Hot Mess

I have to say, Boston has not been nearly as amazing as last year. I am 100% convinced that I should NEVER live here. I love this city. It really is amazing but there have been some signs that are just too much to ignore when it comes to living here. It is kind of like the universe is throwing huge gigantic signs in my face letting me know this is not where I am meant to be.

It makes my decision about going to Michigan for grad school just that much better. Way better in fact.

What are some of these signs exactly? Well, I will list a few from both of my summers combined...

• Falling down a flight of stairs... twice... consecutively.
• Hurting my ankle.
• Getting an ulcer.
• Getting a really bad flu
• Getting a viral throat infection
• Getting an ear infection
• Lung congestion
• All of this interrupting my running progress.
• Rain... so much rain.
• Clouds all the time... even if it isn't raining.
• Experiencing the worst interview process of my life at BU (really it was horrendous. I was shocked at how horribly put together the process was). But I am so grateful for this because if I had liked it and decided to stay in Boston I would have been making the worst life choice. 

Mainly though it is all the sickness. I mean, I'm a sickly person. I often get sick with random little things. Even if I eat healthy (which I really really have been this summer), take vitamins every day, drink lots of water and do everything humanly possible to make myself healthy. It doesn't help. I am still bound to get sick eventually. It's just the law of my nature. And nobody is ever quite surprised when I show up with a runny nose, or a scratchy voice, or a fever that would make Hades jealous. 

However, the amount of sickness that I have had in just 6 weeks of being in Boston is obscene. And when I get sick, I genuinely don't give a damn about anything... except showing up for work. I'm pretty adamant about that. 

-Sidebar: Did you know that 79% of men and 84% of women do not feel comfortable with taking off from work when they are genuinely sick. Yep, go ahead and group me in with that 84%. It makes me nervous and stressed and for some obscure reason I think I will lose my job or get a bad review if I take off work. This is stupid. Nobody at works wants to get sick with whatever you have. And lets face it, you aren't even an efficient worker when you're really sick. And if your boss really truly gets mad about you getting healthy because you're at home puking your guts out or curled in your bed with a fever of 101 then you should not want to work there and I suggest looking for a new place of employment. 

Yes, I know all of this but I still hate calling in sick and I don't think this will actually change for me anytime soon.

Anyway, I genuinely don't give a damn about anything. Like getting dressed... who does that!? If, I am not at work I am in my pajamas. True fact, I actually walked to CVS to get medicine in my pajamas because I was too exhausted to put on a pair of jeans and didn't even want to be leaving the house in the first place.  

Ironically, I think I was hit on by the cashier... or I am being stalked by him. I really have not yet decided which one it is. Then again, I suppose if you're walking around in your pajamas in Boston you're kind of hard to miss. Especially if you did the exact same thing 2 weeks prior because you were sick then too. 

My life is kind of a hot mess and besides taking bottles full of drugs... the prescribed kind... I guess I am really not in too big of a rush to "get it together." 

Batty Boston

There are many things in life that I think I handle quite well and with a certain amount of grace, though I may complain about it at the time. Some of these things include working 12 hour days and 80 hour weeks though I would much prefer not to and am trying to wean myself off from doing this (as if it is really my decision). Falling down/up stairs... obviously this is not very graceful but it's something you must get used to if you're as clumsy as me. Sticking to running at least 3 miles a day 5-6 times a week. Cleaning. Moving to new places where you don't know anybody. Standing in line at the grocery store. Being on my feet for well over 80% of my day. Sticking to a budget. Being covered in rumen fluid and god only knows what else from certain animals such as sheep and cattle...

However, there is one thing I absolutely CANNOT handle and this is furry, crawling, flying, insects/animals or just about anything else inside my house that should be outside my house. And let me tell you, I've had my fair share of creepy crawly things in my day: scorpions, centipedes, geckos, numerous varieties of spiders, and even a mouse once which just about made me throw up.

So, when I was going to put my water glass away in the dishwasher late the other night I didn't expect a bird to fly less than 2 inches away from my face in my living room. This caused an entire series of events... me running to my room freaking out, waking up all of my roommates, hiding behind doors and running frantically away from the flying animal.

The next and only obvious choice is to call our parents. I mean what else do we do when you're freaking out and contemplating shooing the winged creature into the stairwell and having somebody else deal with it. So I get my parents on the phone and I blurt out to my dad that there is a bird in the house and I don't know how to get it out and we are currently locked in our rooms for fear of being attacked by birds. All I can think about is the movie Birds and my outlook on the situation gets drastically worse. Then my Dad pauses and asks, "Is it a bird? Or a bat?"

No freakin way... it's probably a bat. It's 11 at night why would a bird be in here. I don't have glasses on and I ran away too quickly to see if it was actually a bird.

And that is when all of Medical Microbiology comes flashing back to me and I think of the cases in which kids got scratched/bit by a bat got rabies and died. That's it folks. I'm going to have to climb my way out of my 3 story apartment because get real if you think I am going back out there to suffer rabies. That stuff is crazy.

So yes, it was indeed a bat. And it took 3 girls and one boy (my roommate's boyfriend) well over 40 minutes to get this crazy flying creature out of our house. In the process we manage to completely contaminate a trashcan, throw several pillows and tissue boxes around the room, and in the end accidentally kill the bat.

And don't judge me about this. I love animals as much as the next person... probably more than the next person. Once, I ran over a rabbit and I had to pull over on the side of the rode because I was crying so hard because I felt so bad for the poor little bunny. But I also love not having rabies. I've decided this is probably a really really good thing. So much that I don't feel bad for this little bat. It shouldn't have come in to our house in the first place...

Suffice to say, Boston has been making me a little batty.