Of Car Accidents and Gluten

Wow. Our lives are just so interesting all the time.

Just a week ago, I got a lumbar epidural for my ruptured disc I received from a car accident back in June. This morning, my boyfriend got in an accident. We now have no car because my dad's car just got repossessed so he took the one I had been driving, and now this. Thank goodness I don't have class this week. That gives us a little more time to figure things out. And thank god I wasn't in the car! That would have screwed up my back even more, not to mention how much more complicated my case would have become! Can't we just catch a break sometime?

I can't wait to go buy myself something
like this once I get my paycheck!

In other news, I have decided that, now that I finally have health insurance, I'm going to try to get officially diagnosed with Celiac. I'm certain I have it, as my mom has it. I display the same symptoms, but to a smaller scale. I went off gluten for a year and a half to try to avoid such a fate myself, but in order for them to diagnose me, I have to actually be eating gluten. So as of Sunday, I have been eating gluten! That first purchase was hard! I felt like I was buying drugs or some other illegal contraband.

"I'm not ready, I'm not ready!" I cried! "I can't do it!"

My boyfriend bought it for me. He held it in front of my face until I told myself to "just do it," and took a big bite. Since then, I've almost been acting like a drug addict. I haven't told anyone at work yet, so when someone brought a bunch of pastries for everyone to share, I snagged a ton and hid them in a drawer, scarfing them down ravenously every chance I got. I've calmed down a bit, now that it's been a few days, but I still can't wait to go eat everything I haven't been able to for so long! I feel so free!!

I saw the scariest thing last night...

And it kept me up until 4:30 this morning.

Here it is: "Where The Wild Things Are child actor Max Records stars in Ruairi Robinson’s Blinky™ — a sci-fi short about robot helper who experiences a less-than-helpful malfunction," as described by thedailywhat.

Blinky™ from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo.

I saw the video at around 6:30 last night, thinking I was going to take a shower after I finished. Oh no; I spent the next couple of hours just trying to get it off my mind. It didn't work. I finally had to shower because my boyfriend would be getting off work soon and picking me up. Then entire time I was in the shower, I was freaking out, checking behind the curtain every minute or so, and jumping every time the steam caused the curtain to so much as twitch. And so began my night of terror.

I somehow survived the shower and shortly after, my boyfriend came to get me. I showed him a couple of nice videos I'd watched that evening, and then he scrolled down to that and as he was scrolling past it, I commented that it was so scary and I was really freaked out. He of course had to watch it, then. I ran into my room, saying I would not watch it again, just trying to block it out with music and picking up the nearest manga to distract me.

He finished watching it, and of course began asking me to "play with him" and counting down all night. I kept telling him to stop, saying that I wanted to try to forget it, not remember it for the rest of my life. We went back to his house and watched some stuff on Netflix to try to get it off my mind, but as soon as the lights were out, I started freaking out again. I tried to calm myself down, reminding myself that it wasn't real and that Josh could kick its ass anyways, but that didn't matter. The movie kept flashing into my mind, and even Josh's comforting embrace couldn't relax me.

I decided I was staying up all night; there was absolutely no way I could sleep. Josh went to bed, but I stayed up watching some anime and then The Prince of Persia. I had to go to the bathroom really badly, but I was petrified to go out into the hall by myself, and I wasn't about to wake Josh up to walk me to the bathroom. That movie ended and I turned on The Princess and the Frog. That made me feel a little better, along with going on tumblr a bit, so I was finally able to force myself to go to the bathroom and lay down to sleep with the happy movie playing in the background.

I got two hours of sleep. They really should put disclaimers on these things. I mean, I know I'm a little bit chicken, but still! That was just terrifying! Agh just thinking of him counting down makes me shiver! All I know is that my boyfriend had better knock it off today!

And to end on a lighter note- look at this cute video from Chatroulette! I'm sure this made her week!

Ants.

I hate ants. I always have. In junior high at lunch one day, I was sitting on the blacktop curb with my friend talking, and at the end of lunch we looked down (we'd been staring up at the mountain/hill the whole time) and found we were covered in ants. It took me an hour to brush them out of my hair. I didn't even go to class.


And we didn't even know until we looked down! You don't feel them at all! And they aren't like other insects... I dislike spiders, yes, but generally there's only one of them at a time. Ants just keep coming and coming in thousands!


My great irrational fear is that they will cover me and get inside my orifices (my mouth, nose, ears, and other places) and eat me from the inside. That scene in the latest Indiana Jones movie? I was screaming in the movie theater. I couldn't help it. I could not stop screaming for the entire scene, as much as I tried. If you haven't seen it, the scene is comprised of massive killer ants in the jungle coming from everywhere, covering everything, and just completely ripping through humans, tearing them apart limb from limb (here is an image gallery with screenshots of the scene). The embodiment of my greatest fear.



Yes, that is a massive swarm of ants underneath her.

Which brings me to this lovely article I read today on Cracked.com: 6 Reasons We Should Be Way More Scared Of Ants.



Like many of you, I was not previously aware of Argentine ants. This article is well worth a read.

You might be thinking, Hey, no big deal, I'll just step on them, like I do to other things that are smaller than me. They're just ants, like any other ants. But they're not. Argentine ants are special. Special and evil and powerful. They will wait for you to go to sleep, then climb on your face and bite you, (yes, that is a thing they do).They're coming for your family by way of your nightmares and they need to be stopped.

Basically, as their name indicates, these ants originated in Argentina, where they were previously kept in check by wars with other species of ants. In the past 100 years, however, they have made their way around the globe, via us, and are now messing with the ecosystems, putting several species in danger of extinction. 

Unlike other ants, they don't fight among colonies; when one colony encounters another, they just join forces. This has created a super colony in Europe that covers 3,700 miles. And that's not the worst part.

While supercolonies aren't specific to Argentine ants, Global "mega-colonies" are. In 2009, Insectes Sociaux reported that three different supercolonies -- one in America, one in Europe and one in Japan -- were actually different branches of the same colony. Scientists gathered these ants from all over the world and put them together, and whenever they got near each other, they "recognize[d] each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles" and started "rubbing antennae together."

And according to this pest control website, regular poison does not work on them! "Do not spray any repellent spray pesticides around Argentine Ants. Spraying will not kill the queens but will increase the egg laying and will only compound the problem." ;A;

I'm so freaked out! I keep imagining that I'm feeling them crawling all over me! I'm going to have nightmares for a week! We need to do something about this awful breed of ant!

It's officially spring!

It's so nice and warm outside! I wish I was out there running around, but I'm stuck working in an office.

I'm not so sure what to do with myself lately. This always happens whenever I move. I have a hard enough time trying to figure life out, being twenty-one, but adding the uncertainty of moving all the time does not help. I had just started settling into a routine before I moved, and I'd been there like four months. Now I'm all off-kilter again.

We're slowly getting things unpacked, but it's hard being as busy as we are. It's only been a week, though, so I guess it's not so bad. It's been very nice being able to just go home for lunch! I got used to that in a snap! But what's not going to be so easy to get used to is sleeping away from my boyfriend - living away from my boyfriend. We've been "living together" unofficially for more than a year! But it's too expensive for us to get a place together -- even a studio. So I'm living with my mom, and she doesn't want him sleeping over.

I need to talk to her about that. He's been taking care of me from day one, when she was never there; he stuck up to his family for me countless times when I had to live with them for a while. I understand when my brother stays over, but a couple times a month shouldn't be too much to ask. I haven't been getting restful sleep at all, and my boyfriend hasn't even been getting sleep. And what's even harder is the fact that I work all day and he works all night. It looks like I'll only be able to really see him on the weekends in the morning now.

We've been lucky for last weekend and this weekend; he's had Sunday completely off work! Like I mentioned in my last post, we went to Disneyland last weekend, and this weekend we'll be going again! I'm so thankful for that! But usually he works Saturdays and Sundays, so we'll only be able to see each other in the morning. I'm glad that he has hours, but I'm going to miss him.

I can only hope that we can make it through this next hard period in our relationship, and hopefully by next year or so, we can live together. If we've made it this far, we can make it through anything!

------

As a side note, I've been hooked on this site lately: Fuck Yeah Nouns. It has the weirdest results come up for things! Just type in Harry Potter and see what comes up...

Rekindling the Flame

Disneyland, Tangled, reliving those precious first days, movies, lap-sitting, tummy kissing, cuddling, boba tea, teasing, laughing, playing, dreaming. It has been a wonderful weekend. I feel more in love than I have in a long time. <3

Not-So-Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino

I do not get why it is so hard for the employees at Starbucks to understand that the drink is called a Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino. Not just a Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino. DOUBLE. So why is it that when I order a Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino, they seem to think that I'm ordering a Barely Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino??

See, this is what it's supposed to look like.
Mine is white.

I swear! This tastes like water with some chocolate chips in it! I spent good money on this and risked being late to work; not to mention the fact that my office is freezing in winter! But I decided to rush over to Starbucks because, despite the cold, I wanted something chocolatey. So much for that. 

And it's no good asking them to make sure there's enough chocolate in it. Then they overdose on chocolate and I can't even drink the thing! I just want you to make it right! I didn't say I wanted to drink straight chocolate syrup! If I wanted to do that, I could have spent a lot less money and go to the grocery store! 

And because I was nearly late for work, I couldn't ask them to fix it. So I'm drinking it, but it tastes so gross. I can't wait to just finish it and drink my warm tea that I made myself.

First Post

Hello everyone~

This is my very first personal blog (outside of site such as livejournal, tumblr, facebook, etc). I'm not sure what I'll be posting about here yet, but I hope that you will enjoy~

A little about myself:

I am a 21-year-old night owl who is currently trying to start college (I actually managed to start one whole class this semester), working full-time as a receptionist at an office job (I haven't gotten up this early in years!), and trying to figure this whole life thing out! I'm also an undiagnosed Celiac (My mother has it; I just haven't had health insurance to get diagnosed), so I eat gluten-free.

About two years ago, my family's house began the process of being foreclosed. I had to learn the hard way all the lessons of life in a couple of short years, having been very sheltered my whole life. I went through my first friend and boy drama, got my first serious boyfriend, learned about money and being screwed over by "friends" and jobs, ended up moving in with my boyfriend's family and getting extremely depressed, finally learning to drive and getting more hours and renting a room with a family, got in a serious car accident, got an office job, lived with more bad room mates, and now am about to move into an apartment with my mom this week!

I've lost friends and gained friends and reconnected with old ones. I've had friends move across the country, go into the military, and get pregnant. I lost my virginity, and found the one I hope I will be with forever. I've finally started college after being out of school for two and a half years.

Basically, I'm just trying to get back to be myself again, now that I'm finally not depressed anymore. I'ts been a long ride. My boyfriend has had to be there through it all to help me learn to do all this real life stuff. I'm finally figuring it all out, but it's still hard at times.

Now that I'm moving in with my mom, it looks like I'm going to have some more lessons to learn, having to balance the whole mother-daughter roommate relationship. I'm not sure how this will change my relationship with my boyfriend. And next semester, I should be able to really truly start school, and not just the one class that I'm taking now!

I'm nervous, but at the same time very much looking forward to the future! 

Click through to read the more-detailed-but-still-very-abridged version of the story!

Backstory

I had been an extremely sheltered little girl from a Christian family (to give you an example, I was only allowed to watch G and select PG rated movies, PBS Kids, Playhouse Disney, and Nick Junior until I was in 6th grade. I was just a little behind my peers, I think...), and suddenly we were going through divorce, my mom, sister and brother moved somewhere, I stayed at the house with my much-hated father to watch over the house while we had some newly acquired house mates just to try to keep the house afloat for as long as possible. Luckily, my father is a fire fighter, so he was not home very often.

So began my months of freedom.

I had already graduated high school, and hadn't started college yet, so my weeks were completely free. I worked weekends at a Japanese restaurant with people I considered family, went to Disneyland with my two best friends all the time with our annual passes, had friends over at my large house to make use of our large theater system (yeah, you know, the thing that caused all this trouble to begin with! My father never should have spent all that money on a bonus room, pool, and bbq...), went to church, and just generally had loads of fun. It was a particularly warm summer, and we enjoyed staying up all night to go on "night hikes" on the horse trails behind my house, hanging out at Denny's, and having Disney movie marathons.

Then my world expanded when one of my best friends started dating someone. He was included in our movie marathons and we were invited to Denny's with his group of friends. Our circle now had quite a few people in it, so we were more alive than ever. Still innocent, we never touched drugs or alcohol, but had fun in our own way -- fangirling over disney and anime.

I viewed my friend's boyfriend as an older brother. He helped me out the many times my father was an asshole and kicked me out of the car when he'd offered to take me to work instead of taking the bus, leaving me with no option but to take the bus and be hours late to work (The bus system where I live is TERRIBLE). That is, he helped me out those time when my father didn't take my cell phone as well. (Yes, my father would actually kick me out of the car, leaving me hours late for work with no way to call and let them know I was going to be late. And before you ask, he kicked me out because I was arguing over something he was blaming me for that my brother was sitting in the back seat going "Sorry, I did it, it was me." Yet my father was still yelling at me for it to the point of kicking me out of the car. Isn't that lovely?) He helped me move into my friend's house for a month to escape my bastard of a father, and then move back out when her parents didn't want me living there anymore.

But then things started to change. My best friend and her boyfriend were always fighting, and he'd complain to me about it, saying things like "I should just take you and leave her and all my friends because you understand," making me feel special and wanted and accepted. In my naive mind, I still thought that he only viewed me as a close friend, but my feelings started growing for him. It was quite a love-hate relationship, though. I went between feeling cared for and wanted and feeling tossed to the side, hating how much of a little girl he could be when he didn't get his way (which was all the time).

This turned into a cycle of mental abuse to the point where I though to myself that I wouldn't mind so much even being a second girlfriend, and I could understand how people could have more than one wife. It was bad. Summer came and we would go to the pool with my other best friend and her boyfriend while the first best friend was at work. He would totally flirt with me and tease me and tickle me and hold me in his lap, and then she would join us after work, and I wouldn't exist (except to blame his relationship problems on me and call me a bitch). She ended up finding out that I liked him, but not about the flirting. It became a huge elephant in the room.

The summer was drawing to an end, and I was beginning to realize that this foreclosure thing was going to happen soon, and I needed to get another job. My first best friend got me a job working with her at a women's clothing store, and I began training there the week that she went across the country with her family to look at houses to move into later in the year. I felt like I was in another dimension. I was working at her job without her. The store played modern secular music, which I had previously made it a point to avoid. I was getting all these sexual messages played to me all day long, and then I was seeing him and his friends and going swimming with them at night.

Twice that week, we ended up alone at my house, watching movies, and I didn't let him go all the way, but... I  really just wanted him to hold me, and I thought that that would achieve that.

My best friend returned, and things were normal for a little while. One night, we were on our way back home from Denny's or somewhere, and the song "Watcha Say" by Jason Derulo came on the radio. I sang along loudly, and when we got back to my house, I pulled her aside and told her. It wasn't right that she didn't know, and I knew that I needed to get myself out of that situation.

She talked to him about it, of course, and that manipulative asshole actually got her close to believing that it didn't happen, and I was just making it all up. We spent days going back and forth, and finally she decided that she did believe me, but that she was still going to give him a chance.

We stopped talking for a while. Luckily we had different shifts at work. I felt awful. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. I hung out with an acquaintance most nights, sometimes seeing the boyfriend's group of friends. They had all seen what had been going on, and they supported me, but they weren't close friends. I was totally lost.

My friend and I started hanging out with these two guys- one I knew from high school, and the other was his best friend who I'd seen a couple of times in the many Denny's outings. He'd actually made me die of laughter one night talking about how The Asshole (as I will be calling my best friend's boyfriend from now on) was probably jacking off in the bushes when he'd stormed off after not getting his way, and saying that he needed to put in a tampon.

These guys took us on "real" night hikes, even giving us each some pocket knives and stuff. One night, my boots got stickers all in them, and they were stabbing into my legs, so he ended up carrying me back to the car, and pulling out all the stickers, much to my friend's (and his friend's) jealousy.

I ended up deciding to move in to an apartment with some acquaintances, knowing that the foreclosure was coming very soon. I ended up moving in two days early because my disgusting room mates had gone so far that there were maggots crawling all over the kitchen and the living room. I left that night.

And that night, I texted him, and he told me that his dad was drunk and being abusive, so I begged my friend I was moving in with (a guy who had a crush on me), to drive me over to see him. He came back to the apartment with us, and was being very cute and flirty and fell asleep on my lap. At that moment, I decided, he would be my boyfriend.

We spent the next week hanging out, and I finally told him that I like him, and that I was pretty sure he liked me, too. He played coy and said he'd have to think about it. That month, my nights were spent with him. He would bike over to my apartment and help me get unpacked, and we'd stay up into the night, walking down to the 7-11, talking and getting to know each other. He was everything I'd ever hoped for, but didn't think I could actually find in one single person. Everything was perfect.

And then everything came crashing down on me at once. Apparently my bank account was still connected to my mom's, so when the IRS levied her accounts, they took all of my money, too. That would have been just a minor set-back, but then, the guy I was sharing a room with moved out two days before the end of the month, and I was going to have to pay twice the rent I was expecting to. And my new job gave me my two weeks notice (They are an extremely unprofessional company, and the manager is notorious for firing people and hiring new ones on a whim. She fired all four of the new girls that had come on at the same time as me).

I moved in with my other best friend's family for a month or two, but then her father screamed at me one day, and I moved out. My boyfriend and I had been together for three months now, and I ended up having to move in with his family. Talk about awkward! I didn't know what to do. I'm a very reclusive person, and having to live with his family like that was just too much. I felt really embarrassed that I was being a burden like this, and I pretended not to exist as much as possible- staying in his room when I wasn't at work.

This continued for months, and I was thrown into a deep depression. I was paying rent on a place that my friend had helped me find to move into, but I had no means of getting to work from there, so I stayed at his family's place.

I gave him my virginity, and we kept accidentally calling each other husband and wife instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. It was cute, and one of the few things that kept me somewhat happy in this bad time.

I was trying to get a license, but I had no car. My boyfriend got his license, and my dad gave us his truck that was completely unsafe to drive since he had let it fall apart because it was technically supposed to be repossessed. My boyfriend spent days fixing the car himself, and then he helped me to get my license. I failed the test once and had to take it again, but I was finally driving, and could stay down in the canyon where I was paying rent.

He ended up staying there with me, and my work gave me a ton more hours! I finally had a tiny bit of money to just buy myself actual food so that I wasn't living on quesadillas (gluten-free food is really expensive- well, food in general is expensive when you have no money to speak of). He got a second job working at a nursery, and he loves plants and was working hard and doing all this extra stuff and getting a lot of respect from his coworkers. He was really really happy! Things were really looking up!

But my hours were really starting to wear on me. I was working lunch and dinner with the restaurant closed for a couple hours in between, so I was essentially getting up, going to work, taking a break where I couldn't really do much of anything, working again, and then going to sleep. We rescued a kitten who was abandoned by her mother at his nursery, and I've always wanted a cat, but my mother never let me. So I was still a bit happier than I had been, and things looked like they were improving!

But then my boyfriend's married, pregnant manager decided that she was going to fire him because he hadn't flirted back when she'd come on to him. After all he'd done for them, she just fired him. They were a new business, and were going to throw out a bunch of stuff from the nursery that had been there before, and he had convinced them to give him a few days to try to sell it, and had made them a ton of money! He'd taken over duties of others that hadn't been doing such a good job, and he had even redesigned the logo for them! And then she just fired him for a reason like that.

It hurt me to see my love go from being so amazingly happy, to feeling so miserable so fast. Out of that huge pile of stuff he'd been selling, he'd bought some cute garden decorations for me to put outside my little cottage, and kept them in his mom's garage. The day we'd put them in the trunk of the crappy van I'd been driving (my dad traded me for a crappy van as soon as my boyfriend fixed up the truck all nicely), I was on my break from work, driving back to his mom's house to see him. I was sitting at a red light, with at least 30 other cars, when some asshole driving a truck must have been on his cell phone because he didn't see it was a red light and rear-ended me, pushing me into the truck in front of me. The trunk door was smashed all the way up to the back seat. The gifts were demolished, and the van was totaled.

So now I really had no free time. I had to go to the chiropractor on my breaks now, to try to fix my aching back. Sex was extremely painful, and I didn't even dream of going to Disneyland. I had no car to drive, so my boyfriend had to borrow his mom's car, and even when I wasn't driving, I was having major PTSD. I still have it all the time, just very minor. So that was how my summer was spent. I did not go to the pool even once, and I visited the beach for two hours one day because our friends were there. My other best friend had ended up getting pregnant at the beginning of the year, so I'd barely heard from her, and this was when we were going to say goodbye to her boyfriend because he was going to the Marines.

Going to the Marines has been my boyfriend's dream since he was two years old. His grandfather was a high-ranking official in the marines, and he wants to do that, too. But they keep tugging him along, making up excuses as to why he couldn't enlist, but saying that  he had to do this or that first. He did all these different things for months, before they finally said that he just couldn't go. He tried to get into the army, and they were much more helpful. He took all the tests and scored extremely high, and he was supposed to go, but then they told him he didn't make it because of some medicine his mother had put him on when he was in high school. They said that he'd been off of it long enough, but now they were saying that he had to take two years of college first, taking a "full load" of classes, which apparently means more than "full-time." Apparently, he's supposed to take like 3 classes a day, 5 days a week. How is that even possible to do while working?? Doesn't "full-time" mean "full-time??" How can they expect anyone to be able to do more than that? It's called "full-time" for a reason!

And so his dreams were crushed again. He was now a manager at the fast food restaurant he works at, but it was still not a good situation money-wise.

I got offered my full-time office job by some regular customers at my restaurant, who turned out to be the president and vice president of the company! But right before I started working here, the family I'd been renting a room from decided they were going to move suddenly, giving me less than 30 day notice. At the same time, I found out that my dad might get his truck repossessed at any minute.

I struggled to find somewhere to move that I could afford, get to work from with the bus, would allow my cat, and I could have my boyfriend over. I got lucky and found a place right by the college where all the busses ran with some 30-year-old stoners. It worked great at first because I wasn't sure if I'd even have a car for long (my father had ended up getting me a tiny little plastic car that I swear to god I'd die in if anyone hit me). But then they got comfortable and their true nature was revealed. They left nasty disgusting dishes and food all over the kitchen. They didn't believe in using pesticide, so we had cockroaches all over the kitchen. And, worst of all, they ate my food. A lot. My expensive gluten-free food.

One day I had gotten myself some delicious gluten-free pizza (one tiny little pie for $20), and I'd left it in the fridge for the next day, MY BIRTHDAY, and I woke up to find they'd eaten it. So I spent my birthday this year PISSED. Such a nice state to have your birthday in.

But I was getting settled, and decorating my room and finally learning to cook and such. And I began registering for classes at the nearby community college!

Then that couple got pregnant, so they're going to have the girl's mom come live with them, so they gave me 30 day notice. So I had to move again. I thought I found the perfect room mate and it looked like it was all going to go perfect to move in with her and my best friend from junior high, so I moved in with my dad and his  girlfriend for a little bit until we could get the details worked out. It turns out that I can't move with them, though, so I had to find another place. At my dad's girlfriend's house, I was sharing a room with my brother who snores SO loudly, I only got 3 hours of sleep the first night I was there. So from then on, I've had my stuff over there, and I've just been sleeping at my boyfriend's family's house again.

It feels like the cycle is starting all over again! Luckily not, though, because the people my mom was renting a room from decided that they just don't feel like having her rent from them anymore (they are the most fake, hypocritical "christians" you will ever meet), so this weekend, I'm moving into an apartment with my mom!

My other best friend's husband got shipped out to North Carolina, and she moved out there with him. I've been kind of hanging out with some girls from high school and my best friend from junior high, so that's been nice.

And, as I said in my first post, I'm just trying to get back to being myself after this long depression, helping my boyfriend through his depression, and just trying to figure out this whole life thing! Things are slowly getting better, and I know that very soon I will actually consider my life somewhat normal again!

It's been a bumpy ride, but I hope you all will enjoy coming along with me!