Laundry day, I avoid you,

Laundry day… just no,

Oh Laundry day I hate you.

If that short Haiku does not tell you how I feel about laundry then let me just tell you flat out how I feel about it all. For starters I HAVE NOTHING CLEAN LEFT!!! Literally ran out of yoga paints a week ago, and if that’s not bad enough I am about to run out of jeans, PJ’s, most importantly sweat pants, and socks. This means if I do not do my laundry tonight chances are I will walk into class tomorrow wearing a shirt three sizes to big, a skirt that is three color shades to wrong for my one clean shirt, and a sweatshirt that probably should have stayed at home or at least in my dorm room.

But seriously I hate laundry. It is so incredibly annoying because I wait until the absolute last day… or sometimes a little after that to do my laundry, so that basket is packed, I am talking barely gonna get that zipper shut, going to need three to four washers, not even sure the last time that shirt has been cleaned full. Then I have to lug that downstairs (okay actually to the elevator because I am lazy on laundry day and there are to many steps) to the laundry room while trying to balance my soap, dye catch sheets, and remember to grab my ID.

When you finally get down there, there may or may not actually be an open machine, or in my case four open machines to wash your clothes, that machine may or may not already have clothes in it, and someone may or may not hate you when you pull there clothes out to make it open. Then you have to pay two dollars a load (and I jam my laundry in there, so I am not even sure if it actually gets clean), you have to set a timer so you don’t become “that kid” that holds up the washer forever, and then you have to go all the way back upstairs because lets face it… the basement is super creepy.

So after the clothes are actually washed you have to go back downstairs, switch them into a dryer (which is never open by the way, I am pretty sure the one still has clothes in it from move in day), and set yet another timer so you don’t forget. Here is the catch, you clothes never actually dry in the dryer and so eventually you have to go back downstairs to have them run the cycle again which means setting another timer and remember to go back down again.

So after its all finally dry you lug it back up to your room, stick them in the corner, and by that time I just forget to fold, so they hang out in the corner of my room until I go through them again. I eventually get them put away especially after I get enough comments about how there must have been a tornado that ripped through my room to make it look like that. Then in one to two weeks, I do it all again.

So in the end I hate laundry, but it is a necessary evil so it will all get done…. maybe if you see me in that outfit I described earlier…. well you know why.

So this week my struggle has to do almost purely with canning. Canning is fantastic, you get to meet people, fundraise for THON, and dance like an idiot (which I actually really enjoy). But hosting, hosting is next to impossible. For starters I had to convince my parents that sure, 10 kids is fine, we could fit 10 kids in our basement. That may be a stretch of the truth though, we will find out this weekend. Then I was informed I must find a place to can, well this is where all hell breaks loose and I go a little insane. I called 13 businesses, I was given permission to can at one, I called 7 areas, I am allowed to can at 2, I mean come on all I want to do is raise money for the kids! But enough about that, I am sure it will be fine, I will just be stuck to my phone for the rest of my week.

Also sickness, now that is a struggle. Its like… should I go to class? should I do homework? Should I even wake up? I am so bad at judging  how sick I am when I first wake up, I mean I wake up and I am like yeah I feel better than yesterday, lets do it!!! And five minutes into the day I just die, but by then I am already up, already in class, and so I just get on with the day.

Then there is homework, as in once I am behind, I stay behind. Now trust me when I say that I have been behind since… pretty much day one. The issue is that when I get behind, I just tend to leave everything there. For instance math, I am so behind, I am talking probably a month on the homework and probably two weeks on the lessons, lets not even talk about the reading because that is just not happening at this point. I am behind, and I need to catch up, but at this point I am having way to much fun avoiding it all and pretending that I will have time at a point near in the future. And so I continue to go to hockey games, football games, and hang out with friends rather than do what I actually came to college to do.

And lastly I struggle with walking, I mean am I that lazy if I decide to take the CATA bus? Come on it pulls up right in front of my dorm, its right there!!! Admittedly I try to walk, try to exercise, and try to be active, but honestly on days when it rains or I am just lazy than yes, yes I use the busses. I mean I have tried to limit it to just really far away places like the BJC, but really when it gets cold out, that just may not happen.

Oh and I lied one last story, I was in physics the other day and we were doing a lab and so I asked my TA if something was constant for the whole lab, he said no. But it didn’t make sense if it was constant so I asked again, again, and again. Well after asking him four times, spinning in my chair twice, and breaking two pencils in frustration he came over and told me, “that problem is easy, you solve for the answer using this which is constant.” Well just a heads up to everyone, apparently there is a code to get things in classes, I would try the classical jump twice, ask three times, and skip like a kangaroo, but I think we all just need to figure it out.

So good luck to everyone and have a good week. Struggle on my friends, struggle on.

Technology, that is by far the struggle of the week for not just me, but I am sure many others as well. This week my computer has officially died along with its entire memory bank and my hopes of having an easy week. Grant it losing a computer is not the end of the world, there are much worse things that could have happened, but in an era where technology tends to rule, its definitely not fun having to find a computer lab every time you need to do homework. Plus to lose all of my pictures and documents, if I wasn’t to sleep deprived for all of this to register I probably would have broken down in tears when I heard the news, but alas my brain operates at an extremely slow pace as of late so I still have barely noticed.

So anyway going back to the computer lab experience, its really not to bad, I live really close to the lab so its not to hard to get there, its more the judging stares that I hate when I walk in. No they aren’t judging my papers, my pile of books, or even the tired look that is displayed across my face, but rather the pajamas that I have accidently run out of my room in. While I have not had my own computer I have had a few close calls with assignments being due, and so I tend to literally run into the computer lab and tackle a computer in order to submit my assignments on time. The issue is that this is often late at night or early in the morning that I remember this, so more often than not I am in plaid pajama pants and a shirt 3 sizes to big. Essentially I look like a bum when I go to sleep and so that is exactly how I show up in the computer lab when I go to turn something in. And so occasionally I get some way to judgy stairs as I have a panic attack about whether I will get my assignment in or not. I mean its not like I always look like that, I try and look relatively decent in a day, (except for in EDSGN but that’s because its an 8 a.m. so I just roll out of bed, I am going back to sleep later anyway!) but its like the 5 minutes that I go into public dressed liked an idiot, and so of course I always have to see someone that I know.Its kind of the same thing on laundry day, I mean its laundry day, how nice to people really expect me to look well all of my good clothes are dirty? And the answer is apparently half decent, because one laundry day my friend from high school texted me and told me to come and visit her in her boyfriends room.

Now I had been friends with both of them for years and so they had seen me in worse than the outfit I was currently in so I decided to visit while my clothes were drying. Now as I am walking up the stair it occurs to me that they probably have friends so I wanted to check and make sure none were currently visiting. After giving it some time and receiving o response to my question inquiring if there was anyone else there, I decided the coast was clear. To my wonderful surprise I walked into a room of nicely dressed people as I stood there in the doorway with my laundry detergent and me in old gym shorts to be greeted by other people that I had met or lived in my building. If that wasn’t great enough my wonderful but slightly judgmental friend then began her “your shorts are to short” rant that let me know that yes, yes in fact I was being judged. Well after that incident I have learned to hide in my room on laundry days in order to avoid this, after multiple lab incidents I have learned to try and avoid needing the computer past my shower, and now I attempt to hide in my room if I look… less than decent because moral of the story, you will be judged and you will see someone that you know.

Let me preface this entire blog with the fact that I like food and sleep, I eat on a regular schedule and used to sleep 8 hour nights and I am grumpy if I am hungry and anti social if I am sleepy. Now that all of this has been said you have to understand that I also over volunteer and forget to schedule time for eating and sleeping among all of my other activities and so I am pretty sure that my body officially hates me.In just today I have eaten crackers and a granola bar for dinner, drank five hour energy instead of sleeping, and now I am already preparing to go to sleep at 2 a.m. to wake up for an 8a.m.

Now I understand that this is actually quite a common occurrence among college students, but seriously if I chug one more cup of coffee instead of sleeping I think that despite the influx of caffeine I may just take a nap on the concrete steps outside of the library and call it a day. Not to mention I think I am supporting the granola bar business with my less than stellar eating habits. I know that peanut butter bars don’t necessarily satisfy all of the food groups of the pyramid, but for now its going to have to do, thats where five hour energy comes in right? It has plenty of vitamins to make up for what I am missing…. I hope.

But this struggle seems like nothing when I compare it to the true struggle of college, and that is keeping names straight. I have been walking with a kid to one of my classes for a solid month now, but I have no idea what his name is. I could ask, but at this point its just a little awkward. I even tried to introduce him to my roommate so that she could tell me his name later, but to no avail, neither of us know what it is, or even what letter it starts with. Once someone tells you there name you are sort of expected to remember it, well that doesn’t happen and so here are some tips on how to avoid the awkward “what is your name again?” conversation by avoiding the use of there name or just making it up and getting away with it.

I use the classic approach of just sticking with calling them “you” and greeting them with the classical “hey you,” or “hey whats up?” therefor completely bypassing the awkward name game.  Another approach is to also make up a nickname for them thats more fun to remember, I called a friend of mine Bucket because not only was it a fun nickname, it also made it easier to memorize her name. I mean keeping it interesting is definitely the way to go, but then you still have to memorize the nickname, maybe the best thing to do is to just tell them that you are going to call them a new name every day for fun, when in reality it just makes it so you NEVER have to memorize on name for them.

In the end though maybe its just best to ask them again, I mean I think most of us are used to people forgetting our names. On second thought though, its been a month so I think I will just stick with “you.” As for the sleep, well I will get there, I mean if you add up the 5 hours of sleep I got last night with the 5 hour energy I drank today its like I actually got ten hours right?