I Know You Can't Live in a Sitcom (Gross Idealizations of a Year From Now)

So, I used to daydream about romantics all the time. Pretty traditional stuff, really: meeting men in coffee shops, book stores, or elevators; they would be handsome, funny, interesting, and compassionate; I would be about 150x more attractive; I would put together a stress-free, relatively cheap, and absolutely perfect wedding; we would live in a cute little cottage-style house, and...

And then, after years of pointless daydreams, I realized: I might not ever meet anyone who I like and who likes me. Ever.

Tons of people never fall in love or get married. Which is fine, but can you imagine how crushing that would be if it was all I ever dreamed of? You know how some people say "You need to be okay being alone before you can be okay being with someone"? Well, it's kind of like that. Despite the fact that I always alone--I wasn't ever really okay with "being alone."

After that tangent I started this blog post out with: these days I daydream about loads of things: doing interviews with Conan or John Stewart, writing and illustrating children's books, traveling around Scotland with Renee, taking up running, writing really thoughtful comparative essays, befriending Rainbow Rowell, writing for SNL, and, yes, sometimes even making out with handsome hipsters in coffee shops. My daydreams are still really idealized and they are still really unlikely to happen (especially that running one...), but they're daydreams. Plus, now they're at least varied.

As of late, I've been daydreaming about next year a lot. As many of you may know,  I graduate in May. And, if you have been following this blog post since I started it way back in August(?), you may know: I love beginnings. I am super idealistic about the beginnings of things. ("Oh, but graduating is an ending..." Except it's not: it's a beginning. The beginning of not being in school. Every ending is a beginning of something new and all that jazz.)

So, here it is! Some characteristics of my super-idealistic daydream version of a year from now:

• I'm living alone. It's a small apartment, but relatively nice, and I'm not forced to share my space with anyone which is awesome. 
• I do that "do most of your prep work on Sundays" thing that people who have really busy weeks but still want to eat healthily often do. I eat a lot of fried rice, oatmeal, homemade veggie burgers, and cream-based vegetable soups.
• I have a lot more bookshelf space. Also, I read about a book a week, which we all know is the ideal. 
• I have a small group of lady friends--not sure where I made all of them, but probably a couple are from work and probably a couple are strengthened friendships that I already have and maybe I met some new people at church. Anyway, we do a secret santa at Christmastime and celebrate galentines together, and we're always trying to do book clubs and monthly "ladies nights" and ceramics classes but those are always falling through. 
• I get a pet guinea pig who has cowlicks all over its body, like the guinea pig I had as a kid did.
• I befriend the guy who lives across the hall. We have one of those good F-R-I-E-N-D-S style friendships where he just kind of shows up at my door on a semi-regular basis and we eat fried rice and watch The Mindy Project together. We wouldn't ever get up to any romantic shenanigans, but we'd still accompany one another to our friends' weddings. (BTW, best friend from high school is getting married in June, anyone want to accompany me? No? Shucks. If only I had already befriended the guy across the hall.)
• I get some proper lights and set up a place for video filming. Then, sometime, I get a new camera (as mine was recently ruined and I am currently borrowing my father's.) And eventually, I get better editing software. My youtube videos, though still rarely watched, are super good quality.
• I save up enough money to go to either Vidcon or Leakycon in 2015. I'm not sure which one yet, but I go to one of them.
• I publish my children's book, promote it Conan and the Daily Show. I start performing Standup and Spoken Word Poetry. Rainbow Rowell and I become friends, it's awesome. Sometimes I makeout with Chris O'Dowd. Sometimes. ("He's married!" You say. "NOT IN MY DAYDREAMS!" I retort.)

I was just kidding about that last bullet point. But, daydreaming, eh?

Weekend at Aunt Marci's

This past weekend, I went to visit my Aunt Marci. She lives about three hours away. Twice before I've gone on solo-road trips to visit my best friend, Alli, in Kirksville. It's about the same distance, but since this was the first time I was solo-travelling in the snow, my parents were a little extra cautious. (Side note, The Best Friend is in France right now and you can check out her awesome blog about it here.) My parents were "take a shovel, and some snow boots, and a sleeping bag, just in case..." cautious. But here's the thing about parents' worry: you should acknowledge their advice. Should you strike out on your own? Of course. Should you ultimately make your own decisions? Of course. But you need to hear them out, unless they completely suck--and I mean are-abusive-and-racist-and-sexist-and-genuinely-awful suck, not are-old-and-dorky suck--you should consider their advice. So, I followed all of my parents' instructions, because I would never want to ignore their advice and then put myself (their daughter) in danger. Okay, mini rant over and we can go back to my story.

I bought a GPS to make the drive easier. I get lost all the time, and since I was also going to be meeting up with a friend I didn't want to get lost somewhere unfamiliar. Plus, it's really just going to be nice to have.

And I stocked up on car-ride treats. (Another side note: I would recommend doing this for both rides, because on the way home I wound up eating gas station food which was bad-for-me and underwhelming...)

Also, keep your eyes peeled. On my new blog (working along side my new beauty/lifestyle youtube channel) I'll be posting a review on the ready-to-eat meal I snacked on during the drive. 

I arrived at my aunt's just before she left work, so I wound up sitting in my car for a little bit (it was freezing outside) and listening to the radio. I haven't listened to KCMO-radio in quite some time, but it seems like Springfield-radio is a little heavier on the country channels. 

Shortly after my aunt got home, we went to one of her favorite restaurants for supper. We had a really good Greek pizza. The interior of this place had a dining section sectioned off with a wall riddled in person-size square holes. I kept thinking about a dance sequence with people sliding in and out through those holes. Ah, if only life were a musical, am I right? (A clue: no. I can't sing worth crud.)

My aunt has two cats--Pearl, who was a stray cat that my aunt took in, and Dora, Pearl's daughter. They're both curious and playful. Plus gorgeous. I took a ton of pictures of them:

The one on the left is Dora. She's the baby. Shortly after I took this picture, she nearly knocked down that picture frame.

The one on the right is Pearl. She's the mother. She's so elegant, right? And she hides under chairs.

THEY ARE SO CUTE, RIGHT? Gaah. So cute. SO CUTE. 

Whenever I would be getting ready for bed at night, they would rough house against the bathroom door, and longingly stretch their paws out underneath the door. I would let them in, and they'd roll around on the bath mats, explore the bathtub, and jump up on the sing to watch me brush my teeth. 

On Saturday, I woke up pretty early. Lying in bed, I thought about my new beauty and lifestyle youtube channel. My plan is to upload a video every Saturday, and... "OH MY GOODNESS," I thought to myself, "I have a video that I'm supposed to upload TODAY..." 

So, I sat up, got out my computer, and started putting together my first video on my brand new channel. You can, if you want, go watch that video right now, or, if you want, you could go subscribe to my new channel. If you don't want to, that's cool, too, but that's what I did Saturday morning. 

My grandmother lives about an hour away from my aunt, and one of my cousins goes to school nearby.  So, my cousin and his girlfriend were going to visit the grandparents on Saturday, so my aunt and I decided to meet up with everyone in the afternoon. As we were driving up there, we stopped a flea market and looked around. I found two dinosaur welch jelly jars that go along with one we used as a small glass while I was growing up. I didn't take a picture of them, but I wish I had, because I'd like to show you them. They're really cool.

At my grandparents' house, I played a couple of rounds of Chicken Foot with my cousin, his girlfriend, and my grandfather. My cousin won, which would have been a real blow to my ego if I'd been playing the whole game. I'm just kidding, it wouldn't have been a blow to my ego. I usually don't really care about how well/not well I do in games. 

Then, my grandmother worked on fixing supper while my aunt, cousin, cousin's girlfriend, grandfather, and I watched the first episode of Bates Motel. Basically everyone enjoyed it, but I thought it was hard to watch. I mean, it was very well put together. I have trouble with psychological thrillers and "the makings of" serial killers. Then, to make everything worse, it was that cute-kid from Spiderwick and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was getting turned into a serious-mommy-issues-serial-killer. Plus, there was a really graphic, violent, and descriptive rape scene. It was rough to watch.

One of my grandparents' giant dogs laid on my feet all throughout the episode. I took this lovely picture of him while Norma Baker was stabbing her rapist in the chest multiple times. (Okay, not right then, but you get the idea.)

When my grandmother put the veggie cobbler in the oven, she requested that we take the dogs for a walk. So, Devin, Meghan, Aunt Marci, and I took the dogs for a walk. It was chilly, but not too cold. Bits of the road were slick and icy. The sun was falling. We talked a lot about the wide variety of types of architecture in their neighborhood. It was pretty and pleasant. 

On Sunday, my aunt and I hit up a couple more thrift stores and flea markets. While we were making our way through a Red Racks, my mother called. She wanted to let me know that it was snowing in the metro, and she wanted to make sure I'd call her before I headed home. While we were on our way to a flea market, my father called, letting me know that it was supposed to snow throughout most of the day. He suggested that I stay another night to ensure that I wouldn't drive into any nasty weather. Extending my visit meant missing out on at least my first class on Monday and running out of clean clothes (thank goodness I brought a spare pair of underwear, you know what I mean?), but it also gave me sufficient time to do everything I wanted to while visiting without a significant time crunch. 

So, my aunt and I ht up a couple of flea markets--I didn't take in pictures in the flea markets, but I wish I had. In one, Urban Flea, there were really awesome displays. There was also a mannequin in a phone booth. If that's not prime photography material, I don't know what is.

 I didn't get anything at either of the flea markets, but I got a pretty decent haul at Red Racks (there will be a blog post haul on my other blog sometime, too...)

In the afternoon/early evening, I went to meet up with my friend, Dani. We went to Starbucks and chatted. It's always nice to see her--we went to college together for two years before she transferred, and I miss her SO MUCH. 

She's so cool and pretty. Oh my goodness. We planned on going to a cool downtown cafe, but since we met in the later-afternoon on a Sunday, the only place open was Starbucks. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with her sometime in the Spring and we can get together in the early-afternoon of a Saturday so we can hang out in one of her favorite cafes. 

In the evening, my aunt and I watched an old movie featuring a very handsome man, taking care of a lost boy, a concerned mother, and my hopes that the handsome man caring for the child would end up with the mother. "You've watched too many Disney movies," my aunt sighed. Oh, but my hopes! My hopes!

The next day, I waited around for a bit so the Springfield roads would clear up some. It prevented me from going to my Monday classes, but I had a fairly safe and easy drive back to the city. 

Anyway. It was a wonderful weekend. 

I'm Trying to Meditate

"You really shouldn't be using the computer while you're meditating, Katrina."
I know. But I kept trying and wasn't getting relaxed so I figured I would just talk about how I'm feeling.

I get panic attacks. I'm not sure if I've ever really talked to you guys about this, but I get pretty frightening panic attacks from time to time. They started when I was in middle school. I can remember it pretty clearly. It was the beginning of seventh grade, language arts, and we were working in small groups. I did not like my group.  It was comprised of a guy who always dominated conversations, a guy who never talked and only ever laughed nervously, and me. The guy who always dominated conversations did not agree with me about something. I was thinking about how much I did not like him, when all of a sudden, I started noticing everything all at once. This jerk guy in my group, leaning over the table and talking loudly at me, the four other tables full of talking peers, and everything they were saying and doing. All at once. Then, I started buzzing a little bit, and I couldn't see very well. It was like the whole world was in an overly active haze. My teacher had me step out into the hallway, she asked if I was all right, I nodded, and she told me to take a few moments before coming back in. Reality slowly stabilized.

I've had panic attacks on and off ever since. But recently they've been getting worse. Part of it is that my parents' house is so noisy. There always are a lot of sounds that layer up, and if something has gone wrong (like, if I haven't had enough time to myself recently, or if I have to try and make a phone call, or if I've been reading the same paragraph over and over again) I'm really susceptible to panic attacks.

Awhile ago, I had three panic attacks in one day. First, in my house. Someone was watching television, people were talking in the other room, the dog's nails were scratching on the floor. My laptop's charger was busted and so I was going to have to get another one. I tried to order it online, but couldn't quite figure it out so I was going to have to call in--it was awful. I couldn't quite hear the guy, I was stressed about how expensive it was going to be to replace, and the noise was building up so badly. I started picturing placing my head in the freezer and slamming the door against my temple. Why? Because I wanted quiet and calm so badly. I didn't do that, of course. That would be unsanitary, and, well, just generally a bad idea.

Pause for a moment. You might be wondering, as my dad later shouted at me as a rushed out the door, why I didn't just ask my family to be quiet. But it gets very hard for me to speak when I'm having a panic attack. It gets harder for me to speak when I have a panic attack then any other time--and it's already pretty hard for me to speak sometimes. Usually, I have a hard time speaking because I feel like people don't care about what I have to say. When I have panic attacks, I have a hard time speaking because I can taste all the words on my tongue and they are all so angry that I don't want to say them because they will be less productive than when I say things when I'm calm. Which is already so unproductive.

Back to the story of the day of three panic attacks. I tried to distract my panic away with an episode of Parks and Recreation. It was almost effective, because my family didn't speak through it. But as soon as it was over, all the noise built up again. When I rushed out, realized I forgot something, rushed back in, and as I was leaving someone asked "What's wrong?" And I half-screamed, half-sobbed "It's just so loud!" Then my dad yelled at me about how I could have just asked them to be quiet. I sat in complete silence for five minutes before my heart rate decreased and I felt comfortable leaving.

I had to go to the Mac store to pick up my chord because they didn't have it as a ship-to-home offer. So, I went to the Town Center Plaza location, as they had told me on the phone. For someone who gets panic attacks due to over stimulation, the Mac store is basically "hell." It is packed with people, they have obnoxious blinking lights, there are about 10,000 screens, loud music is playing, and every single person in the cramped little building is talking. Cue panic attack #2. I told the guy I needed to pick up a chord, he typed in some information, and there was a problem. A problem they solved by making me call and talk to the office I had already been talking to. It was the worst experience of my life. After every sentence, I had to ask the person on the other line to repeat themselves. Finally they asked, "And you're at the Country Club Plaza location?" That's right. I misunderstood which ____ _____ Plaza location I was supposed to go to. "No, I'm sorry," I half sobbed into the phone. I hung up, told the guy I was at the wrong place, and rushed out. My body was buzzing, my heart was thumping, and my esophagus was coiled tightly increasing the pressure in my chest. I stumbled off the sidewalk, falling face first in the middle of the road. I pulled myself up and sat on the curb until I was feeling a little bit better.

For someone who was still feeling the effects of TWO panic attacks, the Country Club Plaza was the last place in the world I should have been driving. It was full of traffic--both vehicular and pedestrian--and nobody is really considerate of the other  people in the area. I tried calling my parents FOUR times each to let them know that I had gone to the wrong location, but they never answered. I was legitimately afraid that I would stumble in another road and be run over and my parents would have absolutely no clue where I was. To make matters worse, I had to drive around the plaza several times before I found the Mac store. I went in there, anxious as ever, and was immediately over stimulated again. Everyone who "helped" me was passive and primarily ignored me. When they finally brought out my chord, I watched the "genius" who was helping me, hold it for five minutes as I was consumed by my third panic attack and assisted another customer.

When I finally got home, I was so drained. I cried a lot, slept, and honestly felt like never getting out of bed again.

Since then, my panic attacks have become more regular. I had one yesterday. The cards were stacked against me since... Saturday, I guess.

See, I'm also introverted. Which means I get my energy from time alone and I prefer socializing with small groups of close friends. Usually, I get 2-4 hours alone in the mornings when my parents are at work and my brother is still asleep. I use that time to make myself breakfast, work out, shower, and get ready. In quiet. In solitude. It's nice. On the weekends, my parents don't work, but they frequently go to the gym and then to coffee shops in the mornings, or they go on day trips.

This weekend, however, our entire town was coated in a sheet of ice about three centimeters thick. So I didn't have any time to myself, but I made due. However, when their school district called school yesterday, it meant I was going to miss out on my morning routine. Not only that, but I missed out on that very necessary time I have to re-energize. As I made my breakfast, my mother washed dishes beside me--a noisy chore magnified by the volume with which my father watched the news in the other room whilst he loudly talked on the phone--and frequently bumped into me or tried to conduct morning pleasantries. I retreated to my room where I felt stifled and trapped, but at least I had something like solitude. Except: I could hear the television and chatter from the other room. (Remember my thing about noise?) Moreover, my father came into my room for more pointless pleasantries. So, on top of being exhausted and incapable of conducting myself in solitude, I also felt extremely guilty about how irritated people being pleasant to me made me.

The stress from missing out on my morning routine, in conjunction with my inability to "recharge," followed me along on one of my busiest days of the week (Mondays and Wednesdays are really rough for me). In my history class, we broke into small groups and worked on questions the professor assigned to us. This has been a source of a lot of stress for me recently, bringing me pretty near panic attacks each time we've done it, and yesterday was certainly no exception. It's hard because a whole class of people is talking at once. The group behind us is very, very loud. To make matters worse, my group is filled with extremely soft spoken women who barely whisper as I try to jot down what they're saying. And yesterday, after I asked my partner to repeat herself (yet again) and she still spoke so quietly I couldn't understand a single word to write down, I snapped. Just like in seventh grade, I noticed everything all at once. I felt my chest tighten. I was so consumed with a desire not to cry in an upper level college class that I missed absolutely everything we talked about for the remainder of the class period.

I was in a haze all through out my next class. Not just a haze, but an angry and unpleasant haze. I thought about how there was only one likable person in that class--a cheerful girl who sits beside me helped me figure out what I had messed up on Photoshop--and how everyone was just unnecessarily loud. So, when I got out of class, I went home. I emailed in to my work study letting them know something had "come up" and I crawled into bed where I remained for the next three or four hours.

I decided that I should try meditating daily. Maybe that would help decrease my panic attacks and help get my anxiety "in check." So I came into the basement, thinking it would be quieter than anywhere else in the house. I lit a few candles, I manufactured a mat with a blanket and a pillow, and I put on a relaxation playlist. I closed my eyes and I pictured myself as a rubber skeleton of anxiety. I pictured each tendon of anxiety snapping and rolling into one ball at my center, which would be expelled from my body. But I can hear everything from the upstairs. People stomping around. Music playing. My father talking to the dog. My mother talking on the phone.

I'm a little bit worried. Today, I tried to carry out my morning routine in as much solitude as possible--despite the fact that the school my parents work at and the school I attend have both been closed for today. But, even distancing myself as much as possible, I don't even have the illusion of solitude. And, tomorrow, my parents' school has been closed again. I can't keep having days where I don't have the opportunity to replenish my energy. Last year, there was a snow storm and I was stuck in my old apartment with two of my roommates. By the end of it, I'd gone so crazy. Like, a bit of me exploded by my inability to get some time or space to myself. I can't bear it. You guys. I CAN'T BEAR IT.

...Writing this blog post has not helped calm me down, though. I am feeling very, very unrelaxed right now. So. I think I did meditation wrong. Oops?