the nutcracker? more like the slutcracker.

I'm exhausted.  I've planned every semester with the hope that I could take it easy as a second-semester senior, but Neuroscience has been my downfall.  That's not even the whole problem, though.  I'm just losing it.  I forgot about a meeting last week.  I forgot about an obligation an hour from now, and since I'm not prepared, I plan to skip it.  I had planned to have my religion paper done last Friday, and I haven't started it yet.  Which means I have two papers due this Friday.  I left the books for the first one at home.  And my hat.  I grabbed the wrong set of grad school papers that I planned to look at tonight.  Sure I forget little things all the time here and there, but today it just feels like everything.  And I've never not been on top of things before.  I don't get this behind on homework.  I'm reliable.  I'm responsible.  I do what I'm supposed to do.  I earn good references.  Though I may not always perform to the best of my abilities, I never blow anything off entirely.

The response to these concerns is often "Hey you've worked hard for four years, take a break, it's not the end of the world".  That's dumb.  Compared to most IWU students, I really don't work that hard.  No one else gets to be lazy, why should I?

Despite what this post may sound like, I wouldn't say I'm hard on myself.  I'm not an over-achieving perfectionist.  I just feel hugely unprepared and inadequate right now.  This is such brain-mush.  Sorry.

PS - So I was trying to think of a title for this, and the current one just popped into my head, and made me a lot happier.  So good.

Hotlanta, or Mildlanta?

Last Friday I woke up at 4:30 am to take a brisk walk over to Hansen, spend 11 hours on a bus, and bunk in a church in Atlanta when not volunteering during the day.  Despite its reputation, the temperature did not rise above 65 all week, and in fact was rather cold on some days.  That, and the fact that I did NOT eat at a Waffle House, are the two biggest disappointments of my week.  Otherwise it was generally better than expected.

Tourist-y wise, I saw Martin Luther King Jr's birth home and tomb, went to the Coke Museum and tasted probably 25 international products, Olympic Park, and Underground Atlanta (also a huge disappointment).  The volunteer projects we got werrrrre okay?  I'm pretty sure I only met like 3 people who actually live in Atlanta, which is a bummer since the point of the trip is to meet, connect with, and understand the community.  I was expecting to see firsthand effects of flooding and poverty and hear personal stories and actually feel like I impacted someone directly.  I was expecting it to be more like Hurricane Katrina relief.  In actuality, we did a lot of warehouse work and a bit of construction.  But even though I didn't get much from it, it still made someone's life easier.  So that's good.  I also got to plant trees, named Elmer and Prickly.

And I made friends :)  Which is always nice.  The best part was that even though I was crammed in a tiny room with 90 girls in bunk beds and had to shower in a trailer, I didn't fucking hate my life every night, which I thought I would.  Pleasant surprises. 

And a final note, Shamrock shakes in the south are NOT as good as the ones by Chicago. 

Why I shouldn't have nice things.

I have been the proud owner of a cell phone since the age of 14.  About 7 years.  In that time, I have never lost any phone for more than 10 minutes before finding it in my pants pocket, where I would have stumbled upon it eventually anyway.

Until the end of January abouts, when it fell out of my pocket in CNS.  "A very nice girl named Amy" found it and called my mom, who then emailed me so that I could contact Amy and be reunited with celly.  Happy ending.  Until about two weeks later, when I left work around 8pm, almost certainly leaving my phone on the bed before heading to the shower.  Yet when I came back, no phone was in sight (nor in sound, as I had left it on silent).  Did it fling out of my pocket behind my dresser as I undressed?  Did it never even make its way home, falling out of my pocket as I quickened the pace to avoid the shady man on my walk from Jimmy John's?  We may never know.  I suffered through a phoneless week, then bought the most delicate of go-phones that doesn't even have a front display.

So for about 2 hours I've been getting ready to go to Atlanta tomorrow.  I was downstairs tidying up in general and preparing rice (which I hear makes a good substitute for cereal with a little bit o sugar), then grabbed a few odds and ends to bring upstairs.  Put my jacket, shoes, water bottle away, turned to grab my hair dryer, comb, and phone, and...there was no phone.  W.  T.  F.  I spent a good half hour looking EVERYWHERE for it, Facebook messaging people to call me, because of course no one was on AIM, and in general going crazy and freaking out because I wouldn't have a phone in Atlanta.  And this time it was worse because I absolutely positively knew that it was somewhere in the house.

I had just resigned myself to waiting for someone to call, and sat down to write a blog entitled "Epicest Fail Ever", when what's that???  Lovely bells from my closet!  Where in my closet?  My shoe.  My fucking shoe.  My phone dropped into my shoe as I carried the armful of straggling goods upstairs.  Who loses their phone in a shoe?  This seriously just pisses me off.

This is probably way more information than anyone will ever care to know, but it really just gets to me, and I need to feel like someone will understand how unbelievably frustrating this is.

Lastly, thank you to my savior, my darling sister AnnaBanann.

springspringspringspringspring

Today was a good day.  I picked my bike up from the bike doctor (routine checkup), so it was all smooth and clean and happy after spending months in hibernation.  Rode to the local/natural foods store to buy almond milk and larabars, because I'm foodcleansing myself of unnatural ingredients today, brought on by the act of eating half a box of raisin bran crunch yesterday.  Met Thomas for a stop at Coffee Hound for mango green tea, a walk downtown, a bike ride to normal, and a used book purchase.  Then work. Meh.  But I just finished a batch of honey roasted almonds for the trail mix I'm making for ASB!  I find that on long trips during which I rely on cafeteria style meals from a nonprofit organization trying to save money, like ASB, the vegetarian option usually lacks protein.  Hence the sugarysweet almonds.

Yet, all of these lovely events are irritatingly tainted by the knowledge of everything else I  have to do.  I will have a paper due every Friday from the first week of spring break until finals.  Six total.  And the real kicker, lectures haven't progressed enough to actually start any of them.  So I just have to sit and stare at the slowly darkening cloud of impending doom.  Bummer on such a nice day.

To buy from the used book store I discovered today:

Bhagavad Gita - Krishna?   $2
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig   $4
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie   $5
Total:   $11

I can scrounge up 11 bucks.

For now, though, I return to Neuroscience...le sigh.

WTF Kierkegaard?

Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universe, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute.

I still need a name for this blog...

...but I want to express my desire to watch all of this year's Academy Award nominated films.  Or at least the good ones.  So that's what I plan to do on all of the rainy days of May Term.  Weeeeee!!!