Will nobody rid me of these troublesome sinuses?

Puffs Plus: check.

"snot-rag bag"*: check.

Simply Saline nasal wash: check.

peppermint aromatherapy shower tablet**: check.

beat the roommate to a steamy shower: check.

Ayr saline gel***: check.

Aquaphor****: check.

apple juice: check.

Panera Bread broccoli cheddar soup: check.

Yogi Throat Comfort: check.

Cable tv, internet, and ps3: check, check, check.

The cold from hell is good to go.

No, seriously, GO. Jeez. I blew my nose so many times between 12:00 and 6:00 I had a Very Dramatic nosebleed just as I was about to clock out. If I could get the stupid manager to change the filters on the vents it would really, really help.

*This is what my dad calls the plastic grocery bag employed to segregate tissues from the communal trash. Also portable!

**It doesn't clear my sinuses, but it does make me very aware of them.

***To moisturize the inside of the nose.

****To moisturize the outside of the nose.

My colds are, obviously, a bit of a process.

Sooooo...

I decided upon graduating to take a year off of school.

That year is up.

Now what?

Man, a BA in Literature gets you nothing.

Anybody have any ideas on how to become an editor?

Anybody have any advice on getting really awesome recommendation letters for gradschool?

Anybody know if you can put a key back on a keyboard when even the little squishy doohickey underneath is gone? My quotation mark key popped off...more than a year ago and I'm sick of it. I managed to write a thesis without it, too.

Horndog On A Stick

After three days on a different, low-dose birth control (Microgestin Fe 120, as opposed to the dreaded OrthoTriCyclen), is it too soon to know if it's the reason I am suddenly incredibly horny all the time?

Or is it the fact that Wulfy came down with an _insert number of hours here_ stomach bug, and knowing I can't even kiss him is somehow bringing my (largely absent, lately) sex drive to the forefront of my consciousness?

Amusing anecdote: night before last I dreamed that I fucked Wulfy in a Cracker Barrel restaurant, which was actually a riverboat. I told him this as he staggered back to bed after being sick again, and it made him laugh weakly while holding his stomach.

Also, the new pill doesn't make me throw up! Score.

Suckitude

Reasons last week sucked:

-Dumb argument with guy friends (see below)

-Sleep deprivation

-Tina Turner the Honda Accord has been making disturbing rattling, thumping noises.

-Annoying patients

-Coworkers disrespecting My Brother The Doctor

-Coworkers blaming me for "freaking out" over said disrespect

-Possible week before my period? Not sure, as I still haven't figured out exactly how I respond to the Pill.

-Dog my family has had since I was ten is steadily getting sicker.

Reasons This Week Has Sucked:

-Parents had the dog put down Monday morning; they and my brother stayed with her. I had to stay here for work.

-Coworkers continuing to argue.

-Coworker who regularly cheats on her husband with her ex-husband (who cheated on her) flips out because her husband may or may not be corresponding with someone who may or may not be another woman, and has been looking at cute girls on Myspace. Facepalmage ensues.

-Annoying patients

-Sleep deprivation

-Today, Tina's front tire almost falls off when I drive my mechanic coworker around to figure out what's wrong with her. It turns out that when my parents had a very trusted family business at home to replace my tires last month, they didn't tighten the lug nuts down enough. It's amazing my tire didn't come off when I was going 70 on the interstate to get back here after xmas. Coworker helps me get her down to a local tire place to replace the lug nuts, which are totally stripped, and they end up having to replace the entire wheel, which is bent and broken all to hell. Repairs cost close to $200.

-I remain vaguely irritated at my aunt, all the time, because she's nosy and nitpicky and thinks she's my mother, and she still hasn't cleared her stuff out of the apartment I was supposed to move into in August. And she refuses to work on it until I clean my room--that is, the tiny guestroom she's tried to squeeze me in for months, with no desk and tiny twin beds. And not enough storage because her stuff is still in all the dressers.

-I need to go to a dermatologist because I think the rosacea I've probably inherited from my parents is beginning to show symptoms, because my cheeks are really red and blotchy and flaky, and it's  But I'm not actually full-time so I don't have insurance right now. Which is freaking me out in general, really.

This is shaping up to be the Fortnight of Suck.

On a lighter note, boobies!

After reading Dw3t-Hthr's post about this post, I thought I'd weigh in with my own thoughts:

Having been on the pill for a few months now, I am proud to report that my breasts have grown from 32-no-one-makes-cups-this-small-dammit, to 32-a! The past few years I've mostly worn training bras from Target, which come in a few cute colors and patterns, but are lacking in the won't-show colors of black and "nude," and have oddly-placed underwire. Now, I have one black bra and one "nude" bra that came from the adult lingerie section. I have arrived.

I still don't like my bra selection, though. Bras this small usually have a metric buttload of push-up padding, because most bra manufacturers seem to think that a-cups are something to be ashamed of. I stopped wearing padding after meeting Wulfy, who helped show me that my breasts are fine as they are, thank you very much. Victoria's Secret even has a bra they claim "fit's like custom," which means that d-cups have no padding and a-cups have more padding than I have breasts. And their underwire stabs me like woah.

I also don't like going braless, which larger-breasted women keep marveling at--even though they're small, it's uncomfortable to jog or go down stairs without a little support because they bounce (that, and my boss is the Abominable Snowman who keeps the office incredibly cold and a ridiculous lot of people are offended at the site of a nipple bump through clothes). This, even though my mom had to naaaag me to start wearing a bra when I was thirteen.

I'm more-or-less happy with the way my boobs are now (I was not particularly happy when they grew, as now I only have two bras I can comfortably wear), I just hate whatever idiot designs most bras.

Now, a couple sources for small-sized lingerie. I haven't ordered from these yet, but at least most of the models do actually have small enough breasts that I can get an idea of the fit on petite ladies like me:

Lula Lu petite lingerie has lots of cute lacy styles, and lots of basics.

The Little Bra Company has bras designed by a petite woman just as frustrated as I am about bra design.

How do you start?

I just got into an argument with a few white male friends who insisted that American white men are discriminated against, other forms of discrimination have nearly faded out of existence, and "racism doesn't exist up North."

*facepalm*

At least one of them is genuinely a cool and understanding person. I think he's just burnt out on the atmosphere at this liberal arts college, where no matter what the class, the point is often that White Men Are Evil. If I had the emotional wherewithal to calmly discuss a few pertinent examples with him, I might be able to get somewhere. But I am an emotional person and I'm dissatisfied with my living situation and my body hates me and I'm underpaid and my dog is dying, and I just. Cannot. Do it.

So, Irrational Female I remain.

The other guy? Is a know-it-all engineering major. The numbers of disciplines in which he thinks he is an expert and is Most Emphatically not are ridiculously numerous, and no matter what the argument he seems to end it with "whatever, we're not going to agree anyway," with an undertone of "I'm right and you're wrong, no matter what you say." To which tonight, I had so say, "You're right, we're not going to," and refrain from saying "because you're never going to listen to a word I say." He's the one who said "racism doesn't exist Up North." By Up North he meant, mostly, Boston. Any minority Bostonians want to disagree? I'm sure you're out there somewhere. Not that he'll listen.

And my beloved Wulfy had to take me home and comfort me, after being astonished at the ire I showed in this argument. And, because I am a white female and this is what I know, the conversation turned toward "women's issues." Why am I a minority anyway? My "minority" comprises 51% of the population, I say. My "minority" also makes less on average than your "majority," for the same work, of the same quality, over the same time. A female coworker of mine was flat-out told by our manager that she doesn't make as much money as a man who works with us, despite doing the same work and having more experience, because "it's a man's world, honey." And here's how I really flabbergasted him:

"Can you tell me when the last time you were really scared you were going to be raped? Because I can."

My car wouldn't start and I was near my workplace, and after catching a ride over I got a male coworker who used to work as a mechanic to take me back to my car and get it to start. And I was scared shitless to get into his car, but I need my car and I knew he could fix it and I was afraid to piss him off if I told him I didn't want to ride with him after he'd gotten our manager to give him permission to leave work, and I knew for sure he could fix my car, for free, and in a far shorter time that waiting an hour in freezing weather for a AAA person who was a totally unknown quantity. And I had to weigh that against the fact that he's over six feet tall to my 5'3", and weighs nearly twice as much as I do, and I know he can lift me a foot off the ground at arm's length.

And my boyfriend had no clue that I was scared that night, that I would have reason to be scared. Because he has never faced that kind of fear.

And now I am so far away from that original argument that I don't know what to think. I'm just a mess of these stupid emotions and I've cried too many times today.

My dad just called to tell me that the family dog--the goofy chocolate lab puppy we got when I was ten--probably has lymphoma and they might have to put her down within the next few days.

Poor sweet dog-baby.

I am tired of my body betraying me. And vice versa.

I started on birth control recently, as the last few years my cycle has gotten less regular than, well, ever before (not counting the first few that I know I didn't keep good track of) and the accompanying cramps got worse. And well, it's nice to know that, should Wulfy and I decide to start having sex, I'm covered on the pregnancy front.

But this damn pill. Is killing me.

Even my worst cramps, the four-Advil-takes-the-edge-off, mommy-I-think-I'm-dying, ohgodowowowowow cramps, have only ever lasted one or two days. Until now.

owowowowowowowowow. For more than a week! And as I haven't even finished my first pack yet, I need to keep on this stuff long enough to find out if it will work long run, once my body gets used to it. I actually left work early today, even though I've been snowed in since Friday and missed even more days of work.

AND, my boobs are so swollen and tender, I can't wear my favorite bras--the cups are too little. I know I have said in the past that I would like to fill out an A cup, but I am so not sure about that right now.

I am so tired of feeling like my body and me are two separate entities fighting each other.

Why hello there, come here often?

...No, actually.

I just graduated college--only not really, because I'm going to eventually go to grad school so I'm not graduated in the sense of "omg I'm DONE, WOOOO," and because the ceremony got snowed out. 10+ inches of snow in this part of this state is, while not by any means unheard of, still brings everything to a grinding halt. Except people wanting eye exams, apparently, as my-brother-the-doctor still performed a fair number of exams in the midst of a raging snowstorm. Without my help! Amazing.

The snow wasn't really that raging, it just. kept. coming. is all.

So now, being out of school for the time being, I have no clue what to do with myself. Hypothetically, actually write something funnish--blog more maybe, and start work on a cheesy romance novel. All my loose ends feel very untied right now.

Am thinking, this minute, of blogging every day; if not here, over at the other blog. Obsessed as I've been with interior design lately, it makes sense. Blog as daydream, as I'm not in a position to decorate anything--living with an aunt who has an apartment in the basement that's supposed to be mine, but actually in her guest bedroom (on a twin bed, which I vowed never to do again) because said apartment is filled with the detritus of many years of living in the same house. It is, after all, in the basement.

I feel guilty for feeling so dissatisfied with this situation. I have a job, a place to live, plenty to eat, a great boyfriend, a city I love, etc etc etc. But nothing feels right, right now.

Hoo Boy

Started a new job in a (kind of new) city recently.

Boss is, of course, kind of a dick.

Too exhausted at night to blog.

But hey, at least I get paid...*falls over*

The godawful cold is moving along.  The incredibly sore throat is mostly gone, the unbelievably stuffy nose is beginning to clear, and the dreaded cough has set in.  Every time I get sick I get this damn cough.  It's uncomfortable, disruptive, and makes Wulfy think that I'm about to die.  Oh god, I hate this cough.

At the same time, it is satisfying to get rid of that tickle in my chest.  It's like scratching a bug bite.

I also definitely have a job for the summer, and a tiny basement apartment in which to live, so I don't have to go home.  Yay!  I like home, I just like here better.

And uh...that's it.

Anxiety

I am stressed right now.

It's not because of school, per se, because my classes are going along more or less fine.  I'm just stressing myself out over grad school.

My parents want me to go into law, which would make money, but I don't know if I want to.  I would ideally like to teach English at a community college or higher, but there aren't a whole lot of jobs or money there.  Or, lately I've been thinking I'd like to get my masters in library science and be a librarian, at least for a while.  A few schools in the state offer a joint JD/MLS, so maybe that would be good?

So either I've been working on school, thinking about what to do after I graduate (likely this December) or distracting myself with fluffy bunnies and Shadow of the Colossus so I don't freak out too badly.

And this is why all my blogging, even my shiny new design blog, has fallen by the wayside.  *sigh*.

Filler post, woooo

I am taking a salsa dance class this semester.

If you don't think this counts as exercise, think again.  The way you have to move for that Latin rhythm is just...unnatural.

Ow my back.  Ow my thighs.

Picture to the right is Wulfy's sister and brother-in-law, not doing the salsa.  They're dancing a rumba, actually, but it's the same family of dance.  Imagine how strong she must be to hold that position.

Is this thing on?

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I started a goofy new blog about design, my latest relaxing time-waster:

Ange de Design

Sometimes it's hard to write about things I want to write about here; so many other people have a better handle on current events etc, and my personal life is...well, it's personal.  I'm at a point where sharing my life is kind of difficult, for whatever reason.  But "hey, I really like this chair!" is not so personal, so there you have it.

More stuff will go here, I swear, when Winter Break is over and I have classes to write about.

In which the blogger exclaims, "Holy crapsticks! I haven't updated since JULY?"

Well, it's been a tough semester. I had to withdraw from my art class to deal with everything--I was doing really well in that class and I liked it, but it was too much of a time suck to work on art projects with a due date and write FIVE BAJILLION papers too.

Not that the FIVE BAJILLION papers were unexpected, mind you, I'm a senior Literature major taking 12 hours of nothing but Lit classes. And all my professors like to assign research papers within two days of each other.

BUT, I'm taking a Shakespeare class in which our big project is a group performance of a scene from a play, and my group is doing the witches from Macbeth. We're totally pwning the other groups too.

What else deserves mention...

Oh yeah, that whole election thing. Can I just say

WOOOOOO HELL YEAH!

Followed by Prop 8 passed? What a bummer.

And conclude with the anti-Obama people I am Facebook-friends with are racist, sexist, rude, illogical, and unreasonable. I may mention more on that later.

In fact, I probably have a lot more to mention later, but I need to go get some supper and write a paper on the differences in the treatment of women in Genesis and the Gospel of Mark.

School

School has started up again for the year.

I went ahead and ordered my class ring--I will graduate in 09, dammit!

I'm looking at a difficult semester (no easy electives for me, in addition to four upper-level major classes, I have an introductory art class that's notoriously difficult and time-sucking) in which I need to do really well (have to have a grade boost to get into grad school), so wish me luck and don't be offended if I'm not around the blogs much.

so...

I am having SERIOUS issues in my personal life right now.

Concentration = nil.

And I'm totally in the wrong, too.

Which makes it worse, because there's no one to look at and say "You did this to me! You BITCH!" except me.

Oh God.

I'm cleaning my room.

The horror, the horror!

(Heart of Darkness got put in the "get rid of" pile...)

Having moved back home for another summer, it dawns on me that I never really unpacked last summer. And I haven't cleaned my closet in a few years--actually, that's pretty good, for me. Previous to that I hadn't cleaned my closet since we moved to this house. When I was ten.

I am realizing more and more that hoarding is one of my most troublesome neuroses. I can't get rid of the September 2000 issue of Allure! I might need it someday! For...collage! Yeah, that's it, for collage materials! Never mind that I have twenty other issues and they're all the same!

(Fashion magazines are my vice of choice. That and swearing.)

And don't even get me started on the stuffed animals *hangs head in shame* I identify far too strongly with cute and fluffy inanimate objects. I feel guilty enough about keeping the majority of them in the closet, much less entertaining the idea of giving them away. And Wulfy doesn't help, either, as he has a similar soft spot for cute-and-fluffies, compounded with feeling really, really bad for anyone or anything that seems to feel unwanted. The thought of a needy sock monkey makes him get all teary-eyed.

And oh god, the books. I moved a bookshelf to school this year and got to leave it there until fall semester, so I'm now short one. I have a weird hand-me-down shelf (an Oakley display case, a cast-off from my dad's office) but it doesn't fit a lot of books. The shelves are clear acrylic cubes that look big because they're deep, but they're actually absurdly short compared to normal bookshelves.

I feel silly having all this......stuff.

OMGWTFBBQ

I did something rather strange and certainly not exactly characteristic of my usual self yesterday.

It started when Wulfy and I rolled out of bed in the morning. He went back to his room to take a shower, I hung around mine checking email and stuff, waiting for him to come pick me up because we were supposed to eat breakfast at IHOP (we love us some IHOP. Cheese blintzes, mmmm). But he had a wedding to go to in about an hour, and an errand to run before then, so when I went out and met him he ended up circling campus and dropping me right back off because exactly why am I running this dumb errand with you instead of going back to bed when we don't have time to go to breakfast which is what we were supposed to do and I reminded you about ten times over last night and this morning and we've been wanting to go out for breakfast for about a week so how the hell did you forget?

So I stayed pretty pissed at him until about four in the afternoon, when he returned, and we waited until about five to finally go eat our IHOP because we might as well make it supper since you got back so damn late.

So I simmered and he kicked himself for about an hour, at which point I decided to try and be nice (which I actually rarely am, I am sullen and have a tendency to half-unconsciously, half-intentionally make him pay when he pisses me off, which he only usually does slightly anyway. I'm hard to live with.) and hopped up on the bed with him to tickle him and cheer him up and get him to stop looking pitiful and take me to IHOP.

I say, "Oh look at the poor pitiful Wulfy oooscha booscha wooscha wooooo *tickletickletickle* Oh come on cheer up."

He says, "But I hurt you."

I say "You're a silly bean. Do you want to take anyone else to IHOP with us?"

He says "I don't know, what do you want to do."

I say "You decide."

He says "But you're more important than me."

I say "Oh Wulfy, you know that's not--"

Wulfy, at this point, snaps because I've been a brat all day, and says very harshly some unpleasant and unpleasantly true things about the way I treat him and threatens to leave me.

I say "If that's how you feel, just leave."

He gets his big oh-shit-I-shouldn't-have-said-that-now-she's-gonna-hate-me eyes and says "I didn't mean it!" while attempting to hug on to me so I won't get up and make him leave.

I make him let go.

I sit and seethe for a while.

Then, without saying where I'm going, I put on a hoodzip and put my room keys in my pocket and leave.

It was pouring rain. I walked around campus for what I'm guessing was an hour or more, cellphone-less, considering a lot of things. I've been inexplicably unhappy lately, with myself, with school, with the job I have at home, with Wulfy, with what the hell do I really want to do with my life, with what the hell am I doing with my life now, with my suite-mates who are Loud Talkers, with my brother who is an asshole and my mom who is a little bit nuts and my dad who is not exactly the most sympathetic person in the world and the portion of my friends who never talk to me and the one girl who slandered me and with myself for not calling her on it and with my campus ministry for being politicky and obnoxious and my campus minister for having a large and thorny stick up his conservative-in-about-every-way-you-can-think-of-except-not-hating-
Harry-Potter ass and myself again for not being good enough for my almost annoyingly sweet and considerate boyfriend and sometimes wanting to break up with him for no good reason and for flirting too much with a cute coworker and just GAH WHAT THE FUCK TIME FOR A MELTDOWN.

So by this point I am fucking soaked and tired and my jeans are getting heavy because they're so wet and I'm wearing an old pair of Keds that are now squishy and my socks are wet so I've got two intense blisters on my Achilles tendons and ohmigod how long have I been gone what will Wulfy think I bet he'll hate me for making him worry I'm so mean to him god I am a horrible girlfriend and I just got mad at him over IHOP for god's sake wtf am I doing.

So I go back, and find my cell phone, which he has called three times and left a desperate choked-up message begging me to call him and tell me where I am because he's really worried and DAMN, I do not deserve to be with someone so wonderful but I'll be fucked if I let him go. So I call him and he's outside looking for me (oddly enough, he's where I was, but having checked other likely places first he's about an hour too late to find me there) so we figure out where we both are and meet halfish way (he runs, I limp in my squishy shoes so I meet him more like a quarter-way) and we have a cheesy-romance-movie crying hug in the rain, then go back to my room and cry some more and talk everything out and woooooo catharsis.

And THEN, we go to fucking IHOP.

Wow, the drama. The romance. The histrionics.

So I feel much much better now, though I'm thinking about forcefully dragging myself to therapy since as long as I'm a student here I get like ten free counseling sessions a semester. Well, sort of free, since it comes with tuition and all. I've got a big fat family history of depression and have had an episode or two before of just feeling like shit for weeks, so I feel like I need to be doing something to at least monitor that and try and check it before I end up being, well, my mom, who is only just getting some help now that she's going crazier now that she's older.

So yeah. The whole meltdown thing is in general not me but this time it worked out, even though I feel just the tiniest bit stupid about making this big scene. I was never really nuts as a teenager so perhaps I'm still getting the adolescent crazies out of my system. But for now, the air has been cleared and I'm feeling pretty groovy.

Hey Wulfy! I love youuuuuuuuu!


[Edit] After reading over the first bit, I seem to have made the Wulf look worse than he was with the snappage. This is something he does occasionally, usually as a weird injoke thing, but also occasionally because I really do drive him nuts sometimes. The criticisms were real, the threat to leave was not. It was also stingingly accurate, namely that I do often treat him as if I am more important than he is, but I was upset about it because I already had too much going on in my head. We have also lately not really talked about all this shit enough, and even the Wulf has his breaking point.

My point? He really isn't an asshole, even if the outburst seemed harsh.

Bahaha

Out of Wulfy's mouth just now:

"You're sweeter than a vagina filled with whipped cream."

Isn't he awesome?