Failure

Sometimes, things that should be good ideas end up being bad ones.

Emily, Maire and I are going to see the new Harry Potter at the midnight showing. Of course, this requires costumes. Emily decided to go as Luna Lovegood, a decision I’m a little jealous of. In order to do this, she decided to bleach her hair blonde.

Ideal situation.

We were very excited. I am a Pro at dying hair, so it was left up to me to decide what type of bleach we should get, and I was the one who did the actual dying. I thought I warned her that there was no way of knowing what it would look like, especially since she has dyed her hair before, but there is some debate about the level of disclaimer. But we did it, and I was super excited and Emily was alternately excited and terrified. Here are some pictures of the process:

Pre-dye.

Application.

Excited.

Letting it sit.

I went to dinner while the bleach was still on because I was starving, and when I came back an hour later, this is what I was greeted with:

:(

“We are going to buy brown hair dye and fixing this NOW because I am not going to dinner with my hair looking like this.” Emily was blow drying her hair and looking at it wistfully in her webcam. When asked if she was okay emotionally, she replied, “I am disappointed, but I am okay.” After further probing, we determined it’s the blonde bit at the top she hated, and not as much the strawberry blonde part at the bottom. Bleach does that sometimes; it can come out anywhere from platinum to grungy orange to fluorescent yellow.

Brown hair dye was purchased, and applied. I’m sure my worry didn’t even begin to compare with hers, but by this time I felt entirely responsible for the state of her hair and thusly the state of her happiness. This is Emily looking nervous:

Nervous-hopeful?

When she came out of the shower, her hair was too wet to properly determine the color. But she informed us that the strands that fell out and dried really quickly were a “thumbs up”. This is what her hair looks like wrapped up:

Mile-high towel.

She was blow drying it in the bathroom so she could use a mirror, and suddenly I heard a terrified shriek: “It’s black!!!! Why would this happen to me??!?!?” She came in a few minutes later and apparently I had misheard; it wasn’t black, it was blue. This is quite possibly the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in the history of dying hair, and I have quite a history with it. Parts of it are brown and parts are black, though I can’t see any blue. I haven’t the slightest idea how this happened; it certainly hasn’t been an issue in the past. For future reference, apparently this dye does really, really weird things. Be warned.

Arrested Development makes everything better.

Emily has decided to go as Cho Chang, and be the most beautiful Cho that there ever was ever, proving that she is Resilient and also needs to talk about her dead ex-boyfriends over coffee.

p.s. I do all my own drawings and take all of my own photographs unless I say otherwise. This would be indicated by a link in the caption, such as in the Mono picture, or the picture of Jimmy in Degrassi. I even have a fancy Drawings page! This will hopefully be updated on a fairly regular basis.

College Is Bad For Your Health

College is bad for your health. This is a thing you hear a lot, since the food isn’t good and there’s a lot of stress. But, at least at my college, people are regularly seriously injured. And I don’t even go to a big college.

First off, there was a guy from a neighboring college who was here at a football game. He was a player, so I guess there’s some sense of risk, but he was so seriously injured he couldn’t get up and an ambulance had to be called and he had to be attached to a stretcher and removed from the field. He lifted his arms in triumph on his way out, so presumably he’s at least a little okay. But still. This was the first weekend of school.

Pictured: survival?

The day before Halloween, one of my best friends here, Emily, and her friend Dana got hit by a car. They were crossing the sidewalk completely legally, and someone turned left into them. Emily was okay, though her leg was in enough pain that she couldn’t ride her bicycle anymore and she’s been borrowing my car. Dana was less so; she has to wear a leg brace, and is going to need surgery this winter. She runs track, so this is a super big deal for her.

This is the actual police report of the accident.

McKenzie, yet another girl from my dorm, got Mono and had to leave early. She’s going to have to redo her term.

Mono.

There’s another girl named Bonnie who I’ve never met, but she lives in my dorm. She also got into a car accident, though she was in her car. She broke her foot and then got pneumonia, so she had to go home early. She’ll be able to do her finals over the internet, so at least she doesn’t have to redo the term.

Apparently she hit a telephone pole and not another car, but I was informed of this about two seconds ago, after the post was already up.

Another friend, Lauren, was in the hospital for about five hours on Sunday. She’d been semi-delirious from a fever for a day or two, but when she woke up, she couldn’t really move because her back hurt so much. Her grandfather drove down to take her to the ER, where they determined she had a kidney infection. This was actually a blessing—the other option was kidney stones.

These are not really the colors kidneys are, but I don't have my good color pencils with me.

Also the thing that looks like a hat is an Adrenal Gland and not a hat at all.

A friend of mine named Tony was in the hospital for six hours on Monday because he thought he had appendicitis. He doesn’t, but they don’t know what is wrong, so he has to go see his actual doctor next week.

Tony looks like a stick bug, only much more human and also way cuter.

Someone whose name I don’t know broke her hip a few weeks ago and needed emergency surgery. There was something already wrong with it, but all she did to break it was fall and land wrong.

Almost what a hipbone looks like...

Plus, all the bicycles outside my dorm had their tires slashed a month ago.

This is Steve Holt, Emily's bike. He was very sad until my roommate repaired him in Shanonie's Bike Shoppe.

We don’t actually believe there’s a curse, mostly. It’s the sort of thing we laugh about nervously and then look over our shoulders to make sure there’s no natural disaster about to kill us all, or a serial killer, or maybe yellow fever.

p.s. This is a picture of my roommate’s pillow that has bicycles on it. She wanted it to be used as Steve Holt, but I’m attached to my drawing of him, but I also promised her it would go in the post. So, here is the Steve Holt that lives on Shanonie’s pillow:

Shanonie's pillow.

p.p.s. Guys, you need to stop taking me so seriously. Of course I miss Jimmy on Degrassi; who wouldn't? But I’m super happy for him that he’s doing so well and doing what he wants to be doing.

Dear Jimmy

Something very important recently came to my attention. Aubrey Graham, who once played Jimmy Brooks on the TV show Degrassi: The Next Generation is now a famous rapper.

Um.

Excuse me? How did nobody tell me this until last night? Here he is, featured in Rihanna’s new video:

What's My Name feat. Drake

This is him on Degrassi:

Jimmy's the one in the blue sweatshirt. The picture came from here.

I loved you, Jimmy. You were one of my favorite characters. In a show full of bitchy teenagers, you were one of the few genuinely nice guys who always tried to do the right thing. When you got shot in season four, I cried. When you were shown walking on crutches after having stem cell surgery, I cried. When I realized you left the show forever, I cried. And now I find out you’ve gone off and had a successful career as a rapper, under the name Drake??? You could have rapped on Degrassi, Jimmy. In fact, I’m pretty sure you did.

Jimmy, you might think it’s cool to have a Real Career where you get to do music videos with people like Rihanna. But you know what else is cool? Showing teens how to deal with the Tough Stuff. That’s what you did on Degrassi. You brought hope to a whole generation of troubled teens. And now? Now you’re singing about what Rihanna’s name is. That is not cool, Jimmy.

You have disappointed me, Jimmy. No longer are you a wheelchair-ridden basketball star. Now you shave your hair into stupid patterns and look like you think you’re cooler than the rest of us. Well, Jimmy, I’ve got news for you. You don’t.

Why would you do this to me, Jimmy? Was it the money? The fame? I’m sure you made money on Degrassi, even if it’s not the bajillions rappers make. And you were famous where it really mattered—in my heart.

Goodbye, Jimmy. I hope you have fun in your new life, but never forget those of us you left behind.

p.s. Somerset has returned to some sense of normality. The two couches on the walls are still there, but the chairs have become more spread out, and there are only boring chairs along the wall of windows. There is now a group of furniture in every place where there should be. But hey, at least my couch is still here!

Please Comment?

Okay guys. This makes me feel like a jerk, but I need to say it.

Please comment? It makes me feel like people read what I’m writing, and that makes me feel good about writing, and like I want to write some more. Currently, no more than two people have commented on a single post, and they are the same two people: my mom, and my roommate, who gets to hear me whine about nobody commenting. See?

Also please follow? It’s not hard, all you need to do is click the little button over on the right (I think that’s where it is). The very first night I had my blog up, my friend Jesse followed me and it made me super happy, and I thought this would be a trend. But it hasn’t been. Don’t you guys want to be trend setters??

You can comment anonymously; you don’t need an account or anything. A bunch of you have commented on the links on my Facebook, or liked them, and that’s great, but there’s a special sort of satisfaction that comes from getting comments on the blog itself. It’s not hard, especially for the ones of you who leave comments on FB already.

There are also some of you who have told me in person that you read every post. You have no idea how happy that makes me, like I am made of sunshine and rainbows. That level of happiness, that also happens when you leave comments. So pretty please?

Like I said, I feel like a total dick for asking this, but it means so much to me. Like Christmas, only every day!!  I promise this will be the last time I ask, but don't you want me to feel like it's Christmas every day? That's a pretty awesome feeling.

You Know What's Just Around The Corner?

Hey guys? Guess what?

Christmas.

I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday in the everness of ever. Christmas decorations, Christmas carols, Christmas cookies, Christmas presents, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas ornaments, Christmas trees. All of it. It might not seem like it, but Christmas is just around the corner. It is forty-one days away. That is not very many days at all. Last night, I even started knitting Christmas presents. That makes it even closer.

Last year, I got a Christmas tree for the very first time. Almost all the other years in my life had been spent living at home, where my parents had a two foot tall fake Christmas tree that stayed up year round. There was no Decorating The Tree because the tree was always decorated.

This is my parents' Christmas tree, though you can't really tell how small it is from the picture.

The year before that, I lived in an apartment, but the landlord wouldn’t let me have one, because it was a “fire hazard”. But then I moved to a different apartment, and you better believe one of the first things I asked was whether or not we were allowed to have Christmas trees.

The realtor gave me a very strange look. “Yes? Why wouldn’t you be?”

I shrugged nervously, not wanting to give her a reason to say no. “Fire hazard?” I half mumbled.

“Of course you can have a Christmas tree.”

It was June at the time, which in retrospect may have accounted for some of her confusion, so I had a whole bunch of months to wait until Christmas. But eventually December happened, and I bought a Christmas tree. I spent a looooong time finding the perfect tree with my dad, and it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. It looked like this:

Apparently I don’t have a picture of my tree undecorated. I am extremely upset about this.

My parents gave me a few of their decorations, but they didn’t have many because their tree was small, and some were too fragile/special to give to me. I had two cats, one of whom was ten months old, and we didn’t know how they’d react to a tree. As it was, they didn’t care at all. But this gave me an excuse to go Christmas ornament shopping, which was the Best Ever. I got cheap filler ornaments from A. C. Moore and Michael’s, and then some niceish ones from Macy’s and such, and then a few super amazing ones from Anthropologie. I also asked for Christmas ornaments for Christmas, and ALL of my friends and my parents obliged and it was amazing. This is what my tree looked like decorated:

This was my tree last year!! It was beautiful ^^

Then I had a Christmas party and we decorated Bridget:

The decorating process!!

These are some of my favorite ornaments:

I had this made for me on Etsy and it has my name and the year on it and I love it :D

One of my bestest friends got this one for me and it's the best. Pooh is my favorite thing in the everness of ever.

Acorns from Anthropologie. Acorns are super special; their significance will be explained in a later post.

Bridget got this one for me. It's so delicate and gorgeous and Christmas ornament-y.

This is one of the few my parents gave me. They're itty bitty tiny glass balls in different colors; this one is silver, then I have a red one, a pink one and a blue one.

Three of my closest friends and I knit a blanket together a few years ago. It's one of my most precious possessions. This is a mini-version that the same friend who got me the Pooh ornament made for me. It's probably my favorite ornament.

This is another one from my parents. I know it was my dad's, and I'm pretty sure it was from his childhood. There are two of these, and then a long, skinny one. They are my childhood.

This year I’m living back at home, and there is some Debate about whether or not we can get a tree. My parents are worried about the cats still, which is absolutely ridiculous since we have proven that mine don’t care, the family cat is twelve or thirteen, and I refuse to consider the possibility that their cat would destroy the tree because it is too Magical to destroy. And if they try to say that cost is an issue, I will insist that it is both a Christmas present to me and also supporting the local boy scout troop and who doesn’t like boy scouts?

Was there a point to all of this? No. Not even a little bit. I’m just SUPER excited for Christmas :D

I Have Super Powers

I have Super Powers. My mom gave them to me. I can fit any amount of anything into my backpack. I am not joking. It is kind of ridiculous. I realized this today when I realized just how many things I needed with me in Somerset. This is what my backpack looked like after I packed it:

In the first pouch, in the very front, I keep my Black Parade confetti. I got it when I saw My Chemical Romance’s first show on their Black Parade tour. They had confetti cannons, and exploded confetti into the crowd. I put some in my pockets, and then decided to keep it in my backpack, so I would never lose it and always have it on me.

This is not all of it, just a small sample.

This is the second pouch. Mostly I only keep food there, but sometimes I put other small things in it so they don’t get lost in the hugeness of the bigger pouches. Currently, I have three tins of Study Mints (anise seed mints from William Sonoma that are my incentive to study—I only let myself eat them if I’m actually getting work done), a ball of yarn, a bag of sour gummy worms, mac & cheese from Panera, hand cream, a pencil sharpener, two tampons, a house key, a bar of Hershey’s chocolate, an old receipt, three tubes of Smarties, an eraser, two pencils (one of them is a Pokémon pencil that I’ve had since third or fourth grade), a Sharpie, a PrismaColor pen, and two bags of tea I stole from the café.

The third pouch isn’t super useful; it’s thin and narrow and not quite tall or wide enough for papers. I’ve been keeping my colored pencils and markers in it.

There are two open pouches on the sides, useful for tall things, like Saltines, a water bottle and an umbrella.

There are two other pouches right next to those that are the most useless things ever. I went through them for the purpose of this investigation and found a comb, two things of tinfoil and a pair of contacts. I have not used contacts in five years. It was kind of gross.

This is where I get really skilled. The biggest pouch is very, very big and I am very good at squishing things. There was a season of Twin Peaks, my wallet, the Stephen King book I’m currently reading, my headphones, my current knitting project, my computer’s charger, a knitting needle, a piece of pasta, my stuffed lion Pace and a full-sized blanket. It is full-sized. I promise.

There is a top pouch where you’re supposed to keep your iPod and stuff, but I don’t bother to bring it when I know I’ll be on my computer the whole time. This is another good place to keep small things, and also sharp things. There are four knitting needles, a pair of scissors, an iPod connector, two double A batteries, a pencil and two more rolls of Smarties.

Then there is the computer pouch. I keep my computer in it, along with papers I don’t want to get bent. The folded up one is an old essay I forgot was in there, then two edited copies of the same paper that’s different from the first paper, a stack of blank papers for drawing pictures for my blog, the reading I was supposed to do this weekend but didn’t, and then a homework assignment.

This is everything that was in my backpack.

Going To Bed Should Not Be This Difficult

Going to bed is one of those things that is one hundred percent harder than it should be. It would be awesome if, when I looked at the clock and saw that it was six past midnight, that generated the following train of events:

1.    “Oh, look. It’s past midnight. I should go to sleep, so when I have to get up for class on Monday, I’ll be alive.”

2.     I pack my things together, leave Somerset and walk to my dorm without any interruptions.

3.    Go into my room quietly, change into my pjs, get into bed.

4.    Go straight to sleep.

However, this is generally what ends up happening instead:

1.    “Oh, look. It’s past midnight. I should go to sleep, so when I have to get up for class on Monday, I’ll be alive.”

2.    Then I check my email.

3.    Then Facebook.

4.    Then my blog to see if anyone commented or is following me.

5.    And then I stay up for another long period of time doing stupid internet things, or maybe watching Twin Peaks and/or knitting.

6.    Eventually I am too exhausted to be alive and the mere thought of being awake is enough to make me cry.

7.    Pack my things, leave Somerset, walk past the coffee shop and get depressed because I’m out of culinary cash and there are a whole eleven more days until the end of term.

8.    Walk to my dorm without any interruptions.

9.    Go into my room quietly, change into my pjs, get into bed.

10.  Play backgammon on my phone for an hour. Possibly also cribbage and Sudoku, maybe even Rush Hour, though usually I’m too tired to think that clearly.

11.  Put my phone away and spend another 30 to infinity minutes not falling asleep because I’m incapable of falling asleep.

You can start to see why this is a problem even within those lists. I am actually tired, tired enough to not remember how to use tenses. This is related to another problem with staying up late—I can do homework if I woke up before noon, but I can’t think much beyond YAY INTERNET!!! past, say, eleven-thirty. Then the following events occur:

1.    Wake up at quarter of one in the afternoon.

2. Throw on whatever clothes are closest and sprint down to the café before it closes for lunch

3.    Forget to bring study supplies.

4. Need to walk back to dorm after lunch and return to the same building to study.

5.    Look at the clock.

6. Get panicky because it’s quarter of two and I haven’t gotten any work done yet.

7.    Do stupid internet things to calm down.

8.    Realize it’s quarter of three.

9.    Get panicky.

10.  Finally get some work done, but continually get distracted by IMs and the Internet and the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy and knitting and Twin Peaks and looking at pictures of Montana.

By the way, friends, Montana is the most beautiful place in the world. If I didn’t love my college so very, very much, I would transfer there so I could live in the mountains and breathe the fresh, mountain air and go skiing all the time. There is not a lot of skiing in the Midwest. It is very flat. Plus, about the air: my campus sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, smells like cow poop. This could be because the entirety of the downtown area is built on a landfill. Or maybe because there’s a paper factory across the river. I don’t know. But it’s gross.

I have cleverly blacked out the name of the paper mill so you can't find me and won't kill me in my sleep.

I am concerned that, since the town is built on a landfill, there is secretly a Trash Monster that comes out at night to kill people who don't live by the CC&Rs like in that X-Files episode.

Picture taken from: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/index.htm. If you never need X-Files pictures, that is the place to go.

I did not take this picture because I have never been to Montana. I will, though. One day.

Picture from:  http://www.montanadeathrecord.com/montana.jpg.

Another consequence of not sleeping enough is that I get crabby and the little things, like everything smelling like cow poop, start to get to me. If I could go to bed at midnight like a normal person, I bet when I woke up and walked outside and smelled the cow poop, I would be like, “Wow! Cow poop! What a beautiful day!” But no. Instead, I go outside, and I’m like, “Grrrrrr cow poop you make my life miserable. I hate you, cow poop.”

This is now sitting face down on the coffee table in front of me so people don't see it and think I'm crazy.

Okay. The CD I was listening to just ended, and I am going to take this as a sign that it is time for bed, even though I have not drawn pictures of cow poop yet. I can do that tomorrow, and it will make no difference whatsoever because I don’t want to post two posts in one day because:

1.    I don’t want to overwhelm my readers.

2.    I don’t want to use up all of my post ideas right away.

3.    I don’t have the materials for drawing on hand, and my roommate is asleep and I don’t want to wake her up to get them. Plus it’s cold out, and I don’t want to either:

                             a. Walk to my room and back.

                             b. Pack up, go to my room, get my things, sit outside my room and unpack again.

4. I can’t take a picture of the paper factory because it’s dark out.

5. I don’t have a picture of the building with the crack in the floor because the whole town is sinking, or even remember what building it is, which means I will have to ask my professor, who looks like John Stamos.

Also, there’s a really loud band playing somewhere and it’s driving me absolutely crazy. Good night, friends.

p.s. I did not go to sleep. Instead I stayed up late to write blog posts. I did, however, move away from the obnoxious loud band. I also changed into my pjs in the dark, then decided I wanted to stay up. This involved grabbing a bra at random because I couldn’t see, and also a shirt at random, because I couldn’t see. So now I am wearing a skintight Lifeguard Hampton Beach shirt that I got as a joke and my super push up bra. A mistake has been made.

You do not get to see the skintight shirt or the super push up bra because I look like a skank and that is not the image I want to project onto my internet readers.

p. p. s. The Somerset situation has gotten more intense.

People have started moving the comfy couches and chairs to the tables lining the windows. This is one example, but the same is true up and down the room. My roommate walked in, looked at the situation, then looked at me and gave me an "Oh god, you weren't exaggerating" look. I was vindicated.

Also, no stalking!!