Why I Should Never Again Have A Room Mate: Sun

I have come to the conclusion that I won't be able to ever successfully have a college room mate that I do not, in some ways, despise.

Being a semi-only child has ruined this for me. And by semi-only child, I mean I have three older siblings, but they were all old enough to be out of the house by the time I came into the picture. Technically they're my half-siblings from my father's previous marriage, but they lived with us more often than not... it wasn't until I was 3 or 4 that I think we actually didn't have my youngest older sister living with us.

Living as an only child does not in any way provide you with any experience that might be deemed necessary when going to college to live with a room mate. I have to admit that the first semester, I was excited about my new room mate. But there was some sort of mix up, and the girl that I got information from in the mail turned out to not be my room mate because I wasn't good enough for her or something. Never met her, but did friend her on Facebook. Deleted shortly afterward.

Oh no. The room mate I had was to be an international room mate. From Korea.

Now I have NOTHING against Koreans or any other nationality. But this girl was not the best candidate to be sending to the States for me to room with. Or for anyone to room with. The first day I met Sun, I sensed living with her was going to be a challenge. I came in with my parents, all happy and ready to move in... and she was sleeping. I tried to be quiet, but moving in to your room at college isn't exactly something that you can do without making a small amount of noise. After finally getting settled in, I tried desperately to befriend the strange girl who had been forced to be my room mate for the next year of college (which was really like, 8 or 9 months).

We went to dinner together, spent some time watching my tv that I brought with me, talked as best as we could with the language barrier, and spent a very nice first week together.

Then school started.

At first, I was able to deal with the constant sleeping during the day and the constant staying up late and watching weird shows on her laptop until 4 or 5 in the morning. At first, I was able to ignore the fact that I was so quiet and considerate when I got up to go down the hall to the community bathroom and shower, and even would blowdry my hair in there so as not to wake my slumbering roomie, even if she wasn't. And for a while, I was able to overlook the fact that I was the only one constantly vacuuming and sweeping up all the black hair that was falling to the floor around her side of the room.

But eventually it started to get annoying.

I began to grow resentful toward this girl who was sharing living space with me. I began to start hating the fact that she would be asleep when I wanted to watch tv or play my music. I began to start despising the fact that I couldn't get a lot of sleep on the days when I had 8 AM classes because she wanted to stay up late and study or watch shows on her laptop and couldn't be bothered to use the fucking common lounge just outside our door. And it certainly didn't help that I had been trying to do anything and everything possible to be a good room mate, including letting her use an extra Ethernet cable that I had so she could use the internet and watch the stupid shows she stayed up so late to watch. Oh, and I allowed her to use my phone in the dorm several times, without which her parents wouldn't have been able to call her.

There were times during our months together when Sun would disappear for a few days without word, and those days I enjoyed. I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and it was just like being home again but without my parents around. At first I worried about her when she didn't come back every night, but after a while I stopped caring. I actually hoped that she wouldn't come back so that I could have my peace and solitude away from her.

About halfway through the semester, I had a talk with our RA about the situation. I didn't feel that I could talk directly to Sun because she was a) never around, and b) didn't pay attention to me even when she was around. During the mediation with our RA, Sun got really upset at me and started crying because I didn't talk to her, and no matter how much I tried to explain that it was because she never talked to me, she just continued to look pathetic and sniveling until the mediation was over.

A few more weeks went by, and nothing changed.

Well, one thing changed. I was no longer the only one picking up black hair off the floor. But Sun's idea of cleaning the room was taking a tissue -- yes, a tissue -- and running it over the floor with her foot. The first time I watched her do this, I was at a loss for words. Not only was she using the tissues from my desk (I had a budget to live off of every week, so I couldn't afford to start sharing with someone who didn't give me the time of day), but she wasn't even really being effect in cleaning AT ALL. Who the hell thinks that you can effectively clean a floor by running a TISSUE over it?!

Crazy people. That's who.

A few more weeks went by. We were three weeks away from the end of the semester. And I snapped. One night while she was out, I went over to her side of our room and took my Ethernet cable back. (I know, I'm so badass.)

About an hour or so later, Sun came back to the room and tried to get onto her laptop. Needless to say, she immediately noticed her lack of internet and the cable that provided it. She turned to me and for the the first time in weeks, spoke to me. (Mind you, I'm going to be making her sound as though she spoke perfect English, but she didn't. Don't feel sorry for her.)

Sun: Where's my cord?

Me: No idea what you're talking about.

Sun: You took my cord!

Me: I didn't take your cord.

Sun: Where did it go?

Me: I took back my cord.

It was at this point that Sun demonstrated that she knew a chunk of the English language pretty well as she cussed me out. I just stared at her, though I was shaking with adrenaline. I couldn't believe I'd actually crossed the line from "good room mate that lets her roomie walk all over her" to "total bitch". It really wasn't that hard of a transition, to be honest.

After a heated argument that I'm pretty sure the entire six floors of our building heard (we were on the third), both of us stormed out of the room. I went immediately to talk to our RA about what to do, and I have no idea where she went. I honestly don't care. After talking with my RA, I had pleaded my case that she be the one to move. She'd already decided that she wasn't going to stay for the next semester and was going to end her study abroad, so why should I be the one to move? Neither one of us spent the night in that room, and the very next day she moved out.

I had the room to myself for the rest of the week until my replacement room mate moved in. Kaitlyn and I started to bond, and the remaining two weeks of the semester were pretty nice. But interestingly enough, she didn't come back to school for the Spring semester... and that gave me the room all to myself. Too bad it had to end when I transferred to Towson in the fall.

The Disney Saga: Part 2 - ExtraTERRORestrials

If you followed along with my first post, you know that my family and I have just arrived in Florida on a flying death machine. How we managed to do this without actually dying is beyond my ability to comprehend -- or perhaps beyond my desire.

The real reason I wrote that post was to get to this one, though admittedly one of the later installments of the Saga will probably be my favorite. (For the record, I have NO idea how many of these there will be, but there are several stories from my two trips that will give me some stories to tell.)

On the last day of our trip, my mother decided it was time to visit the Magic Kingdom for one last time. In case you know nothing about the Magic Kingdom, this is what it looks like:

The second we stepped off the tram, it started pouring down training. Rather than just go back to the hotel for the rest of the day, we just ran inside and decided to find something to do. Most of the rides were closed, however, because rain does that sort of shit to an amusement park.

Not to be deterred, we turned to the other ride that was available to us. It was called An ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter.

Yeah.

So we go in there with another crowd of people who thought waiting in line in the rain to see the inside of a giant golf balls was crazy and pointless, and end up in front of a robot standing before two vertical glass tubes. All of a sudden, the robot comes to life, and starts to talk to us about teleporting (mind you, this is Future Land... where creative names don't exist anymore). To demonstrate with the tubes behind him, Mr. Robot uses his... erm... dog pet thing Skippy. Things go bad. Basically, Skippy ends up looking like a burnt glob of melted cheese that has been trampled on ten thousand times and then a five year old found it stuck to their shoe and peeled it off so they could take it to class for show-and-tell but the other kids thought it was lame so they stole it and ripped it up and then the original kid that had it finds it and puts it back together and glues some googly eyes on it.

Then we're herded into another room.

It's circular with a bunch of chairs surrounding a giant glass tube in the center of the room. My parents and I took a seat in the third row and sat down. There were television screens around the room as well, so I hoped that perhaps we might just be watching a movie. I failed to comprehend the fact that not only had we just witnessed a space dog being permanently disfigured by a teleportation device, but we were all now sitting in a dimly-lit room in chairs that surrounded a giant version of the mistake we'd seen not seconds ago. Oh. And the chairs had those restraints like what you see on rollercoasters on them. And after you sit down, they come down over your shoulders.

If you read the first part of this story, you'll recall that I FUCKING HATE ROLLERCOASTERS. My tummy gets caught and my legs feel like jello and I feel like my insides are going to come flying out any orifice they can get to.

After everyone gets settled in, this little video pops up (I found it on YouTube to give you an authentic experience for free!). Shit goes crazy and we wind up getting an ALIEN that EATS PEOPLE and the POWER GOES OUT. This thing then starts RUNNING AROUND in the DARK. (Of course, in that video, everyone is LAUGHING and you can see the "alien" getting pulled down... BUT I WAS 8 AND I DIDN'T HAVE NIGHT VISION OKAY?)

This was apparently supposed to be a special effects ride... so as the alien is running around, you FEEL the room shaking, you FEEL the breath, hot and heavy on your neck. And then when the guy comes to fix the power and gets EATEN by the alien, you feel warm liquid on your legs. I wasn't sure if mine was the blood of the guy that just got eaten, the saliva of the alien that ate him, or my own urine. Then you get to the part where you can scream to get the alien back into the tube? How the HELL that works, I have no idea. But you can bet your ass off that I screamed louder than anyone else in that room.

The ride finally ends, and the lights come back on. The restraints are lifted. My parents got up to leave. I stood to follow them... and fell in a trembling, weeping heap to the floor. Uncle Jerry (again, see the first post) had to carry me for about twenty minutes before my legs stopped shaking enough to hinder my ability to walk.

I didn't speak to my mother for about an hour, and when she finally did get me to talk again, there was only one word I could say to answer why I was mad: "Because."

Demon Hamster Moves Into Barbie's House

Sometimes I wonder about my luck with pets.

When I was a little girl, I had the same pet that most young girls have: a hamster. In fact, I had several hamsters. Well, two, but that counts as several to me. The first of these little guys was named Key-key (I have no idea where the hell that came from), and he was white with beady red eyes. Or maybe that's what I remember because that thing was the devil incarnate.

One morning I awoke in my room, and looked to the left where my beloved devil-hamster's cage was. It was more like one of those plastic boxes you put hermit crabs in with a vented top and a water thing attached to it. For some reason, the bottom of the cage was wet, and upon further examination of the cage, I found that the water bottle's spout had been pulled off.

And the other weird thing? Key-key was nowhere to be found.

I jumped out of bed, which really is impressive because I am so not a morning person. (I want to point out that I'm ironically writing this at 7:47 in the morning while at work, and I've been here for two hours already.) After tearing the left side of my room apart for fifteen minutes frantically searching, I turned to go to the other side of the room and continue. I feel that at this time, it is important to mention that I had this huge plastic dollhouse at the foot of my bed that I'd play with my Barbies in.

It looked something like that, except that is like a huge-ass version where kids actually play in it cause they can fit. And mine wasn't like that.

And guess where Key-key was?

On the second floor, staring out at me with his little red eyes of hateful vengeance for being locked in a cage. In retrospect, I can totally see how he'd hate my guts. But I didn't want him to get eaten by the vacuum cleaner, and I was 5. So honestly, I didn't think I was the most inhumane person in the world. But apparently Key-key did. When I tried to pick the little sucker up and put him back in his cage of doom (not even thinking about the fact that he could just escape again), he BIT me.

And this is when "Charlie Bit Me" plays in my head, except it was Key-key the demon hamster. My finger bled for a while, but I just got some toilet paper and wrapped it up so that it would stop bleeding. I was a very resourceful 5-year-old.

My mother swears it was a dream, but I know better. That, and I did still have a cut on my finger from him biting me... TAKE THAT.

Mr. Squirrel, Please Don't Eat My Dogs

When I came home from work today, I didn't think that I was going to come home to a blood bath.

Good news is that I didn't, but it was pretty damn close.

I happened to beat my mother home, which meant I had pup duty. Back in the end of January, we got two Silk Terrier liter mates off Craig's List, naming them Molly and Maddie. Let me tell you, they're monsters. Adorable, fluffy, balls of energy that will lick you to death.

Seriously.

Their tongues could be acid with how intensely they lick you. But that's getting off the subject... Damn my rambling. ANYWAY.

So I came home, let out the pups in the back yard. I heard the phone ringing, so I ran inside to grab the phone. It turned out to be my stepdad calling home to check messages from the hospital (at the risk of getting off-track again, UJ fell at work and broke his back). I went back outside to check on the pups... only to find them frantically barking at a tree. I was confused as crap, and just so happened to have the camera with me... Here's a video of just what they were barking at.

They were barking at a squirrel.

You see, before UJ fell and broke his back, he had this vendetta against squirrels because they were chewing on the side of our house. Well, apparently that led him to think about getting a cage to catch the squirrels. While it sat out on the picnic table with nothing caught for three weeks, he finally puts it down on the ground and one gets caught in there. And the pups found it.

Then mom came home.

Not even that distracted them. And we felt so bad for that little squirrel, so we had to let it go... but see what Molly does as we try to free the squirrel so he can return to his squirrel family.

The Disney Saga: Part 1 - Planes? Or Flying Metal Death Cages?!

When I was about 8 years old, my mother and my stepfather (hereby referred to as Uncle Jerry, or UJ... I'll get into explaining THAT at another time) took me to the most magical place on earth: Disney World.

It was the summer of 1999, and I was excited, as any tiny blonde 8-year-old who has never traveled outside the state before would be. It was my first plane ride. Ever. And I was excited.

Who wouldn't be excited? You're in a huge-ass piece of shaped metal with nuts and bolts all over it, which somehow manages to stay up in the air, even though you can barely get a PAPER plane to fly more than two feet, and that's only if you make the wings correctly. But being 8-years-old, you may not consider this fact and would just continue to focus on the fact that you won't have to sit in the back of your stepfather's pick-up truck for 15 hours while you drive down to Orlando for a week of sweaty teens who wear deceitful costumes of your favorite cartoon characters.

That morning, I was just like those kids you used to see in the old commercials for trips to Disney World. You know, the ones where the kids wake up at 3 AM and drag their parents out of bed, but in a semi-calm and tranquil kind of way. Except that I wasn't one of those alien kids who wasn't screaming with joy at the thought of seeing Mickey Mouse. I was PUMPED. I had everything packed, and I had my Walkman player with my Backstreet Boys tape and headphones ready to go.

I don't remember much about the drive TO the airport, but I do remember standing in line with my mother as we checked our baggage and headed toward the gate. I remember getting on the plane, and feeling the jets humming beneath my feet. I remember going to the very back of the plane, sitting just behind the wing against the bathrooms (which, by the way, never use unless you have to). And most of all, I remember sitting down in the window seat and buckling myself in as best as I could with all the excitement I was experiencing.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that I had an epiphany involving a similar thought path to the paper plane idea I mentioned earlier. And you know what? Miraculously, riding in a car for 15 hours didn't seem that bad. At all. In fact, it seemed like the best idea in the entire world, and I just had to share it with my mother.

I turned to her, the most serious look I could muster on my face.

Me: Mom, I don't think I want to ride the plane.

Mom: Why not?

Me: Because.

When you're 8-years-old, "Because" is the best fucking argument there is. There's no beating "Because." Why? Because.

Mom: Well, we're riding the plane.

Me: WHY?!

At this point, I started to panic. How in the hell was this huge-ass hunk of METAL going to fly when a PAPER plane couldn't?! My mind could not deal with the physics of thrust and drift and all that other crap. I WAS 8. But apparently mom found a way to use my powerful argument against me.

Mom: Because.

Touche, mother. Touche.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to retort to my once bullet-proof argument when it was thrown back in my face. That, and all thought processes ceased when the engine of the plane began to rev. My tiny hands clutched either side of the seat as hard as I could, my eyes bugging out like I was about to spontaneously combust. (Apparently Firefox thinks that "combust" isn't a word, because it's underlined in that red line right now.)

We taxied to the end of the runway with no change in my stiff posture. But don't worry, it only got worse.

If you've never ridden on a plane before, this can be a very terrifying experience if no one walks you through it. As we're sitting at the end of the runway, the engines revving louder every second and causing the plane to vibrate a little more intensely each time (and not in a sexy way), they start to explain emergency procedures over the loud speakers. Effective to a point, but when you're 8-years-old and having a mini panic attack, focusing on putting words together isn't one of your strong suits. It's not your main concern; not shitting your pants is.

Thankfully, mom insisted that I use the bathroom three times before we boarded the plane.

As the safety speech drew to a close, my knuckles were growing whiter with every passing second because of my iron grip on the seat, determined that I would hold onto it when the plane crashed down from the sky a few feet from where we were to take off. A paper plane couldn't go more than two, so how the hell was this thing supposed to make it to Florida?

The pilot made one last announcement over the loud speaker, and the stewardesses disappeared to belt themselves in. And then the plane lurched slowly forward, gaining speed with every passing millisecond.

Something I should probably mention about myself is that I can't do rollercoasters. Why is this important? Because. Because when you take off from the runway in a plane, you get the same sinking feeling in your stomach that you get on that first drop of the rollercoaster.

For someone who can't do rollercoasters, this is a reason to panic.

For some reason, my body thought that perhaps the way to counter this feeling was to extend my legs straight out in front of me, pushing them higher as the plane began to tilt off the runway. And so that's what I did. We began rushing forward, gaining speed, and my legs began to rise off the floor. My knees locked, holding my legs board-straight in front of me in an attempt to slow down the plane and stop the impending doom that I sensed coming closer and closer.

Finally, we lifted off the ground. I felt like my stomach had become full of lead and had dropped out into my seat somehow, and was attempting to pull my bladder along with it. And then all of a sudden, it felt as though both my stomach and my bladder were re-thinking their escape route and thought it might be best to escape through my mouth.

Now I know what you're thinking, and luckily enough for me and everyone else on the plane, I didn't throw up. But it was very tempting to do so.

The rest of the plane ride was rather calm, except for an occasional bit of turbulence. But I'll tell you what; the rest of the week, I tried convincing my mom to somehow find a way home other than taking a plane.

She didn't listen, and we took a plane home anyway.