I hate how you take advantage of me because I’m a good person.  I hate that I was the one who quit my job because you thought working together was putting a strain on our relationship.  Could it not have been the fact that you got in trouble for you substance abuse and couldn’t use your “herbal remedy” to quell your aggression anymore?  I hate that I had to start looking for a job in this economy because you cannot make a six-figure income meet all of ‘our’ needs.  Even though those needs are not mine - it’s your weed, your mushrooms, your alcohol that put a strain on our economic standing, put aside the fact that my weekly grocery budget keeps shrinking and the purchase of the net book I need for school has  been postponed indefinitely.  Put aside the fact that I have decreased the costs of running our small household since I’ve stopped working with you and found shortcuts to make the food last longer - somehow we still can’t seem to make it.  And according to you, that’s my fault.

I hate the way you constantly put down my younger brother and are currently making him face homelessness because you cannot control your aggressive impulses and are selfish.  Put aside the fact that I put up with your car thief, womanizing younger brother when he was staying with us or  your convict friend who didn’t take regular showers and brought over free-loading women.  Put aside the fact that I treated them both with dignity and respect they didn’t deserve, opened my home to their uncleanly habits and picked up after them because it made you happy to have them around.  The fact that my brother helps around the house and makes my day brighter has no impact on your selfish mine because he isn’t related to you.  Apparently my family doesn’t deserve the respect your family does because I come from good, intelligent people; therefore, my relatives should be held to standards that your relatives couldn’t even dream of reaching.  I despise that you laid off my brother under the guise that you couldn’t afford to pay another person, yet you pay your older brother who can’t manage money thirty dollars and hour to work that should only pay out ten to fifteen dollars an hour.  Let alone the fact that you underpaid my younger brother while he was working when you paid your younger brother and convict friend the standard, base pay of ten dollars an hour, even though they were living in our home at the time, just like my younger brother.

 

I hate the fact that I’ve been attempting to keep our home clean while I’ve been looking for work, but every time I get something completely clean, you take it as an invitation to destroy all my hard work.  The reason I wiped up all the ash from the countertops is because I didn’t like it there.  I do not like my kitchen counters to be as sticky as Peggy Bundy’s floors because I have to cook hearty meals there.  Meals that you look down upon because they are not exactly to your taste.  I’m sorry that I like my food cooked differently than yours, and I am a damn good cook, as well.  If you like your food a different way, you should make it yourself and see how hard it really is to make a palatable meal.

I hate how you are always undermining my decisions and dismissing my thoughts and ideas because you don’t see them as superseding the things you think and say.  Your decisions and money management skills have us living from month-to-month when we have quite a sufficient income, and yet you don’t even take a shred of my advice to heart.  My bank account is a hundred dollars overdrawn and we still haven’t paid the mortgage from last month, and all you keep saying is “Oh, we’ll pay that next week.”  Yet, next week never seems to come, does it?

I hate that throughout the duration of our relationship, I’ve changed my mannerisms, my schedule, my way of doing things, my way of organizing, my way of sleeping, my everything, and yet you haven’t changed at all.  Well, strike that, you seem to have changed for the worse.  You keep saying that you’ll find alternative ways to unwind and not be on such a quick trigger - that you’ll try to find a way to relax and destress, yet all you’ve done is displaced your foul moods on me.  And I sit here and try to adapt, to be more patient, to avoid the things that trigger your moods, yet it all goes unappreciated.  I try to keep quiet while you sleep into the afternoon; I try not to point out the way you’re taking advantage of me; I try to remember exactly where you’ve put every little thing - like your keys, cap, and beanie; I try to compromise until you‘re satisfied.  This, however, doesn’t seem to be enough.

I love you, but I can only bend so much before I break.  And I can slowly but surely hear myself cracking, snapping, tearing apart.  I don’t think I can stay together much longer, and when that time comes, all you’ll see is me walking away, my footsteps echoing in the silence.

Honestly, I'd totally forgotten about this blog site, and the only reason I even logged back in was because I read something in an old notebook I had from high school about it, and I wanted to see if anyone had commented in the past few years.  Figured that no one would, lol.

 I suppose when I was younger, that would have mattered greatly, but now that I've grown and changed, I'm not really surprised or upset or anything really.  I've quite grown fond of apathy (and the irony in that is wonderful, isn't it?)

Just figured I'd take the paddles from a metaphorical defibrillator machine to this pretty much dead blog, just to get a blip on the fictional heart rate monitor.  Maybe, soon, it'll get another blip, too.

...and I absolutely love it!  I mean, I still have my "bored" moments, and walking around these hills is hell on my legs, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  I'm glad that I ended up going to UT, and it's just the best school ever!  Go 'Horns!!!

LOL, as you can tell, I so bleed orange.  But serious, great school, awesome professors, wonderful campus, and just some of the best resources and people you could ever come across.  I mean, everyone is really nice, and the school is right in the middle of everything.  I can literally walk wherever I want to go from campus (well, except back to my apartment, lol).  And for places like my apartment, the public transit system is awesome.  Not only does UT have their own shuttle to go from student housing and back to campus, but the city transit system is really efficient, too (my roommate who goes to ACC uses it daily).

Also, Austin is a magnificient city.  Great scenery, tons of things to do, it's so enviormentally friendly (aka - clean air), and it just has this great feel to it.  This really good urban bohemian feel to it...

And, if only classes could be so laid back, but no, we have to have tons of homework.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I love learning, and I know it's a lot of work, but there's way too much of it!  I mean, I sit down and do homework everyday, and I'm still at least a lecture behind in all of my classes.  I have so much reading...and so many Cyrillic letters...I'm gonna go insane, I swear, lol.

That, and my folks are getting pissed at me about wanting to take a semester off.  Thing is, I love going to U, I love learning, but I don't know if I got into college because I wanted to or if I got into college because that was what I "should" have done.  Like...I was just doing what everyone expected of me...

And, out-of-state tuition is killing me...  I mean, I can take a semester off, work, earn enough money, qualify for in-state tuition, and then use the money I earned to go to school for a full year!  Why don't they understand that I don't have to get a degree in 4 years?  It's not like high school; I don't have a "set" time to finish by!!  I'm gonna have to do 5 years of undergrad anyways, so why not take a semester off?  Why not earn enough to go to school instead of digging myself deeper in debt?  I mean, I'm the one who's gonna have to pay all of this back!  This is MY debt, so why do they think they have a say over it?  It's not like they're gonna have to work themselves out of the whole!  And, I can go to school for 2 years for the price of one semester of out-of-state tuition...  It's ridiculous of them to expect this of me...

...still remember everything I did and said; didn't get piss drunk, but I was pretty gone. Um...5 mini shots of cheap vodka, about a 12 ounce glass of cheap wine, a glass of cheap wine and cheap vodka, and half a glass of root bear and vodka. I think the night went well.

I've met a ton of really cool people the past few days in Austin. Met a ton of foreign exchange students, mostly really awesome grad. school students. Hm...a dude named Alton, a dude named Johnathan, a dude named Jeremy, a guy whose name escapes me, a dude named XiaoMin, two dudes whose names escape me as well, a gorgeous guy named Gilberto, um...Ankit, Siddarth, Harsh, Meghna.

I have an awesome roommate named Krista, and one of my other roommates just moved in. Don't know too much about her, but her names Fnan. My last's roommates name's Lindsay, but she hasn't moved in yet.

Met Bryce and Zach yesterday when they came by to help Krista with her showerhead (they couldn't do it), and we went to eat at CiCi's with them (they had coupons for free meals). Krista, Zach, and I went to the pool afterwards, but Bryce and Marie went to get their drinks. Um...went over to their place later on that night, tried to pace myself at first, didn't work too well, obviously. Initially, it was only us two and them and their roommates (Trevor and Omar), but then this really weird dude who was trippin' just came into the apartment and started playing Zach's guitar for at least an hour. He was so fucking gone, ridiculous... Makes for a good story, though (made me laugh so hard). So, we finally got rid of him (well, Zach did), and I had taken about 3, maybe 4 shots by then. Then, Zach woke up Trevor by spraying Tag and catching it on fire in front of his face (Bryce recorded it); it was hilarious! So, after he'd woken up, he went and got a few other people (Beth, Carolyn, Sean, and Andy), and the girls were really cool people, but they guys I didn't talk to. Um...by this point, I had taken another shot, and for a while, I just kinda buzzed, sitting around. Then, they got more wine, so I poured myself a glass of that, and after a bit, the hookah was ready, so I smoked that with a few other people (it was only a mini hookah, though). I finished off my wine and then added the last bit of wine in one of the bottles, mixing it with some vodka. That was not a good idea. I took about 30 minutes to finish that glass, and I was still smoking at this point, so I was messed up. Um...met Jasmine and Andrew during this time period. Finally finished off my glass, poured myself a glass of vodka and root beer, drank about half of it before I felt like I was gonna reverse my digestive system, so I stopped and proceeded to make a fool of myself. Rolling over the couch a few times, flailed around to music, stumbled everywhere, cursed up a storm, went outside, layed down on the pathway before telling myself that I needed to leave (around 2:00AM). So, got up, told someone (I think Zach), that I was leaving, managed to get down the four flights of stairs, half skipped, half ran my way back to the apartment (hearing them laughing all the while from the balcony), managed to get back up four flights of stairs, opened my door, shoved all my shit off my bed, remembered to take aspirin, and fell asleep. It was so much fun.

And, I think I should have fun in this infernal city. Tuition is about $3,000 more than I thought it was, so the whole year would end up being $26,000. Thinking about transfering to Bristol at the end of the semester unless I get a scholarship (I'm hoping I get the two I applied for over summer). If not, and mum makes me stay here the whole year, then I'll just borrow the money from my uncle and pay him back after I graduate ('cause I qualify for home tuition in the UK, and I can defer payments until I graduate). Not to mention, U Bristol is such a better school than UT is. I mean, nothing against the school, UT is awesome, but...it has nothing on U Bristol...in any way.

Okay, so after my fiasco at Campus Estates, stressing out big time because I thought I wouldn’t get to go to school, and finally figuring things out, I ended up in one of the places I told myself I would end up. Yep, Longhorn Landing, dead in the middle of Riverside. I think things went kind of good, kind of bad. The first guy we met, I think his name was Sherman, was pretty cool, kinda unreadable but nifty, none-the-less. He took us on tour of the premises with these two Russian men (one of them was looking for a place for his son), and he showed us a model apartment. So, everyone knows the models are always better than the actually apartments, so I wasn’t fooled by it (and the horror stories people tell on www.apartmentratings.com about this place, so…). Well, after we toured the place, we went back to the leasing office and met with the lady me and my dad talked to on the phone. Lorie, I’m pretty sure her name was, and she seemed like a total flake. Was always getting things mixed up, took forever to get my lease, didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, etc. And then there was this white guy in the office as well who looked like a complete tool. Fake tan, blonde hair, funky short haircut, bad attitude, the works.

Well, we found out when we were at the model home that the complex only does 12-month leases, so the Russian guy got a little upset by that ‘cause his son is leaving in May (I figure he’s an exchange or international student), and the tour guy said the leasing agent might be able to work something out. He also said that I could maybe move in on the 21st ‘cause my orientation is on the 22nd, and the original people said I could only move in on the 25th. So, we got back to the office, and my dad and the Russian guy set up 9 month leases, but they tacked on $50 extra bucks a month, split the special offer in half, and made us pay an extra month of rent (which this Lorie chick didn’t make clear until I’d signed more than half the lease). It took literally hours for us to finish this shit up, and in the end, I signed a 12-month lease anyways ‘cause it only cost $150 or so dollars more and my dad didn’t want to have the hassle of dealing with the 9 month lease (‘cause it seriously was a hassle; she was so unorganized). So, now I’m bound to that place for 12 months unless I find a way out of my lease, which I’ve already looked in to, but now I just need to contact the OPD and get an attorney to check things out.

See, I already have a kind of bad feeling about this place, but I think if I be precautious and stuff, I’ll be okay. I guess I just have to be extra careful and make friends with the right people, which I would have had to do anywhere else anyways, but here even more so because Riverside has the highest crime rate in Austin. Though, that could be because of crimes like theft and not serious crimes like murder, and I don’t have anything worth stealing, so I don’t think that’ll be that big of a problem, hopefully. And the reviews at www.apartmentratings.com say that it gets really rowdy, and I won’t be able to sleep/study there on the weekends, but maybe it’s just a ton of pissy people who exaggerate. Or I could just call Austin PD on them and have them break up the party/arrest the underage drinkers (assuming that I’m not at the party myself, which I probably won’t be ’cause I’m more of a concertgoer/playgoer/museum visitor/private party/stick to my own group/party at the right places kind of girl). And, if worst comes to worst, I’ll just stay at friend’s places or sleep in one of UT’s many libraries or whatnot…

I guess the plus side is that there are a ton of Asians who live there, and quite a few of them are really hot guys. And, hot Asian guys are usually good ‘cause most of them don’t have enough confidence to be assholes like white/black/Latin/etc. guys do, and for the most part, they’re ridiculous smart/funny/interesting/cool/etc. So, if the apartments are as bad as the reviews say they are, I shall just band together with the cool people at the complex and petition or something to try and fix things. If that doesn’t work, someone’s parent or relative has to be a lawyer, and the OPD is always open, right? Yeah, I think I can survive until semester ends, go to civilization, come back for another semester, and then find civilization in my budget in Austin for next year. Yeah, it’ll all work out.