Hypocritical?

I get hit on occasionally, it's never really anything to write home about and for the most part I keep it to myself. I'm in a committed relationship (the term "committed" makes me think of padded walls), living with my girlfriend of one year and four months and our cats doing, the domesticated thing.

The last time I reallly got hit on I was buying a new pair of hiking shoes at Eastern Mountain Sport. I walked over to the wall-o-shoes looking for the pair I wanted and this chick descended upon me like no one's business. If I had been single (or a lesser person) I totally would have flirted back. There is a girl who keeps coming back to my work (I help students at my school with papers) and signing up for my time blocks and sitting realllly close to me when I'm working with her. When her fingers brushed my hand one time it was everything I could do to not fall straight out of my chair. That was less being hit on and more being bashed over the head, in my opinion (in that there was nothing subtled about that action).

I usually tell Hillary when I get hit on, I don't know why. Maybe it's a subconscious desire to make her jealous. Maybe it's a subtle hint to her that she best appreciate what she has (because if she doesn't someone else will appreciate it for her). For the most part we have a good relationship, certainly better than average. The fact that we enjoy cooking together and cleaning together (most of the time) definitely helps, and being able to sit quietly and read or write or do homework without disturbing each other (again, most of the time) is good. A lot of the time we bicker like sisters, and then I wonder to myself "is this really what I want?" I don't know if this is really what I want. I don't know if I want to be twenty years old and in a committed relationship, I'd love to be able to go out with that girl from my job. Sometimes in the morning though, when the orange morning sun is peeking through the curtains in the bedroom, the glow will land just right on Hillary's hair and I'll see more clearly how beautiful she is, how beautiful she always is. I'll remember all the good times we have and have had and will continue to have, forgetting all the rough patches and all the (really) bad times. I'll reach my arm around her waist and pull her in to me really tight, and when the alarm clock goes off at 7:30 she'll wake up in my arms and it will be the start to a better, brighter day.

I've been home in Connecticut since last Friday, and Hillary has been alone in the apartment. I bet she is lonely, and understandably so, but I needed some time to spend at my house with my mom and my friends and my animals over my spring break.

Today Hillary called me and told me that some guy who she had a meeting with yesterday (a big meeting of the big shot college admission counselors) flirted with her today. I think it's funny, Hillary is so goofy it never even occurred to me that someone else would think she is attractive. She's a very attractive person, but she's just so darn goofy, and she's not a stereotypical pretty girl. She loves her job and she does it well, she's not out there to meet a man (or a woman, for that matter) so I guess I am kid of surprised at how presumptuous this guy was.

Apparently he emailed her asking her about something from their big meeting yesterday and they emailed back and forth about work stuff for a bit and then he asked her for her number (although, I have to wonder, why would you give some near-stranger your phone number?) and she gave it to him. He started texting her and initiated the flirting with something to the effect of "you should be happy that you have a cute guy's phone number."

Hold. the. phone (literally). Did he just compliment HIMSELF? Bold. Homeboy's got balls.

She texted him back something to the effect of "not really, I don't think my girlfriend would be too happy about it."

Annnnnndddd in comes the stereotypical "girlfriend??" and the wonder at the fact that yes, a woman MIGHT choose to be with another woman because there are guys like you (addressing this gentleman who made the decision to flirt with my girlfriend) out there.

I can't wait for him to text her asking about a threesome, because that's all lesbians live for obviously.

College is a strange world, not quite high school (where heterosexuality is the ONLY sexuality) and not quite adulthood where (at least on the East Coast of the U.S.) sexuality and "love relationships" are left to the adult's choosing or inclination.

Boys still assume girls want them, even if that girl is a lesbian. Girls still assume boys are going to drool over them if they come to class with their tits hanging out, even if that boy is gay.

If I were a man, in a heterosexual relationship with Hillary, I would have every right to be pissed off at this guy and to be protective of my girlfriend. I feel like, since I'm in a homosexual relationship I don't have the social ability to be pissed off and to be protective. I'm supposed to just go belly up to any advances made on my girlfriend. She's not my property and she has the ability to make her own decisions and defend herself, but I still feel kind of... I don't know... hurt?

Not hurt I guess... but funny. People don't usually hit on Hillary because she's goofy, and that goofyness is part of what I love the most about her. I also love it when she laughs because she has the FUNNIEST laugh. She has a cute nose and a beautiful face. Anyone with two functional eyes could see that about her and love her for it, so I can't really blame this guy. But he doesn't know that she's a really good cook and a really fun cooking partner. He doesn't know that she'll slip her hand into yours when you least expect it when you're meandering the grocery store. He doesn't know that she loves gummy candies (especially those fruit slice candies) and watching Greys Anatomy on her laptop instead of reading files on Thursday nights. He doesn't know anything about her, and the fact that he thinks he knows her and he thinks he has the right to know her is what pisses me off the most. I don't even know this guy and I know he's not good enough for her, and he never will be. And that's what really bothers me.

Conservatives Beware

Sarah Palin admits to crossing Canadian border for health care

That was basically the best thing I heard all day. Thanks to the array of liberal blogs that I read daily, I am a very happy camper today.

I keep getting in fights (over facebook, no less) with one of my cousins. He is ten or so years older than I am, he dropped out of college and joined the Navy for seven years when he was my current age. He couldn't hack it at college, and he knew he couldn't hack it as a pilot like his father was in the Air Force and he didn't want to go to the front lines with the Army or the Marines, so he joined the Navy. Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that. The bottom line is, he didn't join the Navy because he is patriotic or felt a sense of duty to his country. He joined up because he didn't want to get shot at, to learn new skills or have to really do anything. He joined the Navy and worked in the boiler rooms as someone who keeps the ship running because he just could not hack it in the real world, either finishing college or getting a job.

He dropped out of college because they asked him to leave because he is/was an alcoholic and never went to class or did his work.

And he's a conservative bigot who thinks that, because he is a white heterosexual male (with a wife and three little boys, who will all be brainwashed by their good for nothing father) he is entitled to put others down and his opinion is always right.

We fight about everything, because he is "extremely right" and I am "extremely left." He thinks socialism is the worst idea he's (n)ever heard, and I think, after extensive reading and studying the matter, that socialism is one of the best economic systems imaginable.

He doesn't want to do his research, he doesn't want to hear what the other side has to say. All he wants is to spout off his opinions and for everyone to hear him and tell him how right he is.

Well I'm simply not going to do that. I'm not going to go belly up to him because he is a white heterosexual American male with too much free time and not enough common sense. And that pisses him off to no end.

If, at the end of the day, I can sufficiently piss off a conservative, I have done my job, and it will have been a good day.

The only word of advice I have for conservatives: do your research. If you're going to say this that and the other thing about socialism, make sure you've actually read the Communist Manifesto. If you say that socialism and communism are the same thing, you sound like a dumbass so go back to middle school. I read the Communist Manifesto for the first time in the 7th grade. Now, I know that many conservatives didn't make it that far in their education, since they were too busy worshipping idols and preparing for the rapture, but there is no excuse for talking about things that you haven't researched.

If you come to me spouting off your ideas and telling me that I'm wrong (unless, of course, I am wrong. There is nothing wrong with being wrong, there is something wrong with being wrong AND STILL trying to impress yours wrongness on others), I will ram you into the ground with knowledge and vitriol so hard that you'll have to go crying back to your mommy.

Nothing would satisfy me more than to know that I've made my 30 year old cousin go crying to my aunt because I schooled him over facebook.

Ed-you-ma-ka-tion

As you may or may not know, I'm twenty years old.

I'm a public high school graduate from Connecticut and a junior at a private liberal arts college in Massachusetts. I'm the daughter of a woman who has worked all her life, the widow of a victim of cancer (my father, one of the most wonderful human beings to ever walk this Earth), who will hopefully be able to retire in fifteen years or so in her early seventies.

Next May I'll be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in English. This time next year I will have applied (and hopefully have been accepted to) graduate schools in both counseling or clinical psychology, PsyD programs or MA or PhD programs in English. In the next ten years I hope to get either a PsyD or PhD in counseling/clinical psychology or a PhD in English Literature.

I wonder if every college junior gets as worried as I am now. I'm painfully aware that I'm a type A personality (though most people don't use that classification anymore) and that I get stressed out very easily, but this just seems like so much to be dealing with at one point in time.

Not only do I have to worry about my school work, about my job and about getting jobs and internships lined up in my fields, but I have to worry about graduate school and post-grad and where I want to be in the next 3/5/8/10 years.

I worry so much that in ten years, when I'm thirty and my mom is in her mid-sixties, I'll (hopefully) finally be in a financial position where I can have children and my mom will be too old to enjoy her grandchildren. I worry that with all this education and all the money I'm spending on this education I'll never be in a position where I can support a family financially. I'll always be paying off loans and living in a one-bedroom apartment with screaming babies in the hallway.

I'm just worried I guess, stressed out about everything. Everyone always reminds me that they're XX years old and they still don't know what they want to do with their lives, and that's perfectly fine but I am so worried that if I follow my dreams of getting my education and my PhD and wait another 10,15,20 years to start a family my mother and my aunts and uncles are never going to be able to enjoy my children the way they enjoy my cousin's children (my cousins are mostly significantly older than I am).

It's a lot to think about it so I guess I should just try to worry less, but that's hard to do when you're me.

Been a While

It's been a while since I last posted a blog. I've been pretty busy with getting back to school in the states, adjusting to the apartment, moving two of the cats here, dealing with a whole bunch of shenanigans which I will get to in a minute, and just living my life, basically. I mean to come back to blogging, but it's hard when you feel like you don't really have anything constructive to say. It's been an incredibly rough 2010, and I put on a brave face but mostly I am becoming increasingly aware that everything is not okay, and for all I know right now things may never be okay again. But I'm hanging on to the hope that things will get better soon.

So as anyone who has read this knows, my rabbit Buns died at the beginning of January. He was the best rabbit ever, but not only that he was a good friend too. I relate better to animals than to people, because animals just listen. They don't give you their advice or choose sides. Buns was like that in many ways, I could just talk to him and stroke his long golden-red ears and he would just sit quietly twitching his nose and staring up at me. The thing I miss the most about him, I think, is that whenever my mom and I would argue and raise our voices Buns would stamp his feet as if to say "enough!" I realize that he was probably very sensitive to loud noises and shouting, but I like to think that he was the voice of reason in an unreasonable environment. The voice of reason is gone now. In a lot of ways it just feels like everything is falling apart.

We went to Disney World as a family a few days after Buns died. It was my mom, me, my aunt, my other aunt and my uncle, her two daughters, their husbands, their total of five children, and my mom's friend Naveen and his wife. Naveen was the cause of the drama at my birthday (the reason why I wish I could forget that I even have a birthday), and he managed to cause drama at Disney too. There was a huge fight in the Magic Kingdom between my mom and my aunt, causing my other aunt to come outside brandishing her cane at the two of them. It was really very funny, but on a deeper level it was disturbing. My mom is willing to be cruel and violent (she pushed my aunt, her older sister, in the Magic Kingdom of all places) to the people she proportedly loves over this person whom she has known for all of four years. I don't want to spend time with Naveen, and I particularly don't want to spend time with my mother and Naveen because I will always lose when it comes to him.

My Pastor retired on Valentine's Day. It was one of the most pathetically sad days of my life. Pastor could barely get the sermon out without crying, and I was practically sobbing in the back of the church. I got some really good pictures with him but no picture can capture what he truly means to me. As far as I am concerned, Pastor is the person who saved me from myself when I was a lost 15 year old girl, struggling with a whole slew of issues that no person, much less a 15 year old, should have to deal with. He sat and talked with me once a week for a year before I was ready to be Baptised and confirmed, but sitting and talking with me and listening to me and giving me his undivided attention was exactly what I needed then. He never felt sorry for me, and in truth I never told him half of the things that were on my mind, but he gave me a new life, which is something I can never thank him enough for. And now he is out of my religious life and I am so afraid that he is going to be out of my life for good, in that I no longer live in my hometown and I can barely keep in touch with my best friends.

We sold my car, Rhonda, the girl of my dreams on Saturday. She's such a beauty that car, and I love her with every ounce of my being, but I have a new car now that is reliable and won't blow the radiator for no reason. We sold her to a father and son, the father wants to fix her up so that the son can use her to drive to college next year. Nothing would make me happier than to know that someone is driving her and loving her, but I will miss my first car, just like I miss my first rabbit and my first Pastor.

So it's been a pretty rough 2010 so far. I'm hoping things start to look up soon, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Well I take that back, I am optimistic that things will start to improve, I just know that things can always get worse, and knowing that just makes this shitty year that much shittier.

So happy March everyone, I hope your year has been better than mine thus far. May we all see vast improvements in the outlook of our 2010's.

New Apartment

Hey! Sorry it's been a while, good ole blog, but I have been busy.

I recently moved into the apartment with Hillary. It's pretty adorable, it's a one bedroom with slightly off white painted walls, parquet flooring, a built in bookshelf with an antique pencil sharpener screwed into the wall (the building used to be an office building). We're getting heat, hot water and electricity covered with the cost of monthly rent, and cable and internet (which we had installed today, hence the blogging) for $55 total a month (for the cable and internet, not the whole place hah). So basically we're living cheaply, but it's wonderful.

I might be a little bored though, I just organised my 40 Disney DVDs in the order that they were created, starting with Snow White and ending with Wall-E. I have about 100 more DVDs to organise tomorrow. I got the Wii for Christmas, which will be fun to play around with.

Moving into the apartment was stressful, and exhausting. I've been going to sleep between 9 and 10 at night and waking up between 7:30 and 9 am. I'm looking forward to getting back to classes starting next Tuesday, and I have a pretty... interesting schedule, to say the least. Getting up and awake and ready in time for a 9 am two days a week is going to be trying, particularly because I'll be up late studying and doing homework. Getting back into the swing of things will be good though, I feel like last semester was just a vacation from reality.

Living with Hillary is fun, so far at least. Cooking together and doing dishes together are good times. I'm looking forward to having some weekend mornings where we can "sleep in" until 9 am and have pancakes and mimosas.

Just kidding about the mimosas. Mostly.

I hope everyone out there is doing well, lots of prayers and good thoughts for the people in Haiti after the earthquake today.

Home

After a relatively debacle-free day (despite our flight from JFK to Logan being canceled due to the "blizzard" and having to be picked up at JFK, which is the same distance from my house as Logan so it's whatever), I get home to discover that my beloved rabbit, Mr. Bunnykins aka Buns, the greatest rabbit who ever lived, is dying. He is having some type of neurological issue, which is always the hardest to watch in animals (and in people). He doesn't appear to be suffering at this point, except he can't get up. We feed him and help him to his water and give him as many yogurt chips as he'd like and cuddle with him until he falls to sleep, but it breaks my heart when I open his cage to help him do something and he tries to get up to come over to the opening to the cage so I can give him the kiss I always give him every time I get him and every time I put him back, but he can't get up for his kiss. So I melt into a puddle of tears and kiss him and hold him until he is practically drenched in my tears.

I've had Buns since between the fifth and sixth grade, and I'm a junior in college now. That would make him about... ten years old or so, give or take a few years. He's on the high end for the life expectancy of an indoor rabbit, he's been treated well his entire life with us (we adopted him from the Humane Society, his previous life is a mystery), allowed to roam around the living room and to play with the cats. I never even scolded him for all the things he's destroyed, like blankets, shirts, shoe laces, or the time he chewed through the electrical cord for the lamp in the living room (this rabbit must have nine lives).

He's mostly just one of the best friends I've ever had. He always greeted me when I got home. A lot of the time my cat wanted nothing to do with me, my dog is too flighty to care, but Buns always cares about me and comes right up asking for a kiss on the nose, and he always gets it, and I always scratch him in the soft spot right between his ears.

I feel like I betrayed hi by being gone for four months when I knew he was old, and I knew he wasn't terribly well when I left. He apparently just got really sick in the past week, since Friday. I hope he isn't suffering, and if he appears to be suffering we will not allow that to continue. He deserves so much better than to suffer anything, he is such a good friend and a gentle soul.

Now my cat is laying on one side of my legs as I'm lying in my own bed typing these words and my dog is laying on the other side, eyeing me to make sure that I don't leave ever again.

My mom and two of my very best friends picked me up at JFK, which was just too wonderful. I was so happy to see them.

I'm so glad to be home. I wish Buns could live forever, but I know that's an impossibility. Soon, and hopefully with little pain, he will be with my daddy and Candy and Kashi and Ducky and all the little creatures that went before. I firmly believe that God has a special place in Heaven for animals, and I know that Buns will have an endless supply of yogurt chips and enough newspaper to rip up for ever.

Going Home

Today is my last full day in London. We just got back from Belgium last night. Brussels, Bruges and Ghent are all very beautiful cities, full of history and absolutely spectacular architecture, but they had a horrendous snow storm while we were there (on a walking tour, no less) which put a damper on things, so to speak.

Disneyland Paris was really cool, but it was no Disney World. The food was terrible and the service was pretty awful, but it was really cool to go to Disney in France. The experience itself was worth it, but I wouldn't voluntarily go back again (at the very least, I wouldn't pay money to go back again).

I've been MIA on the blog for a while now because of finals and last minute traveling and such, and I assume that once I get home I'll be pretty busy with the holidays and seeing friends and family, so this may be my last post for a while. Finals are over now, and home is less than 24 hours away.

Everybody cross your fingers that the snowstorm predicted for Saturday-Sunday isn't as bad as they're saying it's supposed to be, so everyone can get home to their families for Christmas. Gosh I can't even wait to get home!