It's Too Hot

I didn't sleep well last night.  It's been so unseasonably warm, and I find myself waking up at night, sweating.  At one point I told myself "If I wake up again tonight, I am going to jump in the shower to cool off and then go back to bed."  It didn't come to that. 
They're doing work on my building, so I had trouble sleeping past nine.  I did some writing, I blogged here.  Various nosies were made outside.  It got quiet again, so I slept a little.  Then there was noise in the hallway, and I remembered they were doing on that too, and I cursed my inability to sleep like a normal person. 
Now I'm very tired and don't have time for a nap.  And I am probably going to go out tonight to hang with friends.  And I'm not sure I'll have the energy to enjoy it.  Curses. 

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I have been reading lots of poetry lately, and this cool poem struck my eye.  There's so much amazing imagery here.   I really love the line about cushioning someone's misfortune with sleep. 

(Un)Interruptions

My roommate's been missing for the past few days.  She's been coming around to get something and then immediately leaves.  She hasn't, as far as I can tell, been sleeping in her bed. 
I'm not sure how to interpret this.  On one hand, it could be that she is just crazy busy or has a new boyfriend or something.  On the other hand, it could be that she's angry at me and instead of talking to me, has just decided to leave.  (She has a sister nearby; maybe she's staying with her or at her place?) 
It's hard to know what Nina is thinking, as she is in and out so fast.  She has a set schedule during the week.  She's usually gone by nine in the morning.  This morning she came in the room at around ten, which, in all my time living with her, she's never done.  I was totally surprised to hear her come in.  (I was trying to sleep.  She seems to hate that I am such a fan of naps, although I've decided to nap only when she's gone.) 
I am enjoying getting full nights of sleep.  I had forgotten how satisfying uninterrupted sleep is. 

Roommate Troubles

When I was younger, I started leaving rooms when I got really angry.  I didn't have to do it a lot, but occasionally I did.  I did it mostly to allow myself the time and space to calm down. 
At around one in the morning yesterday I realized I needed to do the same thing.  So I grabbed my key and left. 

I ended up in one of the common rooms, watching television.  The screen was all snowy, but I watched part of an episode of Stargate Universe, which I had actually never seen before.  I tried to concentrate on the show and not what was making me angry, although my mind kept wandering back to my problems.  I hate this. 
By the time I went back to my room, I had a compromise in mind.  It was too late to do anything about it tonight, so I tried to sleep. 
And couldn't.  Again, even though I tried to concentrate on sleep, my mind was wheeling around problems.  This is both a good and bad feature.  Good in that I can usually quickly figure out how to fix something.  Bad in that I have a hard time thinking about anything else, and when I'm trying to sleep, not being able to relax is bad. 
But also because, well, the problem was my sleep.  There's a lot of noise on the street below us, even well into the night.  My roommate won't let me close the window at night because she says she gets too hot.  And then the noise keeps me up.  (It apparently doesn't bother her one bit.)  Instead of her, say, not wearing winter pajamas to bed, which would be an obvious way to fix it, she said something that angered me last night, which is what prompted the retreat.  I was trying to be the better person, but trying to do that was meaning I was up half the night, the sound of ambulance sirens and car door alarms keeping me up. 
I tried to tire myself out.  I have all sorts of tricks that sometimes work.  I got on my computer for a half hour, hoping the harsh computer glare would make my eyes tired.  No luck. 
Around 4:30 this morning, still awake but in that state of "dear God, just let me sleep," another set of sirens went off and I finally shut the window.  It took me at least another half hour, but I finally fell back asleep. 
She woke my up in the morning, opening her drawers and doing something strange with liquid.  (Every morning there's a glug, glug, glug sound and I find myself wondering why she can't do that in the kitchen, since that is where she is heading next.  I am trying to be patient, but I am stunned by how generally inconsiderate she is.  When she is sleeping and I'm awake, I try to do things that are either inherently quiet or if they aren't and they have to get done, I try to do them as quietly as possible.  Every morning she must open and close at least six drawers.) 
I got up then because it's not worth trying to fight it.  I just got up and waited for her to close her drawers enough to let me walk past.  Once she was out of the room to get her breakfast I changed and got breakfast myself. 
I was tired at breakfast this morning.  My eyes were doing that itchy thing that tells me they're red and that I'm tired.  I didn't really feel like talking to anyone.  I thought about offering her a compromise, trying to decide which one would be the best. 
When I got back to the room, I sat down at my computer and started doing my usual morning routine of catching up with the news.  And she left.  I was going to offer it to her this morning, but she's gone. 
Part of me is still really angry.  Like, ready to pick a nasty fight angry.  But the other part of me so wants to make this work, since other then the noise thing, I mostly don't mind her.  I can try to forgive the early morning wake up if I can just manage some decent sleep in the first place.

Dinner with Mikey

I was having one of those days were nothing much happens.  After getting up from a nap, I started getting ready for my dinner with Mikey. 
I haven't seen Mikey since May and I fell upon my old problem: should I wear makeup or not?  I'm loathe to wear it, but I look so bad normally, and even though Mikey is so cool about stuff, what if he's had a personality job recently and isn't the same person? 
Luckily, when I saw him, it was pretty clear he hadn't changed.  I made fun of him for dressing like a hipster, and we were off, just like old times.
He told me all about what he was doing.  He just got a job offer, and he thinks he's going to take it.  He told me how much he likes his current job, and all the cool new friends he's made, and about his roommates Patrick (who's boyfriend is in South Africa) and Jennifer (who is "a hot mess.")  He talked about how glad he was to see me, since he's been missing his old friends.
He said he wanted to hang out some more, just like Emily did.  I guess now I'm going to have to come up with some cool stuff to do. 
I love the hugs I've been getting lately.  When I was younger, I wasn't into touching people, but now that I'm older, a hug from an old friend feels so good. 

Night of the Zoos

I have been exhausted lately, so I tried to take a power nap.  I didn't really fall asleep, but I did feel slightly better.  Then I took a shower.  I was super annoyed with myself because my complexion has been great all holiday break, and today I woke up with a pimple forming (not quite) on my forehead.  It looks super stupid, but I scrubbed it as hard and as long as I could and then put four different medications on it and then makeup. 
I had agreed to go out to dinner with Lisa and Tori (and maybe Ashley?  Ashley's so hard to pin down these days so I didn't know if she was coming.)  I was scheduling things back to back so maybe I wouldn't have time to go home to fix myself up, so I was doing the fixing before hand, before I went out with the girls. 
I'm not good at timing.  I had an extra half hour before Tori and Lisa wanted to meet, so I sat down at my laptop and tried to take care of some extra things.  I made sure my MP3 player was recharging, I caught up on some reading, I worked on some paperwork.
I noticed that it was ten minutes past when they were meant to show up.  Ashley has a tendency to be late to things, so I thought maybe they were waiting on her.  If so, Tori would already be annoyed, so I decided to wait it out.  I worked on a short piece I'm writing, trying to edit it down so it's shorter. 
Around twenty after, I got a text from Lisa.  "Where are you?"  Uh-oh. 
I texted her back that no one had said where we were going.  Last week, Tori just swung by my house and picked me up.  I had no idea where we were going until we got there, and I frankly was too busy talking to ask.  I had assumed, since no one had said anything about where it was, just had given me a time, that we were having dinner then. 
I finally got there, almost an hour late.  The place was packed.  There were tons of children around, and it vaguely reminded me of what people say when they say something is a zoo. 
I finally found both of them in the back.  They had politely waited, ordering an appetizer but not food.  They apologized. 
Tori was telling me about how she had gotten an email by a professor over how angry Tori was with this guy.  He had mispronounced her name for months, or something.  (It was hard to hear over the zoo animals.)  She had replied back that she was going to torture him in this class. 
"What are you going to do?" Lisa asked. 
"I'm going to sit in front and talk to him the entire time."
"You're going to get tired," I said.  I can't imagine talking like that in class.  When I'm in a lecture, it's all I can do to get all the information down in my notebook. 
Lisa showed me pictures of her new apartment, which is possibly the nicest looking college apartment I've ever seen.  The bed spread matches the shower curtain that matches the couch that matches the lights in the dining room.  Tori teased her for having so many stuffed animals on her bed. 
"They come off when we sleep there," she said.  I honestly don't think six stuffed animals are that many, and anyway, they're all smaller.
We headed over to the grocery store.  Tori had seen this thing about chocolate beer.  I told her how I had chocolate wine once, and it was seriously disgusting.  It took us a while, just because Lisa got herself lost and then ran into someone and then called Tori and I asking where we were. 
"We told you, we're in the booze aisle," Tori said. 
"Tell her it's the large aisle." 
We looked around for this chocolate beer, but couldn't find it.  We looked through lots of other things, and I was struck by how much I wanted to try certain things.
No luck.  After combing the area we gave up.  Tori and Lisa decided to keep looking.  Tori thought that maybe the grocery store was the wrong idea; we needed to look at an actual "booze-booze store." 
"Booze-booze?" I asked, in reference to her choice of words. 
As we were driving, I got a text from Philip, asking me to meet him.  I had agreed to meet him yesterday, before this whole dinner with Lisa and Tori thing, before the alcohol hunt began. 
"I'll drop you off," Tori said. 
When I got out of the car, I thanked her, calling her Mom.  I went inside. 
Again: a zoo.  I'd never been here and it not be a zoo, so okay. 
"Are you looking for someone?" a waitress asked. 
"Yeah, he..." I trailed off.  I was about to say his name but I was stumbling for how to describe him. 
"Is he tall, dark and handsome?"
"He...he's handsome."  I guess.  He's not that much taller than me and he's got darkness inside, but it's something he doesn't show people willingly.  He barely likes showing me. 
She pointed, and he looked up and saw me.  Okay, looking at him again, I thought, he was handsome.  He has a nice haircut, the kind I tried Chris to get for years. 
He hugged me and I sat down.  Another waitress approached us and we ordered. 
Philip told me all about what he's been up to lately.  He's working on his master's.  He is trying to find a job, and although he's interviewed for some, there haven't been any offers yet.  He said he had just broken up with a girl about a month before. 
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. 
"Don't worry; it wasn't meant to be." 
What does that even mean?  It wasn't meant to be implies that there is a certain amount of fate involved in relationships, and I'm wary of fate as a philosophical concept.  It strikes me as intellectually lazy, like not believing in evolution or saying that someone is overanalyzing a piece of literature. 

Spending the Day Doing What I Didn't

Erin, Nori and I were outside, dancing and fooling around.  Erin and Nori were taking pictures of the night.  I had my camera with me, but I didn't feel like getting it out. 
I was too busy dancing.  I dropped my shoulders low, looking down at the ground.  I put my arms out, slightly above my head, making it look like I was pushing walls away that were closing in on me.  Then I moved my legs so that one foot was in front of the other.  When one leg would move, I'd wobble just a little bit.  I did this for a while. 
I turned around.  Both Nori and Erin were staring at me.  "What was that?" Nori asked. 
I really couldn't tell her. 
They both kept taking pictures, including some of me.  "You always make your pictures look nice," Erin scoffed.  So sue me. 

"Post them immediately!" Erin commanded.  Nori told her that she had to go down to Ann Arbor the next day to see Frontier Ruckus, this band I saw a few years back.  I would like to go myself, but more because I took a class with their drummer and admired how smart he was.  Mark later tipped me off that he was in the same band I had liked.  I suspect Ryan, the drummer, wouldn't even remember me, because why would you remember some girl from a class a year ago, even if she was one of the smartest and talkative kids in the class?
While we were dancing and taking pictures, a janitor came out and looked at us weirdly.
"We're not doing anything wrong," Erin said to her as way of explanation.  And we weren't, though she skittered around us oddly. 
"You would think she was used to drunks," I mentioned to Nori, even though we weren't.  Usually when I've had a lot I feel like I'm swimming, but here I just felt like I did when I wake up from an unrestful sleep: tired and wishing for something better. 
"We should try to break into Morrill Hall!" Erin exclaimed.

There's a long story here.  Morrill is where the English department is located, and it has become a tradition for English students to "break in."  By break in, I mean go through the often-unlocked front door or climb up the fire ladder.  Almost ever creative writing kid I know has written a creative nonfiction piece about it.
I always had this weird fantasy of camping out in an office I had the key into.  In this fantasy, there was a particular young man with me.  We'd share a sleeping bag, and get up right before the sun, and watch it rise from the roof, admiring campus at dawn.  This never happened, for a wide variety of reasons. 
In the meantime, I had spent the day doing what I didn't get done when I was actually in school.  I went for a swim with friends.  I went to a co-op party.  I have a long lunch without regarding the time.  I had an evening of being silly with friends, regardless of the rules or time.  Breaking into Morrill Hall, another thing I never got around to doing, seemed right somehow. 
We drove over there, we parked in the nearby ramp.  Several cars passed us.  We stood outside the front door.  A cop car drove by.  Something about it dampened by mood. 
Erin couldn't get the door open. 
"If that door's not open, the rest of them aren't either," she said.  "Let's go home." 

Rain on Rooftops

Last night, at around 4, it started raining again.
I have an odd nostalgic thing going on with weather. I love, for example, to sing in the rain. (At the beginning of the school year, I sang a Priscilla Ahn song in front of Hannah during a downpour, and yesterday, "Roxanne" in the courtyard during a drizzle.)
I love to be snuggled in my bed during a storm, and listen to the rain on the roof. At home, this is usually a great thing, since my bedroom is right under the roof, and I find that the rain puts me into a gentle sleep.
Here, it's a disappointment. It's probably the fact that the roof is at a different angle, but the rain doesn't sound as nice. (Mostly, it's just one dripping sound, which is not ideal. It's suppose to be lots of little raindrops making a larger soundscape.) It makes me miss home and all the strange little creature comforts I have there. For example, I live near a nature preserve, and in the summer, the crickets make tons of noise. I put earplugs in and can still hear them. Those little things make me so happy.
I think another part of the problem is that I just can't sleep. This last month has found me up until four or five in the morning, tossing and turning. I have a lot of stress in my life right now. Most of it is stuff that is going on in my relationships or with other people, and I recognize that in most cases, no one is doing anything on purpose to hurt me. But I still find myself unable to block most of it out. I realized in the shower last night that the first ten things on my mind were all the stresses of my life. A large number of the people and things I found joy in, even a few months ago, have all taken a turn for the worst, almost all at the same moment. I'm hoping if I just manage through this semester, a lot of this will either resolve itself or will go away so that I'm not always forced to think about it.