The Guilt Complex gone Kusch-style

The guilt complex, my friends, is something that I have always been tortured by. Though at the same time, I feel like it has kept me out of lots of trouble too.

It seems that my own guilt complex has altered itself though in the last couple years, and I can't make sense of it.  

Chris always tells me that I apologize too much, but I don't think I can help it. I always feel like everything is my fault, or like I'm the cause of everyone's inconvenience. I'm not upset about this, cause I don't think it really hurts anyone, but I don't understand it.

Here's an example that someone brought up a couple weeks ago. 

--All of my friends know or at some point knew that I can't eat gluten. I've had to explain to everyone what it is, what it does, show them the rash on my hand that acts up when I eat it, etc, etc, etc.  I don't mind sharing that with people, but I feel like I inconvenience them by it. I try not to mention it if food isn't brought up, and it usually comes up by someone talking about pizza or something, and I'll say something to the effect of "ooo, I wish I could eat that" or something like that.

The part where this gets distressing is when people invite me out to eat---at a place where I know I can't eat anything. It works out fine if I already ate or if I'm not hungry and I can just get a drink, but 98% of the time, it's during a meal time when I actually need to eat.  This whole blog could probably go into another blog about how I can't say no, but I'll leave that for now.  

I feel bad that when people invite me out, I have to put a stipulation on where we go. That doesn't seem fair to me. I tried to do the whole "stick it out" kind of thing during the school year and I went to Pizza Hut with Chamber Singers a couple times for lunch...but... 1) That doesn't exactly leave me anytime to eat when I get back since I have a 1pm class, 2) Technically I could scarf down some salad at the salad bar, but it tastes like shit, and cost $5.99 or something like that for crappy lettuce and horrible toppings...3) I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to sit and sip on a root beer or coke and watch everyone around me eat one of the primary foods that I miss most, not to mention the wonderful aroma of pizza surrounding me! I wanna cry, but I don't want to look weak. I want to leave, but that would look bad too. I want to complain, but then people are like "oh, well that sucks..."-- and whether they mean it or not, I don't want people feeling bad for me.  That just makes me feel even guiltier. 

Well, I don't know where that leaves me. I don't feel resolved about anything, but at least I got it out of my system, right?

BTW, I just found out that the Flinstone Gummy Vitamins that I have been eating for many months have gluten. SOAB.

The Vermillion Effect

I have a problem. It's called attachment. I get easily attached to people, places, and things.
  As far as the 'things' go, my attachment fairly temporary. It's kinda like a fad. I'll go after something (fairly) new, and I'll use it non-stop. So far it has happened with new movies, Ipod, X-Box, Facebook, computer, and other things.

Attachment to places is bad too. I got attached to my churches up in the Twin Cities, to my pharmacies north of the Cities, and now to USD. I think it's the people in these places though that makes them attachable.

People attachments are the worst. It takes me forever to get over those--and by forever, I mean it doesn't happen.  I would give a lot to be able to forget about some people in my past. This type of attachment haunts me in my dreams and in real life. I still have a hard time going home to the Twin Cities, and running into people that made my life a living hell when I was there. Really, that only includes people from my senior year of high school and Holy Childhood people. It's not just the people that I despise because of what happened either-- when I see people that were involved in any way to those two horrible events in my life, memories come pouring back in, and I feel depressed. Depressed--this from the happy-go-lucky girl. 
Even when I went up to Jake's wedding last weekend, there was still a sense of sadness because of the past. At the reception, I happened to sit with three families from HC, each of whom played a role in the whole HC crisis. We mentioned HC a few times, but none of us were eager to talk about it. Then we changed the subject, due to the hardened and sad look on all of our faces. If there was a good thing about that, it's that I wasn't the only one who was still sad about everything that happened.

Regardless of all the attachment issues, I still treasure all of the wonderful memories that I have from the past. I only wish they could be seperated from the horrors.

The Pains and Joys of Living with Boys

All my life, I have lived with either my family, or in a dorm/apt with girls. This is the first time that I've lived with two guys, neither of whom I am dating. I loved it for the most part, especially since for some reason, I always feel safer around guys.
I thought that the hardest part would be the schedule differences between us. Kevin works from 7-3 usually, I work from 4pm-9pm, and Chris works overnights. That has actually worked out alright for all of us I think. We haven't had any problems regarding that.

Pains-
1) Dishes don't get done as often as I'm used to, but part of that is my fault as well
2) The boys never shut up about their girlfriends. EVER
3) Kevin doesn't know how to put the seat down and loves to slam doors shut


I guess that wasn't as long of a pains list as I thought, lol.

Joys-
1) Kevin likes mowing the lawn
2) I have two boys to kill bugs and spiders for me :)
3) I live with two gamers
4) Chris and I are both Bing Crosby fans
5) If I can't reach something or lift something, I have two guys to ask
6) Both guys happen to hate how gluten free food tastes... hence, no stealing :)

Regardless of the joys and pains though, I love my boys. They are both good guys and I've enjoyed living in the house over the summer--so much so, that I want to move into Tim's room when he moves out :) 

The Official Music Camp Rant...

First and foremost, music camp was a blast. I was on my own this year as far as running things behind the scenes without D!, and I survived . Also, a huge thank you to Mike Bossman for being one of the coolest coworkers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. His humor was one of the main reasons I made it through the week without getting terribly crabby.  Also, I will never forget the rap that Bossman and I left on Holdhusen's voice mail. The other reason I survived music camp and especially Sunday night was due to my awesome volunteers--Amanda and Andrew. Both Holdhusen and I noticed that when everyone else went to bed and left the FA, it was Andrew and Amanda who stayed behind and helped us till 1 am when we finally finished at the FA. They even stuck with me after that while I had to bring everything over to the the dorms and only made it out of there around 2am. 

Important lessons from camp:
1) never piss off a camp parent, even if it is over something stupid like a chair placement in the secondary jazz group...
2) always keep a full stock of food and pop for the counselors, and you better make that 'real' pop, cause the RC Cola was not appreciated...
3) (for me) buy one of those special hearing aid thingys you see on tv that allows you to pick up on conversations better, so that when Holdhusen calls and asks you to do something quickly, you don't have to ask "what?!" three times....
4) (also for me) don't play with the sousaphones on Thursday night knowing full well you will never make it out of bed early enough Friday to play them and wake up the kids
5) don't eat the gluten free bread served at the Commons... I thought it just tasted bland and like crumbly something or another, but according to Dave Earll, it tastes like sawdust.

The rest is just pure rant.
1) I love my counselors, but.... when four counselors are sitting in Knutson and just chilling and I'm setting up gear and I need someone to go close the doors so that parents will stop coming in, and I ask if someone will do it, it would be really nice if someone would just stand the heck up and do it, instead of me standing there awkwardly staring.

2) I love music camp parents, but.... when you and your child come up to me at the question table, and you let your child yell at me for their own mistakes on their applications, that is not cool.  It is not my fault that your kid signed up for every ensemble offered and therefore has no time for electives and musical activities.

3) I love music camp kids, especially vocalists, but.... I have been dealing with my share of divas in the last couple years and I have no desire to see more in the making. To 'Diva' as we so aptly named her last week, you need to grow up and realize that the world does not spin around you, and neither does music camp. No, I will not go out of my way to schedule your "extra" voice lessons during World Drumming because "it wasn't fun when I took drumming at this other music camp last year..." and no, I will not pull you out of show choir just because " the pop music they chose gave me a migraine..." I feel horrible that Dr. G had to put up with you for four voice lessons! Oh, and just so you know for future cases, coming into the office and having a full fledged meltdown in front of me and all of the counselors is not the way to win people over. It only gives us something else to laugh at after you leave the office.

4)