Approachable

Another meal, another round of strange conversations.  At lunch, Predad sat down with me.  Later, when Tamar came and Predad was gone, I complained about Predad coming around, saying I don't understand why she wants to be around me when I am not friendly towards her at all.  (I mostly didn't talk as she sat there.  I would rather eat alone, in silence, then listen to her mostly incoherent babbling.)  "Well isn't this a common problem for you?" Tamar asked. 
"What's a common problem?"
"Well, you know, since you're easily approachable." 
What?  I don't agree at all.  I don't her I feel like I have the exact opposite problem.  People don't want to come anywhere near me.  I complained about an episode from several years ago where someone said some nasty things about me, that implied, among other things, that he would rather not go anywhere near me. 
"He was just being a stupid boy!" she answered.  "He just wanted your attention, so he said those things."
Well, he most certainly got attention from me.  The negative kind of course, and then I began to avoid him because I was all "Uh-huh.  This guy is awful and mean and really?  I can't believe he said those things with absolutely no evidence." 
Tamar maintains that he wanted my attention.  I'm skeptical.  He had plenty of opportunity and could have used all sorts of false reasons to come and talk to me and we had mutual friends and he never used any of it.
The conversation ended with Tamar saying that "I don't know how men think!"
"I can tell you right now," Jenny chimed in.  "They don't think." 
Oh well good.  Another person giving guys a slide on the whole being brainless thing. 
I still disagree with Tamar about being approachable.  It's not that I generally try to turn people off, though there are time I actively try, it's that I'm not doing anything nice.  Really. 
I would ask other people what they think but I can kind of guess.  Josie would agree, though she would frame it differently than Tamar did.  Ashley would probably say something nasty about it.  Dan would say something about me being an enigma, which is a whole other thing I am frustrated with right there. 

This is What a Normal 24 Hours Looks Like

I was advised to put the mail in the mailbox next to the subway, which I did.  Since I was on my way out, this worked out surprisingly well. 

As I was in the subway, I put on my MP3 player.  The first song to come on?  "Mercy Me" by Alkaline Trio.  Just before I had left, I had a conversation about punk rock and I mentioned that I loved this particular band.  Funny how life happens that way. 

When I got home, I was all alone, so I played music loudly and enjoyed myself.  I was reading some blogs online when one mentioned about a recent National Suit Up Day to celebrate How I Met Your Mother.  I don't really watch that show, but Dan does, so I texted him. 
"Are you wearing a suit?" I asked.  I imagined him in one.  Cut rightly, it would flatter him.  The actually suit would have to be form fitted, and the pants would have to be the right length (covering the ankles and slightly covering the shoes), but he would look good and adult and mature. 
"I don't own a suit," he texted back.  Way to blow that fantasy. 
I was a little surprised this was the answer, since Dan drinks gin and has elitist views about art.  But I can't really think of a reason he would need a suit either.  He's also an awkward science boy; he needs clothes he can use to trample around in the mud and whatnot.

Dan texted me back.  "Do you know who does have a suit?" 
I thought maybe he'd mention his roommate, who also has no particular reason to have a suit.  "James Bond" I texted back. 
"Glenn Beck," he answered.  I actually had a hard time remembering what Beck wears.  Usually I'm too busy being annoyed at him. 
I decided not to text Dan further, just because he is anti-text message. 
Inga came home, and we chatted about our days.  Inga's an actress, so she told me all about how annoying her opera teacher is and how annoying this other actress in her class is. 
Jackie, one of the other roommates, came in, and we chatted about boys.  Jackie's boyfriend is thirty years old, which is way older than her and which I think is kind of creepy, though I don't think it's my place to tell her what to do. 
Inga and I had dinner together.  (Jackie's been sick recently and hasn't wanted food lately, though she had a little later than us.)  We had a nice conversation about siblings.
I like my roommates a lot, but everyone goes to bed so early.  Around 10:30 or 11, which is ungodly early, really.  I am use to going to bed, at the earliest, midnight.  And when I'm having sleeping problems (which haven't affected me much in the last week) I'm lucky if I make it to bed before 3 in the morning.  One of my former roommates, Sam, had the same problem as me, and I can't imagine her living with these girls. 

Since I don't have to be up as early as them, I've been staying up later.  I go to another part of the building and work on other things, mostly catching up on email.  I sat in one of the lounges as this girl watched Law and Order: LA.  It's by far the most boring of the franchise, and this comes from someone who watched all of Conviction. 
I went back to the room to go to bed, and I don't think I made too much noise.  And then I crashed. 
Camilla gets up around 6 or 7 to exercise, which is fine but she exercises less than a half foot from my bed.  The first time I noticed it, my voice caught a little.  I didn't quite gasp. 
I had breakfast that morning with Jackie.  I don't think we talked much, but we were both tired.  I stole a box of Cheerio's and a bagel out of the caf. 
The girls all left before I did for school.  My schedule looks like it's going to be later in the day than most of them.  After they left, I did all my usual stuff to get ready: brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, putting on my perfume, etc. 
I worked on some things online as I waited for it to get closer to when I needed to leave.  I wrote some notes to friends. 
I noticed that Justin was online, so I chatted with him.  Justin is about to turn 25, and he mentioned that some of his Chinese friends want to take him to a strip club.  I still think this is a great idea, one that Justin should totally go for, but I don't think this is going to happen.  I suggested that he get a couple of other friends together for this little outing, like Nick, Dan and Daniel.  There were few things I could think of that would be as funny as those four trying not to be awkward in a strip club.  They're awkward around girls dressed normally; I can't imagine them around the scantily clad kind.  Justin had to get going to class, and I was leaving soon myself, so I let him go. 
I finally got my stuff together, and caught the subway.  Sort of.  I went into the car, and waited and waited.  Finally, three fire fighters came by on the platform, wheeling one of those cart things.  I had enough time to think "Er..." before someone came over the intercom and said that a customer was sick and that they would be starting off soon.
And eventually we did get going, though they changed where we would be stopping.  This didn't affect my traveling, but it did affect a lot of other people's, who got off. 
When I got to work, Alex wasn't in, so I got started on a project that Alexander had for me.  He wanted me to do some research and familiarize myself with some stuff on ecofeminism.  I don't really know much about ecofeminism, so I got started on the project, reading the materials he gave me.
I guess for the time being this is what my schedule is going to be, which is weirdly normal.  I don't know if I can handle having a set schedule and being normal and all that.  I'm use to having nothing set in stone and getting frustrated.  What am I going to do when I don't have to be frustrated all the time?

Embarrassed and Frustrated

Today has been way more frustrating than I planned on it being.
One of the many things that managed to grate on me was about this charity dinner my Mom wanted us to go to.  A girl my sister knows from high school was diagnosed with cancer a few years back, and they occasionally hold events to raise money to take care of her.
I really didn't want to go, but I decided to play nice about it.  The reason I don't want to go was that I really hated my high school.  Not even everyone, but a large portion of people.  I'm really glad that whole part of my life is over.  Despite my Mom always encouraging me to go back and talk to people, I generally don't want to.  There are a few people who I don't talk to anymore that I wouldn't mind running into or hanging out with, and a small group I still text or have fun with, but I'm generally separated from those people.  And glad to be.  I didn't want to go to this dinner because I would inevitably run into a least one person I couldn't stand and would rather not see.
I'm especially sensitive right now because I feel like, despite working so hard in college, I have nothing to show for it.  I have no employment as of right now.  I could make excuses about the economy and about my family situation, but they're just excuses.  And in any case, I'm sick of people's judgment on the subject.
But I was still planning on going.  So, I started picking out my outfit.  I was planning on wearing a nice purple blouse with my black professional pants.  And then I couldn't find the pants.
I searched all over the house.  Nothing.  This is one of the many reasons I hate living here.  I don't want to use the washing machine because my Mom has flooded the house with it no less than six times.  The ones at school are far more reliable and no one would blame me if it exploded.  So my Dad does the laundry and then clothes go missing because, despite labeling my clothes, he puts them elsewhere, in other closets, in the living room, hoarding them in the laudry room, and as I discovered today, storing them in the basement.  I wore those pants about a month ago at the Honors College event for graduates, so I know they have to be somewhere.
I'm increasingly worried that I left them at school.  As I mentioned yesterday, I have only recently started going through certain boxes, but I'm starting to wonder if a box got misplaces.  I am missing part of my beloved music collection (including Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), two anthologies of feminist theory I was working on, God's War, and now these pants.  In the rush to get out of Lansing, I can't remember if these items were all in the same box or not, but I'm getting worried. 
If I lost that stuff, I'll be heartbroken.  The pants can be replaced, eventually, though the way my body is, it'll be hard to find a pair of pants that looked that good on me.  But I don't even remember all of the music I had in there (though it was probably around 20 CDs).  Sometimes I have CDs that are rare/signed by artists, and I'll probably never be able to recoup that loss.  And those books were expensive; two of them were around 800 pages. 
So I'm really upset right now.  I decided that I wouldn't go if I couldn't find those pants, because in addition to being judged by the appearance that I haven't done anything in the last five years, I really couldn't stand people looking at me and thinking about how ugly and/or unkempt I am.  I'm further embarrassed and frustrated by my concern for a) my appearance and b) what people think of me.  These people were almost all assholes, if not incredibly dense, so just finding them thinking at all would be impressive. 

Ballbuster

Update today on Grandma: Turns out when we went to see her this afternoon, she didn't go to therapy. That's the entire point of being there. She was in her pajamas, asleep in a chair. My Mom made her change and marched her down there and made her do stuff.
Her therapist is really nice. My Mom mentioned that I had just graduated. "High school?" she asked.
Damn, if only. "No, I just finished up at Michigan State."
I have maintained for a long time that I look younger than I am. When I was in the seventh grade, one nasty piece-of-work eighth grader asked me if I was seven. Even now, I think I easily pass for much younger. When I mentioned this once to Dan, he disagreed with me (in a rare change up for him, it was one of the least diplomatic things he's ever said to me. International relations could use someone like him.) But ha, I'm right, case closed. Even a therapist says so.
But I digress. What's really heartbreaking is how my Grandma has basically given up the will to live. She doesn't want to do anything anymore, even the simple important stuff, like combing your hair or eating or walking. She fought with the therapist the entire time about walking with a walker and using a bike to exercise. At one point, she put her head down and cried. I've never seen her cry. Even when her husband died, her reaction was to be a pain in everyone's ass, take cold medication, harass her godson about his hair follicle situation and yell at her husband's corpse every chance she got.
The therapist asked what she was like when she was younger. "A ballbuster," I thought. I remember her being really harsh, and supposedly, I was a favorite and she softened as she got older. I can only imagine how difficult she was when she was at her prime.
I realized in October that this is one of the few good things about her dementia: it's erased ninety percent of her personality. She's still difficult sometimes, but in sort of a passive way. She just doesn't do whatever you asked her to do, but if you try to have a conversation with her, she'll sort of just tell you what you want to hear and keep on doing whatever. Before, she'd yell and carry on and actively try to make things harder on you. The whole passive thing is frustrating in its own way, but at least you don't get sworn at. In more than one language.
I find myself really annoyed with this whole thing, and then I feel bad because I've done pretty much nothing to help. Not because I didn't want to, mind, but because I was up at school dealing with at least seven other problems, most of them interpersonal. Which is also why I feel guilty about living at home again. I feel like my Mom would really appreciate me not being a layabout. If I was gone, she could at least delude herself into thinking I was being successful.
Also, my Grandma has a roommate at this place, and she irks me even more. The woman plays her tv SO LOUD. Like, it even gives me a headache, and I'm not the kind for headaches and am one of those teenagers who blasted their ears with the likes of Nirvana, AFI, and Alkaline Trio. The hell if I can hear. I would like to read my science book in peace without being distracted by some irritating design show about people with stupid condos who are way overpriced.