It's cool

that I'm leaving in a week and my room is a mess and I still need to buy a lot of things and try and use up the rest of my food and pack and start taking anti-malaria pills and finish up any last minute projects in the adlab and at work and try and stop thinking about how

I'm really scared that I'm going to have a panic attack when I see all the bugs or that I'll get attacked by gangs or get a tapeworm or fail at all my projects or not come back speaking better Spanish and I don't have time to

work out before I leave and I'm going to get fat eating pupusas and probably won't even have room for my running shoes in my suitcase (not like I'd use them anyway) but

somehow my enduring optimism better kick in soon (i hope) and it will be fine and it will be great because it always is, and I actually am really excited and really grateful

but also a little terrified.

Here's to hoping and praying and wishing that 7 weeks from now I'll be back and healthy and missing El Salvador.

Landlords Suck

My landlords are from Hell. That's all.

Landlords?! More like landtyrants!!

Most of the time I'm a pretty patient guy when it comes to our landlords. I think they may be a little overzealous and a little paranoid and a little stingy and a little... well, you get the idea. So most of the time I just choose to sit back and let other people dog on them. This time broke the camel's back.

I've had enough of their incessant emailing! How many times do they REALLY need to email us!? I probably get more contact from my landlords than I do from my own parents and family!! When are they finally just going to sit back and let things accumulate? Stop changing things. Stop adding things. Stop critiquing things. Let things be, let them run their course. They complain about funding for their mortgages (Which none of us really need to know anything about. Seriously?!), so if it's such a problem then stop making upgrades!! Stop investing more and put that money towards your extravagant debt already!!! We as tenants do NOT need to hear about it, nor SHOULD ever hear about it. It's unprofessional!

Arrggh! Frustrating!

it's not okay.

I used to think I needed to marry a guy who had really high expectations for me because there is something inside me that is stubborn enough to never say "I can't."

Sometimes I thrive in those kinds of circumstances.
But recently, I've realized that, while high expectations help us grow, unrealistic expectations make us give up.

But there comes a point when lines are crossed and the expectations you hold for other people are more than anyone can live up to.
And when you mock them because they fail or because their priorities aren't the same as yours, because they are involved in more than just your life's work,

that's when it's too much.

When I'm getting fired up and all I want to say is:

You just DON'T treat people like that. Just because you are in a position of authority does not give you the right to act like a child.
To ignore people's efforts.
To interrupt them.

If you expect people to listen to you or trust you or ever want to be around you, you have to give them the respect their efforts as well as their successes.

I just have two more words for you: positive reinforcement

Helping to break the Silence

Oh my gosh. I just wrote a very long, very vent-ful post on here and tried to publish it, but blogger decided to give me an error thing and said to go back and try posting again, and then it conveniently deleted my post.

Here is the gist of it:

When I am home, I want to be home enjoying myself and Oregon and my friends and not doing stupid homework.

When I am around Matt, I want to be allowed my private loving of him and not be interrupted by his girlfriend showing up to the wedding that he and I are a part of. (I have loved him for 7 full years now, never got over him, and now that I'm older and wiser I know that what I have felt for him all along is love, even if at a slightly lesser degree than what I more recently felt for a certain someone else.) But it's ok and I only cried for a few minutes last night because I have known all along and still know that Matt and I never could be. I am still hoping to find his clone here at BYU. I'd be all over that in a second.

I want to bring back all of these books that are just sitting in my bookcase here in my room but I don't have room to because I have to fill extra space in my suitcase with my brother's hammock! I want to have a bookcase in my room in our new house but now I will have very few books to fill it with, which will now not include my Harry Potter collection, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Princess Bride, my beautiful, stunning, but 10 lbs set of the Lord of the Rings, and my four copies of the Hobbit (yes 4 and they are all different and I love them all. One is even equal in beauty to my LOTR set). Just to name a few.
I will have room to bring a few books with me that I haven't read yet though. Yay...

I realized that there is probably a way to find a saved draft of my last post but I don't really care. I like this one better anyway.

:)

I thought I'd break the silence on this page. Either all of our lives are far too simple and easy or we've all seemed to find another outlet for our pent up frustrations.

As for me and mine? I'm not sure. Probably the other outlet option.

Nonetheless, here's for hoping our lives are great enough that we don't need to vent.

...just had a thought... we may not be venting because we're not in school currently...

Ps. After reading through the Labels for previous posts I think I may be way out of my league on this site, being the only male writer.

sniff, sniff, sneeze

Allergy season is here.

I wish I could take a sick day from the outdoors.

Just when it finally gets nice outside...I can't stop sneezing.

boo. boo. boo.