Stupid college kids...

I rely on NPR for most of my legitimate news now that I have cancelled my cable subscription and no longer get to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart (Oh, how I miss my nights with Johnny). During one ritual listening to Morning Edition last week, there was a story about the increasing risk of meningitis outbreaks on college campuses. There have been mini-outbreaks regularly over the last few years at campuses across the country. Some colleges and universities are considering requiring all entering freshmen to be vaccinated against the potentially fatal illness.

The article was very clear about why this is happening -- college students are filthy. They share everything from party cups and toothbrushes to boyfriends and stolen Biology 101 midterm questions. Considering the store where I work is located right off the University of Washington campus, it quickly occurred to me that most of my coworkers and many of my young customers are probably ridden with infectious diseases.

This realization came too late to save me. NPR may have had the best intentions to warn me of the danger of working with late-teen germ factories, but I had already been struck. By the end of that business day, my lungs felt thick, my tongue was all sweaty and the little voices inside my head blamed the college kids. Damn you, College Kids!

I spent the next two and a half days paralyzed on the couch with a high fever, respiratory infection and a really bad mood. Curiously, the only thing that seemed to make me feel better was viewing "Without a Paddle", which I had forgotten to remove from my Netflix list by mistake. It arrived just in time to further confirm my suspicion that my illness had its roots on pointless adolescent humor. I slept like baby for 90 minutes, but I didn't laugh once.

Don't get me wrong - a lot of the youngun's I work with are nice kids. Some of them may even graduate and lead productive adult lives. But I have learned my lesson. As an older American (age 37) I can't keep associating with these folks without risking infection. The NPR story suggested campus vaccination campaigns, but maybe a full-on quarantine would be in order. College kids are dangerous.

That's funny, I feel fine.

I spent the entire month of January being insane without realizing it. On the outside, everything seemed normal -- I was upbeat at work, eating well and going to the gym, and I even managed to put some finishing touches on the apartment my boyfriend and I moved into in November. Amazing how those last few boxes sit overflowing by the door for months, as if I had unpacked enough and I expected them just to unpack themselves or throw themselves away. It was a picture of boring domesticity. Only I was insane.

Maybe I didn't notice my warped state of mind because I was coming off of the crazy Christmas retail season. Maybe it was because there was a sense of "normal" to our lives again. The boyfriend was working on a big music project and got a part-time job (finally!!!) to get him out of the house. I just let my guard down and assumed "normal" was okay... but to any sane person, what had been normal for us would have immediately struck you as crazy.

My first clues should have come from this blog. I wasn't writing in it. Sure, I have made a few offline journal entries, but I abandoned this publishing experiment on blogger. One reason for lack of literary output: sleep. I was sleeping a lot. Too much. Lots of naps. That used to be my old life, my "normal" life. So the signs were there in front of me, but I was too crazy to notice.

Then the pressure really started to build. My boyfriend's jobs were suddenly driving him nutso -- one was soul-sucking his creative juices in advance of a new album release; the other basically lied to him and tried to give him barista wages for computer support job... Oh, and they didn't like paying anyway. There we were, two underpaid, overworked men trying to live off of my Crate & Barrel salary (love the job, love the discount, tolerate the paycheck). Rather than leave bills unpaid, we scrounged together and resented every penny we could find until the coffee nazis decided they could pay up (note to Ladro fans: they still haven't paid... can store closings be far behind?).

The stress of all this let the crazy in me finally surface. I went off the deep end, accusing the boyfriend of making the whole thing up like a bad season of "Dallas". I decided that he was just using me for sex and didn't really have any coffee or music related jobs. How could we be so tired and not have anything to show for it?

After venting my insanity, my pupils returned to normal size and the flame-spewing crack in my skull closed up. Bottling up my frustrations and pretending "normal" is good did me no good whatso-fucking-ever. I feel better now. I may still be crazy, but that's better than normal anyday.

Look for random writings and ravings to continue.