PTSD Barbie: comes with a totaled car, soft tissue injuries, and a overwhelming fear of driving. (The complete account of my car accident from my perspective)

     After a long ass time of not posting, I'm going to go ahead and account the details of my car accident.  I'm well aware I came out of the situation extremely lucky, because my injuries were minor and hopefully temporary.  The whole situation, however, was still horrifying and depressing, and I'm going to try my best not to sound somber and morose, but rather light-hearted and aloof.  To steal a trick from my favorite hilarious blog Hyperbole and a Half, if I ever sound depressing or like I'm ranting imagine my voice sounding like cookie monster and it will be so ridiculous and comical all depression will be removed.

So, I guess the beginning of the story is me heading home from work at about 9pm on Saturday, October 23rd.  I was in no particular rush when I came to the turn that enters my apartment.  This turn is in a median which will later be a huge deal since the lack of a light at this location makes it extremely difficult to place blame on anyone but the person turning.  Seeing no cars, the nearest at the light down the street, which is at least a quarter mile away, I turned into my complex.  Well into my turn in my peripheral I see a car coming at me FAST.  I mean like 90 fast.  I slam the gas to try and move out of the way fast enough, but alas, I'm not exaggerating at all when I say he was going 90 mph on a 45 and I heard the horrifying screech of tires before the inevitable impact.

This part is really hard to describe.  I don't know exactly what happened inside my car other than on impact I must have closed my eyes, because something hit my head on the right side, and I literally have no idea what it was, and don't remember registering pain.  I know it was fucking fast.  I felt the impact and the feel of spinning (like when you do a donut in a car) and next thing I know, I'm in my car, which is resting on the sidewalk next to my complex.  All of this was instantaneous, which is why I think at the time I was just shocked and totally calm.

Like I said it's hard to place all my thoughts at the moment except I know I didn't realize how bad the crash was until much later.  Immediately after the crash all I remember was fixing my glasses, which had been partially knocked off my face, and hoping they weren't broken (this is actually something I recalled a day or so later, which is one among many reasons I know something hit my head, even though i don't remember the sensation, or what the hell it was).  A bit after checking my glasses I think the next absolutely trivial, spaced out thought I had was noticing my hard plastic Starbucks tumbler that I had in my hand was on the floor, and had broken a little, but the contents hadn't spilled.  That, and the transponder for passing the toll I had in my car was DESTROYED along with the entire windshield.

I knew there was a cop car directly behind me when I had made the turn, so as I now opened my car door to step out, I looked back and saw said cop with his lights on turning into the scene of the accident and heard sirens coming from down the street.  As I sat in my car about to get out, I touched my head and looked down to see blood all over my hand (another reason I know something hit the right side of my head) and this is were I started to, very slowly, come to the conclusion everything was not alright.

My immediate panic was that I wanted badly to get a hold of Erich, since a small hysteria was setting in and I was literally right in front of my complex.  I stood up and turned around aware that I had forgotten my cell phone, still shocked into a quasi-calm state.  I had a very pressing urge to just walk inside to get him and come back, but knew there was no way that was happening, and remember vaguely mumbling about someone please getting my fiance from inside.  This went on for no more than 10 seconds before the police officers began shouting at me to please sit the fuck down, which is understandable, since I didn't know it at the time, but I looked like an injured hot mess, my lip swollen and bloody and blood running down the side of my face.

(They were yelling at me and the other driver who also chose to get out of his car at this moment and stumbled in the police's direction.  He seemed spaced and the police were screaming at him to sit down when he collapsed at their feet.  He later said he was fine so I don't know why he fell, other than shock, and many ask if he was drunk, but again, I don't know.  It would make sense, since we was going Fucking 90 on a 45 at 9pm.)

This is when a hysterical girl on the sidewalk in front of me approached me practically crying and says, "OMG I'm so freaked out right now, holy crap!  Are you ok?!" to which I calmly replied, "Can I borrow your cell phone? My fiance's inside there" *points*  Again something I hadn't realized at the time, since I was unaware of the details, but the poor girl was probably terrified because apparently both cars had spun in the air on impact and landed where they did (I knew I spun, but had assumed in was on the ground and not in the air) and I now realize she came extremely close (about 50 feet close) to being crushed by my car when it landed.  She lent me her phone and I called Erich.

I recall being calm and somewhat together as I called Erich and tried to tell him to come outside, but he says I was incoherent until I said something to the effect of "Someone hit me.  HARD." and started crying as I had just realized my head was still bleeding, and I was in a significant amount of pain, and there was quite a commotion now around the accident, which I was realizing more and more could have been fatal.  (remember to read this like cookie monster)

Erich later told me he heard the accident from inside the apartment and thought, "Holy crap, someone just got fucked up."  Then he got my phone call and once he realized it was me ran outside barefoot, which he immediately realized was possibly a mistake because the entire exterior was sparkling with broken glass.  He hopped over the hood of my car, which was wedged firmly into a chain-link fence along the sidewalk, and gave me a hug to calm me down.  Upon realizing I wasn't dying anytime soon he excused himself to go inside and grab shoes and the digital camera since he'd seen the damage that I couldn't see because I couldn't move from my side of the car without several public service officials shouting to sit down... again.

At this point I'm going to go ahead and take a break.  To be continued...

Adventures in Retail

While overall I enjoy my job at Unidentified Retail Store there are a few things customers do that really piss me off, or just generally irk me.  I thought I'd share a few every now and again to make light of my frustration and educate the masses on what not to do.  The following two examples are fairly meaningless incidents that bug the crap out of me, I think mostly because of how often they happen.

Scenario 1:

A customer approaches the register with their hands full of items and sets them down right at the edge of the counter in front of them.  This is normally no big deal except when your counters are really long this happens:

Seriously, it will take no effort on your part to push the stuff you're buying slightly forward and save me the effort of diving across the counter awkwardly.  It's not even as bad for me as it is for the shorter associates in the store.  True the company didn't need to make awkward yet stylist registers, but they did so please... push your stuff in my direction.

Scenario 2:

This one is probably one of the things that irks me the most during the day and I know it's SUPER petty of me to get so pissed, but it seems sooooooooo stupid to me.  Like many many stores we have fitting rooms.  These fitting rooms have door hangers that say vacant on one side and occupied on the other.  Pretty straight forward right?  Every so often the door hanger falls off the door the customer picks it up and WITHOUT FAIL says this:

Customer: Hey, here's the stuff I don't want... and this fell off of my door... I wasn't sure what to do with it...

They hand me the door hanger and I say this: No problem, have a nice day =D

What I want to say: It's a fucking Door Hanger, what the hell do you think I'M going to do with it?  Put it on the door, dumb ass.

And this is just two of the moderately stupid things people do.  The possibilities are endless, I'm literally astounded everyday at how dumb people are.  I had a customer try to use the temporary credit card out of the store credit card application without applying for it yet.  It was literally a blank piece of card-stock paper she handed me to pay for her stuff.  I still ask myself if she's aware that credit cards always have numbers on them, or at least writing other than just "sign here" especially if they have no magnetic strip.

Come on people!  I know lots of people are stupid, but I see people who I have no doubt in my mind are functional, reasonably intelligent people in their day to day lives act like complete idiots.  More in my adventures with dumb-ass customers to come...

1000 ways to die and why I'll never shave again

For those of you who don't know there's a show on Spike called 1000 ways to die.  It details gruesome and unusual ways real people have actually died.  It's like the Darwin awards but not always stupid, just odd or original.  They are, however, real stories reenacted with names changed and so on.

Last night I watched this show with Erich for the first time.  It was intriguing and somewhat funny (a guy gets pulled over with a hooker, and tried to hide pepper spray - get this - up his ass, and it went off AND KILLED HIM! Wow).  One story among these was so freaking scary I'm literally shocked.

They introduce a showgirl (I forget the name, but since it was changed to protect the innocent in the first place, I doubt it matters) who according to the show "works all night, and sleeps all day, with little time for mundane tasks like going to the grocery store."  Apparently she hadn't changed the blade on her razor and cut herself shaving.  Fairly common.

Anywho, where it gets grizzly is apparently her razor was so old it had streptococcus bacteria.  For those of you who don't know, here's some wiki for you: "In addition to streptococcal pharyngitis (or strep throat), certain Streptococcus species are responsible for many cases of meningitis, bacterial pneumonia, endocarditis, erysipelas and necrotizing fasciitis (the 'flesh-eating' bacterial infections)."  Guess which one she got!

Flesh-eating disease.  She got flesh-eating disease on her FACE!  She touched her face at some point and it got into a pimple, and the next morning half her face was all "flesh-eaten" and Spike showed it in the reenactment and it was fucking scary.  She went to the hospital, and within like a day her face was basically gone and she died.

This is super scary to me for two reasons, A) I wait way too long to go grocery shopping.  I always say I'm going to go, then don't until my dinner options are mustard and olives.  B) I wait way too long to change the blade on my razor too.  By the time I change my razor blade I could more effectively shave with a butter knife.

The first thing I did this morning was change my razor blade.  I'm officially terrified of shaving, and I'll probably never pop a pimple ever again.  Excuse me while I go save up my money for laser hair removal.

*sigh* I hate college

I have an exam at 7:25 AM tomorrow (today?), which I intended on staying up tonight to study for.  UF in an all time gesture of BS decides right now is a good time to cancel my registration because I have yet to pay tuition.  This also revokes my access to any online materials for my courses (AKA everything) so now I'm going to read the text book to try and learn as much as possible before my exam, which I may or may not be allowed to take.

I know, I know, this is what I get for procrastinating, but seriously?  This is harsh; they know this is the week like every class is giving an exam.  I have online homework I PAID FOR on the online access.  Grrr... I'm furious.  I may not have a right to be, but it's still bullshit.  Why not allow me to take the freaking class and deny my credits until I pay like a normal, reasonable university would?  Obviously I have to pay up sometime, but I'm sorry if two-grand doesn't fly out of my ass whenever I give a shit.

I think my ultimate resource here is my credit card, I've got enough credit on it to pay the tuition off, however, in another bold stroke of "fuck you"-ness I can't just pay and get access back.  I have to "re-enroll myself" as a student this semester and the office in which I do that doesn't open till fucking 8:00 AM. Then my petition to re-register has to be approved by a committee.

I hate all the red tape at UF.  I love the institution, don't get me wrong.  The education is superior and it's the #1 public university in all of Florida, plus all the amazing strides as a research university (We invented Gatorade!  Hellooo, we're totally awesome, lol, jk we're awesome because we invented all kinds of medicine too.) and the animal science program is Fucking Awesome.  The Vet School is ranked 11th in the state and that's because 3 schools tied for 4th, 5th, and 6th.

In spite of all this (or perhaps BECAUSE of all this) everything here is a chore.  People say "Oh, that's all universities," but it's not.  All universities DON'T put a hold on your record if you owe so much as 50 bucks.  I have friends attending universities right now who owe tuition in the thousands.  I also know other universities don't kick you out of your major if you're "off-track" which could mean you took your classes in the wrong order, or you couldn't get into one of your tracking courses because it was full.  Doesn't matter, you're off track and you HAVE to change majors.  Forget that this will force you to pick a major you don't want and are probably also off-track for.

*sigh* I hate college.  I can't wait for it to be over.  Now to go read 4 chapters in the next 3 hours and hope my teacher says "Sorry, I can't let you take the exam now.  Take the make-up once you re-register."

PS Sorry for the pissy rant.  I'm furious this had to happen specifically tonight, when I planned on looking over all the notes, recordings, and web-inars located online.

Twitter made me it's bitch

Since the inception of Twitter I've thought it was a stupid idea.  I remember hearing about it like this: "It's like Facebook, except only status updates.  Like people will update what they're doing ALL day.  'I'm eating breakfast.'  'I'm in the shower.'  'I'm going to work.'  Who cares about all the insignificant crap you do all day?"

I wholeheartedly agreed, and decided it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of.  I was always a FB reject anyway; I NEVER checked my FB until I got a smart phone and the FB app was freakin awesome and effortless.  At this point I noticed a Twitter app and thought "Meh, I've gone this far, F' Twitter."

Now recently I've noticed pretty much everyone I know has one.  I wasn't too worried about it.  In a recent conversation at work (I can't talk about certain work aspects on social media; we had to sign something.  I'll literally be fired.  They were very vague.  I think I'm in the clear with the stuff I talk about, but just to be safe, from here on out I work at Unidentified Retail Store, or URS, whenever I feel the need to bitch about stupid customers) some coworkers brought up Twitter.  My friend says, "I think I'm the only person on earth without one," to which I chimed in a hearty "Me too!"

This spawned the "This is why I like it" conversation, and I think the winning point was: When you follow comedians they post hilarious tweets.  Now I'm thinking, "Score, I totally want to hear Dane Cook and the like be funny all day long...."

And thus, I made an account tonight, I'm already following 25 people/things and have 3 followers, of which I only know 1 of them personally.  Yup, I just became Twitter's bitch.

PS If you happen to know where I work don't out me on here so that I can post awesome customer fail moments and not be fired.  Thank you =D

My gym hates me

My cycle of tired

So, I am a major insomniac, mostly because I'm nocturnal.  If I had it my way I would go to bed at 5am or around then and wake up around noon.  Add to this that life in general doesn't allow for this system (see also: school, work) and I get very little sleep.  This has made it so I can skate by on 4 hours a night of sleep and feel totally fine, in fact I often wake up completely naturally after 4 hours anyway.  In some cases however, I get less than 4 hours and this is where it gets hairy.

This is the single most common mistake I make.  I do it no less than once a week.  Sometimes, I have some commitment at some unceremoniously early hour (for example this semester, although I tried my hardest not to, I have class Mon, Wed, and Fri at 7:25 AM).  This ALWAYS causes the same lapse in judgment.

The fact that I have to wake up early, in this case at 6ish makes me think, "Ok, self, I need 4 hours to function properly... be in bed by 2 AM.  No later."  This seems like an awesome plan and I go about my day content with myself and the responsible human being I'm about to be.  The problem, however, is that needing to wake up early doesn't make me any less nocturnal, and my attempt at rearranging my sleep schedule already failed monstrously (this is also something I convince myself I can do every semester and also always goes badly).

The night proceeds in one of two ways.  Either I go to bed early with every intention of magically making my body obey and go to bed, or I decide to stay up until my designated bed time.  (The other alternative involves taking sleeping pills but I rarely do because I fear taking them with less than 8 hours set aside to sleep, and as someone with lots of things to do I just can't spend 8 hours of my day sleeping.  There's no time.  Plus most of them don't work.)

The first scenario plays out with me lying in bed and staring at the wall, the TV, reading, or doing nothing for hours, well past 2 AM.  The doing nothing is because damn near everyone tries to say, "You're problem is you don't try to go to sleep.  You shouldn't do other things; just lay in bed and sleep."  Well, thank you, asshole, but if that really worked I wouldn't exactly have this problem, and go through the ensuing misery on purpose.  Dick...

The second scenario involves me staying up till 2 AM, then either going to bed, in which case see scenario number one for the result, or realizing that my deadline has come and I'm still not tired.  This is where my head starts doing some math to try and figure out exactly how long I've been awake, how many mandatory responsibilities I have the next day and thus how likely it is I can simply stay up for the entire time needed.

Another X-factor here is my boyfriend.  (He's really my fiance, but I still feel a little weird calling him that.  I think he drilled it in during the many years he feared making me think we might ever actually get married.)  If he's been good at his only responsibility of sleeping all day long, he may have just woken up in which case I have my golden opportunity.  I can stay up, hope for the best, and, in case I fall asleep too late, I can count on him to drag me by my ankles out of bed and sending me out to the world to accomplish said responsibilities.

If the boyfriend hasn't just woken up, I go about setting at least 7 alarms (I'm not exaggerating it really is at least 7) for 5 min time intervals around my goal wake up time, allowing for snooze.  If he has I stay up intending to make it until a reasonable time in which the getting ready process will keep me up until I head out the door.  Depending on when I woke up the previous day this often goes through without a hitch, I make it to my classes/work, come home exhausted, but all is well, I'm done, and now probably can't sleep.

Alternatively though, I run out of my lifeblood (caffeine) and/or have overshot my staying power without drastic measures [which are only called for in the case of REAL commitments with consequences like taking some big test (SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT so on) or work (cuz there's no such thing as job security in retail and me likey money, incidentally so does my landlord)].  This ALWAYS happens literally an hour before I need to be up anyway.  I have the glorious (and by glorious I mean retarded) idea of taking a "nap" and having my boyfriend wake me.

This is the a fore mentioned mistake that I repeatedly make and always ends badly, just sometimes when you're THAT tired it's hard to think clearly about how dumb this is and your brain supplants reason with "me likey sleepy."  So when Erich (boyfriend) comes in to wake me up after roughly 45 min of sleep he is met with the angriest, incoherent little bitch you've ever seen.

It's seriously amazing how unbelievably pissy I am after less than an hour of sleep.  If you have a cat you know most cats hate water.  Imagine the way cats act when you try to submerge them in water only transformed into a human you're trying to pull out of bed.  This is grossly exacerbated if you need to ask me any questions.

I simply don't have the mental capacity to understand what came out of your mouth while I'm still semi-sleeping, but I still try.  Instead of succeeding I either say something that makes no sense, get unreasonably angry because you're not making any sense, or both.  Particularly if I answered nonsense, which figuring out some nonsense to answer already pissed me off, then you ask "What does that mean?" which is another question AND requires that I remember the first question AND my nonsense answer AND how I meant the nonsense answer, which makes me downright pissed off at you.

After all this BS I wake up REALLY FUCKING ANGRY, and with 15 minutes to get where I need to be (makes me more angry).  Now I'm a rushed little pissed-off ball of confusion and I look like a hot mess.  You can see where this outrageously tired, mad, coffee-seeking disaster doesn't function well in class.  It's ok though, because with the onset of tape recorders I've found: nap time = any time.

The resultant delirious day goes by and I plan to crash when I get home which is perfect because viola!  I'm in bed early!  Score!  Not... I can't sleep more than 4 hours without actively trying so now I wake up between 5pm and midnight, which gives me better odds of staying up all night tomorrow.