I decided to look around at apartments online today. mostly one bedroom, one bath apartments. I looked in the town I am currently in and the one that is about 30 minutes away from my parents house. I am trying to decide between graduate schools in both towns so I thought I would look around and see what was out there. My mother talks like she expects me to live at home again this summer and to live at home if I go to ASU. That simply can’t happen. It’s hard enough for me being at home for about four days. We fight and, more than that, I don’t have a room. My mom has pretty much converted my room into her room. Her fax, laptop, little refrigerator, clothes, dressing table, make up, etc are all in my room and she sleeps there. I have to sometimes sleep in the same bed as her if she decides not to sleep in the room that has always been hers and dads. I have nowhere to put a desk, I would have a curfew, and we don’t even have good internet. We have dial-up and it usually belongs to her or my brother so I really can’t imagine how she expects me to live there and go to school. It just isn’t possible for soooo many reasons. Anyway, I got kind of depressed. I’m not sure I will ever be able to afford a place of my own and I really want to be able to do that. I want to have a place to go right after I graduate in May so that I don’t have to deal with her trying to convince me to stay. I’m not sure what I should do about everything. I want to try to get grants and things to help me pay for my grad school. However, my parents still claim me as a dependent and won’t let go of that so I can try it out on my own. They make too much money between them for me to get any assistance other than loans. I, on the other hand, could get assistance. I make very little to be quite honest. I just can’t get it the way I need to. I’m sick of having the financial help held over my head and being told that I couldn’t do it without them. I don’t get credit for busting my butt on the finals, papers, and other crap that I go through. I appreciate all that my parents do for me, it would just be nice to get some recognition.

In other news, one of my fish died. Penny jumped out of the bowl and I found her one the bar at my parents house, still alive. She was missing an eye though. Lucy apparently attacked her. Well, Lucy died when I got her back to my place and Penny is still alive and kicking with one eye.

Okay so its almost Christmas and I am super excited about that. However I have a few rants. Just so everyone that decides to read this knows ahead of time….This may be offensive to some people but I assure you I am NOT being racist.

The other night at work one of my fellow carhops, a white girl, called one of our cooks a boy. Apparently “boy” has now become a new peeve of the black community because we were all informed by our manager, who is a black girl, that you should never call a black guy a boy because it is one name the slaveholders called their slaves. Of course this led into an argument about slavery. It really bugs me when that kind of stuff happens. I hear black guys call each other boys all the time but the moment a white person uses that word it becomes a negative thing. A racist thing. This is why every white person is perceived as being racist. We can’t help it, the rules are always changing it seems. The thing is, the people that talk about this stuff are not touched at all by slavery. It doesn’t g on now and the closest they have been to it is having to have a job. It bugs me. You can’t use what happened in the past to defend what you lack in the present. If you sell drugs it is that you have to do it because your ancestors were slaves, it is because that is what you chose. If you can’t keep a girlfriend it’s not because your ancestors were slaves it is because you haven’t found the right person. We all get it. There was an injustice in the past but there always has been. Jews were persecuted for much longer than black people. The Native Americans were treated just as bad, if not worse than blacks. It just really gets to me. There is a great chance that all of us have an ancestor somewhere that was persecuted for something at some point so I would love it if people would stop making excuses and start trying to make something out of their lives. If people would lose the grudges they hold for things that didn’t even affect them, we could have a much better society. It’s not like black people don’t have rights now. They can enter Miss America AND they have a Miss BLACK America too. They can go to our colleges AND have ALL BLACK colleges. There are more scholarships for African Americans than there are for white people. So there is no way I can be convinced that they are mistreated. I have discussed this with my friend, who does happen to be black. I love him to death but he pulled that race card on me a couple times and it ticked me off. He is from a wealthy family. Their house is so big that you couldn’t see the whole thing in the pic he had on his myspace. He goes to college with no scholarships, out of state, and he doesn’t have to focus on his education…his parents will pay for him to be here as long as it takes to get him a degree. Meanwhile, I was Valedictorian of my high school class, I have studied my brains out all the years I have been in school, still lost the scholarship that didn’t even pay for all of my school. I have loans like crazy and will probably have to take more out when I start grad school and that is if I can get in. He knows nothing about hard work and yet he pulls the race card because I told him to stop screaming out “Will you marry me?” in the middle of the packed cafeteria, while on his knees. He was kidding but I didn’t find it funny. Afterwards he asked me to warm up his cake for him in the microwave he was closer too than I was. I could probably go on forever. Anything that people use as an excuse for laziness gets on my nerves and that is not limited to the race card.

Okay no that I have that out of my system…I clean Penny and Lucy’s bowl today but I think I lost some of the rocks down the disposal…not good. Apparently, the mom situation has gotten worse instead of better. My ex boyfriend who doesn’t even live in this state was brought into this situation because “someone” offered to pay him to beat my bf up….betcha can’t guess who. Looks like its about the time for a heart to heart with mother…I’m sure she;ll explode about my hair first…I put highlights in and I’m not sure how I feel about them.

My roommate officially moved out, finals are over, and I have two new friends in my room. I rearranged the room all by myself and it looks pretty good in my opinion. It was one of those small victories that everyone has in their lives at some time. I could have easily had friends, mom, or my boyfriend help me but I managed to do it all myself. Finals went alright I think. I’m praying for a B in my spanish class. If I get it I have a shot at the Dean’s list again. That would be very nice. If anyone wondered why it has taken me so long to post again it is because I had the finals and a six page spanish research paper due on the day of our final. (Which I managed to finish at three in the morning on the day of the final.)

Okay so I have some friends to introduce you all to. I bought two female betta fish on friday and they are my favorite roommates lol.

 

I think those are all of the same one. She is blue and her name is penelope but we call are Penny ( We being my boyfriend and I, he named her.) The other one is purple and I named her Lucy. I love Lucille Ball as an actress so that’s why I named her that. They are so funny to watch. Penny is a bully. She always chases Lucy around the bowl. Good-naturedly of course. They seem as happy to be in my room as I am to have them. Kyle bought them a floating lily pad and a tree for their bowl. Sweet huh?

So that is the basic update. I am supposed to get my grades either tomorrow or Wednesday and that means that you will have the chance to read how happy I am or how depressed.

Here’s the question I pose to the people that actually read this thing: Are mothers always right or can the guy the mother doesn’t like actually be the right guy for the daughter?

One more final to go and the semester will be over for me. I can’t believe it went by so fast. I am going to miss my writing class. I’m not ready to graduate, yet I am ready at the same time. I want it to work out to where I don’t have to have the help of my parents financially anymore. My brother will be going to college next year while I am in grad school (if I get in). I am ready to be an adult and take care of myself but I am not sure how to take the first step in that direction. I’m on my mom’s cell phone plan, she has access to all my accounts, and she has all my bills sent to her to be taken care of. This is a point in my life where I am scared but excited too. I want to take the step but how do I do it? I feel bad because I almost dread going home for Christmas and even for the weekends that I visit. Things with my mom are stressed and I don’t want to fight with her. I also want my boyfriend to be welcome in the house and I want to be able to talk to him or about him with no one getting angry at me. I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine my wedding without my mom there. Mom and the rest of my family of course. She says she probably wouldn’t come if I married my boyfriend. (We haven’t talked about marriage but that’s what she said and it still hurts).

My roommate is moving out. After almost a full semester of conflict, semi-friendship, and silence, she is leaving. She is marrying the only guy she has ever been in a relationship with and they have only been together since last May. If she’s happy, I think it’s great. We haven’t been getting along this year, despite the fact that we have been good friends since like sophomore year (we are seniors now). She’s a great person, just kind of hard to live with at times and I’m sure I’m not always a peach either. I am very excited about the room situation though. I (hopefully) get to have the room to myself. This means that I will still have two girls in the apartment with me but I won’t have to share my room. This is the first time in nearly four years that I have had my own room. My mother has pretty much taken over my room at home and she sleeps in there a lot even when I am home (dad snores really bad) and I have had roommates all through college. I am already decorating the room in my head. I’m pretty sure I dreamed about it last night too. I am worried though. It seems that loneliness has fallen upon me today for some reason. My phone is quiet today because everyone is either studying for finals or they know that I am studying for them. It’s good for me of course because my three finals I have to take are killers this time. There is also no one here. That is fairly unusual considering that all of us girls in the apartment have boyfriends and friends that frequently come over. I guess the lake of people around me today is making me lonely. It may also be because of the mom situation. I don’t know. I feel cut off from everyone at the moment and I am not sure why. I wish there was someone out there who went through this stuff and could give me advice. Are moms always right or can the guy they don’t like be a great one for their daughter? On a completely different note…there is a Santa Claus roast on VH1 right now. The guy playing Santa is one of the guys from Cheers. I really hope no little kids are watching this. It would traumatize them. I saw Mama from that show Mama’s Family on there. My brother and I used to love that show. I guess I will get back to studying for a while. Maybe I will pop Breakfast at Tiffany’s into the DVD player. It is my ritual for when I feel sad and lonely. I have no idea why but Audrey Hepburn and her handsome male love interest make me less lonely.

Every time I talk to my mother lately it has ended in me feeling sad, depressed, or angry. Sometimes all three. I have always been very close to my mother. I didn’t have many friends in high school because I just didn’t fit with everyone. I loved to read and write. I made impressive grades and I dreamed of getting as far from my hometown as I could. I just hated the small town that I felt I was cursed to have been born in. I couldn’t tell you how embarrassed I was to have our class colors on our invitations. The class voted to choose camouflage and chrome as the colors….even though neither of those are actually colors. When I got to college it was a different story. I made friends quickly, my teachers loved me, and I was completely accepted for who I was. I love the town that is only two hours from mine. It feels more like home during school than I ever feel when I move back home for the summer. My relationship with my mother has been changing since I went away but it was generally the same until recently. I got a new boyfriend. A serious one. He’s a great guy that loves me and is so sweet to me. Mom doesn’t see it though. She can’t say a single good word about him. It doesn’t matter to her that we have been accuainted with his family and him for most of my 22 years on this earth. He was my childhood crush. Things are horrible. Mom and I fight nearly every time we talk and especially every time we talk about him. He isn’t allowed to come over my parents house anymore…even though he has been really nice every time he was there. It is driving me crazy. I actually dread Christmas because I want to be able to spend a little time with him that day and I just know she will throw a fit. Meanwhile, she is treating my brother’s girlfriend like her daughter instead of me. She hasn’t bought any of my presents but she has bought little brother’s girlfriend more than one thing. I’m not jealous of the girl, I love her like she’s my little sister but I can’t help being a little hurt when my own mother doesn’t make a big deal of me coming home during the times that I can manage to make it home but she makes a big “to do” over the other girl (who she sees every single weekend). Maybe I’m overreacting to everything but I just don’t know what to do. I envy the great adult relationship my best friend has with her mother, that is for sure.

I am utterly exhausted. I believe that all college professors are out to murder their students through gruesome and tiring assignments, piled up tests, and papers that are nearly impossible to do well on. My Spanish professor thinks that I am struggling in his class because I don’t like literature. However, I have always loved literature of all kinds. It’s his tests that are impossible. Finals are this coming week and I feel the pressure of them looming over my head like a dark cloud that is about to burst and spill the rain. I’m doing the best I can to keep my sanity. I know that God never gives anyone more than he or she can handle. That gives me hope. My boyfriend is being incredibly understanding of my stressed out mood swings. its not often that a girl finds someone like him. If only my mother could see how great he is for me. I am still kind of sad, though. I can’t find my brand new mp3 player that I love so much. It’s been missing for three days and I am getting very sad. I also let my movies go late and now I have to pay to rent them for the whole next week even though it is only going to be a day late. Oh well it could be worse.