups. He he he... Apparently this is to be re-evaluated in 1 month, which happens to be the day before I move. This should be interesting. But the PT will work with me to start lifting and all the other normal movements... I'm considering attempting to re-establish my average for bowling left-handed...
On the positive side, the left-handed diet seems to be working out pretty well. I'm down 9 lbs in two weeks... It's amazing how much less you feel like eating when eating is such hard work. Ha ha ha! I wonder if a fork also falls under the lifting restriction. Maybe an empty fork is okay, but a full fork-- don't even think about it. Okay, so now I'm just being a little bit silly. I need to in order to stay sane!

If you are reading this, please pray for peace for me. This is too much stuff happening all at once and I just need to keep on pushing along. I was actually feeling mostly calm until after my appointment. I think the reality of the no lifting and its effects on moving are beginning to sink in. I'm doing my best to take it one day at a time. And one coffee mug at a time... :)

Some random things...

* I am currently reading a book written by Hugh Laurie (yes, as in House) in 1996. Who knew that Hugh Laurie wrote a spoof spy novel? I found it on the buy two get one free table (which I, of course, frequent) and I had to buy it.
* I am happy that I can watch House tomorrow rather than taping it. Because usually it's on at the same time as the Dancing with the Stars results show, but since it starts earlier this season... HOORAY for Lazy Tuesday!
* And on Lazy Tuesday there will be far too much hotness for me to handle. This may be highly inappropriate but in addition to a couple of the pros, there is also one particularly tasty celebrity. Tasty because he's a cook-- and he's sizzling hot. He he he... enough cooking jokes. Then there's House. I think I'm drooling already just thinking about tomorrow's television viewing. Wednesday it will be back to reading.
* Ugh. Moving stresses me out. Moving when I'm not fully functional-- Ay caramba! My goal is to call somebody every time the stress makes me feel like eating something unhealthy. I've been quite good lately, though mostly only because things are not agreeing with me anymore and I'm trying to figure out what items cause problems and which are okay.
* And following that previous thought, what's up with that? All of a sudden after I turned 28 my body has started rebelling against me in every way possible. I guess now that I'm 29 I need to work harder to fix that.
* I don't want to wait until January to find out about the essay contest. I don't know why I care because the odds that I will win are probably in the negative numbers, but for some reason I have this tiny glimmer of hope floating around inside of my head. And I know that now matter what happens, I've done something good because I actually followed through on that goal.
* I have decided that I think that all people should be taught to be ambidextrous from the time they are small children. It would make life a lot easier.
* I am not a clumsy person. Following my recent incident, people have made many jokes about my clumsiness and for some reason it really bugs me even though I know I'm not clumsy. Yes, I had a singular clumsy moment, but that is not my nature. I generally don't drop things, trip over things or lose my balance. I have never done ANYTHING like that before and will hopefully never do anything like that again. I have no idea why I'm so touchy about that, but every time somebody makes a clumsy joke, it makes me cranky. Maybe because I've been trying so hard to laugh off the fact that I was ungraceful enough to catch my toe in my opposite leg pajama pants that it's made it seem like the kind of thing that happens to me all of the time--even though it doesn't.
* My co-workers make me happy. On the claims side of the building, everyone is so much more easy going and nobody really hates their job. Also, they're not so much girly-girls with all the gossip and cattiness that was predominant on the customer service side. Most of the claims women are the low maintenance and quirky types. Still almost all women, but much easier to get along with women. Very pleasant. At least there's no stress in that part of my life.
* As much crazy stuff that's going on with me recently, I am actually quite happy. I suppose being loved by people around you can do that. I feel like recently I've stopped focusing so much on the love that I don't have (romantic love) and more on the love I do (God's love, family love, love of friends). Hopefully I can keep on with this, because it feels pretty darn good.
* What, you expected me to keep coming up with random things? No way! It's time for bed!

I may be stubborn, but I am not left-handed

So, as many of ya'll know, I had a minor incident last week resulting in what is more than likely a fractured elbow. Apparently with this type of elbow injury, which is caused by falling and landing on outstretched arms, essentially jamming the elbow, a fracture is rarely detected on the initial x-ray, and therefore additional x-rays have to be done at a later time if mobility has not significantly improved in about a week. So tomorrow, I will go to the orthopedic clinic for my additional x-rays and more thorough examination. If they are as gentle as the x-ray technician at the hospital, I'm imagining this will be something akin to torture.

Now you may be wondering about the extraordinarily talented thing I may have done to injure myself in such a way, and I have to tell you, the kids at church (and perhaps one adult!) were very helpful in coming up with some stories that are FAR more exciting than the reality.
1) I was skydiving.
2) I was wrestling an alligator in Florida.
3) I fell off of a building.
4) Rollerderby

The reality is that my toe caught in the opposite leg of my pajama pants and I kind of flew, landing on my outstretched arms, primarily the right, and ended up on the floor. That is the best description I can give as it happened so incredibly fast that there was no thought involved until I was already on the floor. I can tell you, however, that it was my black thermal Tinkerbell pajama pants that caused the fall. Is that enough detail for you?

I thought I just had a sore muscle from catching myself on the floor, but as the evening went on it was apparent this was not the case. I was going to try suck it up and see how I felt on Thursday, but when I laid down to go to sleep, all those little moves that you don't realize that you're making were killer. So my dad came and picked me up and I officially checked in for my first ever ER visit at 12:02 am on Thursday. It went fairly quickly and I was home by 1:30 am with my arm wrapped up to look like a limb of the Michelin Man.

Since Thursday, it has become apparent to anyone who didn't previously know, that I am too darn stubborn for my own good. Some of my friends as well as my parents have at moments, become irritated by my refusal to allow them to help me. I just like taking care of myself-- even when I was a child, when I was sick I would still get up and get my own juice or crackers or 7-up. It's just the way I am. Even though I am not a lefty, I'm doing my best to function like one because life does not get put on hold because I was so incredibly ungraceful that I tripped over the pajamas I was wearing. It may earn me a lifetime ride pass for the short bus, but that's about it.

Well, that's all for now. Think good thoughts for me tomorrow when I go to see the orthopedic specialist-- hopefully they'll put me in something smaller and easier to manage. Ironically enough, right as I was typing that, there was a Michelin commercial on TV featuring the Michelin Man. He he he he he!

Asking for help

This is the post where I do something I'm REALLY not good at--and that thing is asking for help. So the first thing is prayer. I need prayer for finances as I prepare to move on October 25th and for peace and safety until I do. I am just keeping this on my blog because I prefer to keep it among my friends.
Second, I am going to need help with the moving process if anyone is available at any time. There are several parts of this--1) It would be great if any of my friends can just come to keep me company while I pack. I have a horrible time getting things done alone-- I don't really need help packing, just another person there to keep me motivated while I'm doing it. If anyone is interested in helping me out here, I'll make you dinner! 2) I need some muscle for moving day. A buff guy or two to help my dad with the furniture and heavier boxes. (Really the couch is the worst of it...) There will also be some food provided on this day, though probably more like pizza or something similar because there will be too much going on for me to make something fancy--plus my dishes will be packed... : ) 3) Do any of ya'll have a truck? 4) Does anyone need a dresser? It will be free to a good home. It is about six feet wide, 18 or so inches deep and about 30 inches tall (I'm just guessing on these measurements!) It's really good for a young girl because it has a vanity style mirror that's about 2 feet by 3 feet that attaches to the dresser. Here is a picture (please excuse the mess):

So I am bound and determined NOT to take the dresser with me this time. I have been wanting to replace the blasted thing with cubes for years, and now seems like the ideal time-- the dresser goes away and I set up the cubes in the new apartment. It will be a beautiful thing! I am not a fan of dressers because I like to be able to see what I have-- and while the mirror would be great for some girls, it did not succeed in turning me into the girly girl my mother had hoped I would be. At any rate, if any of ya'll want or need the dresser, let me know. I'm willing to give it away to a friend, but if nobody needs it, then I will attempt to sell it on Craig's list for a little bit of cash to put toward my cubes. Hooray!

So that's all for now: prayer for finances, peace and safety; company for my packing adventures; muscle for moving day; cubes; oh yeah, and if any of ya'll have any spare empty boxes lying around, let me know!

Success at last... and a failure

At last, the dreaded essay of doom has been completed and sent off to Real Simple magazine. Okay, so in my eyes it will never be completed. I could continue working on it for months--or even years-- and never think it was good enough. But I cut myself off. I just sent it off by e-mail. I cannot publish it on my blog quite yet. Until the results of the contest have been determined, the essay cannot appear anywhere else--even if it's just my piddly blog that approximately 7 people read. So if anyone just CAN'T wait (insert sarcasm here) let me know and I will e-mail it to you. I know, it's not likely, but since my last few blog posts have been about this project, who knows.

Next on the agenda-- the failure... I need to move. I didn't want to move until I could afford to buy a place, but the complex is quickly going in the toilet and I would like to escape before I'm completely buried in crap. I know-- it's a beautiful visual, isn't it? So anyway, this week will be spend looking at new apartments because my lease is up at the end of October. I have been considering this for a while now. A new management company took over the complex in about January and everything has just gotten worse since then. My "air conditioner" has never worked properly; they turn the water off to the apartments to fix a leak AT LEAST once a week; the garbage disposal has stopped working and they never actually show up to repair anything; and all of this would be manageable if not for two more major concerns: First, the light outside my door has been burned out for two months and the next light over has been burned out for three... the moral of the story-- I cannot see ANYTHING if I come home after dark, which is completely unsafe for more than one reason. And second, it seems that they have dialed down the security patrol that used to drive around the complex at night because I haven't seen them for months, and I used to see them at lease once every day. These two things combined with recent events in my complex, and I just don't feel comfortable anymore. So I now officially have a month and a half to find a new place, get all packed up and moved out. I hate moving.

That is all.

Overhaulin'

This just in:
Just days before the submission deadline for the Real Simple essay contest, my essay is being completely overhauled-- It is now going in a completely different direction than I originally intended, and this one seems to flow much more naturally. My old topic felt too force, too wooden-- And of course too lengthy. It was not a story that could any way be told in 1500 words. Trust me-- I've been trying for weeks to condense it, but telling only the bare bones cannot possibly capture the essence of the moment. And tonight, as I was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, I was thinking about what I could possibly do to make this work. I really did not want to send in a crappy essay just to say I did it, so I tried to think of another moment to write about. But really, how do you condense THE most important moment of your life into 1500 words. In fact, how do you even pinpoint the most important moment of your life? These are all thoughts that rolled through my head within the last hour. And that's when it came to me. The beginning of the 1500 words that will describe the most important day of my life. Now to put pen to paper and get it done. I always have worked better under pressure. Hopefully this will be no exception. Look for the end result in a future post--but it may be a few months!

More than mere words...

One of my greatest desires is to be able to write in such a way that it is more than mere words that flow from the page, but also joy and laughter, sorrow and heartache. I want to move people to fits of giggles, to action, to tears. I want the write something that stands out, that people will remember, not so that they will remember me, but will remember the story and what it meant to them and they will carry it with them. In my life, I have read probably four or five books that did this for me. I have seen two or three movies like this, and probably two episodes of television that have touched me so much, so deeply that their meaning cannot be forgotten. And yet this is what I want to create-- something so rare that not even the most accomplished writers do it all of the time. And yet, to me, to do anything else would be a failure. And so instead, I do nothing.

It is time to stop doing nothing. The deadline for applications for admission to the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Vanderbilt University is January 15, 2009. I now have less than five months to complete my packet. This morning I tried to create a timeline for myself to get everything done.
Here's what I need:
1) My writing sample. Not just any writing sample, but it will need to be the best thing I've ever written. 25 pages of fiction--- part of a novel or a short story. The goal is to complete the first draft by Oct. 15 and the final draft by December 15.
2) College transcript. I need to head down to UNR and order this by Nov. 15
3) Statement of purpose. Yeah, not quite sure about this one. I can't really include the above in my statement of purpose because it's not really realistic...
4) Three letters of recommendation. Hmmm-- Also not sure about this one. Need to find out who are acceptable people to obtain letters from since I have absolutely no contact with any of my college professors, most of whom have disappeared from the University (or at least those who would have written letters for me.) At any rate, I will ask the people by Oct. 1 and request to have the letters back by Dec. 1.
5) GRE scores. This one is relatively simple since I'm still w/in the 5 year window. After that I would have to take the test again. So I'll just have to order the results online and shell out the twenty bucks to have them sent to another school since Vanderbilt was not even one of my considerations three and a half years ago when I originally took the test.
6) Lots and lots of prayer. Okay, so this is not actually part of the application packet, but really, this is what it's going to take for me to complete this, for me to remain obedient and actually follow through and finish something that I start. I don't usually struggle with follow through in other areas of my life, but in my writing it is a HUGE issue.

Good night and good luck.

A Reward Upon Completion

Today Season 4 of House came out on DVD. I had intended to wait until after my essay was finished before I bought it, figuring it would be a reward-- but then I realized if I waited I would be paying 10-15 dollars more for it because it is always cheaper when it first comes out. So today I bought the DVDs, saving 10 dollars, plus also acquiring a 5.00 dollar Target gift card with my purchase. Here's the catch-- I am not allowed to WATCH the DVDs until after I finish my essay. Right now I am working on take 2 of my second draft. I have a lot to cut, and my first attempt at a second draft was getting longer rather than shorter. So my deadline for myself is August 31. I have 12 days to finish.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

Things to Come

Coming up soon, I am going to be providing my readers with tales of some "interesting" roommates I had back before I decided that living alone would be in my best interest. If you are not interested in my roommate experiences, too bad. Blame Erica... She told me I should write about them. He he he.
But before I am allowed to write those thrilling tales, I have to edit my essay for the Real Simple essay contest. The question was "What was the most important day of your life?" and the contest deadline is September 9. After I get my essay sufficiently edited and sent off, then I can write the roommate stories. For those of you interested in reading my essay, you can either ask me about it and I will send it to you, or you can wait until I find out that I didn't win, and then I will post the essay on my blog.
I also found another essay contest that I am planning on entering. It is for Glamour magazine and the deadline is December 31st. That one offers the winner the opportunity to meet with a literary agent. Again, I doubt I have much chance of winning, but (almost) every writer gets many rejections before they get paid for any of their writing, so I will use the cliche statement "nothing ventured, nothing gained" and I will proceed. This essay contest asks writers to simply provide a "real-life story." For this contest, I think I am going to write about the journey to find joy in a life that is nothing like I had imagined it would be or planned it to be. I did not plan on being 29 and single was not anywhere on my timeline (yes, I know I am not 29 yet, but I will be by the time I start work on that essay. And it's not like 28 and single was any more of a walk in the park)-- It was supposed to be something like married by 25, first kid by 28, done with kids by 35 at which time I would be able to stay at home and write for some additional income while caring for the children and the home. I know this goes against the feminist ideal that a lot of my female friends stand for, and usually I do, too, but that is really what I had imagined my life would be like. And most of the time, it's okay that it's not-- but every once in a while, like when another friend announces their engagement, or a pregnancy, or buying their first home with their husband, I get a little bit sad that I am missing all of these things. And my life is a constant journey/battle to try to find peace and joy in my life, just as it is. So this is what my essay will be about for the second essay contest.
Oh, and I am considering re-opening the Cross & Quill blog for all of you writers out there, just for the fun of it. I'll post writing topics on there every once in a while, just like I used to. This is not definite--just something I'm considering.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Another Sleepless Night

It is almost 3 am. I have to be to work in about 4.5 hours and I have yet to fall asleep. I should be exhausted. I walked to and from work, then to Whole Foods for some shopping and upon my return, I spent the rest of the evening cleaning. I finished cleaning for the night at about 10:45 and headed off to bed. By 12:30 I still had not fallen asleep, so I decided to get up and work on my entry for the essay contest in Real Simple magazine. It's not like I'll actually win, but there's no chance if I don't try, so I'm going for it. I thought I would get tired working on the essay, but no--instead I wrote six pages (handwritten) that have to be edited and shaved down to 1500 words. And I still was not tired. That was at 2 am. I'm almost ready to just give up and stay up until I have to go to work. But that never makes for a good work day. So here I am blogging about sleep, hoping that if I say the word enough times, it will actually make me want to sleep. So I think I hear my pillow calling me back for another attempt.

Good night and good luck!

Getting things in order

Today, after ending my month and a half long television on DVD binge (which actually ended last Thursday after I finished season 7 of Gilmore Girls), I found myself in a cleaning mood. I cleaned the refrigerator. I folded almost all of the clothes on my bedroom floor. There are still some clothes on my living room floor, but I agreed to myself that I would stop at 9pm. I intend to continue cleaning tomorrow and the next day until I have my apartment organized in a manner that will allow me to function again. When I get depressed I kind of shut down and stop doing anything. I don't clean. I don't cook. I don't go out. I don't do anything. The problem is, that then when I'm done being mopey, things have become TOO overwhelming and so I don't know where to start getting back on track, and so I just ignore it even longer.
The reality is that in the year and a half that I have lived here, I still haven't found a place for everything, which is why it gets so overwhelming and why my apartment always looks like there was an explosion... I need to find a place for everything so that I know exactly where I can go to sit and write, or where I can grab my gym clothes and running shoes. Ugh. Probably I should get rid of some things, which might make the process of finding a place for everything a little bit easier-- but I'm horrible of getting rid of things. And when it comes to clothes I always end up regretting about half of what I get rid of. For example, two years ago, I got rid of my fat clothes-- but now I need my fat clothes again. Now I don't want to get rid of my non-fat clothes because I'm sure I'll need them again since I'm back on my pills and I really can't afford to buy new clothes again.
So things to do to get things in order:
1) Figure out what items I can get rid of.
2) Find a place for all remaining items.
3) Set up desk with all necessary writing supplies and utensils
4) Restock refrigerator with healthy food, eliminate all foods that contain the word "cream" because the result of eating said foods is quite unpleasant...
5) Find a suitable alternative to yogurt (which no longer agrees with me) for breakfast.
6) Establish if there are any other food items that no longer agree with me. Jerks.
7) Ease my way back into running and hope it works out better than the great walking fiasco this spring. All summer I have been sticking to the bike and the pool, so hopefully things are good to move back into running. We'll see...
8) STOP BEING SO DARN EMO!

That is all.

Strange.... And Yet I Cried...

Yes, I know it will come as no surprise to most of you that I cried-- I always cry. No need to remind me of that. But this time, it was not about me being emo. It was actually me watching a movie. A very strange movie. If any of you have seen Lars and the Real Girl you will know exactly what I am talking about. Who would have thought that a movie about a man who falls in love with a life size doll could have such a good message.
I won't tell too much, just in case anyone intends to watch the movie, but basically, Lars takes the doll as his girlfriend, the brother takes him to a psychologist, the psychologist tells the family that they need to play along as long as Lars needs them to. The family gets the town to cooperate as well, and the town ends up loving the doll, too-- And at one point Lars gets in a fight with his sister-in-law because his doll has gone out to do things with some other people in town and she isn't home to play Scrabble with him. And the sister-in-law tells him that doing all of this for "Bianca" (the doll) is not easy, but the townspeople are doing it because they love him.
So the thinking part of that moment is this: What things do other people do for us out of love that we may not even recognize-- that we may even resent? And why do we have such a hard time accepting and recognizing love unless it's right underneath our noses-- and sometimes even when it is under our noses we don't recognize it.

Just a thought for today...

Smokey's Outdoor Adventure

On the weekends when I go to my parents' house, it is always my mother's request that I bring Smokey along. She refers to him as her "grand-kitty"... And she always insists on taking him outside in the yard for at least an hour. We put on his harness and leash and let him roam around the yard. Here are some pictures of Smokey's adventure today:

Pictures in paint peeling... and Protestants

About the pictures--
When I look at things like clouds and spackled walls and peeling paint I see pictures. Animals, faces of famous (and not so famous) people. It's usually when I'm feeling bored, or lonely, or when I can't sleep-- This week I discovered a new setting for seeing pictures in unexpected places-- when I'm uncomfortable. During a doctor's appointment this week I saw William Shakespeare's face in the air vent in the ceiling. Okay, I know it's weird, but I think my imagination takes over when my emotions can't handle the place that I'm in. Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me?

And about the Protestants--
This weekend I have to miss church because of a family event. This isn't exactly true... I will not be missing church, I will be missing my church family. I will be attending church elsewhere with the rest of my family because the church that I attended as a child is honoring a friend of the family for her 95th birthday. It will be great to celebrate the occasion, as she's a really sweet lady.
This is taking place at the Lutheran church that I attended until I was 9 years old. I have only been back there twice and both experiences have left a bad taste in my mouth... I'm sure it works out well for some people, but for me I can't handle the exclusivity of it all. I don't really agree with the rules of the church that state that only someone who has gone through confirmation in that particular church can partake of communion-- among other things. I will be missing home this weekend. I will be missing the people who love me as I am, the people who actually know me-- who can look at me and know when something is not right. But at least I know I have someplace to call home. Someplace that I can go back to time and time again and be blessed by the company of true friends.

Today's post was brought to you by the letter: P

The best thing he ever did for me...

Sorry all! This post is long!

Today was father's day. I have a great relationship with my father. I also have a great relationship with my mother (most of the time). I would call my relationship with my parents together somewhat mediocre. It's hard to be around them together because it upsets me that my mom doesn't appreciate the good things about my dad. She only sees his faults and holds them against him every chance she gets. She never mentions the things she likes about him. When I ask, she makes a joke, like "I married him because I thought he had money," but she never says anything positive about him. I've come to a point where when I spend time with just her, I have to tell her that I don't want to hear it when she starts complaining about my dad again. That's not to say that he never does anything wrong-- after all, he is human like the rest of us-- but most of us can look past those things to see the things we love about the person. I can't understand how my dad handles it, never hearing kind words about the valuable qualities that he has, about the great things that he does. He has always been my advocate and encourager.
For this reason, I want to share the best thing my dad ever did for me-- mostly because he reminded me of it today and I need to get it out, since there are parts of it that my family and even my closest friends don't know--parts that I had blocked out of my mind until recently. Parts that I have run away from. And my dad doesn't entirely know what he did for me. He could handle it, but my mother couldn't. And I can't tell one without telling the other.
Anyway, this afternoon, I went to have coffee with my parents at Starbucks. My dad and I were browsing through the "Homes" section of today's paper as I am always browsing at the cost of condos-- it's about that time for me to just live my life as it is now, rather than how it could/should be. Of course the only condos listed in the "Homes" section of the Sunday paper are the new condos, which are completely out of my price range. So while my mom went over to Linens-n-things to look at vacuums, my dad and I started talking about condos that ARE in my price range. There is one that I could even afford right now with no money saved. It has been fixed up beautifully-- I'm not crazy about the location of it, but with the right price and the right home, that would be fine. But despite the perfect price tag, I CANNOT and WILL NOT consider this condo. And when I told my dad where it was, he instantly knew why-- even though I thought he wouldn't remember, he did. I told him I knew someone who lived there and he said, "Yeah, that jerk who tried to....." Yes, he really did trail off at the end like that, which makes the perfect segue into the real story.

Many of you know I had my first real boyfriend when I was eighteen-- and that I didn't really like him, I just wanted to know what it would be like to have a boyfriend. I didn't really know him when we started dating and had no way of knowing what a lunatic he really was. He knew from the start my stance on sex-- he knew that I was waiting for marriage, and he told me that was okay--that he respected that. Twelve days after we started dating, he bought me two dozen roses and a necklace for Valentine's Day. I told him that it was too much and that I only had something small for him. This is when he started trying to get me to drop my principles. He told me that there were other ways I could make it up to him. I just laughed and ignored it.
A few days later he started telling me he loved me. I said nothing back. This upset him and he would grab me by the arms and pull me toward him and ask why I didn't say anything back. It made me nervous, but I told him that I didn't want to say it unless I truly meant it. I'm not the type to casually toss around words of affection. He told me that I could make it up to him by performing certain illicit deeds that I would prefer not to mention here. He said he was joking, but I always knew he wasn't.
After about a month, I knew I'd made a bad decision, but it took me another month to get the courage to actually tell him it was over. Another month of dodging advances and groping hands. Each time I told him I didn't want what he was offering, he got more emotional than I have ever been. He went into self deprecating mode saying that it was probably because he was too fat and that no girl would ever like somebody so fat. And each time I would have to explain again that I was saving myself for marriage and that I did not think he was ugly (even though I really did...) Finally, I decided to do it and he threatened to kill himself if I broke up with him. I was miserable. I had taken to punching walls and hitting myself with hard objects. But I was afraid he would really do it and I would have another thing to make me miserable--I would feel responsible even though I wasn't. I chickened out. I took it back, lied and told him I didn't mean it.
Two weeks later his dad and step-mom took us to dinner with them, after which they invited us out to their house. I didn't have my drivers' license at the time, and so I went where he went. At his dad's house, I had my first taste of alcohol aside from champagne and orange juice with my parents on New Years. His dad insisted that I HAD to try a shot of Aftershock. That it would be the best thing I ever tried. I am aware that it was a bad decision, but I was curious. I tried it, and it felt good. It made me feel a little bit numb and forget about all of the awful things this guy said and did. I followed up the Aftershock with two shots of peach schnapps and a mug of Goldschlager and hot chocolate. I felt good for the first time in two months.
After the hot chocolate, we left and went back to his condo-- the one in the complex where I can now never consider living. I was tired and tipsy and just wanted to go home-- bed sounded like a good place to be. But again, I didn't drive and therefore went wherever he went. So it was his condo. It was just as good of a place as any to sleep. But I didn't plan on what happened when we got there. I climbed into the bed and curled up to go to sleep-- his plans were different. He started removing my clothing one item at a time. I was kind of drowsy and out of it. I though if I just ignored him and did nothing that he would leave me alone, so I (stupidly) let him do what he was doing. I hated it. I felt disgusted, but I was drowsy and dizzy and didn't feel like fighting. But he kept going. He tried to do the one thing that I told him that I specifically told him I didn't want. I spoke up. I told him to stop. He told me that he knew that I would like it once he started. He kept trying, but I started squirming. I found within me a strength I didn't know I had. I know it sounds cliche, but it is the only way to explain what happened. How else could I have pushed aside a 24o lb male? I pushed him away and ran to the bathroom and cried. Once I came out, I discovered he'd fallen asleep. I considered calling my parents but I didn't want them to know about all of the stupid decisions I'd made that led to me being drunk and alone in a condo with someone that I knew had the will and the strength to force himself on me.
After that night, I stuck with him because I was afraid that what I had allowed him to do, though it was not everything, was still enough to ruin me for other guys. I was afraid that people would know. And I figured that since he'd already done a little sampling, he might as well continue. Yes, I know-- yet ANOTHER bad decision on my part. But mostly I tried to make sure that we were never alone at his condo again so he never had the opportunity to take it all from me. I only spent time there when I knew that his best friend or my best friend would be there. The rest of the time we hung out at my parents' house or in public places. I couldn't risk another experience like that. I never drank around him again, either. (Yeah, I know-- DUH!)
Finally around month four, I got up the nerve to call it off for good. I didn't care if he hurt himself, and I think part of me had figured out that he was just emotionally manipulating me. I did it over the phone so I wouldn't back down when he started crying.
Now I'm sure you know this isn't the end of the story, since I still haven't gotten to what my dad did for me.
About two weeks after I broke up with boyfriend number one, I started seeing boyfriend number two. He was a friend and he was there and it was convenient. Not a good reason to date someone, but at least I knew something about him. I'd known him for four years, so I felt safe with him. About a week after I started seeing him, I also started seeing boyfriend #1's car appearing in all of the places that I was. When I was at work, I would see his car go by four or five times a day. He tried calling but I wouldn't talk to him. He drove by my house each day, too. He even knocked on my window a couple of times and when I saw it was him, I went to another room. He asked my best friend why I wouldn't talk to him. She told him that I really didn't like him because he had tried to force me to sleep with him. And he told her, "If I want to sleep with her, there's nothing she can do to stop me." When my friend told me about this, I got a bit freaked out since he was basically following me everywhere.
At this time my parents didn't know the slightest about what had happened during my relationship with boyfriend #1, but I think my dad knew that something not so good had happened. He didn't say anything, but he is pretty insightful... He knew that boyfriend #1 kept calling, because it was their phone, and I was refusing the calls. He knew that boyfriend #1 kept trying to see me at work, because I told my parents that part. One night about two weeks after that creepy, threat-like statement, I was out with my friend and boyfriend #2 was out with his friends. And boyfriend #1 calls my friend's cell phone and demands that she put me on the phone. She lies and tells him that she just dropped me off at home. He tells her that he just talked to my dad and he said that I was out with her. My dad had mistaken him for boyfriend #2 (they actually could sound quite similar on the phone) and told him that I was out with said friend. My friend lied again and told him that he must have JUST missed me. He called my parents house again and this time my dad recognized his voice. My dad told him that if he didn't stop calling that he was going to hunt him down and remove certain body parts that I would prefer not to mention. Now I know that violence is not the answer, and my dad also knows that. He would never actually commit the acts that he speaks of-- but for him to be angry enough to say it was enough. I never heard from boyfriend #1 again. The truth is, my dad can be quite scary when he is angry. I have only seen him TRULY angry twice in my life, and both times were in my defense-- so I can imagine what he sounded like on this occasion. Whether or not it was the right thing to do, it made me feel a little bit safe again when I thought I might never feel safe again. He protected me the way only a father can. And that is the best thing he ever did for me.

A House is not a home...

But it certainly is a FABULOUS refuge. When I am down and feeling funky, I find great comfort in certain things. One of those things is reading. I've progressed past the reading stage and I am currently watching season one of House on DVD. I am aware that running to old episodes of House can never make me feel at home, at rest, but my brain and my emotions have checked out for the day, so this is what I am doing.

So, anyone out there who is a House fan, what is your favorite episode?

Small Surprises

Recently I have had a few small and happy surprises in my life. I have been having a difficult time, but despite that, there have been some good things that have cropped up during all of it. Due to the recent use of bullet points by others, I will use numbers instead, just to be different. :)
1) A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail at work letting me know that there was an open position in claims. My manager encouraged me to apply and I interviewed with the claims manager about two weeks ago. During the interview, the claims manager told me that there were over 100 applicants for the position-- this pretty much left me thinking I had no chance. I mean, it's not a promotion, just a lateral transfer, but still, I know I don't interview well and so I assumed I would not be chosen. But last Thursday I found out I was chosen. So beginning June 23rd, I will be working in claims. NO MORE PHONES! YAY!
2) I have been developing a more meaningful friendship with somebody who has been my friend for years. She came back into my life at just the right time-- we both have very similar lives/issues/ concerns-- and that has brought us closer.
3) Okay, so maybe it's a good thing I didn't use bullet points... I can't remember what else I was going to say! It was a good day, I've had a bit of wine and I came home and decided to put a movie on. But when I went to look through my movies, I really felt like watching First Wives' Club, which resulted in me having to break into my VHS tapes. Oh well. I guess I should go to bed...

Good night and good luck!

Just in Time

Today started out rough. I don't know why, it just did. I've been in one of those places where I am in no way satisfied with my life. I knew I was in a funk the minute I woke up, but there was nothing to do to stop it-- not yet. I got to church early hoping to talk to some friends, and I did. I thought it was enough to lift the funk. When worship started and everyone started arriving, I discovered that it had not been enough. When I watch all of the happy married couples and their newborn children, or even their toddlers, the response for me is not just emotional. I literally find myself having a physical pain inside as I watch all of the couples, many younger than me, arriving with their children. This is not about being single. This is about the children. I watch people beside me and in front of me looking adoringly at their infants and it hurts. It never used to be like this. It used to be that being around other people's children was enough to fill that need inside of me, but it's really not anymore. I'm sure I sound completely mental to all of the people who actually have children, but each year this has become more and more of a struggle for me.

At any rate, about that time as all of the families are streaming in, the worship team was playing "Your Grace is Enough." And I'm standing there being completely emotional because I want more than anything to believe that. My head completely comprehends it. I know it to be true. But at the same time I don't FEEL it to be true. Even though I KNOW that I have everything I need, I still FEEL this physical pain inside when I watch all of the families gathered around me. And then, there I am, crying like an idiot again-- standing there wondering to myself why I even bother leaving the house, why I don't just stay at home reading or watching television-- it would probably hurt less. It would mean nobody would have to see me crying like an idiot and I wouldn't have to try to put words to what I feel inside when somebody looks at me and knows that something isn't right. And I wouldn't have to listen to another person tell me, "It's alright, it will happen in God's time" rather than just being there. I don't need somebody to tell me the things I already know-- I just need someone to be with me and to allow me to be with them. I also don't need somebody to act like my hurt is irrational or somehow wrong. That would be like if a married person talked to me about problems with his/her marriage or kids and instead of listening and being supportive if I said, "You should be grateful for the family God has blessed you with." I'm sorry, but if somebody is hurting, no matter the reason, their hurts should not be seen as irrational or insignificant because that just deepens the hurt.

So this morning when I was thinking that I want nothing more than to have my heart know that His grace is enough, and I was crying (at this point only a little) because I am upset that I don't feel this in my heart and in comes the ultimate example that His grace truly is enough. I don't know if any of ya'll have a song that is beyond worship for you but is somehow restoring and fulfilling but I do. The song is "Amazing Love." I blogged about this a while back and you can read it here. In fact just reading over this old post has refreshed some insights that I needed to have refreshed-- and all because of that song. And the beautiful thing is that it was the song during communion today. What better time to have God nudge me right when I'm wondering why I even bother coming to church anymore-- why I even bother leaving the house. And then this song comes and fills me up and I'm instantly reminded of what my life was before Jesus. Before Jesus, I was afraid to let people see me cry-- I took to cutting myself instead because I was ashamed of my hurts, afraid to reveal to much of myself because people might use them against me later. This song is a life raft that always comes along, right when I feel I'm drowning. When I need it most, God throws it out there to pull be back in again.

And now I see that it is time to start living in the present again, rather than wondering what the future might hold. Why must I keep forgetting this VERY basic principle? How much simpler would my life be if my heart could always remember this?