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.