Extraneous Details for Your Perusal

I realized that there are several little tidbits of information that are just interesting to know, and that might be helpful in understanding what's happening.  I'll try to go in roughly chronological order.

I initially heard about the study abroad opportunities while sitting in the advising office waiting for my appointment to add marketing as my second major.  At the time, I was an accounting major who was falling haplessly in love with my marketing class, which was the subject that had initially turned me toward business in the first place.  How I decided to go with accounting instead, I genuinely can't remember.  I believe it had something to do with wanting to prove that I'm a big smarty pants, and to do something hard just because I wanted to win at doing hard things.  This is rarely a good reason to do things.

An informational meeting was coming up soon, and I decided to go.  The meeting was very interesting -- other trips were mentioned, one to England and one to India.  England was a close second for me, but I was told that Leta likes to take people who are desperate to take only her trip.  If I really want it, it should be the only trip for which I apply.  I walked away from that meeting feeling incredibly confident that I would be accepted.  It was an inexplicable feeling that I was definitely destined to go on this trip.

In my preparations for the application, I happened to mention it to my friend from accounting.  Now, she's got what I would call, really good luck.  She is currently on a scholarship with the AICPA, which is an academic accounting fraternity of some sort, and she got this really cool internship with the King County Courthouse as a forensic accountant (I had no idea that was even a thing).  She's got some added demographic benefits, such as being Latina, and being a non-traditional returning student, etc.  Anyway, when she found out that I was applying, she decided to apply as well.  The goal was to take the trip together.

My confidence immediately dropped.  On one hand, it would be incredible to have an existing friend for the trip.  Ireland wouldn't be ready for the two of us.  But, on the other hand, I was very seriously concerned that rather than take us as a boxed set, Leta would pick my friend over me.  I delayed very seriously in finishing my application, and finally completed it a week or so before the deadline.  I wrote my personal statement honestly, naturally, and from the heart, and decided to let it play out as it would.

Well, the spoiler is that obviously I was accepted.  Unfortunately, my friend was not.  Now that I know the other members of the group, I really wish she was coming, so that I would have a decent friend with a viperish sense of humor to tour Ireland with me.  But it is probably best for my personal growth that I make this trip alone.  But I will sorely miss her.

*   *   *

I found out I was accepted to the trip via phone call.  Now, what is funny is that my phone is forever attached to the side of my face.  The fact that Leta was able to call three separate times when I did not have my phone on my person is remarkable.  I didn't recognize the number, and she didn't leave a message, so I had no idea who this person was who kept calling me at 9:30 at night.  I wasn't going to call them back and interrogate them -- "Hello, why do you keep calling me, I think you have the wrong number, who are you so I can tell you that you have the wrong number?  You didn't leave a message so I don't know who you are, or who you were trying to reach, but I'm pretty sure you have the wrong number, so I'm calling you back to follow up, and make sure you get a hold of whoever you're supposed to be calling, because it's definitely not me, because I think you have the wrong number."

Finally, I was on the phone with Chris when the number started to call me.  I was, by now, quite perplexed about this very insistent person who never left a message.  I hung up with Chris to take the call, and it was Leta.  She said hello, and asked for me, and then she spent a little time admonishing me for not answering my phone.  Then she said that I'm on the team, and I swear to God, I said "what team?"  And she said "The trip to Ireland!  You're going to Ireland."  And then I screamed at her.

Once I was done screaming, I thanked her profusely, and apologized profusely, and thanked her again.  I ran downstairs to tell my parents, and then I cried for a little while because I was so damn excited.  I called Chris back, and he was also excited, and at this point I had stopped crying, so I tried to act nonchalant.

*   *   *

Flash forward to our first meeting of the group, in mid-April.  We did some typical ice-breaker activities, and did mini-interviews with each other to introduce our partner to the rest of the group.  Leta loves what she called "juicy details," so I mentioned to my partner, Toto (Cambodian) that I used to speed-read for debate, and could talk at about 400 words per minute.  When this was announced to the group, I was required to perform this skill.  I did ok, for someone who was severely out of practice, but I got hung up on the word "economics" and stuttered until I got going again, which is always embarrassing.  I was also the only person to be required to perform for my juicy detail.

A few people were not in attendance for work or class, and one of those people was Will.  Leta said that Will was coming late, and alluded to something about him and sheep.  When he arrived, after my stuttering display, she turned to welcome him and said "It's Will!  The sheep guy!"  We all looked between Leta and Will, and he started to explain, but Leta waved him off and said "it's a story."  As he sat down, he assured those of us nearest to him that it was NOT a story.

We talked about the trip, and the companies we would visit.  I asked about the sheep farm, because on the trip brochure it mentioned a sheep farm.  She asked if I had raised sheep, but I said that my mom and I both knit.  Apparently that was more than enough interest for her, and she declared that my company profile should be on the sheep farm.  In a stunning moment of revelation, she realized that Will could be my partner, because he was the sheep guy, so we'll be partners, and we'll be the sheep people.

Oh God, trip hasn't even started yet, and already branded as a Sheep Person.

I met with Will when the group broke up a little later, and asked him about "the story" related to the sheep.  He said that he was raised on a farm in Eastern Washington, and that, among other animals, sheep were on the farm.  That's all.

Still, we are branded for life as The Sheep People.

*   *   *

On an insufferably hot day, our group met to learn about the history of Ireland from Leta's husband, Mark.  He has a PhD (?) in history, and despite the education, he spent a decent portion of time trying to operate YouTube to show us a video about the IRA.  One should never laugh at a person for struggling with things, but he was being exceptionally comical about it.  I am going to believe that he was doing a caricature of a person who can't find the mouse on the screen.

He was, however, a fantastic story-teller, who gave a brief history of Ireland in about 45 minutes.  He will be meeting up with our group for a week in Ireland, for his and Leta's wedding anniversary.

During this same meeting, we all put our names on little tickets, to be drawn from a hat later.  I always feel some dread associated with being up to "win" anything, because 75% of the time, the "award" is a task (in my experience).  Just as she was about to draw, she informed us that she had 5 Rick Steve's Ireland travel books that she was giving away.  I very nearly declared that she could take my name out of the running, because I had already bought the Lonely Planet Ireland book.  But before I could speak, my name was the first one to come out of the hat, and I suddenly decided that I desperately wanted it, so I kept my mouth shut, and graciously took my award.  Best drawing ever!

Coping

When I got accepted for this trip to Ireland, I think I felt my blood pressure palpably rise.  It's very exciting, but I immediately turned my brain over to high-speed insanity whenever the trip or any related issues were mentioned.  (I can further support this with the fact that I was up until 1 am working on the presentation I gave with a partner about the Irish sheep farm on the Ring of Kerry, when most other people didn't seem bothered to do a decent job at all for their topics.  One girl spent her entire speech about Jameson whiskey talking about a spring break trip to Boston that she took, and related her tour of a beer manufacturer to the (vastly different) distillation of Irish whiskey.  Excuse me, but please stop bragging about your vacations, and just talk about the topic to which you were assigned.)

Anyway, several pre-departure sessions were scheduled during the school year.  After each of these meetings I was simultaneously invigorated and terrified.  I became increasingly sure that I would love Ireland and the people and the climate and the environment.

I also became increasingly confident that I would not fit in with my fellow groupmates.  I think I've started to single out a few people with whom I can have a decent time, but the vast majority of our group is Greek, and if they are not actually living together in a fraternity right now, most of them are at least friends, or well-acquainted.  It's concerning to me that I will have no one to talk to, and the mandate that we must always travel in pairs may result in my spending a lot of time in the hostel.  To all of you who know me well, you'll know how shocking it is for me to have difficulty finding someone with whom to converse.  I was built to talk to adults or children, but people my own age are mystifying.  There are moments when I speak words out loud, and no one hears me.  My sense of humor (which I acknowledge is rather sharp sometimes) falls on completely deaf ears.  I've never experienced anything like it.  I was spared the heartbreak of high school ostracization while I was in high school, but it's all catching up with me for this brief trip to Ireland.

(Interestingly, at a completely unrelated family barbecue on Saturday, I was introduced by my host to a very nice Irish couple, and spent much of the evening talking to the wife, Siobhan.  All of my expectations about the friendliness and kindness of the Irish was completely confirmed, and she assured me that I would find more people like her upon my arrival.  We talked about Penny's -- a fabulously cheap department store, -- about putting a little black currant juice in my Guinness to cut the bitterness, about taking the hokey bus tour of Dublin because it really is pretty interesting, and about how Ireland has had a very hot summer so the weather will probably still be warm and comfortable when I'm traveling.  She completely set my mind at ease that my trip will be fantastic.)

The last official meeting of the crew was a barbecue at Leta's (director's) house in Edmonds.  So on Sunday I trooped dutifully out into the admittedly gorgeous, if very distant, hinterlands north of Seattle but south of Bellingham.  Approximately half of our group was in attendance, 11 of 26, and we discussed the final schedule, packing lists, credit unions, and other sundry topics.  From the mood of my peers, my anxiety is completely and wildly abnormal.  Most of them confessed to not having thought about packing yet at all, and several had yet to call their banks, or had confirmed with the State Department and the Embassy.  I left the barbecue feeling as though all the anxiety that I had let out the night before had all rolled itself right back up inside me.  I called home to let my parents know that I was headed back, and dad gave me a bit of an extra dig (he is somehow surprised and offended that I am so anxious.  It's as though he forgot the nightmare that was me before leaving for Alaska last year.).

Thank God for my mother, who is just as anxious as I am, and who is also not coping well.  She's opted for serious and complete denial.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as it were.

Ramblings of a Manic Insomniac DIYer/Impending-Travel Denier

For many people, I might even say most people, the prospect of traveling abroad is exciting and fun, and not in the least bit full of terrifying anxiety.  Well, that's great and all, but for a select few of us, thinking about hopping on that plane and going to a far off land where they speak a language that is allegedly the same one that I speak but is obviously not the same, it's the most scary thing ever.

And what does one do, when one is trying NOT to act like they are completely anxious?

They become a manic insomniac who can't stop cleaning things and never sleeps and wants simultaneously to kill everyone and to be cuddled.  Enter the daunting and unending project of trying to repaint my childhood bedroom (bear in mind, that this is the worst idea ever, because now, upon my return from The Dreaded Trip, I'll be sleeping in an equally foreign new bedroom).  Gone will be the days of the hot pink bedroom!  Say hello to the new days of a cream and teal bedroom!  *Sophistication!*  *Adulthood!*  *Increased Resale Value!*

Ok, that's great, but mostly, it's been a never ending project that began by me unloading at least a thousand dollars worth of stuff out of my room.  Clothes and shoes mostly, but also jewelry, trinkets, and mementos from life that were put into tubs for long term storage.  Oh God, I think some books actually LEFT my private library to go to charity.  Additionally, horrifically, I was convinced into moving my two cherished bookcases out of my room and into -- communal living spaces.  They cringe at the suggestion.

That was all day Saturday.  Sunday I began coming down with a cold that was only exacerbated by the level of dust in my room, but I soldiered on, bought paint and found materials, and moved everything out of my room except the bed frame (spoiler alert, that will be a terrible idea), and the giant shelving unit that holds all my folded clothes.  I would live to regret leaving both of those objects in my room, because if they were too big a pain to move before painting began, I don't know what made me believe that they wouldn't be even more annoying once the painting started.

Monday, however, I was supposed to go to work, but the cold I was brewing caught up with me, and the day was mostly wasted napping and sniffing instead.  My boyfriend, Chris, came over to help, and I started to feel better by the end of the day, and began the task of caulking the trim that had never been finished in my rush to move into my room the first time.  The BF is a finish carpenter's apprentice, and was supposed to help with the finishing that needed doing.  As a finish carpenter, however, he usually leaves caulking of trim etc to the painters.  So his help was somewhat less than helpful, and was in fact very messy, and eventually we had caulk everywhere. To smooth the edges of our hellacious caulking job, we wiped the trim down with wet clothes.  By the end of it, we had very dirty fingers and a bucket full of caulk water.  I'm not making this up.  Many jokes were made.

Side note, we have had some of the most incredibly hot weather this summer, and my small room is a veritable pressure cooker in the summer.  This is not the environment for emotionally supportive home improvement projects.  Things were said in that room that I cannot take back.  (Sorry Chris.)

I ended up doing all the caulking myself (so typical) until about midnight and then I fell into bed and thankfully was exhausted enough to sleep.

Tuesday I was healthy enough for work, so I did my actual job, and came home to do a coat of primer.  This primer was quite old, and had separated a little, so it did a rather poor job of covering the hot pink.  But it got done, and we moved the set of shelves out of my room to better paint the ceiling.  Now, I was attempting to enlist the help of two studly men for this task -- that is, my boyfriend and my brother.  In their infinite wisdom, they decided not to move the bedframe (which also needs to be sanded and painted), and instead, the brother left without moving anything.  Quite a bit later, I got fed up moving the shelves around, so Chris and I slid the whole thing out on its side to get it out of my room.  Presently, there's a massive cabinet of shelves obstructing the path to my room, and I can't get the bedframe out, so that's still unlikely to be sanded or painted in the near future.

Wednesday is when it gets really horrible.  I bought a teal color, Embellished Blue, for the west wall and the edge of the east wall that surrounds my built in closet.  I also bought a light cream color for the other walls and the ceiling, Angel Food.  One coat of Angel Food was going on really well, and Chris and I were doing a really good job, and everything was clean, and then tragically, Chris spilled a bunch of white paint on my brown carpet.

This is not an incredibly terrible tragedy, because the paint cleans up with soap and water, and honestly, the stain is gone, so it's not a big deal.  But it's a mood killer, and a roll-breaker, and a parade rainer.  And now I might have to murder Chris.  (Sorry Chris.)  Manic Insomniac Sierra can't deal with these types of setbacks.  The particularly maddening part is that he's not a very effective cleaner, and obviously has never spilled paint on the carpet before (I admit nothing).  Carpet needs to be blotted, not scrubbed.  That's all I'll say.

Anyway, the existence of a paint stain led to a massive argument, not related to the paint at all, and exclusively fueled by my hangover-cold, the heat, exhaustion from sleep deprivation, and absolute insane anxiety, and the fact that every single male to walk the face of the earth is just so damn annoying.  This argument actually happened much later over the phone, long after he had left, which provided me time to (very aggressively) paint a swatch of Embellished Blue next to the Angel Food while I gave unnecessary ultimatums and threatened to hang up and never talk to him again.  I do not deny how incredibly overly dramatic I am.

I realized that I hate both of these colors.

Angel Food is code for white.  Embellished Blue is code for just plain old standard baby blue.  And I hate both of them.  A white ceiling is ok, and fully permissible.  But there's a reason I had a hot pink bedroom to start off with.  I'm a bright color kind of girl.  And this white and baby blue crap is not going to fly.  So I'll be taking the Angel Food back and retinting to get it closer to something that contains pigment.  We'll see about the blue, with a decent color near it, it might not be so bad.  I'll reserve judgement, but I think it needs to go too.

Basically, this is the final piece of evidence that I hate everything, and nothing is going my way, and oh good Lord, I had to register with the State Department today, and I'm denying that a trip is impending.  I'm an Impending-Travel Denier -- like a holocaust denier, but, you know, on a much smaller scale, and in no way at all like a holocaust denier.