a rush of blood to the head

Adrenaline is such a fickle thing. It can so easily transfer from ecstasy to fury, as I know from past incidents and am experiencing again. Right now.

I told myself I wouldn't rant and rave in this blog, because I wanted to keep it rather... not lighthearted, just perhaps maybe a tad less personal, less burdening and more uplifting. Well, fuck that. Any self-imposed rules just got pitched out the window because brother, let me tell you, I AM PISSED OFF.

My Christmas Eve is ruined. No, this is not an melodramatic statement. Backtrack to a few weeks ago, when I call in to schedule at work (i.e., tell them when I'm coming home and what I can work if there are any restrictions). They tell me that my manager already HAS the schedule done... days ahead of time. Ooook. That kind of blows. So I write down my hours and realize that I'm scheduled for Christmas Eve day, 11-8:40. Since we close at 8 tomorrow - well, tonight, I suppose - this is a ten hour closing shift. Not only does that SUCK, but I always, always, always sing on Christmas Eve in the church choir, and THEN to top it off I rush over to the local V.F.W. to participate in my stepfamily's Christmas Eve dinner (something that almost tries to be the feast of seven fishes, and is always quite delicious). Alan and I are always a little late due to church, but after the dinner we head back to our stepgrandparents' for some gift-opening.

Now, my manager and I fight about this EVERY single GODDAMNED mother freaking year. Every year, like something is going to change about my Christmas Eve routine. She insists I can go to a different church service, that it's not fair I always request off, and I tell her that no, I can't, and no, it isn't, because she KNOWS I always come in for every shit shift she schedules me for. One night is NOT too much to ask for. Well, she went on with her jolly good self and put me on, ho-ho-ho. Funny lady. Do you know how impossible it is to get people to cover your shift on Christmas Eve? I finally had a guy say he'd probably be able to take it - he'd text me and let me know, but he was pretty sure. Suuuuuuuuuuuure he will. He's beaten around the bush with it the last three days and today he's just not answering me at all. Suck it up, grow a set and at least tell me know, you douchebag. I'd be a little less unhappy with you if you weren't being such an ass about the whole ordeal.

I can't call off because I need the hours and well it's Christmas Eve. They'd kill me. And then write me up and maybe fire me.

So, looks like I'm working. All day. By the time I get out it'll be 9, and the only thing I'll want is a shower so God knows if I'll even go anywhere for gifts.

Ho-ho-ho. Merry mother fucking Christmas to me.

I am so insanely pissed right now, you have no idea.

It's really quite sad, not only my predicament for tomorrow, but that tonight had to be ruined like this. Otherwise, I had a fan-fucking-tastic time at the Pens game with Sam. Which I'll maybe talk about later, but it ain't happenin' now. I'm way too upset to try to recapture my enjoyment of the game right now.

WHEW.

I don't know if anyone notices, but I tend to use bits and pieces of song lyrics for titles and even scattered sporadically throughout my posts on occasion. If you do, that's really cool, though there's no prize... I just wanted to point it out so that my apology for not doing so today makes any sense at all.

I guess it's been, what, a week since I've updated? My apologies! I don't really have readers, so I suppose nobody's gone into a news-deprivation-inspired coma... Which, I'm happy about! Haha. I would hate to be responsible for any untimely demises. (The paperwork's a bitch.)

Finals have come and gone (thank GOD!) and I somehow managed to survive even with ice storms and ear infections and what-have-you. We'll see when the official grade report comes out how well I did. Or perhaps how poorly I did. Meh. This semester was rough. I'm over it.

We're a week later getting out this year than we were last year, so Christmas seems to have snuck up on me all a'sudden! One minute I'm screaming "Finals SUUUUUUCK" and the next minute I'm looking at a soot-covered Santa saying, "Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!" while I look on in confusion. I dunno... I absolutely love the holidays, but I'm hoping the weeks after Christmas will slow down a little bit, allow me to enjoy what precious little time I have here at home. Not to mention I have to take a good chunk of that time and dedicate it to planning out my last two semesters at Clarion, AND work on securing an internship for the summer. Of course I have an ideal gig in mind, but there are some drawbacks- 1) it is unpaid. 2) they don't release positions 'til March. 3) I don't know when they tell you if you've got it.

Issue #1 is only a problem because I really do try to pay for a lot of things myself. I contribute most of my car insurance, I keep trying to save enough to put a few bucks towards my cell phone plan (thankfully Mom keeps me on hers!), I pay for repairs/maintenance on my car and cell, and most everything I need I buy for myself. I absolutely hate asking my parents for money because they put so much into my schooling and making sure I'm going to college... you know? I don't want to be any more of a burden than I am already; believe me, I'm soooooo grateful that they've taken on a chunk of my tuition so I don't have to be in debt 'til I'm 50. College is freaking expensive! Anyway, I totally derailed my train of thought there. Getting back on track, an unpaid internship is a problem because the summer is when I make most of my money, seeing as I can get close to full time at Wendy's (that's 40 hours), plus any days I spend in the office at Amsler's. There is no doubt in my mind that I must have a job for the summer, so that means that I'm going to probably have to look into a job down in Pittsburgh or at least closer to so I'm not driving all over God's green earth and potentially running into scheduling conflicts/tardiness to either due to traffic/commuting. I'm banking right now on staying here for the summer, at home, even though if everything's in the city theoretically it'd be easier to stay there; problem is, that's even MORE money, that I don't have, than I will probably spend commuting/carpooling/taking the bus. I mean, I haven't checked those figures yet, but I think it's safe to say.

Issue #2 and #3 are only problems because this is the position that I REALLY WANT. As in, this would be the "oh-my-God-I-have-died-I-am-so-happy-I-could-cry-oh-my-God-oh-my-God-oh-my-GOD!" phone call. However, I know you can't put all of your eggs in one basket, and I need to find some other internships to apply for that, if stuck with, I don't hate. Bu-uuut... IF I got accepted for a position with another company and my ideal company calls and says hey, you're in... what the hell do you do then? Is it like a job? Can you call the first one and say I'm sorry, I was offered a better opportunity? (Without offending too many people?) I don't know, because I've had the same job for, oh wait, going on four years, and I've never done an internship.

Sigh. Anyway, I definitely need an internship, so if anybody's got any connections into any cool companies in the Pittsburgh area and do accounting-or-related internships, you should hook me up. Because that's what good people do. =)

I got home Thursday afternoon and here it is on Saturday night, and I work for the first time tomorrow. I can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I never really am when Wendy's is concerned. Can you blame me? It's Wendy's. I would really love not to be on window... (But of course now that I've said that, I will be. For the full nine hours.)

Some strange part of me thought that I would pen some eloquent comeback post to make up for my week-long absence... that part of me is crazy.

yellow dance and we turn

Pens won, is there really anything else to say? =P
I won't bore you with the details here. You can catch the story over at PensU.
In other news, the Baby Pens also kept the hope alive, trumping the Phantoms 4-1. Next game's tonight. I'll probably tune via online radio - maybe.

Clarion's weather sucks, surprised? No? Funny, me either. We get the awesomest bits of the weather pattern up here. This morning my car was covered in about a half-inch of ice, looking very much like somebody had ordered a glazed Chevrolet for breakfast in place of their doughnut. Thanks to the spike in temperature, however, now we're left with regular rain (vs. the freezing rain I awoke to) and slush everywhere. I sincerely doubt my capacity or will to travel anywhere today, except maybe to WalMart for groceries if absolutely necessary.

Everybody's freaking out about the Steelers. They just don't seem to have it all together. I think they all need thrown in a cabin in the woods somewhere to get to know themselves again or something... haha, I dunno. Why are you reading this? I don't do football; I watch it when it's the Steelers, but otherwise, meh. I wish it was a little more like hockey, line-wise, because I feel some HCDB-style line-changing might liven up the team a little. Yes? No? Again, I dunno.

I have my third ear infection of 2009, and I'm far less than pleased about it. It'd be one thing if I was 2, not twenty. So I made an appointment with an eye/ears/nose/throat specialist for over break, hopefully he can determine why they're persistently reoccurring. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the benefits of not being able to breathe, or balance, or hear. Cool.

Speaking of, it's hit that magical hour where I can take more Sudafed. God Bless Sudafed. Truly. Between that, Advil and the Amoxicillin I was prescribed, I may actually not die for finals week. Well, not die from physical-health related issues, anyway. Mental health is a whooooole 'nother story! I'm off to take my meds, and then it's back to studying Management Theory. Or maybe napping. I'm pretty sure napping is an acceptable temporary substitute for studying... right?

livin' is easy with eyes closed

These are the times, though, that the blinders need to come off and you need to take a look at the desolate carnage around you. How many things have you destroyed in your race to get to the top? How many people have you left behind because you couldn't stop?

This semester has been... pretty rocky. Like, think Mount Everest meets Mount Doom. I took on 18 credits (that's a full course load here at the University, we're not allowed to take any more than that)- and not just 18 credits, but those credits are all upper-level, kick-your-ass-and-run-you-over-and-expect-you-to-get-up-and-take-more classes. It's been really hard, and I'm not going to lie, I'm not doing very well at all, and only Finals will tell if I've passed all of them. Some I'm not worried about, I know I at least hold a C in, if not higher. Others, I'll praise God if I can scrape a C in. I'm not exactly proud of this... in fact, I'm not very proud of it at all. I'm accustomed to being the Honor-Roll student, the straight-A girl. But that was high school. Those standards are impossibly high here, especially in my field. At least in my opinion. Hey, if you're better at accounting than me, good for you. I'm trying my best here.

It's also pretty impossible to feel good about yourself with these kind of grades when everyone around you holds you to your Honor-Roll record and doesn't recognize that your own shame already degrades you more any more than their disappointment can. I don't suppose it helps that I can't just outright respond to grade inquiries without being preemptively defensive, because I don't need others' judgments to gouge more than my own self-reprimanding already has.

Through all of it, however, I have found inspiration through one of my best friends, my brother. When I get too down on myself he opens up and tells me that he's proud of me for being like THE first of our name to go to college, how happy it'd make him to see me graduate and get a "good, clean job." Whenever I want to throw in the towel and hit things, I can just look back at this text:

Youll be ok yer makin me proud at least for even bein up there tryin

Yeah, that sentence may not seem like much to you, but to me it means everything. Poor grammar, nonexistent punctuation and all. It means the world.

And it means I'm OK.

i'm H2O intolerant!

So my roommate Megan stumbled across this picturesque piece whilst trolling the vast wonderland that is the interwebz.


Insert hysterical laughter here. Yes, I'm allowed to laugh. One of my other roommates (and friend since we were youngsters), Autumn, discovered a few years back that she'd somehow developed a lactose intolerance. This means, of course, that she can't ingest anything with lactose in it, which, in case your curious, includes but is not limited to just dairy products. Well, she can, but you wouldn't want her to, unless you want to give up all access to your bathroom for the next few hours. So she drinks Lactaid milk and has pills that allow her to - in small quantities - digest dairy things we may cook with.

The real kicker, of course, is discovering upon moving in together that while everyone else in the apartment can handle her lactose-free milk in place of our own regular stuff... I cannot. Not that I choose not to, or that I dislike the taste (because really, it tastes like normal milk) - I literally cannot digest her milk properly. I get the same reaction from her Lactaid milk as she does from my regular milk.

It's quite a quandary, and makes cooking an interesting adventure. We've finally settled on a half/half policy, where both of us get kind of grumbly stomachs, but neither are sick. Ah, never a dull moment here!

let it snow

Every year when it drops into the mid-to-low thirties, a magical event occurs. If it's cloudy enough, and you wait patiently enough, you'll start to see strange little white flakes come out of the sky. If you wait for them to reach you, they melt quickly on your skin at first; but if you adjust to the temperature and try again, you may just catch one on your sleeve. White and crystalline, infinitely fragile and tiny, this shining creation is a testimony to the season, the start to the wondrous landscape we call "winter wonderland." What is, you ask, this insignificant white flake?

It's called snow, people, and every year everyone forgets how to deal with it!

I won't lie to you, I love snow. Snow, snow, snow everywhere, I LOVE SNOW! I live in Pennsylvania and I long for white Christmases and New Year's snowball fights. Snow is fantastic. Not only is it fun, but to me it's the better alternative, because around here we're most likely to see snow when the air temperature is between 15 and 32 degrees. (facts.) I would much, much rather have it at a snow-worthy temperature than deal with the blistering, icy wind that accompanies a "feels like" temperature of five degrees or less. Shudder. I do not like those days.

So anyway, what IS it with people and snow? Now, I'm currently at college, so yeah, maybe we have that gaggle of foreign exchange students who have no idea what to do with themselves, or those Southern Cali transplants who are so excited to see snow up close and personal you'd think it was some rare wonder. (Why you'd want to come to Western PA from SoCal, I have no idea; hey, it's your prerogative, it's nice ta have ya.) Aside from that, most of the people around have grown up around here or within the tri-state area, where snow is NOT a big deal. It happens all the time, steadily, sometimes from November onward but almost always from December through March. Without fail, though, at the first snowfall there are about seven accidents in a three-mile radius, people creeping down the road at ten miles an hour, and people waiting in a long line at WalMart to buy their toilet paper, milk, and canned goods as if they're preparing for a perpetual winter in Narnia under the White Queen.

People.

The snow didn't even last overnight.

This is one of those mysteries I hold akin to the ever-present question, "Why does everyone slow down before the Squirrel Hill tunnels on the Parkway East inbound?" Maybe it will never be answered. Maybe just like those commuters feel that maintaining speed through the tunnels will create a vacuum behind their car and cause the tunnel to collapse, there are people that see snow and assume it's going to block your in your house for the next few weeks.

Take a deep breath and put down the extra gallon of milk. It'll be OK.

a black-tie affair

I'm almost 21 years old, and I've been to seven family funerals in that time.

Five of those have been in 2009.

It's been a rough year for me, and it reflects in the standards to which I hold myself at school. While at one time I would normally at least try to throw myself enthusiastically into my studies, and land at least somewhere middle-ground, this semester and last I just couldn't care less. But this isn't about me blaming my downward-spiraling academic career on personal losses; it's about me dealing with the losses themselves.

How does one grieve when one does not know how? Yes, I get sad, and yes, I'm upset - but I can't show that, and especially not in front of people. I am always the comforter, not the comfort-ee. If I start to tear up at the funeral, I blink very slowly and try to think of something so mundane and normal that it would make you laugh. For example, feeding my cats. Yes, I've sat at a funeral home and thought about whether or not my cats had food at home as an alternative to crying. I think you ought to understand that I weep pretty easily, I've noticed, at least this last year - could possibly have something to do with all the grief I've experienced - but when I cry, oh Lordy, you better have a box of tissues and a bottle of water, because it's going to take a while and it's going to be long and extensive. So I just don't cry anymore. And it probably has something to do with my "mothering" factor. You see, my brother is three years younger than I am, and for all that he's big and tough and manly, he's the more emotional of the two of us. Having mothered him for years, when I know that he's going to fall apart, I feel that I should be the strong one. I bring him a handkerchief when I know he wouldn't have remembered; I hug him and wipe his face and try to stop the rush of pain and grief I know he feels. I echo it, but he shows it. Maybe I feel like that's good enough. If both of us ever got to bawling, well, then, you can forget it, we'd be pretty much worthless to everybody until we got ourselves under control.

Besides being strong for him, I feel that randomly erupting into tears bring an awkward factor to any conversation that is not between me and my nuclear family. So for all five funerals this year, I have not yet once sat down and actually bawled my heart out like I yearn to; I haven't had the time, or the energy, nor do I want to piece myself together after it's over. I know in my head that they're gone, but I don't think my heart really wants to admit it yet. And if it comes all at once... it's going to be Hiroshima for my emotions.

Not all these deaths were completely unexpected, but even so, it doesn't make them any easier to take.
January 28, 2009: Ed, my stepgrandfather - well, my grandma's second husband. Dad's technical stepfather. I don't know what to call him relationship wise, because to me from the time I was born on he was just "Ed" - passed away in the morning. He'd gotten a cold when they were supposed to head back to Mississippi, where they spent their winters, and since she doesn't drive they both had to stay here in Pennsylvania. A month later, his cold hadn't gotten any better, and he was put on oxygen to help his breathing. On this day in January, he got up in the morning, told my grandma he wanted eggs, sat down in his armchair, and when she came back from the kitchen he'd died. I'm the closest family on her side when I'm up here at school - it's about a 20-minute drive for me, and of course I skipped all my classes and went to her. Some of Ed's family had already arrived, and grandma was, as expected, a wreck. It started to blizzard and I had no choice but to leave - I was driving a '94 Acura Integra at the time and while I loved the car, I had no winter tires and she lives on a very hilly, dirt back road and I didn't feel like getting stuck. I had to go, jump back into the college grind until the funeral, and then I only missed those afternoon classes. There is no time to grieve here.
March 1, 2009: Kenny, my cousin, passed away on this night. Thirty-three years old and his heart just gave up on him. He'd sat down with some friends at their house to watch TV. He kissed their little boy goodnight and shuddered, stuttered, sucked in some air. They asked what was wrong, and he said nothing, nothing. A few minutes later, he fell into cardiac arrest and died before the ambulance arrived. That was how I began spring break.
July 20, 2009: My Great-Uncle Ken, who had been in perfect health and had, in fact, just sold me my current car - fell deathly ill, and then into a coma before he passed. He had just finally moved out of his house and into an assisted living home so he could have help taking care of his wife. I had literally just seen him three weeks earlier, as spry and witty as ever.
September 1, 2009: My Great-Aunt Lil, who had prior to this been in fine physical health to my knowledge, died. It may not have been surprising, since she had so recently lost her husband (my Uncle Ken, above), but it still stung. This is how I began my fall semester.
October 6, 2009: My Grandpap Rainbow finally passed on, putting him out of the pain and suffering he'd been experiencing for months as his liver failed him and his bowels failed him. He was adamant enough about the fact that he was ready to go - that his human body was done with him, and that was fine because "he was done with it, too." Old coot. Three-quarters of a century old and he'd said on that day, his birthday, "I might not be around for next year, y'know. I'm the last one left." It was true, all his siblings - older and younger - were all already gone.

I could go on and on about the stories I have, my reactions to their deaths. Maybe someday on here I will. Oh, the stories I could tell... but the important one is that may very well bring that total up to six funerals for this year, because my Aunt Kak is predicted to leave us within the next few days. Now, I could have fun - and again, maybe another day, I will - trying to explain how exactly I'm related to some of these people and why I'm not sure what to call them, but that's because my family tree is all kinds of chaos. Let's keep her my Aunt, plain and simple. Aunt Kak has been fighting cancer for almost... eight years now, I think? It's been a long haul, and through it all she's smiled and laughed, and taken care of Uncle Skeet (who operates on 1/3 of one lung) and been upbeat and noncommital about the whole ordeal... and again, like my Grandpap, her body's just done. It's throwing in the towel, it's run up the white flag, it's done. She's just tired. Her mind's all there. Her eyes were bright. I stopped over at the hospital and she lit up with a "Krissy!" mumbled through lips that can barely speak, she's that tired, and that's her through and through, the only person in my life who's ever called me that. She chuckled and kissed my cheek and held my hand and it was like we were at home.

And the doctors are giving her less than a week to live. They'll send her home to die, and I'm left here behind, looking for something to cling to in the vacuum of empty space left behind. And yet I know that this is a cycle of life. Death is a part of our existence. I just wish... I just selfishly wish that it wasn't hitting so hard, so close to home, all at once.

"Take death for example
A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it
We make extraordinary efforts to delay it
And often consider its intrusion a tragic event
Yet we’d find it hard to live without it
Death gives meaning to our lives
It gives importance and value to time
Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it
If death were indefinately put off
The human psyche would end up
Well like the gambler of the Twilight Zone episode"
-"Ray Kurzweil On Death," Our Lady Peace

a dog-eared page in a half-read book

I'd meant to post this last night, but closed my computer before I could do so, and probably for good reason. I was sort of a mess last night. Yes, I'm a college student and yes, I do have finals next week... but that's just not it anymore.

I set up this blog to have a place to just write. This is me, staking claim on some portion - albeit infinitesimally small - portion of cyberspace and opening the doors so that the people may flock to it. Why would they do such a thing? Well... that's a pretty damn good question, I'm not going to lie. I have no idea what, if anything, will attract anyone to this site besides friends who are curious to see what I pen. (Figuratively, of course.) Most importantly, I have a purpose to this blog: to share. Just to see what I can share, what I can learn from others' responses to what I share, and to see what stress I can alleviate by sharing. I've had blogs before this, but they were mostly privated, sort of just online diaries read by only a select few.

I'm not saying this blog is going to be a running commentary on my day-to-day life or, hell, even current events. It probably will still contain some emotional ranting every now and then, and no, it probably will not be all sunshine-and-roses to read. They say that happiness is like a butterfly... This is my story, my words, my pages, my little homestead in cyberspace. Dog-ear the page and peek back every once in a while to see how I do chasing butterflies.