Goin' Anywhere

I think I've heard the song "Don't Stop Believin'" about 6 times today. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's a good song.

I am currently at the NACURH (National Association of College and University Residence Halls) national conference. I've been told it's "like cheerleader camp on crack." Normally, I'd probably be okay with this, but quite honestly, I'm in a foul mood, and that makes it really hard to be peppy. And I can't even understand why. I mean, I had Caribou Coffee today (the Denver International Airport is my happy place).

I suppose I should start from the beginning, and by "beginning," naturally, I mean the end of the school year. My parents made it into town Friday night, after finals were over. By this point, most of campus was abandoned and they had the freedom to park wherever they wanted and take as much time as they wanted. The short version of this, since it doesn't matter all that much, was that it went off nearly without a hitch (little quarrels here and there, but otherwise tolerable) and they left and I was alone with all of my belongings crammed into two suitcases. I slept for two nights in their hotel, then spent Sunday night back in my dorm.

Monday, I checked out of my room and brought all my stuff to Eddie's to stay in his apartment for the week, although in actuality, most of the week was spent in his hometown of McAlester, Oklahoma. Monday afternoon we grabbed lunch, went back to his apartment for a while, and then packed up and left town. We stayed at his house, I in the guest bedroom. His mother was quite nice and even gave us money for food a few times, so we were able to go out to eat. She was a little obsessive about her dogs (they're Eddie's "sisters" and, much like my grandfather's annoyingly spoiled chi-poo-poo/poohuahua/whatever, use "piddle pads" so they can pee without going outside), but overall, a nice woman. We planned to leave town again Wednesday morning, which meant Eddie's mother was going to pay to fill up his gas tank Tuesday night. Well, apparently that was forgotten, so around 10 Wednesday morning, he called his mother and work and whined on the phone to her until she agreed to use her lunch break to come back and pay for his gas. Waitaminute waitaminute waitaminute. Are you serious?!

The fact is, he had been getting whinier and whinier as the week progressed, and I couldn't understand it. The problem has persisted, and I still don't. Wednesday and Thursday night were in Eddie's apartment. He mostly stuck to himself, but Thursday we went to paint paddles for NACURH (pics, I promise) in the HCSA area of Couch Center. Jay and I ran to Walmart for supplies and in the meantime, Eddie apparently decided to begin the painting. The paddles already had their base coat, half red and half white, so the next step was the word "RUF" in white on the red and "DUKS" in red on the white. For some reason the RUF stencil had gone missing, but Eddie went ahead and spraypainted the DUKS part. In the HCSA hallway. Spraypaint, yes... good idea. Well, for some reason the spray paint reacted funny with the coat underneath and it started to bubble oddlly. Eddie tried to fix the damage by blotting and/or wiping away the deformities in the letters. I saw none of this. What I saw when I got back to the conference room, in addition to the smell of spraypaint in a confined area, was smudged writing. Jay and I both laughed a little bit, but in a VERY easygoing way, and I thought it was quite clear that we were joking. Eddie got pissed and stopped working. He hardly spoke for the rest of the day (I should mention that he had painted both his paddle and mine). I improvised a stencil for the RUF part (the letter P, a handmade stencil traced on a paper plate from the word DUKS, and an E) and used it to blot-paint that part of the paddle onto each of ours with a foam sponge. Not perfect, but it turned out alright. As I was doing so, I said to Eddie, several times, that what happened with the DUKS was not his fault and it didn't really matter. He wouldn't speak to me. He's been just as moody since, and not just towards me, but also towards Jay, despite the fact that Jay finished his paddle for him (the other side of each has the owner's name on it).

Frankly, I'm getting sick of it. I just can't deal with it any more, and I can't understand it, and I'm not sure I care enough to keep trying to pry out of him the details of whatever has him so upset.

Additionally, despite the fact that we are all a tight group of friends and there are hundreds of people at this conference, I'm feeling incredibly lonely. Hannah and Lydia are rooming together (we brought three girls, so one of us had to room separately). Fine, that's not their fault, but Hannah only seems to want to talk to Lydia this trip. Eddie isn't talking to anyone. Jay probably feels just as left out as I do, but he and I just don't have much to talk about right now. We're not mad at each other, we're friends, but we have very little in common, as it turns out.

I want Shannon, and I want Akshatha, and I want Nyssa, and I want easy access to Caribou Coffee, and I want my kitties, and I just don't want to be here right now.

And I started developing a sore throat and stuffy nose late this morning, so I think I'm getting sick.