Uniquely Maladjusted: Cheers + Jeers (Week 5 as a Uni student)

Let’s get the gripes out of the way:

1. The campus grocery store has a serious lack of variety in the canned food section. I am a little tired of canned black beans. Blah. Would it really set the store back too much to offer maybe kidney beans or garbanzo beans or canned tomatoes once and awhile?

2. Exams and BIG essays. Enough, I say!

3. (Literally) cold feet in the morning. I go to bed too toasty to bother with sheets, and wake up shivering and with frigid phalanges. Each night is an expedition off my lofted bed to find a pair of hiking socks.

4. Missing appointments and being late. . .

5. Fake-outs with the weather. It will be nice and cold in the morning, but in a few hours I am trucking around about three layers and sweating through my shirt. STAY COLD, WOULD YOU!!!!!

6. Having to ask for soy-milk everywhere I go. I think I was spoiled working for PCC (my local Co-op back in Seattle). There, the soy and rice milk were just sitting out next to the regular cow milk and cream.

7. Bugs. In the past two days alone I have squished 5 beetles in my dorm. And not your little black beetles. No, these are the goliath sized green-black beetles and make a crunch sound when you squish them and emit a putrid, orange gunk when squished. Nasty. And I have even shut my window in attempt to keep out the big guys to no avail. Why can’t it be COLD already? Then the bugs would drop-dead.

8. Dishes. I went from being PAID to dishes to now doing them before classes, after classes and in-between classes. If I decide to let them go for a day, the dinky dorm sink is completely unusable. Oh-well. It would be the price one pays for cooking in their dorm.

Missoula is not all doom and gloom. No, there are quite a few things that have been making me smile. There is not point to posting a 'Cheers and Jeers' if I completely hop over the Cheers section. Let the listing continue:

1. The rain has cometh. Only for one day, but the skies opened up and let loose a solid dump. I was in bliss.

2. With Autumn in the air I can wear taupe, greige colors shamelessly. (Not like I didn’t already wear them day-in and day-out, though). Sweaters, leggings, scarves, nail varnish… I am languishing.

3. Coco-vanilla lip-balm. This feels like an indulgence each time I apply it. A little layer of armor against the dry-crappy weather.

4. Care-packs. Thank you Mum and Dad! J

5. Squash!!! It may a tad early in the season, but I broke down on Friday and bought one. There will be pictures of my hack-work jockeying the thing into my crock-pot.

6. Saturday morning yoga. Can’t beat it.

7. Audiobooks. When you don’t have time to read for pleasure, you can always listen to books for pleasure. I can clean my room, do laundry, cook, go grocery shopping and walk to and from down-town all while plugged into a good book.

8. Vegan cupcakes (+ Bernice’s Bakery). Yum.

Vegan dark chocolate cupcake with raspberry "fluff" frosting.

9. Possible traveling abroad? Well, at least I am renewing my passport—which is a good indication that the possibility is in the air. Here are my new mug-shots for anyone who is curious... (from one snoop to another):