The Roommonster Era Comes to a Close

Okay guys, I know it's been a while since I've posted but calm down. I'm alive and well and I finally finished this Spring Semester so you have my full attention. Also, I dyed and cut my hair so I somehow got even BETTER looking since last time we spoke. So that's something.

Anyway, The funny thing about people is that no matter how much you might try to leave them, they rarely actually disappear from your life. When I moved out of the dorms and officially stopped living with my roommonsters about 12 days ago, I assumed the year and the nightmares that came with it would all vanish into thin air. No more talking about, thinking about, or living with the memories of the time of my life that will henceforth be referred to as The Roommonster Era. Unfortunately, as busy as I've become with my summer tutoring job and exciting MIB training with Adrian, I'm still a bit fixated on my time in the suite with the "roomies." In fact, saying I'm a bit fixated is a gross understatement. So I thought and I thought with my attractive new hair about how one might go about moving on and letting go. I came to the conclusion that I'm lacking what one might call "closure" and it's time to get me some of that wherever it is. Might as well start with some list making, because that's what all the adults do in the voice over part at the end of movies where they summarize thier experiences and why it all mattered.

Here's what I've taken from this years experiences. The good and the bad.

1. If I never see, hear about, or come into contact with a minion related ANYTHING from Despicable Me, I will be a happy and content individual. There were WAY too many minion references and paraphernalia in that suite considering most of them were between the ages of 23-25 years old.
2. My room mates were all older than me, and half of them were Child Development majors. They sounded like they should have been ATTENDEES at a child development center rather than employees. This was a red flag, and I should have picked up on it from the beginning. I've got to be more aware!
3. Cleaning is important. It's that simple. I don't want to live with strangers who can't clean up after themselves. 
4. Loving yourself is even MORE important. Turning to others for constant validation and support isn't a healthy behavior. On top of that it's annoying. Having lived with four people who didn't love themselves and looked to each other (as well as me) to love themselves for them I can say first hand how ineffective and unrealistic that expectation is. 
5. Emotions are exhausting and completely necessary, but being OVERLY emotional is counterproductive. Group crying on the kitchen floor about your childhood on a regular basis is an excellent example of that concept. I learned that I'm not the most emotionally healthy and emotionally intelligent person on this planet, but I was definitely more emotionally prepared than I originally thought before moving into the dorms. 

There I did it. It's done. I may not have found closure but I made a list and I'm now one list closer to closure than I was before. Trying saying "closer to closure" 5 times fast eh? Hopefully I can cry a river, build a bridge, and get the hell over it SOON for the sake of myself and the well being of my relationships with others. For now, I'll try and focus on more interesting things, like being a tutor and training to be a man in black!

As I mentioned before Adrian is working on MIB training with me. We call it MIB training because calling it "exercise" is way less fun and inspiring. I've also always assumed since childhood that Tommy Lee Jones would eventually show up at my door step and whisk me away to New York where we would practice intergalactic law enforcement together. So it all works out in the end. And Tommy, if you're reading this, we still have time to make it work. I'll accept Will as a replacement, but it just wouldn't be the same. Besides, I'm still waiting on Will to show up so we can go defeat Dr. Loveless in the wild wild west. But I digress. 

We've had two MIB training sessions so far. So far I think we are managing it pretty well. Only a tiny bit of arguing but even that has gotten significantly better since session one. Guys, we are totally crushing it. I'm pretty proud. I'm super sore because I take the "no movement is good movement" approach to down time. It's been worth it though. Definitely building up some muscles that have silly names that sound made up. 

Overall, this summer is panning out to be one interesting and fulfilling new era. Employment, MIB training, new ginger hair. Let's see if I can keep this going.

Until next time, I'll leave you with this exceptional photoshop job of my new hair and elf sized adrian on my shoulder. Yeah guys, I totally understand the internet now.

Just Because it Smells Clean Doesn't Mean it IS Clean.

Guys, I have a lot to say today. Just bear with me. Room mate A and I share a bathroom unfortunately. We have a cleaning schedule and everything. It's on our wall and I even made it into a pretty neon poster. We agreed to the terms of our cleaning duties and schedule at the beginning of the semester because she just couldn't handle uncleanliness. I've been noticing since last semester that Room mate A doesn't actually follow the cleaning schedule. And she uses the term "clean" very loosely. She writes "Cleaned Bathroom" on the board on her door after throwing a little cleaning product down the drain so that it SMELLS clean but isn't actually clean. Here are all the bizarre ways this girl has tried to clean the bathroom in the past.

1) In the beginning of the semester she was cleaning the bathroom shower with the SAME mop she was cleaning the floor with. And she was using pine sol. PINE SOL! What the HELL is that? Who wants their bathroom smelling like pine sol and WHO cleans their shower with a mop? Not just ANY mop. Not a  mop specifically designated to the shower. THE SAME MOP SHE USES TO CLEAN MAC AND CHEESE OFF THE FLOOR OF THE KITCHEN!!! And she doesn't even rinse or sanitize the mop when shes done using it in the kitchen before putting it on the shower floor! When I found out she was doing this and did everything I could not to yell "EEWWW" in her face.

2) She switched to pouring pine sol on the surface of the shower and rinsing it by running water about mid semester. Mind you, I've been scrubbing our shower on my damn hands and knees like a PEASANT trying to keep stains from setting in. My mother will tell you I don't clean like that regularly. Seriously, if you ran into my mother right now and asked her "Hey, does Ashley clean the shit out of the bathroom on a regular basis at home?" She would laugh at you and say "Absolutely NOT!" and she might even throw in a little Appalachian twang because the question you posed was so funny she reached back into her roots and pulled it out. Guys, I'm downright disgusting. But a shared bathroom and a cleaning schedule devoted to the idea of not getting fined by the Housing Department seems like a pretty good reason to start cleaning properly. When I told Room mate A, "What you're doing isn't really cleaning, it's pouring" she switched tactics.

3) Her next approach was to do nothing while making it smell like she did something. She didn't have the courage to talk it out with me, and she wasn't trying to get back at me. If she was attempting that she would have just staged another coup in the living room. She just legit doesn't have any sense of cleaning skills and didn't feel like asking for help or talking about rearranging duties. She didn't touch the toilets at all, dust settled over each week she was in charge and water rings set in and made their home. She never bought the plunger even though she agreed to do so, instead she tried using the toilet brush to plunge. HOW IS THAT EVEN LOGICAL? You're just ruining the toilet brush I bought because of your cheap bastard ways! Her way of making the bathroom smell clean without actually being clean was to purchase air fresheners and pour cleaning product down the drain to get that nice pine fresh scent. 

4) Toward the end of last semester our shower was completely clogged because she never pulled her hair out of the drains and she was leaving particles of food and whatnot from the mopping method she used for months prior. I asked her to put in a work order and she finally did THIS semester. Then she stopped pretending to clean the shower all together.

I wouldn't mind all the grossness and whatnot if she didn't insist at the beginning of the semester that we have a whole organized cleaning schedule because uncleanliness in the bathroom is just such a huge pet peeve of hers. She's obviously a short annoying little lier because I'm disgusting but shes where disgusting things go to die. I haven't even touched upon the whole "Where's that smell coming from?" incident of Fall 2013. The stories too gross to even describe guys.

Now, this bathroom is the SAME bathroom we had a HUGE fight over last semester because she refused to clean it claiming that I unnecessarily cleaned it during her week, and that it wasn't her fault I can't keep track of when I'm supposed to clean the shower. She demanded that I clean the shower two weeks in a row because I was so irresponsible as to lose track of my cleaning schedule. I called BS because I knew it was my week. I verbally told her I was going to clean, to which she didn't say, "Oh I already cleaned it this was my week." AND I kept track on my own as to when I had last cleaned the bathroom. So she said it wasn't her fault. I didn't ask if it was her fault because franky I didn't care. I knew the bathroom was bothering her more than it was bothering me, so I responded to her "Not my fault" with a little Polish saying. "Not my monkeys, not my circus." (aka, not my problem SUCKA!) Needless to say it really hurt her feelings and we had to have a whole meeting about it, RA's and all.  

In short, everyone cried in the meeting but me, people described thier feelings and emotions and Room mate C ran away in the middle and it was all really dumb. Really dumb, but a super funny and entertaining story. I'll have to describe that whole incident in my next post. It would be an injustice to leave you without that experience.

I know I got a little off track, I just had a lot to say. The main point is, just because it smells clean doesn't mean it is clean. But I guess another worthy disclaimer is, don't handle people you can't respect the same way I do. It leads to some interesting stories but mostly avoidable trouble. Show some self restraint in a situation where you think the person across from you is a jackass sorry excuse for a person. Just walk away knowing that they suck, and that nothing you say to them will make them suck less. Seriously, do as I say, not as I do. Also, learn how to clean before you move away from home, people will like you more if you do!

Groundhog Day and the Kitchen Cry Fest of 2013

Day one of move in weekend last Fall I walked out of my room to take a leak and found four weeping adult women on the kitchen floor comparing childhood traumas. It's been like the movie Groundhog Day ever since. I imagine it wasn't very funny for Phil Connors as he experienced it in the moment either.  

You know Groundhog Day, right? Where Bill Murry plays a weather man living the same day over and over. He does everything he can to stop living February 2nd over and over, including kidnapping the ever fluffy and charming Punxsutawney Phil. Yeah, well I've been living a way less pretty and cinematic version of Groundhog Day since that moment I realized my room mates would never stop crying on the kitchen floor.

Anyway, the good thing about living with crazy people is that you get way more interesting stories out of it than when you live with sane and pleasant people. You learn and grow from it and gain all these valuable life lessons, which I will impart on this blog occasionally if I remember to. I can be scatter brained. You may rest assured knowing that you will definitely hear about the stories. If I could sing them to you I would, because I  have a beautiful singing voice the likes of which every Disney princess would hate me more than my room mates do out of pure and utter jealousy. And I could be over-exaggerating. After all it wouldn't be the first time my confidence level combined with my powerful imagination has lead me to believe I'm more extraodinary than I actually am.

Back to day one. I had to take a leak and I still hadn't emptied all of my boxes in my room, but I was making progress. I opened my door and before I could get down the hall to the toilet I was confronted with a very uncomfortable situation. Mind you, not one of us actually knew each other yet. We had exchanged very superficial text messages saying things like:

Room mate A: "I like pugs, do you like pugs?"
Me: "I have no opinion on the pug issue, but thats nice"

So there was no background between any of us to really justify having four women ugly crying on the kitchen floor in pools of mascara and snot. And when I say ugly crying I'm not calling names, I'm just saying this wasn't some glamourus movie version of female emotion where the nose gets a little red and a single tear flows down the acne free cheek. This was full on, I-just-watched-an-episode-of-greys-anatomy-and-I-can't-deal crying where you spoon feed yourself and cling to your comfort object as your face gets smushy and voilent red and you don't know which liquids are which and you realize YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE YOURSELF ANYMORE!

I get that sometimes we just gotta cry it out. Crying isn't a weakness, it's a skill really. It just seemed a little inappropriate amongst a group of strangers in a dorm while they compared really terrible, inconvienient personal histories like a dick measuring contest of emotion and turmoil. Here's a rough outline of how that night went.

Room mate A: "I was adopted"
Room mate B: "I'm deaf" 
Room mate C: "I'm blind" 
Room mate D: "I have trust issues" 
Room mate A: "I hate myself" 

The contest went on... for hours. And I just sat on the toilet devising a plan to sneak past them. This was pretty stupid of me. I mean a really dumb plan, because my room lies just across from the kitchen (not even a yard stick away) where they had morphed into a single human entity of sadness and bodily goo. By the time I realized just how naive my plan was it was too late. I reached my door to unlock it and retreat just as the four weeping heads turned to me for support and validation. I kid you not, it happened in slow motion and everything. 

I am really not that emotionally constipated, but my instinct was to pretend it wasn't happening and lock myself in my room while they judged me for my lack of participation in what I like to call the "Kitchen Cry Fest of 2013." I acknowledge it sounds very paranoid to imagine they were judging me or thinking of me at all while reliving all of thier former traumas and misgivings. Unfortunately, I'm not paranoid. Not even a month into living with them I had to have a come to jesus meeting over Room mate A's hurt feelings over my lack of emotional communication with her. She mentioned Kitchen Cry Fest 2013 specifically as an example of how she felt distanced from me. This then morphed into a group mentality supported by emotional validation with the ring leader being none other than Room mate A. 

The herd has found itself many targets since the beginning of last semester, some of which were members of the herd itself. Thier first target was me. Apparently a common mix up in bathroom cleaning schedules makes you good fodder for the herd. But that's a completely other story in its own.

Day one of movie in weekend will forever be the Groundhog Day of the 2013-2014 school year. I have yet to steal a rodent in any of my plans to end this time loop, does that mean I'm not trying hard enough? I don't believe so, but maybe Phil Connors would have a differing opinion on that. More importantly than the Groundhog Day bit, day one of move in weekend will forever be the day that I started learning how to choose room mates that were NOT the room mates that I chose. Not to get all "Anarchy! Fight the norm! Listen to The Used!" on anyone, but I am not a sheep. I am some kind of undiscovered crazy looking awesome animal that is probably yellow, and probably does weird shit all on its own without the influence of other yellow, crazy looking, awesome animals telling it that it should. This blogger is making better choices in room mates for next year and finding at least a few fellow undiscovered animals to live with. Even if the rest kind of suck, having SOMEONE that doesn't want to cry on the kitchen floor will be a plus.

George R. R. Martin Broke My Tear Ducts

As it turns out, when you live with people you aren't a huge fan of you spend a lot of time getting invested in television characters you are a huge fan of. I've gotten to know this part of dorm life very well since last semester. I've watched a ridiculous amount of full TV series these past eight or so months, so many it would be too embarrassing to list them out. I know this for a fact because I just spent the last five minutes attempting that very list before stopping out of shame. I mean, I'm already writing a blog where I complain about room mates and dorm life and show pretty pictures I draw all alone, why add an embarrassing list of all the shows I watch to prove just how little time I spend outside my room? And it's a shame really, because I'm very attractive and outside looks good on me. 

My latest obsession is Game of Thrones, which if anyone reading knows this show they know its an awful idea to get attached to characters. George R. R. Martin writes every word as if it's a Shakespearean tragedy... everyone dies! Except the emotional turmoil I feel is way worse because I actually enjoy and understand Game of Thrones. The last time I felt like this was while watching Grey's Anatomy, which I just recently caught up with and decided to give a breather after binge watching it over half of Spring break. And yes Spring break happened very recently, so I've been feeling this way for quite some time. It's sad and pathetic and it's my life right now. THERE I SAID IT!

On a positive note when George isn't breaking my tear ducts he is helping me reinvest my interest and curiosity in the magical world; a world I haven't been so engrossed in since the last Harry Potter book and movies. True there's the occasional magical aspect to some of my other favorite shows such as Angel and Being Human that might perk up my little fleshy ears, but nothing recently that's gotten me as involved as Game of Thrones. And so, I draw and I draw and I cry and I cry and eventually something cool and magical comes out and I add it to my ever growing list of characters and stories floating around in my noggin. And now, I come to the whole narcissistic point of this blog entry. The magical little drawing that came out that I thought the internet just needed to experience. Enjoy!

My Monsters and the Room Mate Blues

Ever since I moved out of the house and into the dorms last Fall I've found a new obsession with monsters. This makes sense because I've been living with four of them since August last year. And like most of my obsessions, this one has found its expression through my art. I draw them in class, in bed, on benches during my room mate escaping walks around campus; I draw them everywhere. Many of them are cute and friendly looking while the others end up taking on the characteristics of my room mates. This little blue one here reminds me of the worst of them. She's short, always making noise, and despite her looks is the most popular among our pod. Some might say she makes me ROARING mad! Get it? Roar... like a monster.... Anyway, thankfully I don't actually have to share a room with any of my real life monsters. Hopefully next years room mates will inspire something with a more positive connotation to it. But hey, at least I got some good art out of this year!