Heart Attack

I had a mini-heart-attack tonight. I was sitting at my coffee table painting with watered-down acrylic paint in a bass-ackwards attempt at watercolor when my roommate came downstairs and beelined for her computer. Her cat was following her, meowing for attention. Usually, my roommate is the most obsessive cat mama I have ever seen. Her attachment to this kitty is RIDICULOUS. However, she wasn't paying the kitty any attention at all. What?

My boyfriend pointed out that the cat was making noise, but my roommate just said, "I'm in the middle of a freakout, okay? Not now." We didn't know what was wrong, but the three of us in the room- Me, Severus, and Sev's roommate -all looked at each other nervously. Not that it's a huge pain in my ass or anything, but my roommate and her life are kinda like a minefield. One wrong comment and she could be screaming her head off for no apparent reason. It makes talking to her a bit complicated. Not wanting to say the wrong thing or get anyone upset, we just stayed quiet.

A minute later, she started muttering under her breath. Numbers. 3? 6? 37? What in the hell was she doing over there?

Next thing we knew, she burst into tears.

Appropriate reaction: "Oh gosh, are you okay? What's wrong? Can we help at all?

The reaction that actually happened: "........."

Yeah that's right. My house is full of jerks who freeze at the first sign of trauma. (Seriously. The only time we've ever been quick to act was when we set the kitchen on fire.)

Turns out, she'd been calculating her credit hours for graduation. She's supposed to graduate in May, but thanks to some idiot advisor who was too lazy to check his advisee's math, she's one hour short. ONE. CREDIT. HOUR. SHORT.

If you're not in college or never went to school, you should know that one hour is insane. You earn somewhere between 12 to 19 hours per semester, and you need 120 to graduate. To be short by a single hour practically takes effort.

After my roomie called her parents and went upstairs to talk to them, I casually FLIPPED MY SHIT. I ran upstairs at top speed to get my laptop and calculate my credit hours. I have two more semesters to fix any problems that might arise, so now's the time to check. Fortunately, I did all of the math and it seems that I am exactly on track to graduate numbers-wise. Getting the right classes in the right order might be interesting, but I have enough hours. That's something.

But yeah, I had a mini-heart-attack tonight.

The credit hours thing was only half of it, sadly. I hate feeling like this, but I almost panicked because I thought I'd be stuck living with my current roommate for another semester. This raised several immediate problems:

1) My roommate is a wonderful person, but we're not the most compatible on some things. It's in everyone's best interest that we separate cleanly, which won't happen if she doesn't graduate on time.

2) I have another roommate lined up to move in when this one leaves. She's in a housing situation that she doesn't much like right now, and I offered her this solution. But what happens if my roommate doesn't leave? We have 3 people in a 2-BR apartment, which won't work well. I can't say to my other friend, "Oh, sorry, just kidding, I need you to stay in your filthy, insane, terrible home just a bit longer".

3) My current roommate is engaged. Her fiance and I are good old friends, but being around their relationship is like living in the eye of a hurricane. Some folks like that, but I'm not one of them. Additionally, he's living 2 states away and she's having separation issues. I can't do a whole nother semester of that, especially when she's so eager to get out and start a life with him. I refuse to live with over-the-phone wedding planning, I simply will not do it.

4) Potential problems with my landlady? She's fantastic, but mid-year lease changes don't generally go well with landlords. I couldn't tell you what MY landlady would do if we had to make that change, but I can tell you I don't want to find out.

Sigh. Problems. I suppose we'll figure something out. Maybe she'll be able to take one class online from home. Or maybe my new roomie can hang out long enough for the current roommate to get through a Maymester class. Who knows.

Popcorn Bathroom

Some people spend their whole lives inhabiting one space. Some people never leave their homes and never experience life outside in the moving world. Some people live in their offices, workaholics who never realize what it's like to have a family.

I'm one of the weirdos who lives through her friends. Literally. I have a job, but my coworkers are my best friends, practically family. Two of them I really do consider family, my sisters. I spent most of this evening with friends I hope to keep forever. What did we do? Play Dungeons and Dragons.

I always swore I wouldn't be "that nerd" who got into D&D, but I've found that going on adventures in fantasy lands with people I care about is much more fun than going out clubbing with people I can't stand. If that means I have to be a level 20 Dwarf Cleric with a magical sword of divine light, yeah, okay. I can do that.

My friends really are the best. I have one friend who can't walk past me in a hallway without asking if I like pancakes. Another friend gets sad and almost cries if I don't stop to give her a hug. Another friend trades his knowledge of birds for my knowledge of rats, and we support each other as obscure pet owners. Yet another woman I happen to have known since we were about eight, and today we are very, very different people...but she always answers the phone for me. She's the one person who's been there for me my entire life, literally. She's my soul sister, the one I could go to if the world were ending and it was my fault, and she would just take me inside for a cup of tea and ask me to paint her nails one last time. Every week I look over my computer at one friend, bewildered by her ability to get things done and troll the internet at the same time. It helps me aspire to be an excellent multitasker (even though I know she thinks she can't focus on anything for crap). One more friend used to be a high school wrestler, and can't spend ten minutes in a room with me without tickling me and chasing me around the room. He picks on me, but I know if I ever needed help, I could call him in a heartbeat.

I suppose this is just an "I love my friends" post. I like that. I like having positive posts about positive things. So here are some more positive things for you:

1. I discovered how awesome Spotify is. I love Pandora beyond belief, but a different tool for a different job, right? So now I have TWO fantastic music sources beyond my own absolutely ridiculous iTunes library.

2. I bought a full stock of Totino's personal pizzas at the store today. YUM.

3. Severus has decided to avoid WalMart in all instances possible, because he saw some documentary about how bad WalMart is. So w did our shopping at Publix this week and I got some BEAUTIFUL produce that I'm super-happy about.

4. My homework for the weekend involves painting. I like painting a lot.

5. I beat the big boss dragon in Skyrim. Not bad for a girl who sucks at video games.

6. The downstairs bathroom in my apartment smelled gross all day today because my poor roommate got food poisoning- ew. So I've been having to trek up and down the stairs to use that bathroom. But now it doesn't smell bad anymore. Kinda smells like popcorn. Weird. But hey! Full use of apartment plumbing for the win!

7. K'Naan.

8. Spaghettio's.

9. Hedgehogs.

10. I added aqua streaks to my hair and they look awesome. When I add some lime green to the mix next week I'ma look like a friggin mermaid.

11. I remembered to shave my legs this week and thus I feel beautiful.


And here's a little something for other people who need to feel positive....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/13-simple-steps-to-get-you-through-a-rough-day

Draft

Most of you are aware, I work for a newspaper. Usually I'm just a web monkey who bends the internet to her every whim, but occasionally I get off my butt and write something. Most of the time I write non-objective, opinionated pieces. This week I was asked to write a story about gun control, and it turned out to be much harder than I expected. Thought in the end my story will be cut, trimmed, edited, and made newsworthy, I feel like my rough draft has some merit. So I shall place it here for you to read. These are my raw thoughts, never processed, no artificial preservatives. That is all.

In the aftermath of the recent mass shootings across the United States, a wave of unrest has swept through US citizens. More than ever before, people are worried about the possible implementation of new laws regulating firearm purchase and ownership. ‘The new gun laws will keep everyone helpless, we won’t be able to protect ourselves’ says one side, while the other battles incessantly for keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Both sides appear to be jumping to worst-case-scenario conclusions- and who wouldn’t, after all of this violence? It’s understandable that we’re all worried for our safety. However, arguing with the threat of Armageddon is not going to help.

Adam Lanza, the infamous villain of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, managed not only to take 27 lives plus his own, but also to send an entire country into chaos. Within hours of the news of his attack, social networking sites were flooded with people arguing, fighting about why he did it, and what his access to a gun meant. If everyone who owns a gun could be a mass murderer, what do we do about it?

Many of us here at the [Newspaper] and at [Insert University Here] are Southern natives. We hail from outdoorsy, recreation-based states where guns and hunting are a point of pride. We’ll admit it- southerners like their guns! It does not, however, mean that every one of us with a hunting rifle is going to use it to take innocent lives. The problem is not the guns, it’s the people. Gun regulations are designed to keep our weapons in check, and there are many places where they do just that. Adding more regulations may be a good solution or a bad one, but there is no possible way that any one law or decision will remove all violence from a society. Haven’t we all heard that there is no such thing as perfection?

We call your attention to the people. Adam Lanza is suspected of suffering from some form of autism, which may or may not have anything to do with his motivation to murder. James Holmes, the villain of the Aurora movie theater shooting in July, was mentally unstable and possibly abusing prescription medication. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, were well-known for their love of violence in writing and video games. They were bullying victims who had already turned to theft and anger, and both had undergone counseling. Seung-Hui Cho, known for the Virgina Tech shooting in 2007, was diagnosed as mentally unstable and in treatment at the time of his attack. While we are hesitant to point fingers at the system, it is plausible to believe that these vicious attacks could have been prevented not by restricting the guns, but by restricting the people.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, approximately 57 million people in America suffer from mental illness. Additionally, 45 percent of those suffer from multiple disorders. That’s 20% of our total population. 57 million people who count on the United States government and its health facilities to help them. It is truly heartbreaking to see Americans only hours after the loss of 28 lives posting ridiculous Facebook statuses and Twitter posts about how the president better not take their guns away. We are disgusted by the response of our citizens. Twenty elementary school children dead due to one man’s instability, and all we can do is point fingers at the other side and squabble. Hear this, America- we still see you, we still hear you. Stop embarrassing us all, and look at the real problem. Adam Lanza’s firearm didn’t walk into a school and open fire, Adam Lanza did. If only our system had helped him before it was too late. 

*Note, statistics based on collaborative data from the 2004 census to the present. All study results and numbers are vouched for by the author.

Additive Noise

Hello, darlings.
For those of you who don't know, I happen to have another blog in addition to this one. I lightly review and recommend music. I have so few readers (and by that I mean none), that I'm going to shamelessly plug it here.

http://vsuadditivenoise.blogspot.com/

Please? Please read?