Trying to See the Awesome in the Notsome

The reason I do my “This Week Was Awesome” thing is because it helps me see the awesome even when my week has been utter crap. It helps me think of that instead of dwelling on the shit.

However, this past week or so hasn’t been good, health-wise, for my family.

My great-grandmother is turning one hundred and freaking one years old on the 19th¹. She is old. She went into the hospital last week during the day, but was home by that night. The doctor told my aunt and uncle that she’s in the very beginning stages of congestive heart failure.

People can live for a while with congestive heart failure, but she’s 101 so what could be 10+ years for many people, probably won’t be for her. I’m hoping for a few more years, at least, but I’m trying to take advantage of the time I have with her. She’s my last living grandparent and a snarky one at that. I love that lady. When she was 98 she told me she wanted to slit George W. Bush’s throat. I nearly died laughing. It was beautiful. On Inaguration Day this year I called her and she was giggling she was so happy. She’s so adorable!

Then last night my dad had to go into the hospital because he faceplanted on some cement after tripping over a boulder in his friend’s backyard. After several hours, his head wouldn’t stop bleeding. It looks like someone shoved a baseball underneath his skin. This is disgusting. Thankfully, he didn’t have a concussion. A few stitches and they sent him on home. As a sidenote, apparently the first thing he said when he walked into the house was, “Now, I don’t want you to be worried, but…” before coming up the stairs² to show my mom his face.

Want to know the most worrying words in the English language? Those are them.

Also, my brother went to the doctor and found out he’s been walking on a fractured foot for over a year ever since a wrestling accident last year. *facepalm* And our family friend who lives with us had another seizure a couple days ago.

In other news, I have been having a lot of migraines and bad headaches lately. They always start behind the same eye and that’s making me nervous. I should really make a doctor appointment, though I’m going to wait until after my finals are over and done with this week.

Oh, yes, finals. I make things way too difficult for myself. If I’d just done stuff when it was assigned, I wouldn’t have to spend so much time worrying about the fact I wasn’t doing work. :P But I find it incredibly difficult to do schoolwork or anything, even, when I’m stressed out and distracted. Meh.

1. Funny story: Last year around July she was trying to make a doctor’s appointment over the phone and the receptionist could not understand when she gave her birthday as “12-19-08.” She just kept saying, “But…this is 08,” even when my grandma clarified she meant 1908 as in, SHE IS OLD. I lol’d in real life. ↩
2. We live in a split-level house with an entryway and then stairs leading either to the basement or to the living area floor. This means no matter what, we have to walk up an asston of stairs to get into the house. Fun for my brother–see above! ↩

I’m Turning Into My Dad!

Yeah, you read that right. I’ve transformed into my dad. As my dad is a self-admitted crazy man, as Rachel (and countless others who have met him in real life) can vouch for, this distresses me greatly. :P

However, thankfully, the particular issue that has forced me to utter this haunting phrase, is just that I can hit my snooze button for hours.

My mom and I used to mock my dad because his alarm will start going off at 5AM and he would still be laying in bed at 9AM! Worst part: He doesn’t even hit the snooze. He will just let his alarm clock go off for four goddamn hours.

I UNDERSTAND NOW, DAD. I apologize.

At the beginning of this quarter, I was waking up around 7AM every day, no problems, and getting extra work done in the morning. I thought not having class until 11AM (although that means I have to catch my bus at 9:45AM because I live so far from school) meant I’d have more time to be productive in the morning!

Yeah, no. I apparently don’t know myself at all. Alarm starts going off at 7AM. I set three separate alarms¹ on my phone and it generally goes off every 3-5 minutes. By the time 9AM, I’ve probably hit snooze about 30-40 times. Perhaps choosing the Firefly theme song, “Piazza, New York Catcher” by Belle & Sebastian, and “Willkommen” from Cabaret as my alarm clock tones wasn’t the wisest idea I’ve ever had.

So I just purchased the world’s most annoying alarm clock, except I purchased it from Amazon despite my love for ThinkGeek. Saving $15USD, plus free shipping demolishes all brand loyalty.

Am I the only one who cannot force themselves to get up? Also, for those of you who can’t get your asses out of bed, are you also severe procrastinators like I am? I think there’s a correlation there. ;)

1. Mostly because I can do that weird iPhone swipey motion in my sleep and turn off my alarm entirely without actually opening my eyes. *facepalm* ↩

Things I Have Done Instead of My Homework

If there’s one thing I completely pwn at, it is procrastination. I have it down, pat.

So far in the past 21 hours I’ve been awake I have managed to do these things instead of my homework:

1. Talk on the phone with one of my best friends for four hours. Yeah, really. She lives in Alaska right now, unfortunately, whereas I still live in Seattle, so we don’t get to talk as often as we’d like, but when we do? We talk forever. It’s pretty much ridiculous.
2. Squealed at the ridiculous amount of adorable at Cute Overload with aforementioned friend.
3. Read 85% of Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazarus Dole which I really, really like. Reading it makes me hungry! So much talk of Cuban food, so little time! If it wasn’t for the fact that my bus for school leaves in four hours and I haven’t finished my paper yet, I would be finishing it right now!
4. Watched Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay and lesbian orthodox Jews. Heartbreaking, but fantastic at the same time.
5. Written an infinite amount of lists about what I should be doing.
6. Began NaBloPoMo at my LiveJournal.
7. Wrote about 400 words for NaNoWriMo–though I intend on writing about 3,000-4,000 words today after the long-ass nap I plan on taking when I get home from classes. Add me as a writing buddy! I’m pumpkincarriage.
8. A million other things I probably didn’t need to do, but did anyway.
9. Wrote this post.

Yeah, seriously, I am the world’s biggest procrastinator. The other day I was procrastinating by reading articles on how to quit procrastinating. Of course, I mostly opened a billion articles in a billion tabs, then just scanned a few and closed the rest and went to do something more fun instead.

Considering the amount I procrastinate, it’s a wonder I actually manage to keep good grades.

How bad do you guys procrastinate? Or how do you avoid it?

Not Dead, Not New, Just Improved

Crazy would be how I would describe these past few months. I made a lot of large, sudden, life-changing decisions.

After taking nearly two years off, I decided one day to go back to school starting almost immediately afterwards. The professor that was rumored to bring cookies every Friday? He did. He was also the best English teacher I’ve ever had.

In early or mid-June I decided to move away from home (and Seattle) for the first time to Bellingham, Washington…two weeks later. Where I knew no one. On June 22nd I made that move. I’m going to Western Washington University for summer quarter. I intend on fully transferring for winter quarter. The elementary education program here is awesome.

It’s been a little scary, but awesome. Sometimes you just have to do something crazy to get your life in order, I think.

I hope to be posting here more–for real this time.

Stuff I need to do:

• Redesign donut.nu
• Update WordPress
• Find and install a good plugin for comment threads
• Update my ‘about me’ pages–much as changed

Starting Over

So, I’ve been spending time trying to get my life on track. There’s a lot I want to change about myself and my life, but I’m a huge procrastinator.

But I took the first step today! I’m finally going back to school. I just finished registering. Big step number one! Yay!

I’ve been avoiding taking English 101 for a very, very long time because, despite the fact I read about 200 books in 2007 and 150 books in 2008, I’ve always loathed English classes. They suck all the joy out of the subject for me.

And now I’m taking two English classes. Lord help me.

Granted, one is English 101. I’ve registered for it twice previously and dropped it both times. I know, terrible, but I’ve resolved to finish it, finally. Particularly since, you know, it’s a degree requirement. I decided on my new English 101 instructor purely because word around RateMyProfessors.com is that he brings cookies on Fridays and I think that says a lot about the sort of teacher he’ll end up being.

My first English 101 professor was always completely stoned and talked about Shrek in class a lot and how ogres are like onions, but he didn’t bring cookies so that was a deal-breaker. What self-respecting stoner doesn’t bring cookies?

Seriously. This college has the strangest people teaching English classes, I swear to you. It feels a little like elementary school with more homework. Then you go take any other classes (besides astronomy) and you’re in for a rude awakening when the professors kick your ass and laugh whilst doing it. But I like it, I do. I respond to ass-kicking as motivation. As much as I love it, I don’t respond to Shrek.

And yet I still signed up for World Literature III with the Shrek-referencing stoner teacher. Who, incidentally, came through my line at my job the other day with his child. Still as baked as he ever was.

Then I’m also taking math because, well, I need to improve my math skills as I haven’t taken a class since the 10th grade. I don’t want to know how long ago that was. It’ll just depress me.

All in all, I’m excited, but scared that I’ll screw it up like I have in the past.

Anybody else sort of fell off the wagon and taken ages to actually get their life back on track? I’m having a time of it, let me tell you, but I’m sick of waiting so I’m just going to hop right in rather than wait another three months or two years or whatever.

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