Black-Eyed Susan

FIRST EXAM DONE.

I think I did well on the essay portion of the test, but the rest of it was true/false.

The Greatest Night Ever

Wednesday night was amazing.

After a grueling day of midterms, I returned to my apartment for a short nap. My roommates arrived and I bathed. At 4:30 or so we packed up and set out for a Death Cab For Cutie concert in Memphis.

I’m really exhausted from being kept up by our upstairs neighbors and their insane party, so here is a list of all of the things that happened:

• Drove to Memphis.
• Listened to Ashley narrate an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.
• Had a car-wide discussion of our favorite Degrassi episodes. 
• Went to Urban Outfitters.
• Wandered store, coveted a raccoon sweater, but eventually bought shoes that were on sale.
• Somehow got semi-lost in a parking garage.
• Ate at Rendezvous in downtown Memphis. 
• Had delicious barbecue nachos. 
• Saw the Peabody hotel, yearned to chill with the ducks.
• SAW DONALD GLOVER AT RENDEZVOUS.
• Internalized excitement. Watched Ashley spazz out and take pictures of him.
• Donald Glover realized we were freaks and ran away with his posse.
• Realized Jillian was scared of horses. 
• Berated her for fear of incredibly gentle and badass animals.
• Took monorail to Mud Island.
• Realized Jillian was afraid of monorails, berated her for fear of monorails.
• Bought a Death Cab t-shirt.
• Discovered our seats were incredibly close to the stage.
• Rocked out/nearly died/got a sore throat from singing.
• Went home exhausted but happy.

It was amazing. AH-MA-ZING.

I was killing time between classes and scrolling in the deep in the library.

I decided to print a study guide for an upcoming test in an effort to be (somewhat) productive. As I walked to the printer I noticed this girl was looking at a rage comic and I was like, “Hmmm, that looks like the Tumblr background.”

… Wait.

SHE WAS ON TUMBLR.

SOMEONE IN THE J.D. WILLIAMS LIBRARY IS FROM THE INTERNET.

The weather is PERFECT.

Oxford, MS, is officially amazing. The lows are in the 50s, highs are in the 70s.

AND IT’S ONLY SEPTEMBER.

This will be a glorious week. The Week No Susan Would Sweat.

Packing my suitcase for the trip back to Oxford tomorrow!

Yes, it has been a wonderful summer. Now it’s time to hit the books once again and move into my first apartment! I’m moving in with my Freshman roommate Kimmie and her friend Ashley. She seems super chill and really fun, so I am a bit excited!

Going back to school is always bittersweet for me. On one hand I am SO GLAD to get away from my parents. When I think about having free range again I get all

Now don’t get me wrong, I love love love them, and I am so lucky to have parents that care about me so much. But at the same time their love can be overwhelming (not to mention suffocating) when I’m home for extended periods of time. 

But when I think about leaving my best friend Courtney behind I get all

because we are soul sisters and never run out of things to talk about. 

On a more positive note, I’m getting my hair cut and some highlights done at 2:30! I had my hair dyed once, but I’ve never had highlights done. Having my ears pierced AND getting highlights, all in one summer? Whoa there, Susan! There’s no stopping you!

Things I will be doing tonight:

Laundry

Habitarium

Trying to find something to eat that isn’t fast food

Tumblr

Bathing

I am an animal. Don’t know how this dorm contains my awesomeness.

Communication issues.

I was talking on the phone with my mom as I left the gym/Turner Center. At the same time I thought to myself, I wish I had someone to hang out with tonight, my mom sais, in all seriousness, “Don’t go out too much this weekend, sweetie.”

So to recap, my mom pictures  my weekends like this:

when in reality they’re more like this:

Yup.

Class.

What the teacher says:

“Remember to bring your laptop tomorrow so you can work on your multimodal project in class.”

What I hear:

“Remember to bring your Tumblr tomorrow so you can Tumble on your Tumblr in Tumblr.”

This always happens.

I end up having a paper due on Monday but I spend all of Sunday sleeping off Saturday.

Then I decide to sleep until 3:30 a.m. and work on my paper until class at 8 a.m.

But instead of working, my brain takes a detour and I get on Tumblr and fail life.

I’m just going to tell you about my weekend.

So Friday I was cooped up in my room reading and that was really nice. I actually slept. Saturday I went to The Square with a couple of my friends. My list of purchased items includes:

• one cute dress
• one bottle of wonderful perfume
• one delicious steak sandwich from Newks
• one big-as-yo-head ice cream sandwich from the weird pottery store that I’m pretty sure no one actually buys pottery from
• Stephen King’s Desperation
• Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
• By George by Wesley Stace
• The English Major by Jim Harrison (I felt like the title was speaking to me because I’ve always felt like I’m just putting off becoming an English major)

It was a successful trip. Armed with books, I went home (read: the dorm) and started eating my lunch. My friend and I had plans to go to Memphis that evening to see a band. I felt invincible.

Of course something had to go awry. 

When I paused to get my ID card out so I could scan into the dorm, I must have placed my car keys in my Newks bag out of convenience. I forgot about this until later that evening when I was getting ready to go to Katie’s house to get ready for our big night. I suddenly remembered throwing away my bag because my room is absolutely trashed and I was trying to be a clean, proactive human being. 

Our dorm has a trash chute that leads to a dumpster located behind the building, hidden from the public eye. No body wants to go back there, so I made sure I wasn’t missing any obvious clues. A quick double-check of all of my usual “lost spots” (desk, chair, open suitcase, car, pockets, front desk of Stewart Hall) confirmed my worst fears:

My keys were in the dumpster.

I knew the maintenance staff was off on weekends but just to be sure I asked the front desk clerk. I called Katie but I knew she didn’t have a car. I called my mother but immediately regretted it; she panicked and claimed I should call the police to get it out for me. I quickly lied and told her I had found them underneath my desk before hastily hanging up. The last thing I needed was to become the laughing stock of the Oxford PD.

I don’t have a lot of experience diving in dumpsters, and personally I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In fact, I make a point to avoid dumpsters at all costs. Dumpsters contain (or could contain) lots of scary things: raccoons, feral cats, homeless men, serial killers, or all of those things combined into one monstrosity. They are also smelly and unpleasant to look at. However, I knew what had to be done.

I decided the best way to go about this was to fish the Newks bag out of the dumpster with some sort of stick or stick-like object. Luckily I have a Swiffer in my car. Even more lucky was the fact that I have a key pad on my door so I could get into my locked car without keys.

I approached the dumpster and looked for a way to climb inside. This dumpster was at least nine feet tall and at just a little over 5 feet I was dwarfed. I was about to scale the damn thing when I found it: a sliding latch on the side of the dumpster that reached a little above my waist. I was overjoyed, or at least as overjoyed as I could be standing next to a dumpster. I carefully slid open the latch and realized there were worse things than homeless feral catcoon serial killers.

There were giant swarms of bees.

I’m really glad it was summer and campus was practically deserted, because a chubby blonde girl brandishing a swiffer sweeper mop like a medieval weapon and running wildly away from what to the naked eye looked like a normal dumpster probably seemed a little off. I dove into a bush (which in hindsight seems like a more likely place for bees to hang out). I knew I had to regroup. A single bee I could handle, but a swarm of them? Not even I, with my perfect kneecaps and sickly Aryan skin, could win that battle. 

I did what I normally do in situations like this. I called Brannon.

Brannon is my best friend/ex-boyfriend of four years. We have a complex relationship and far too much in common. I like to think of him as my male doppelganger. Mostly, however, we lean on each other for support and play video games/watch movies/go out to eat together. 

Brannon picked up on the first couple of rings. I explained the situation and sought his counsel. Honestly I just wanted him to drive to campus and help me; however I am a prideful creature when it comes to Brannon. He knows this (intuitively at least), and after twenty seconds of giving me useless tips for fighting off a swarm of bees, he asked if I just wanted him to come over and get the keys the himself.

“If you’re not too busy, it’s whatever,” I said in my best cool kid voice. This is hindsight, though, so it may have sounded more like,

“WOULD YOU PLEASE I AM SO SCARED I WAS EXPECTING RACCOONS BUT I GOT BEES AND NOW I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO urghblurghurgh.” (The last bit was me crying.)

I remained in the bush for an undetermined amount of time until I heard Brannon calling my name. I emerged from the foliage and he jumped. Knowing better than to ask why I was crouching in a shrub clutching a Swiffer he asked me to take him to the dumpster. It’s right there you brave wonderful jerk, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. As we approached what I am now positive was a portal to Hell I formed a shield between the dumpster and myself using Brannon’s body. 

He glanced into the open door and then looked at me. “There’s like three bees in there.”

I looked past his shoulder. The dumpster looked like a bee pit. It looked like Narnia if Narnia was full of shit and bees and Aslan was a giant bee.

“Are you blind?! LOOK AT IT!” He gave me that expression I was by now conditioned to. I wouldn’t call it disbelief or disappointment or even frustration. Maybe it was all three.

I’m going to call it love.

I’m pretty sure Brannon isn’t as bothered as he lets on by my misadventures. In fact, this is the first really terrible thing that has happened in a while. I suspect he was getting restless from my lack of fail anyway. In a way I was doing him a favor.

He gently took the Swiffer from me and asked which bag was mine. I pointed to (what I hoped) was my Newks bag. In one graceful motion he fished out my bag, grabbed the keys, and returned the bag to the dumpster. The bees did not seem displeased. He shut the sliding panel and that was that.

I threw myself at him, thanking God or Dumbledore, whomever had provided him with the magic to subdue bees and speak Beetongue. 

We talked for a bit, then he left. I felt like a wizard.

I recounted this tale to Katie, who did not seem as amused as I was. This is normal. We left for Memphis, saw a couple of bands, then headed back to Oxford to eat at Ihop. I stayed at Katies talking to everyone that was there until 5 in the morning. I slept all Sunday.

And now here I am, my paper (rough draft) is due at 10:45 and I have not even finished the introduction.

Katie and I are going to the Square and we are going to be LADIES.

Bored out of my mind.

I tried to go the gym today but it was closed for the Fourth of July weekend.

So then I was going to go to the bookstore but on the way back to the dorm the heat hit me like

I realized that it was ONE MILLION DEGREES FAHRENHEIT OUTSIDE. And Square Books has no AC, so I decided to retreat indoors like the basement dweller I am until it passed.

In other news I have been back in Oxford for almost four days now and SOMEONE hasn’t tried to contact me at all. 

At this point it is getting old. You know who you are, because I am 89% positive that you read my Tumblr.

THAT’S RIGHT. I KNOW YOU DO.

I WILL DESTROY YOU.

So if you’re reading this right now

and

because

and not to mention that

SO

Back at Ole Miss! (For July at least)

Which means classes

and high speed internet

and parties

LOL DISREGARD THAT FOREVER ALONE

Packing to go back to Oxford for the month of July.

Part is me is really excited to go back to school and get away from les parents

while the other part of me is like, “I don’t want to go back to eating shit and sitting in the library all day and being without my best friend Courtney.”

However, my general feeling about packing is thus:

pepperedheart:

Chilling with friends.