Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day

Today is one of those days. I feel somewhat of a bond with this cat:

My boyfriend, Shane, and I got up early this morning to go over to a friend's place to do our final loads of laundry before leaving tomorrow. I was having a really good dream when I got woken up. I haven't had my cappuccino for the day, and I got stuck carrying Shane's heavy briefcase on the long walk over there because the backpack containing our dirty laundry looked "stupid" on my small frame. 

Now I'm stuck here for 2 1/2 hours to wait (blasted slow European washing machines). Shane is using the laptop for schoolwork, and I finished my only book yesterday. My primary, and only,  source of entertainment at the moment is my exam study materials, but lack of my daily caffeine zap has left me hopelessly lethargic and less than perky.

I'm in a bad mood. 

To be honest, I've always been a mood-swinging person. But it's gotten better over the years. When I was younger (you know, those hellish teenage years?) I would fly off the handle at the simplest request or comment from my parents. Call it teenage hormones, or the desire to not live 1/2 mile from my private academy, thus forcing me to live at home while all my friends were enjoying wild freedom in their dorm rooms. But I would come home from school (my parents were also teachers there...geez, I just couldn't get away even if I wanted to), and it seemed my mom was there waiting to pounce. 
"Hi, did you have a good day?"
"It was fine." Glower and glare. But before I could run to my room, which was only 3 feet from the front door, the dreaded words had already emerged from her mouth and I couldn't pretend to not hear them:
"Before you get caught up in something would you please unload the dishwasher?"
"GAAHH!" Huge annoyed sigh.  "I'll do it later!!! I just want some time to relax!!" 

This went on for a few terrible years--my anger that is, along with some depression--until my parents forced us all to go see a family counselor half an hour away. The ride there was awkward, at best, with me sitting in the very back of the van sullen and annoyed. The counselor was terrible at her job. When I told her the story of getting fired from camp, her eyebrows shot up and she bellowed, "WHAT??!!" Aren't counselors supposed to keep their faces and expressions void of emotions like that? If so, her career was an epic fail. We didn't go to her for long. 

I started taking the antidepressant Zoloft after that, which made me so giddy and happy that my family started getting annoyed and probably wished I were still depressed and reclusive in my room. Pretty soon my mom suggested I take only half a Zoloft. I pouted about how they didn't like me angry and they didn't like me happy either. Over the next year or so I quit Zoloft because my temperament evened out a bit, probably because I was finally away at college with unabashed joy at my independence.

What's left in the anger's place is my moodiness. If I think about something maddening or unhappy too deeply, I'll go into a sudden and often misunderstood sulky and depressed silence. During these times I probably repel people like someone who just stepped in dog crap. When I'm happy though, I can be the life of the party. My friends and classmates over the years have been close, but also keep the slight distance of those who never know if you're suddenly going to become the bore of the party. I should really work on that.

Thankfully I still have those good friends who stick by you no matter what, a great boyfriend who puts up with me (I don't know how), and a family that loves me regardless. 

I always have to tell myself that most things really aren't a big deal. And remember, if something makes you mad, sit on it for a while and think before you speak.... Like this guy:  :)

America The Beautiful

I'm more than ready to go back to America. It's time.

I miss the conveniences, such as knowing exactly what something is when I look at it in the grocery store, or being able to go to just one store--preferably Wal-mart--and get everything I could possibly need rather than going on a mad hunt through 5 tiny, measly-stocked shops. I'm tired of trying to decipher restaurant menus to determine if the pasta contains pork (cause I don't eat pork, remember I'm Adventist), and I'm tired of the coperto (cover charge) that comes with the luxury of sitting while I eat.

And the hotels....we had an apartment for most of the time, but before our 3-week trip we moved out to save money, since after the trip we only had one more week before returning home. So we're staying in a hotel, the price of which would get us a grand room with a jacuzzi tub in America. But no, the hardwood floors (they don't seem to believe in carpeted rooms here) are frighteningly saggy, the large bed is actually two twins pushed together (another typical European shortcut), and the toilet is the kind you actually turn a knob on the wall to make water gush into the bowl until everything [hopefully] goes down. 

My mom sent me an email last night with a book excerpt that I found really hilarious because it's so true: 

Don't get me wrong, after being back in America for a few weeks or months, I'll probably be whining about how I wish I were back in Europe. In fact, I think 3 months is about the turning point; the first two months you're still in novelty-land, but the third month is the homesick month. After you pass that time hurdle, it starts to feel more normal to be living in a foreign country, and you actually begin feeling more at home. At least that's how it was for me when I was in Poland for a year. As happy as I was to be going home, I had begun to feel at home in Europe. 


Notes to self for next time though: 
#1--Don't travel for more than 2 weeks at a time
#2--Travel more like a business woman with a hotel room and rolling suitcase rather than a homeless waif with a youth hostel and muscle-spasm-inducing backpack
#3--Go when you have more money...it will help accomplish #2

Six more days. I can do this. For now, I'm going to try to avoid the cleaning guy who peeks around the corner at me every time he goes to use the elevator. 

Be You

I've been waiting to write this all day, but just my luck as I was typing the beginning words, the workers at my hotel in Italy decided to mess with the wireless router. The end result was no wireless and everyone walking away shrugging their shoulders as I stared after them with a disbelieving "WTF?!" on the tip of my tongue. It's been 5 hours since then and I finally marched down to the front desk and waded through the language barrier to inquire exactly how long they planned to deprive their guests of internet. To this, three of them poked and prodded around until they had it working again, much to my satisfaction.


Yes, I'm in Italy--Milan to be exact, the most impersonal and uninspiring city Italy could possibly have. My boyfriend is doing a 3-month exchange program with his university in California and of course being the girlfriend I was the lucky guest who got to follow him. Some days I think of how privileged I've been to have this opportunity, and other days I can't help but wonder what was wrong with me when I agreed to drop everything and endure three months of this. It's not just all fun and games. While he's away at classes every day, I don't flit around town shopping and living the life. No, I agreed to come here while I finished studying for my board exams as Physical Therapist Assistant. The exam I should have taken, oh, months ago? But thanks to my procrastination, the school's lag in processing paperwork, and my enormous fear of this impending 4-hour hell session, I'm still plugging away at it. 


Add to that the fact that we're living here on strict budget. Actually I shouldn't even say that; we surpassed our budget a long time ago. We're now living on credit cards--his credit cards, seeing as I haven't had a job in about a year now and my funds are non-existent. Lack of money makes traveling around Europe (because yes, we just did that for 3 looong weeks during a lull in his class schedule) a little sub-par.


Thankfully I'd already seen nearly every city we stopped at, thanks to my year of teaching English in Poland with my sister in 2006. Now that was an interesting experience. Ten months cramped in a tiny apartment that we also shared with two other women, one of them in her 50's--we were under 25. Don't get me wrong, my sister and I are great friends and always have tons of fun...when we live in separate houses. Not one single room with no privacy. In the mornings, if we didn't keep a window open, we were always faced with a terrible peculiar smell in our room, like a combination of mildew, rotting food, and sour breath. It's hard not to wake up in a bad mood when that's the first conscious breath you suck in every day. 


But the times when my sister and I traveled Europe alone, fending off the guys and hopping moving trains, are ones I will never forget. Despite our many cat fights, we rocked that trip, and came out the other end closer than before. I'm lucky to have her as a sister.


I'm also lucky to have the parents I do. Still together after so many years, they are my dual solid rock, and I don't know what I'd do without them. Oh we've had our moments....or maybe I should say years. I gave them hell all throughout my teenage life, and still today I probably make them beg "WHY!!! Why can't she be more like her sister!!!" I'm definitely the black sheep in the family. Possibly even the entire family--extended and all--with the exception of an older cousin who I'm pretty sure disappointed her parents' expectations just as much as I have mine.


The funny thing is that I would be considered an angel compared to most. I can't say it was easy being a teenager in my parent's household. Despite the fact that they never raised their voices, hit, or belittled, they were strict in nearly every aspect, albeit in love. Probably a large contributing factor is because we are Seventh-day Adventists. Adventists seem to develop a bad reputation for being strict and boring. Although slander against my religion tends to raise my defenses,  I don't necessarily disagree. Growing up I was restricted from doing a lot of things because of the "SDA beliefs". Things like no dancing, no jewelry, no revealing clothes, no bad language, no rated R movies, no drinking or smoking, no eating "unclean" meat (I'm fine with that one), no doing anything remotely "worldly" on Sabbath, no sex before marriage, etc etc. I'm pretty sure the Adventists of today could get into a huge fight with the older generation Adventists who still actually follow all these rules to the T...oh wait, actually they already have.


My mom especially, who was converted to Adventism as a teenager after a life of being "worldly", is so adamant about following the Bible and the Adventist beliefs that she literally cannot comprehend why I would make the choice to do something I know isn't right. My dad seems a little more understanding, but if he's shocked he usually tends to keep it to a facial expression that says "well that was stupid". 

It's unbelievable to me how I've never once heard my parents even say a bad word. And I'm not talking about avoiding the F bomb, I mean I've never even heard them say "crap" or "hell" (unless they're referring to purgatory). I remember once my dad told me not to say "freakin'" because it was a spin-off of the F word. Huh?! If I were to invent a word to use when I felt the need to spout off some frustration, and then everyone else starting using that same word when they stubbed their toe or accidentally deleted their term paper off their computer, it would suddenly become a word I could no longer say tastefully. 


Bad language is the least of my problems; I really don't care for cussing anyways. The real disappointment for my parents came when I hit college. That was when I got my belly button pierced, went dancing for the first time, and discovered that my new single-hood after the breakup of my first high school boyfriend of 3 years was the best thing to happen to me yet. I still clearly remember when I went home during a school break and, after an argument with my mom over something completely unrelated, blurted out that while we were fighting I might as well tell her I got my belly button pierced too. She called my dad into the room and it was like I'd just had an affair with a married man...."Why, why did you do this!" Of course, being taught all my life that putting holes in your body for the sake of vanity is not what the Bible teaches, my mom couldn't understand why I would do it. My dad was more to the point: "What do you like about it?" 
"Well....it's pretty and I've always wanted to do it." 
Long pause. "Well, we're very disappointed in you." 


But the good thing about my parents is that once they've talked to me about my bad decision, made it clear how they feel about it, and remind me to stay close to God, that's usually the end of it. Not once since that day have either of them said a word about my belly button piercing, and I doubt they ever will. 


I've done my fair share of disappointing and shocking them since. I always seemed to get into trouble with boys, once even getting kicked off staff at summer camp because me and a guy "friend" decided it would be fun to spend our night off in the camp's fire tower. The most we did that night was kiss, but the camp director and everyone else seemed to think we'd gone at it like rabbits up there. I spent the rest of that summer pulling weeds out of my dad's never-ending Iris garden. 
 
Discovery that I didn't save myself for marriage and two pierced ears later, I've told my mom that I think I'm through doing things to disappoint her. Only now I've kinda started to want a tattoo.... But my boyfriend doesn't like that idea either, so most likely it won't happen. But if I do, it will be a black-light tattoo that reads: "I belong to me"....it's a Jessica Simpson song that really hit home to me a few years back, and because of that I want a constant reminder that no matter what, I am my own person.

Truth be told, I'm glad my parents were so strict with me when I was young, because I like to think I turned out pretty good. They've gotten better at just saying "oh" when I tell them something horrifying, and they've still been there for me and love me with all their hearts no matter what. And the feeling's mutual. Perhaps though, you can better understand the title of my blog now--remember the things you were taught, and be the best you can be--but be you. Be something extraordinary.