Leaving California.

Well my friends, nearly a year after my last post on this blog I am back to make another post updating you about my life.

I’m moving back to Jersey for the summer of 2014.

“Why???” you might ask. Well there’s a lot of reasons. But these are not them.

The Things I Will Miss About California:

1) My baby apartment.

For those of you who have had the pleasure of stepping foot into my baby apartment and sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, then you know it’s got its charms and quirks about it. IT MAY BE SMALL, BUT IT BE MIGHTY aka it had walls and a roof and a kitchen and a bathroom and enough room for a bed so that was good enough for me.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT MY BABY APARTMENT:

Low ceilings, close proximity to a college aka loud drunken frat boys 5/7 nights a week, close proximity to a fire station aka sirens all the time, unbelievably sensitive fire alarm that goes off when my oven is preheating forcing me to run back and forth multiple times to stop the loud and obnoxious beeping, roommates (aka ants, spiders, fruit flies, occasional mice, etc)

2) The weather.

Fairly certain that there was ne’er a day the temperature went below 50 degrees during the day. And holy shit that is a modern marvel for a girl who grew up in the northeast. AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW IT’S POSSIBLE THAT THERE ARE PLACES THAT HAVE LESS THAN 100% HUMIDITY IN THE SUMMER TIME? Cool breezes on hot days are the greatest thing. Suck on that, Jersey.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT THE WEATHER:

Nothing. Well ok actually I miss rain and thunderstorms so I guess I won’t miss NOT having rain and thunderstorms. And earthquakes. PEACE OUT MOTHERFUCKERS I DON’T NEED THE GROUND SHAKING FOR NO REASON OK.

3) The people I have met.

My friends from Disney who have allowed me to be crazy me and still want to be my friends (???? you are all weirdos why do you accept me I am a crazy person). You have made being homesick and not knowing a single thing about California before coming here a lot easier. If you ever need a place to crash in Jersey, or wherever I end up next, srsly send me a text. I got you.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT THE PEOPLE I HAVE MET:

My neighbor loudly having sex at 3 am. Nope. Won’t miss that a single bit.

4) The food.

Actual Mexican food is amazing???? And In n Out is amazing?????? AND THEY PUT SANDWICHES ON WAFFLES HERE (Bruxie) AND IT’S ONLY 3 BLOCKS AWAY FROM MY APARTMENT AND WHOEVER THOUGHT TO DO THAT IS AMAZING (except why so close to my apartment pls I want a banana chocolate milkshake and waffle fries every single day damn you)???????

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT THE FOOD:

LACK OF DECENT PIZZA. LACK OF DECENT ITALIAN FOOD PERIOD. LACK OF DECENT BAGELS (#bagelsunday). LACK OF MOES. LACK OF WAWA/QUICK CHEK. LACK OF MOSTLY EVERYTHING GOOD (food) IN LIFE.

There are probably other things. Actually, I’m sure there are other things. But for now, I’m just going to try to focus on the positives of moving back to New Jersey aka sitting in my bed watching HGTV and Food Network and ABC Family and TLC (because my parents actually have cable television!!!) while eating greasy cheesy pizza and cuddling with Jackson. And what’s not to love about that?

PS Still haven't met Seth Cohen so p sure something is wrong???????

The (Small and Pitiful) List of Things I’ll Miss About College

So I graduated college last Friday.  A lot of people I know were sad to be finished with their four years of undergraduate schooling.  No more parties, no more BS (I mean, sorry, "gen ed") classes, no more dorm living, no more fake life.  “Wah I don’t want to leave.  I’m going to miss this so much!!!!!”

You kidding?  College sucked.  It was basically just high school on a larger scale; at least my college was.  And high school sucked.  I am not a school person, and I will not miss about 95% of it.  There are some things I will miss, though, and I’ve compiled a list of them here.

1) $5 Target mirror

I will miss you, $5 Target mirror.  I bought you on a whim at the beginning of my senior year in order to make sure that I looked alright before leaving my apartment.  You were slightly warped and always managed to make me look thinner than I am.  This flattered me.  This also allowed me to skip many a workout on lazy days because I looked great in you, $5 Target mirror, and why bother working out when I look great?  So here’s to you, $5 Target mirror, that I so carelessly threw out in an effort not to bring as much home with me as possible.  You will be missed.

2) Conveniently large bathroom

For some reason, the people who designed the apartments at my college thought to themselves “The bathrooms here should be REALLY HUGE!!!” and ran with that thought.  Therefore, the bathroom was conveniently large.  It was convenient for:

a) having social gatherings of 10-20 people within the confines of only the bathroom

b) having a dance party for yourself

c) Parkour

d) blasting music while you were showering which echoed nicely off of the entirely tiled surfaces within the bathroom

Seriously, why is there so much free space?  Anyway, I enjoyed my time spent in you, conveniently large bathroom, and now any normal size bathroom will pale in comparison because they’re merely not large for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

(Alternatively, the conveniently large bathroom came with an inconveniently small shower in which it was impossible to shave one’s legs.  BUT I DIGRESS.)

3) Absurd amount of closets

I’m tempted to say that the people who designed our apartments at school just loved an abundance of things.  An abundance of space, to be exact, as seen in both #2 and also the absurd amount of closets that we were given.  Not only was there a front entry way closet, there were two fairly decent-sized closets in the hallway that led to our bedrooms, as well as a large back closet that could fit a bed in it.  Not even kidding.  A regular, twin-sized mattress could fit easily in the back closet.  As a matter of fact, the majority of our closets went unused.  Being deprived of closet space growing up and soon to be moving into a most-likely tiny apartment, I regret not having fully embraced the closet space that was so generously bequeathed upon me.  So goodbye, absurd amount of closets.  I never took the time to know you the way that I should have.

4) The prime parking spot

You were the closest parking spot to the apartment buildings on campus and, though you were rarely free, when you were open it was triumphant.  You made me feel invincible when I cruised down the aisles and saw you sitting there, wide open and waiting for me to park my car in you.  And when I was the proud owner of you for those times that were very few and far between, I felt successful.  I felt as though my life had meaning.  I felt powerful.  Until, of course, I had to go to the grocery store and then was left without you*.  Thank you for the memories, prime parking spot.  You know how extraordinary you are to come across.

*Often after leaving for the grocery store, you are forced to park in the really bad parking spot in the very far away parking lot, which you were almost always guaranteed to have to park in on a rainy/snowy/precipitationy day when you have 11 bags of groceries and no friends that are willing to help you carry them.  Stupid really bad parking spot.

5) Extremely quick-heating stove top burner

The front right burner on my stove was a real hot-head, in the best way possible.  When placed on the lit burner, a pot of water would boil in practically 60 seconds.  Maybe even less time.  I could literally watch a pot of water boil in front of my very eyes, basically while watching pigs fly and fat ladies sing.  Every other burner I’ve ever come across in my life has taken minutes, hours, DAYS to boil the water that I just want to cook some simple penne pasta in.  I’ve nearly starved waiting for pots of water to boil.  But not with you, extremely quick-heating stove top burner.  You’ve made all of my cooking dreams come true.  You were so good to me that I chose to ignore that the burner directly behind you never once worked.  Even the time I tried to heat some sauce up and didn’t know why it refused to get hot.  Your tenacity and dedication to get as hot as possible as fast as possible, extremely quick-heating stove top burner, was just the thing to get me through.  I’m sure I’ll never meet another burner quite like you again in my lifetime.

6) Close proximity to literally anywhere you want to eat at all times ever

My college is located right next to a highway that is atrocious to drive on but is lined with basically every restaurant you could ever want to eat at ever (and some you’d probably never actually want to go to but definitely go to anyway because you’re a poor college student and that’s what those places are for, right?  I’ll let you determine those places off of the following sub-list of this master list).  There’s diners, Panera, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Boston Market, IHOP, Chipotle, Japanese places, Chinese places, Thai places, Italian places, Moes, Starbucks, frozen yogurt places, ice cream places, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, and obviously bagel places galore.  Everywhere you could ever want to eat was basically within a 10 minute round-trip drive.  Now, I'm not sure that I'll ever be in close proximity to literally anywhere I want to eat at all times anymore.  With such a variety of options on the local highway, and such terrible food in the cafeteria, I guess it's only fair they placed my college on said local highway.  Cheers to the close proximity to all of those great(/terrible/gross/awesome) food places.  I'll miss you when I have to cook my own food probably all the time forever when I'm on my own.

7) Groundhog friends

You were always there, sitting outside the full-length windows right by my kitchen table, eating grass and scurrying around on your little groundhog legs.  You were plump and adorable and I will miss watching you scurry while I eat my breakfast.  I’ll always remember the time I got a picture with one of you, little groundhogs.  I’ll see you again someday, friends.

For real, though, I guess I’ll miss my friends and a handful of professors.  You guys are pretty cool.  And I guess I'll miss sitting around pretending to do things when I'm actually just watching GSN and eating tortilla chips and salsa, even though I'll probably continue this into adulthood.  But I’m real glad I graduated, and this list probably reinforces that.  Bye 4ever college.

What is Wrong With Me?

Last night, I thought I was dying.

It had started on Friday, after I was packing up my apartment to move home from my final semester of college. I grew immensely tired and a pounding headache began in my head. My solution was to go to Hoboken that night with friends.

Bad idea.

The night started off strong. I had a drink (or 3) in my apartment with friends before heading to our destination of choice. After that is when it all went downhill.

You see, when we pulled into a parking deck to put my friend's car (thanks again so much for being our beautiful DD, Chelsea!), her car exploded. Like it was out of a movie. All of a sudden, there was steam cascading up from the hood of her Jeep. Coolanty liquidy stuff was leaking out of her car by the gallon. Should we get out, came the question?

GET OUT IMMEDIATELY, came the reply.

So we got out of the car.  The parking attendant was not nice to us.  He told us that we had to move the car out of the parking deck immediately because he was sure the steaming car would set off the fire alarm.  Um, hello, who turns an overheated car back on?

Also, at this point, I really needed to pee.  I proceeded to yell at him asking for where the bathroom was until he finally managed to point me in the right direction.  I mean, geez, how difficult is it to tell a girl where the bathroom is?

Anyway, the other parking attendant seemed to have some common sense and let us leave the car there so it could at least cool down somewhat while we waited for the arrival of AAA in 90 minutes or less.  Luckily, they arrived in about 20 minutes or so.  Chelsea rode back to the STS in town with the tow truck driver.  My other two friends and I decided to go dancing for a little while.

But somewhere between leaving Chelsea with the AAA guy and getting to the bar we went to I got supremely tired.  Like, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life.  It was real weird.  We were dancing and having fun but I thought I was actually going to fall asleep standing up.

We left the bar soon after because I didn’t think I could be awake anymore.  We took the train back, but have any of you taken late night trains before?  People are weird, man.  They get real weird when the sun goes down.

This guy locked himself in the bathroom and this other guy was legitimately concerned for him, both of them heavily inebriated.  When bathroom guy came out, he just about fought legitimately concerned guy for being legitimately concerned.  Everyone else on the train seemed to also be heavily inebriated as well, except for the three of us.

We felt real bad for the train attendant conductor guy.  We told him he deserved an award.  He told us that they should just let the train attendants drink, too, so that they could deal easier with other drunk people.  Not a bad idea but also not a great one.

When we got back to my apartment, we were freezing.  I layered up and got into bed.  Then the sweating started.  I woke up sweating and gross.  So the natural solution to this problem was to go get bagels.  But I didn’t even want to really eat my bagel.  Which, if you know me at all, is real strange.  Because I basically eat a bagel almost everyday.

After eating half of my bagel, I went to my real home.  I could barely stay awake, though, so I decided to take a 2-hour nap. I woke up periodically, sweat pouring down my face, neck, and back. As though I'd run 10 miles in Florida in the middle of August. That much sweat.

This is when I came to the conclusion that I was not well.

My brother was flying home yesterday from a week in LA, so we had to go pick him up from the airport. We decided to get dinner at the local diner before embarking on our quest to get him.  I ate my entire meal, including dessert. Not my best decision I've ever made. But I felt a little better, mostly just very full and kind of tired. I could deal with that.

When we got to the airport, I was less full and we had about half an hour to kill until my brother's flight landed. So my mom and I decided to get coffee.

Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. 

Within minutes, I felt atrocious. I felt like at any moment my stomach was going to fall out of my body, onto the floor of Terminal A in front of everyone picking up loved ones coming in from the golden state and from wherever else flights were arriving. 

But I managed to hold it together until I got home. It was then that sitting in the recliner in my living room watching Blue Bloods (my parents' choice) that things really went downhill. I went from sweating all day, damp all over, to being absolutely freezing. I wrapped myself in a blanket. I put my extremely warm laptop directly onto my lap. I knew it wasn't cold in my house because my brother had to get a fan for his bedroom and my father was afraid we would all be hot sleeping overnight. I told him I was shivering. He kept the air conditioning off for me. I was very grateful.

I soon went to bed, after popping an Aleve at my parents' suggestion/wishes, feeling extremely weird and like at any moment I was going to pass out. I was snuggled in bed, still shivering, when I heard noises outside. I was convinced there was an intruder either trying to break into my home or vehicle. In actuality, it was probably my brother making noises downstairs. Regardless, I was terrified.

I spent some fearful moments scared for my life until I started thinking rationally, i.e. that it was my brother making noises downstairs. I snuggled back down and got ready for a long spring's nap.

Then I couldn't fall asleep.  So I ended up tweeting a lot about posting this blog today.  If you want to see them you should follow me on Twitter.  But they were pretty dumb tweets.  So don't feel any obligation to follow me.  But if you're into that sort of thing, go for it.

Eventually, I fell asleep.  There's still a pounding in my head today.  I didn't really want to do anything but lay around, though, so that’s what I did and am still doing.

I didn’t even want to eat Mexican food at dinner tonight.  That’s how you really know something is wrong with me.

I don’t really have an ending to this post.  So here’s a picture of my cat Jackson sleeping in a weird pose:

Also, I’ve plugged this post by Hyperbole And A Half blogger Allie Brosh a lot this week, but if you haven’t read it re: her depression and overcoming it then you really need to.  She is the reason I got into blogging in the first place.  And I’ve been meaning to get back into it for a while, and her return this week got me to get there.  So, there’s that.

Also, my apologies for not having written in a really long time.  I know a lot of you have probably been sitting at your computers anxiously awaiting my return.  So now I’m back.  I’m really going to try to write more now.  I promise.

Also, the pictures I drew in this are really poor quality.  I realized after I left my house that I should have used my brother's iPad to draw them with one of those iPad pen things.  Because the new Microsoft Paint is dumb and also I just use my finger on my laptop's track pad so it's annoying.

Welp.  Bye.

These are my KONFESSIONS

I think there's something that you should know.  I probably should have gotten this taken care of a while ago, but I still haven't done it so I might as well just admit it now.

I don't know how to ride a bike.

I know, I know.  It's like a childhood staple.  But I just never... learned.  It's like my parents just gave up on me when I wasn't enthused.  I was a strange child, to say the least.  And this was one of the oddities that defined who I was and who I still am today, at nearly 21 years old.

A non-rider of bikes.

I tried to learn a couple summers ago but it was a failed attempt and I still cannot do it.  It was a hot day in the middle of the summer, and a couple of my friends and I got bagels and plotted to teach me in a cul-de-sac.  I had collected a bike from my garage that hasn’t had much use in recent years, and we headed off to begin my lesson.

Now, maybe I would have learned better on a normal bike.  But no.  Of course this bike had extra skinny wheels.  They were practically paper thin.  Also the bike was old, and the chains were rusty.  Basically it was a death trap.

So my friends told me how to go about this venture.  Sit on bike.  Put feet on pedals.  Push off and go.  Nobody was around, and we had the street to ourselves.  I could safely maneuver the area without fear of getting hit by a car or getting eaten by a lion.  Easy enough, right?

Wrong.  DEATH TRAP, remember?  The bike was trying to kill me.  I couldn’t make it 3 feet.  I didn’t really even WANT to do this anymore.  One of my friend’s little sisters were riding circles around me as if to taunt me, telling me I couldn’t do this.  I can’t ride a bike and I never will and they’re better than me and I don’t even deserve to ride a bike because at this point I was 19 years old and I was as good as dead without the skill anyway so no point.

And it makes me sad to say this, but I gave up.

Honestly, I am sort of afraid to try again.  I have good balance and agility and I'm pretty good at learning new skills, but let's be real here.  I am tall.  And therefore my distance from the ground to the bike is much greater than if I was a 5 year old.  This distance may be small by perhaps dinosaur standards, but it is not by my standards.  It is an enormous gap of space, so enormous I might as well be an ant trying to learn how to ride a bike.  That fall could be fatal.

So I am writing this post today mainly as a confession that I lack a skill that most people have by the age of 7.  And also to see if there’s anyone out there willing to take me on as a pupil.  I want to learn.  I am ready to learn, and I will not give up this time.  Bloody knees be damned, I must become a bicycle rider.

I have also determined that this must happen this coming summer so that when the Apocalypse happens at the end of the year and cars stop working, I can at least attempt to ride away from the Zombies and the fire storms and the big black hole in the middle of the earth.