Copycat

I love reading over other people's blogs and seeing them laugh about all their analytic stuff. So I decided to try it out. It took me about a month to finally get around to figuring out how to add tags or whatever they are. I still don't quite understand what I did, but it worked. So now my site is being tracked by internet things......I'm not exactly computer literate. I've only been signed up for a little while. I have one search query that directs people to my blog. Somehow 3 people have typed in EXACTLY

"How wearing sunglasses can be positive reinforcement."

Hmmm.

Dear 2009: 2008 wins

Dear 2009

We haven't had that much time to get to know each other yet. I know that we've only been together for two months, and one of those months was a short one. I just feel like if I let this go on for any longer it won't be fair to either of us.

2009, in the time we've spent together I've been almost homeless twice, been told that I am a horrible nurse and lived through personal financial crises that were resolved only by borrowing a lot of money, sorta the same effect you have had on the world in general.

I know this is hard to hear, but I just think my relationship with 2008 was much healthier. We were adventurous, '08 and I. At this exact time in '08 I was happily hungover and sleeping through a bus ride from Siem Riep to Bangkok, about to fly to India. '08 and I hitchhiked across Canada, we slept in Costco parking lots and befriended other parking lot hobos. We drank formadehyde based Thai beer, ate poutine from pie plates and got free muffins from the Tim Horton's night guy in Winnipeg. We expanded our horizons, learned new things and let the world come at us as it wanted to.

With you I'm starting to feel stifled. The adventures I had with 'o8 are something that never seems to happen with you, 2009. All we do is go to class and clinical. Your financial demands and extreme need for time commitment mean that I can't do fun things like go to Montreal for the weekend whenever I want to. You've turned me into someone that gets upset over the idea of sleeping on a floor rather than rejoicing over the thought of reduced rent.

I don't want to be harsh. I'm sure for someone with a need for stability you will be the perfect year. In this world there is someone that will love you and all your scheduled activites. I just think that you should be free to find that person and let me be free to go back to '08. I hope we can still be friends. Maybe we can hang out next week? '08 and I will be on the beach in Malaysia.

Love

Millie

Imitating a Washing Machine and Other Fun Things To Do When Your Roommate is a Shithead.

So my roommate moved out. After all the initial drama caused by her surprise announcement that she was doing so I'm pretty glad she's out of my hair. Her family came and moved her out at 8 am on Saturday, a time when I am not exactly known to be at my very most chipper. At first the fact that she left me with absolutely no dishes, furniture or storage space (she took most of the cupboards) made me angry and the way the eerily empty apartment echoed whenever I walked freaked me out a bit. But then I realized that not having any dishes means I won't have to wash HER dishes and a completely empty livingroom translates into a brand-new, hardwood floored yoga studio, complete with candles (she took the lamp). So yesterday I bought a frying pan, a plate and a fork and today I turned Mates of State way up and danced around the gloriously dog shit free kitchen.

Then I decided to do some laundry. When Tian moved out she took the nice, new washing machine with her and replaced with some old funky looking thing that is probably from the same era as Claire's old stove, just less of a cheerful harvest gold and more of a depressing cold porridge brown in color. Tian, her mother and her sister (who all look disturbingly like the same person) assured me it worked. I'm naive. I fell for it.

So I took all my clothes and threw them in and poured in a generous cup of expensive-ish yummy smelly laundry soap. And then I tried to turn it on.

I've never heard an appliance sound constipated before. I makes this weird, low pitched, "I'm going to blow up soon" type buzzing when set at the "wash" part of any setting. At the rinse and spin cycle it rattles like an unmedicated Parkinson's patient but remains mysteriously free of water. In short, it is not a functional washing machine. And now I'm really angry.

I washed my clothes tonight by dumping them all in the tub and walking back and forth on them like I was making wine. I am now reduced to backpacking-through-Asia standards of hygiene, except there, if I shelled out the 50 cents, someone else would walk on my clothes for me. Since I don't usually get angry I no longer have appropriate ways of dealing with my anger in my repertoire of social interactions. Would someone with more experience being upset please tell me what to do?

Time for a New Coping Mechanism

Apparently, somewhere in the world, there are people who have mastered the art of coping with stressful situations. These people have come up with some actual productive thing to do that helps them handle badness. I've talked to people who claim to be this type of person. They don't drink copious amounts of gin from a bucket or purposely make happy people miserable when shit goes down, like a normal person would do. Instead they do things like go to the gym, write poetry or bake apple pies.

I have not mastered any of these useful and mature ways of dealing. Instead, when things get rough, I assess the situation, decide how bad things are and then, calmly and collectedly, run as far away as possible.

Yes, it's true, I am an escapist. The only thing that cures my stress is getting as far away from what causes it as possible. When actual physical distance is not possible I like to destroy my brain function to the point that I can't think, and therefore can't stress, any longer. When credit card bills come, I go to the movies. When school works piles up and I suddenly come to the realization that if I want to pass this year I will have to pull 5 straight all nighters, I drink a bottle of wine with a friend and go to school hungover, smelling like a brewery and absolutely unable to string together a coherent sentence, let alone focus on the lecture. I'm pretty sure I've always been this way. I have a vivid childhood memory of packing my piggybank and teddybear into a plastic suitcase to run away from home at age 8 because I couldn't understand my math homework. And the worse a situation is, the farther from it I want to get.

Up until this year this strategy has worked very well for me. Running away from shitty roommates has led to better living situations. Running away from immediate financial crises has led to jobs which allowed me to correct said crises. Running to Asia to cure a nursing-school-boredom induced coma was a definite success.

I'm starting to think, however, that this method of coping needs reevaluation. Apparently as you grow up your problems do too and if increasing stress equals increasing distance needed.....I may have to start spending all my time in Fiji. But then what if Fiji gets stressful?