But... Where Did All My Stuff Go?

Last year I packed up all my stuff to go home from school. Sometime between then and now, I have misplaced a bunch of the random things I have collected throughout the past couple years.
Since moving in and now, I have misplaced even more things.
WHERE DID ALL MY STUFF GO???

Alas, the first semester of school so far has been incredibly busy, so I am not surprised that I misplaced some of my stuff, but some really random things have gone missing. For example: my computer charger.
I have not removed my charger from my room, and I am pretty sure I last saw it plugged into the wall. So where did it go? Similarly, all my art supplies seem to have gone *poof* away. What is happening???

This year is my junior year. It is just beginning to sink in that I will soon be a "real person," expected by society to get a "real job" (which, if we're being honest with ourselves, doesn't exist in the art world).

In the spirit of the season I will make a short list of things I'm thankful for in no particular order:
-Alarm clocks
-Gilmore Girls
-My mom
-Warm fires
-Funny movies
-Good food
-Tea
-Hair feathers
-Friend dates
-Friends to go on friend dates with
-Hamburgers

Things I'm not thankful for:
-Alarm clocks
-Black Friday
-Large crowds
-Thirteen-to-fifteen page papers
-Scary movies

So that wraps up this little mind-vomit. Have a good day, e'rybody!

To Live Would be an Awfully Big Adventure

As I am sure you have heard, one of the most amazing actors and creative spirits has passed away. Robin Williams was such an inspiration to me as an artist and a person. He has taught me so many things, through his characters and his life.

As an artist, Mr. Williams inspired me. He put so much of himself in his work and acted with such a passion, it was impossible to imagine him in any other profession. Robin knew the real meaning of loving what you do and doing what you love. He was a little zany at times, yes, but in the best possible way. He broke the mold and had fun. He was true to himself.

"You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

Robin Williams inspired me as a person. If you read anything about his life or talk to anyone who knew him personally, you hear over and over how selfless and kind he was. I have heard that he could sometimes be a little difficult to work with, but that his spirit was infectious. It was one of my dreams to meet him and tell him how much his work and words meant to me, both growing up and in my young adult life.

"Well, He broke the mold when He made me. He made me very special."

- Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire

The sense of humor that Robin had was so universal that he could make anyone laugh. He brought together generations with his jokes and allowed the world to laugh together. He connected people through emotion. He made people fall in love with poetry, with an off-the-wall genie, with a man who would do anything for his kids, with a zany scientist, with a boy who grew up too fast, and so many more ideas and characters. He broke your heart a million times and made it melt a million times more. Through his work, Robin Williams connected with humanity in a way very few actors can. I think that President Obama said it best:

"Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien - but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most - from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets."

"The truth is, if anything, I'm probably addicted to laughter."

"The only weapon we have is comedy."

"You have been a fabulous audience! Tell you what, you're the best audience in the whole world. Take care of yourselves! Good night, Alice! Good night, Agrabah! Adios, amigos!"

- Robin Williams as Genie

Robin, I wish you could see how much you are missed. Maybe then you wouldn't have left us so soon. Oh Captain, my Captain, you were a great man. My condolences go out to his family and friends and fans, and to every heart he has ever touched.

"A whole human life is just a heartbeat here in Heaven. Then we'll all be together forever."

- Robin Williams as Chris Nielsen

Rest in Peace, Robin Williams

1951 - 2014

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world."

The First 30 Seconds of Working Out

When I first start working out, I feel great. I feel on top of the world, untouchable. I feel like I can run for miles and miles, not stopping for anything! The endorphins are flowing, and life is good. All my bad thoughts about exercising go away, all of the negative feelings built up from the last time working out just disappear.

Then, there's 30 seconds later...

But then the next day I feel freaking awesome and unstoppable, so I do it over and over again. Oh yeah.

SHOO BUG!!

One of the best parts of any workout or busy day is the end, when you get to clean away the grime of life. Showers are a safe space, a space for contemplation, not a place to get ambushed.

So, have you ever had one of those days when you're standing in the shower thinking, "La la la, showers are awesome!"

Then, out of freaking nowhere, you are attacked by some crazy little wing-ed biddy who comes up all in yo bidness!

Like, seriously, dude? Let me have this. Please.

Not-so-common Courtesy

You know something wonderful? Food.

You know something not so wonderful? When people go through your food.

When I was a kid, I learned not to go through other people's refrigerators when I visited them. Now, call me crazy (hey, Crazy), but I always assumed that this was a common lesson taught to young children. Anyone else? I used to think that people understood that it wasn't polite to go through someone else's food without permission, but I can't tell you how many times I have had this happen to me in the past couple years:

I find it especially annoying when people do this at school because, like many college students, I am more-often-than-not broke, and food can be expensive when you're living off summer savings. Thus, it irks me when people feel that they can just go through my food and take whatever they want.

Can we make a pact, you and me, to not do this to other people? Does that sound fair? I think that sounds fair.

Check Your Grades, Folks

Teachers are human, right? Well, they at least seem humanoid.

Humans make mistakes, whether or not they are willing to own up to them.

Using math (A = B and B = C, so A = C), we can assume that teachers make mistakes.

Since it is that lovely time of year where our grades are entered into the system and we find out if all of those all-nighters were indeed worth it, do yourself a favor and double check to make sure that your teachers have entered in your grades correctly. Surprisingly, even a few points that aren't entered can really make a difference. So, if you are like me and care even a little about what grades you get, I recommend looking to make sure that your teacher entered grades correctly.

In other news, HAPPY SUMMER, EVERYBODY!

Now that school is out, it's time for friends, family, and fun, right? WRONG. It's time for jobs, jobs, and more jobs so that you can begin to pay off that ever-growing pile of debt. Don't get me wrong, there is definitely time for all that other stuff, but for me, my first priority was finding a job, and I did! I now am a happy employee at a pet store!

As for family and friends, that can pose problems for the average college student returning home. If you are like me, you lived on campus, and now that you're back home it's hard to fit in again. You've grown, and your family has grown, but in two very different ways. You've learned how to live on your own and they've learned how to live without you being there all the time. I really don't have any advice for this yet, as I am trying to figure out how to navigate the strange waters of this new situation with my family. If you have any advice, please share. I am open to suggestions.

In happier news, now that school is over, my panic attacks have subsided quite a bit with the return of summer, so I have stopped going to see a counselor. I am glad that my anxiety seems to be under control, but I know that the return of school may mean the return of high anxiety. Luckily, I have a great support system at school who will help me through anything. I miss my school family, but, alas, summer must part us for a bit. But next year there will be a whole new group of freshmen to add to my school family! I can't wait!

Until next time, have a great summer!

All-nighters are the WORST

The following represents my mental state throughout the night tonight...

11:00 pm - Ugh. So much work to do. This all-nighter will be terrible, but at least we'll get a lot done.
12:00 am - Yeah! I'm on top of this! We'll finish in like two hours and it will be great! Life is great, you are great, everything is just great!
2:00 am - So there is a lot more work that I thought... Dang. We should have done this forever ago. But, then again, we never had time. Oh well. You gotta do what you gotta do.
3:00 am - Ugh. So much work to do. This all-nighter is terrible. We're not getting anything done.
4:30 am - I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE I'M TAKING A NAP. LIFE IS TERRIBLE, MY WORK LOOKS TERRIBLE, EVERYTHING IS DUMB. I'M NEVER PULLING ANOTHER ALL-NIGHTER EVER AGAIN. I'm going to go take a nap...
5:00 am - Alright, we got this. I took a nap, I'm feeling good. It sucks, but that's okay because... Oh, nope. We lost Pants...


In case the time lapse didn't make it clear, Pants and I decided to pull an all-nighter tonight! I'm still up, she isn't. And now I am blogging, so there goes my productivity...

Disclaimer: I really love what I'm doing. If this were for any other class, I would not still be working, but because I am drawing and doing something I love, it's all worth the hard work.

Popular Kids and Friendzones

About a month and a half ago, my boyfriend and I broke up because we decided we were better off friends than boyfriend and girlfriend.
A few weeks ago I accidentally went on a date.

"How do you accidentally go on a date?"

I'll tell you how. You misread the situation, thinking that a guy just wants to hang out and get to know you better, and then they end up making a move, leaving them feeling embarrassed and you feeling stupid for not seeing the move coming.

Little things like this have been happening to me a lot lately. I want to be single. More than anything I want to focus on school and God and not have to worry about dating or all that jazz. I have a lot of guy friends, so I should be good at making it clear I only want a platonic friendship, right? WRONG.

Apparently in life guys and girls can't be "just friends" anymore. Shouldn't I be able to be friends with whomever I want without fearing that they will make a move on me, leaving me in the awkward position of telling them I'm not interested?

I don't believe in the "friendzone." I don't put people in the friendzone. I become friends with people. If things PURPOSEFULLY develop past that, cool. If not, fine. I'm just saying, there is no need to go straight into being in a relationship. Start with friendship.

Rant over.

Story time! In high school I was the weird quiet kid that no one talked to. I didn't have many friends and didn't hang out with anyone. I was never invited to parties or events. I didn't know how to navigate conversations or do the whole small talk thing. Having ADD, I developed slower than my peers emotionally and mentally, which made me an outcast in most situations.

Then there was this guy who we'll call the Director (he's going to college to be a music teacher). He was a hockey player and was involved in the musical. He was one of the more "popular" kids, whatever popular means in a small town high school.

We ran in different circles, were part of different cliques. We talked every now and then during musical, but other than that we rarely had any social interaction. He had a lot of friends, I didn't.

Since coming to college, my development has caught up, I have learned (not mastered) the art of small talk, and now I have more friends.

So over the weekend I went back home to see the musical. The Director was there, along with some other people I graduated with. We made small talk, I was on my very best behavior, and then we parted ways. No big deal.

Yesterday he messaged me on Facebook as he sometimes does. He asked me how I liked the musical, and we just talked for a while (if you count typing words to each other over the internet as talking...) and eventually he asked me if I wanted to go to a party he was having.

Oh. My. Goodness. I was invited to a real life party...

So, now I see what it's like not being invisible. Now I see what it's like to be accepted by the "popular kids." Now I finally have the acceptance I have always craved.

It's nothing special. But seriously. I don't do parties, and I don't do popular. I am so glad I wasn't accepted in high school because now I realize that I don't need other people to accept me in order for me to be important. I am an awesome person. I don't need someone else to tell me that.

Am I grateful for the invitation? Yes. Am I going to go? Depends. But do I need an invitation or do I need to attend the party to make me important? No.

To summarize, you are important. You are amazing. You are awesome. You do not need anyone else to make you cool because you are already cool.

You do you, folks. You do you.

The Pros and Cons of Good Weather

Oh happy day! The winter is seemingly gone for good!
Now that it is warm out, take this opportunity to go outside and be in nature for a little bit. Let your inner hippie get their fix.
Something I can't wait for is going to the park with my friends to play frisbee! I will just dry some fruit and snack on the way to the Point.

Good news! I know who I'm living with next year! :D I will be living in an apartment on campus with five other girls! I need to come up with nicknames for all those people.
I will be rooming with Snow, so that should be awesome! She is one of my best friends in the world.
The girls are some of the best people I know. They all love Gilmore Girls and chocolate! We are meeting up this Thursday for food, Gilmore Girls, and hanging out before we room together. I can't even express how happy I am!

So there is something I have been noticing as the weather is getting warmer. More and more guys are harassing women on the street. I live in the city, so I am around a lot of people. I hear men whistling at women, telling them to "turn around so we can see you better." Guys, this is not okay.
Earlier today I wore one of my normal outfits that doesn't get any attention on a normal day. However, today I added heels because I need to practice walking in heels for my friend's wedding. For some reason this made a few guys think that they had the right to whistle at me and harass me on the street. Whistling at a woman is not a compliment. Telling her that her "big butt looks nice in those tight-booty jeans" is not acceptable! A person's body is not just meat for you to gawk over. Please, have some respect. And at the same time, women, please respect yourselves. Please. And know you're beautiful no matter what.

I hope everyone is safe inside their homes, cuddled up with hot chocolate and a warm blanket with how bad the weather is outside. If you are lucky enough to be in a place where the streets don't look like a mix of cotton candy and those weird Starbucks chocolate smoothies, I am glad.

Going to church this morning, everything looked peachy and fine, but in the hour, hour and a half that we were there, the snow came a fallin'. It took my campus minister, who I was riding with, and hour and a half to drive back to campus, which usually only takes us anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. People were sliding all over the roads, including us. On the radio the news anchor was saying that there were a bunch of cars flipped over and to be careful of the many car crashes that were going on.
It was a hot mess.
Unfortunately there were not any salt trucks to be seen, so the roads only got worse as time went on. Looking out my window now, the roads are still very slushy and cars are going slow-ish, not surprising with how ugly outside looks right now.
My campus decided that the shuttle service, which usually runs until midnight, is kind of dangerous right now, so they are closing it at 5. Good call, guys.
Please, lovelies, be safe.

The good news is that when I came back, all of the dishes had been done!
The bad news is that Pants did them.
So I will go through them, and any that aren't actually clean, I will have to re-clean.
Still, I appreciate the gesture and will not complain because she also cleaned other parts of the room in a more sufficient manner. That, and she's helping me with some of my projects.

I love Pants and Fuzzy, but Fuzzy has been at a film shoot all weekend, and Pants has been hanging with her boo, so I miss them. Ah, well. More time to focus on homework... Too bad my ADHD has been kicking in all weekend. It's getting to be a problem.

In other news, I have decided to loosen up my inner hipster just a bit and give a chance to this Doctor show everyone talks about.
I watched maybe 15 minutes of it, and the effects are terrible. Unfortunately, being an animation major, poor visual effects can be a difficult aspect to overlook, but I will just pretend that it is as old as Veggie Tales in order to justify the mediocrity. Hopefully that will help set my mind at ease.
I will give the show three episodes before deciding to continue or to write it off completely. We shall see how it goes!

Until next time, be safe and warm!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

As a college student who has to make all her own food, I live on sandwiches. Like, three square meals of sandwiches (with vegetables on the side).
I know it's not the healthiest to only eat sandwiches, especially only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I swear they put nicotine in grape jelly. And in peanut butter, for that matter!
Pants is known to get a giant jar of peanut butter and just eat it straight from the jar or put it on apples with honey. (She is also a huge fan of honey and got many honey-type Christmas presents from us here at school: 3 or 4 jars of honey and honey gummy bears.)
I have been craving the weirdest sandwiches lately, too, including yesterday when I wanted to eat a peanut butter, banana, and cheese puff sandwich for dinner. My good friend who we will refer to as Snow advised against it.

Little sidebar here, Snow will be called Snow because she IS Snow White, only Greek. Last year when a group of my friends and I came up with Disney princess personas, she automatically became the 14 year old Disney princess. She is sweet, beautiful, and one of my best friends, so now you know.

So instead of letting me make and eat my super awesome masterpiece of a sandwich, Snow and I went to go get free candy, cotton candy (I had two sticks of cotton candy), Oreos dipped in a chocolate fountain, fried cheese sticks, and french fries... I promise I usually eat extremely healthily.

I swear, being a college student is like being pregnant or something. I am always craving the weirdest foods and food combinations. Some of them turn out well (like putting marshmallow fluff and Nutella on graham crackers to make instant s'mores), and others not so well (never put ketchup on celery... don't do it). With 20/20 hindsight, I don't understand why some of my failed food combinations sounded appealing at any time, but sometimes it's like, I want this taste and this taste in my mouth right now! And it seems totally legit at the time. For instance, ice cream is delicious, right? (I understand that not everyone likes ice cream, and that's okay. I still love you.) And green olives, also delicious. But together they taste like screaming goats imploded and turned into ear wax covered in wasabi that smells like farts and still sounds like screaming goats, and that is all in your mouth so your body is rejecting it big time.
Yeah, I have had some bad combinations.

Total random note (rant) on sandwiches, I have no problem making ANYONE a sandwich, man or woman. However, I will NOT make someone a sandwich if they tell me to "make a sammich" or to "get back in the kitchen." First of all, the kitchen has food, so I am there to eat it anyway. Secondly, I was raised in a home where manners and grammar were important. If my boo wants a sandwich, and he says, "Could you please make me a sandwich?" (keyword being please) or I offer to make him a sandwich, I will. I believe in women's rights and all, but I am not a feminazi and I do not believe that women deserve better treatment than men. I believe that if someone is kind and deserves a sandwich after a long school day, I should be allowed to make them a goodness-darn sandwich without people making a huge fuss about it.
Okay. Rant over.

So yeah, moral of the story, sandwiches = good, feminazis = bad, college student = odd food choices, and me = liking food.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go make a peanut butter, banana, and cheese puff sandwich.

The Roommate Conundrum

I am a second semester sophomore and I have yet to have a real roommate. My first semester at college I was put with another girl who shared my name, but that is all we had in common. She was rather spoiled and never even tried to build a friendship with me, only ever hanging out with her boyfriend. After an annoying semester of her sleeping in the room a total of two weeks at most, she left. I didn't get another roommate that year. I didn't mind much, but it was lonely.

When Fuzzy, Pants, and I were signing up for room assignments at the end of freshman year we still hadn't found a fourth roommate, which we needed in order to sign up for rooms. We found a random girl who was also looking for a few people to live with, so we signed up with her. It all looked great over the summer, and we planned for living together during school. Well, I moved in a week early at the beginning of the school year for honors activities, but I kept in touch with the girl so she could let me know when she was all moved in as I was off campus for semester planning with the ministry team from my school. She texted me, but instead of telling me she was settled in, she told me that she didn't like the room and that she was going to move to different housing.
So that happened.

Last semester one of my good friends came back from the Disney college program, with the plan to resume class this semester. She needed a roommate, though, so I offered up my room. She got it all planned out and we were all set to room together.
Guess what didn't happen.
She decided that her major wasn't her favorite thing, so she didn't come back to school. I don't blame her. I want her to be happy.

I still want a roommate, but I guess I'm a curse for right now.

Doing the Dishes

College is a great time to be on your own, discover who you are, and become a real adult. Unfortunately real adults have to do chores.
I live in a suite on campus with two other girls. The suite consists of two bedrooms and a common room that has a kitchenette. The two other girls live in a room together, and I am by myself in a bedroom that has two beds in it because I have bad luck with roommates... More on that at another time.

To make life easier, we will call the girls by nicknames to help keep them all private and stuff.
Fuzzy, as we shall call her because of a freshman year nickname, has a tendency to be pessimistic and rational, though she says she is more of a realist than a pessimist. We affectionately call her "mom" because she is the one who tells me and the other girl when we are doing something stupid and dangerous. Fuzzy lived on campus last year, though on a different floor than I did.
The other girl in the room shall be called Pants because she doesn't like to wear real pants, and is usually in shorts or sweatpants 24/7. Pants is as weird and quirky as me, if not more so. She often proposes crazy ideas, like making our common room into a blanket fort (which actually happened). She commuted to campus last year, so I didn't get to see her around much. Pants has the same major as I do, so we have a lot of the same classes, though we didn't actually meet until a class trip to a motion-capture studio where we became good friends. Pants and Fuzzy were friends last year, so I met Fuzzy through Pants. They wanted to room together and so we all met up and decided to find a fourth person to room with us so we could live in the suites. Well, we found our fourth person (again, more on that later), and the rest is history.

I love rooming with Fuzzy and Pants, though it was definitely a lot more fun last semester. We are kind of different, so we don't hang out much anymore. Especially with the two of them living together, I am starting to feel like I am just someone who lives with them and does the dishes.

I am the main person in the room who does the dishes. Pants and Fuzzy have meal plans, so they eat at the campus dining areas more often than not, but I buy my own food and eat in the room. Because of this, I use the most dishes, so obviously I do them more often than not. HOWEVER! Pants uses plates and pans and silverware and shtuff a lot, too, and leaves it all laying around (she and I share the lack of desire to clean) so when Fuzzy goes on a cleaning spree, the sink fills up with dirty dishes very quickly. Now, I don't mind doing the dishes, but it would be nice getting some help every now and then.
That's not going to happen.
Fuzzy thinks she shouldn't have to do the dishes because she doesn't use them (except when we have roommate dinners). I respect and understand that.
Pants SHOULD do the dishes, but I don't want her to. I love Pants, but she cannot clean dishes. Like, at all. I always find food still stuck to things, so if she does the dishes, I always end up redoing them anyway.
It's a hard-knock life, I'll tell you that.
So, at least for now, it looks like I am stuck doing to dishes for the rest of the year. Hopefully I will get a roommate who can do them, too.
But, with my luck, that probably will never happen.