What all the coordinated twin-sized bedding does not prepare you for

It’s that time of year when thousands of the nation’s barely-adults head off to college for the first time. Bed Bath and Beyond is just about sold out of their extra-long twin bedsheets, mini-fridges are all packed up and parents are sad about sending their babies off to live on their own for the first time. 

But the thing is, their babies are not alone. For the vast majority of freshmen living in dormitories, there will be roommates. A few will room with their friends from high school. Some others will be like me and get stuck with a random stranger who performs fellatio on a football player upon the chair your grandmother bought you, and forever stains it with that guy’s spat-out jizz. 

I was the only person in my high school graduating class to go to my university, and I was fine with that. But that meant I wouldn’t know anyone when I got there, which is scary as hell. As an only child, I was actually kind of looking forward to the roommate part. The university sent all incoming freshmen roommate compatibility questionnaires with questions about whether you were a morning or night person, clean or sloppy, smoking or not. (It was 2000, and smoking was still allowed in designated areas on campus [the highest concentration of cigarette smoke was right outside the door of the building where most of the theater majors took classes]. Not in the dorms, though.) 

We got notified of who our roommates would be a month or so before move-in day. Jamie (whose name I am altering a bit in the event she’s a better person now) lived an hour or so away, and we met up and shopped for a rug together, along with some other stuff for our room. She seemed pretty normal, and I thought we’d get along and maybe be friends.

As soon as we moved in together, I quickly realized Jamie and I would not be BFFs, and that she either lied on her compatibility questionnaire or the Office of Residential Life wanted to conduct some kind of sick experiment. She was a disgusting slob, leaving food-crusted plates and crumbs everywhere. She smoked. While she did not smoke in the room, we had to share an approximately 2-square-foot closet, and the stench clung to her clothes and seeped on to mine. She was loud and obnoxious and craved attention and acceptance.

Which is why, about three weeks after college started, she burst into our room while I was doing homework and demanded that I leave for 20 minutes because “there’s this guy.” This wasn’t at like midnight on a Saturday, mind you. This was about 3 p.m. on a weekday. 

The guy who lived across the hall from us, Dan, saw me in the lounge and asked what I was up to. I told him I had to read my stuff for class out there because Jamie’d kicked me out of the room to hook up with some guy. He told me it was my room, too, and I didn’t deserved to be kicked out of it. I was like, “Yeah! Totally!” So I marched back there, 45 minutes after I’d left - a full 25 more than she requested - and decided I didn’t have to knock on the door because I lived there, too. As I opened it up, the flip-and-fold chair (there is another more crass name for it that instead of “fold” is another four-letter F word that seemed pretty applicable for this situation) my grandmother had purchased for me for college was all spread out on the floor, as was the football player. He was hurriedly pulling his pants up. Jamie was coughing and sputtering a little and hurriedly pulling her shirt down. She quickly said, “We didn’t have sex.” I said, “I don’t care,” and walked back out.

The next day, I saw a crusty, whitish stain on the chair. Our suitemate later informed me that the guy was a football player who’d Jamie’d met at a party earlier that week. They weren’t dating or anything, but the day he’d come over had been his birthday, and Jamie thought he deserved a blow job for that. I don’t think she ever saw him again. My mouth had been nowhere near a penis at this point in my life, so I was pretty disgusted. 

Oh, that was just the beginning. Other living-with-Jamie highlights include:

* On my way out to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting - where I’d found my niche and met people who would become lifelong friends - Jamie asked where I was going. I told her, and with her friend sitting next to her, she said, “God, how many f**king Jesus meetings do you have a week?” Then she looked at her friend, said “Right?!” and laughed at me.

* I had to climb out of my lofted bed about 2 or 3 a.m. one weeknight to prevent Jamie from peeing in the closet, which her drunken stupor had led her to believe was the bathroom.

* Jamie was dating this guy for a month or two named Brian, I think. (and if you think she was super attractive because of all these exploits with guys, I’m sorry to tell you she was not. Just easy.) Except Brian was more into me than he was into her. Brian had a distinctly creepy, rapey vibe about him. I tried to avoid being in the room when he was around. I told her he made me uncomfortable, and she said to get over it. She had him sleep over several times. He would often come over to my bed - which praise Jesus was lofted off the ground so he couldn’t just slide into it - and want to have a whispery conversation in the middle of the night. He followed me around campus. And of course Jamie got mad at me for “stealing her boyfriend,” despite the fact I told her numerous times he creeped me out and I didn’t want him around. Several more guys spent the night in our room over my objections. Like as a grown-up, I am not OK with a random guy I don’t know in the room where I sleep, change clothes and generally where I have my greatest expectation of privacy, and I felt the same way then. 

* Pretty much all of Jamie’s friends (and love interests) that first semester of college maintained companionship with her for one to two months, max. She was just too abrasive and obnoxious to keep around long. She rushed for sorority after sorority and got turned down by all of them. I laughed inside and hung out with the friends I didn’t have to impress or pay for. 

The end of Jamie and me happened shortly after Christmas break. I had dreaded returning to live with her. After a few days back at school, I wrote my mom an e-mail enumerating all the ways Jamie was still as grating as ever, and that I’d talked to the R.A. about getting out, but they said there were no empty rooms to which I could move. Then I went to class. 

When I returned, Jamie angrily confronted me. “Why are you talking shit to your mom about me?” 

SHE’D READ MY E-MAILS. I hadn’t password-protected my computer because A) I thought I hadn’t needed to and B) It was 2001 by that point and cyber-security wasn’t nearly what it is today. Anyway, that crazy mofo went to my desk, turned my sleeping CRT monitor back on, opened up my student e-mail account and read the ones I’d sent. And I apologized to her for writing those things. 35-year-old me knows so much better now. 35-year-old me might tell Jamie that the personality flaws I’d enumerated in the e-mail were just the tip of the iceberg and inquire why she thought none of her friends or boyfriends stuck around for more than 60 days. And suggest she’d seek professional help 

But this story does have a happy ending. I met my Campus Crusade friends in the cafeteria shortly after the confrontation and told them all about it. One of them, Emily, pointed out that a couple of our mutual friends - including her roommate - were studying abroad that semester. So she was without a roommate.  As soon as the ink was dry on the res life paperwork, I ditched Jamie and moved into Emily’s room. We lived together for the rest of college. We were often mistaken for sisters out in public. This is what my only-child mind had always dreamed of. We’re still close. My son wears her son’s hand-me-downs. Due to our husbands’ poor health habits, I think we’ll probably outlive them, and I want us to be roommates again as widows. I can’t tell you how much I love that girl. 

Parents of new college students, don’t fret. Not everyone will get a Jamie in their dorm room. Some might get a guy like Emily’s boyfriend’s roommate who threw up in a sock, tied it off, and left it on the floor to be stepped on while he passed out. Or his roommate the next year who was from France and very nice but never once changed his sheets. Or, maybe those fresh-faced youngsters heading off to college will get a life-long friend. They might just have to get through a closet pee-er and sock puker first. 

A field guide to the grossest creatures in the Midwest

I’ve been on sort of a blogging maternity leave. You see, after my last “I’m sick of being pregnant” post, God was like, “Hold my beer!” Because within a few days of that I was hospitalized, had my baby 4 weeks early and apparently got closer to death than I would prefer from a little thing called HELLP Syndrome. My sweet baby girl was just fine (tiny, but she didn’t require a NICU stay), but I wasn’t for a while. Props to my amazing OB, nurses who did things for me I would never ask of another human being (two words: bed pan) and husband who held everything together while I was in the hospital for a week. Long story short, I’m fine now and got the cutest, sweetest baby out of the whole thing.

But this post is not about that. No, this about a scourge mostly unrelated to pregnancy complications: bugs. (I say “mostly unrelated” because of Zika virus and stuff like that.) I’m sure everywhere has their own unique insect biome, but I feel like the one in the Midwest is extra horrid, and summer is our bug prime time. We don’t have scorpions (I hate guns but would buy one to put a cap in a scorpion ass), but we got something worst last year: Oak mites.

Oak Mites

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Kansas City was the epicenter of an oak mite crisis last fall. The headline: “The invisible itch mite will make you nostalgic for mosquitoes.” These little mo-fos are so small you can’t see them. They get on you if you stand by an oak tree (particularly pin oak trees). They just fall down and bite. Or they can blow on you from a nearby tree. And then you have unthinkably horrible itching for years. OK, well it was about two to three weeks. Insect repellent doesn’t work. The WSJ said it’s worse than poison ivy itch. Having had both, I can attest that this is true. The only thing that ends the misery is a hard freeze. The people of Kansas City never prayed so much for something to kill their flowers as they did last year. I shudder at what this fall might bring. I live in a neighborhood named The Oaks, so this does not bode well.

Chiggers

You can tell they’re awful because their name almost sounds like the most racist word there is. Like the oak mites, chiggers are microscopic devil mites that bite you and make you itch forever. Why do you itch so long? BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL IN YOUR SKIN, LIQUEFYING YOUR FLESH AND EATING IT. Chiggers live in grass. Like normal, everyday yard grass. While ankles are nice for them, they most prefer to get into your drawers and eat at your private parts. In my experience, they think labia are delicious. One time I made the mistake of going to Shakespeare in the Park and forgetting to bring a blanket or lawn chair. I just sat on the grass. The next day I woke up with a veritable bikini of chigger bites. I counted 63 in all, centered mostly around the cooter region.    

June Bugs

I once saw these referred to as “nature’s idiot dive-bombers.” They should officially be renamed this. Except that their current name is pretty accurate. They’re most populous in June. They’re these icky brown bugs about the size of an average lady thumbnail. If you are anywhere near a light outside in Kansas City on a June evening, these disgusting things will fling their grotesque, crunchy bodies at you. The only discernible purpose for doing so is that they’re morons.

House Centipedes

The most absolutely terrifying of all the bugs is the centipede. I’m not even including a picture here because just a pixelated image of one gives me the heebie-jeebies and makes me dry-heave. They’re like Satan’s multi-legged sperm, come to roost in your basement or bathtub. Many say you’re not supposed to kill them because they eat other icky pests like silverfish, spiders and ants. That’s great. They can do that outside. If one is in my house, I will run screaming from its presence and make my husband kill it. (That was part of our verbal marriage contract: he must kill insects.)

Katydids, aka Leaf Bugs

Look like big leaves and make a chirping sound. Almost as inoffensive as butterflies. 

Ticks

Pulling a tick off one of my cats remains one of the grossest things I ever have done. (And I have wiped a lot of messy baby/kid ass.) I don’t even know how she got it since she never goes outside. These little vampires can kill you. So prominent are they in the Midwest that a new tick-borne virus just got named after a county in neighboring Kansas. This is the reason I stay out of the woods. Also, I’m not what one would call “outdoorsy.” The last time someone tried to make me go camping was in college, and I slept in my car because it was far more civilized and bug-free than the tent. It was a 1986 Taurus and the back seat was about equivalent to a twin bed in size, so I was quite comfortable, thank you very much.  

Cicadas

A complicated creature that can live underground for as long as 17 years, cicadas come out every summer, hang out in trees in your yard and sound like a thousand bugs making noises all at once. They molt, leaving their disgusting exoskeletons just sitting around for curious 4-year-old boys everywhere to pick up and ask to bring inside.

Japanese Beetles

I get that the name would imply these things are not of Midwest origin, but they sure have settled here this summer. They ate up almost all the leaves on my apple tree and were all clumped together while doing so. It was a big, destructive beetle orgy. Their little green bodies filled my friend’s neighborhood pool when we swam there last week. They’re an invasive species, and now that they have invaded my little world, I’m super mad and will be unable to make apple crisp this year with my home-grown apples. 

Proper Midwestern Bug Vocabulary

Finally, I’ve heard some bugs referred to by different names in different parts of the U.S. I’d like to clarify the correct terminology for these insects should you happen to find yourself in the heartland:

Lightning bugs (not fireflies)

Roly-polies (if you say potato bug, you will get a blank stare)

Lady bugs (not lady beetles)

Wooly worm (the fuzzy caterpillar rumored to predict winter severity)

In conclusion, most bugs are gross and I hate them. 

"A magical time you should truly embrace"

While Googling one of the many ailments from which I’m suffering right now at about 35 weeks pregnant, I came to this web page that started with the sentence, “Being pregnant is a magical time and one that you should truly embrace.” And that’s how I knew the site was total crap and immediately closed out of it.  

I will give you that pregnancy is miraculous. I am literally making a new person inside me right now. That’s pretty insane. But I would never call it magical. Magic is spontaneous and delightful. It brings us awe and wonder, not hemorrhoids and gestational diabetes. There are some women with questionable sanity who love/loved being pregnant. My mother-in-law is one of those people. (She’s worth a separate blog all her own.) She just doesn’t get how I don’t think reduced lung capacity and a misplaced tailbone are not the most amazing things that ever have happened to me. Or how I think having and raising children is just one of many things I can accomplish in my lifetime instead of my be-all, end-all purpose for existence. 

Anyway, I want to debunk the “pregnant is magic” myth right here, right now. Because I don’t want anyone who is about to embark on this journey of person-making to think they got the wool pulled over their eyes. It was a lot like that for me in my first pregnancy (more in the postpartum part, actually). So many times I wanted to scream, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this was going to happen?!” So I will, dear friends: I will tell you.

Barfing and tired

I was extremely lucky not to experience morning (really all-the-time) sickness in either of my pregnancies. But I have friends whom it has raked over the coals. Their bodies are like, “So, this is the most important time of everything developing for the baby like organs and stuff, so I’m going to make sure you have as few nutrients as possible. The very idea of eating will make you barf again, and yet it’s the only thing that will make you feel better. Ha ha!” Early pregnancy also brings a level of fatigue that is impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Napping is the only thing that sounds appealing most of the time. This is really fun when it’s your second pregnancy and your first kid would rather throw a tantrum about his shirt having buttons than let you lie down for five minutes.

A deceiving period of blessed relief

The second trimester is, admittedly, pretty great. You pretty much feel like you, except fatter. You don’t look pregnant, just pudgy. During my second trimester this go-round, I went to New York City and walked untold miles every day. Then I went to San Diego and presented in front of more than a hundred people at a conference. I kept on Zumbaing. My pants were snug, but I had energy and a good outlook on life.

Then. Bam.

This is when it gets real - real miserable, that is. Here’s some of the fun stuff the “pregnancy is magic” weirdos won’t talk about (and these are just my issues - everyone has different things that make them miserable in the third trimester):

* Unending sick - So pretty much since I started my third trimester, I have had one upper respiratory infection after another. I have been sick for about two straight months now, with a few days of wellness in between (the longest has been a week). Pregnancy makes you immunocompromised so your body doesn’t kill the baby, and my older kid is bringing home a smorgasbord of novel new germs from preschool. I apparently can’t fight a single one of them. Nor can I take the good medicines. (I am convinced Tylenol is ground-up paper shaped into tablets. And, oh, how I long for NyQuil and its 10% alcohol.) 

* Gestational diabetes - Despite having none of the risk factors and gaining less weight this go-round than in my first pregnancy, I got diagnosed with this for the first time. (When I explained my lack of risk factors, the nurse told me, “Well, you are 34.” She might as well have added, “grandma.” Then she suggested I could make myself a vegetable stir fry to eat for breakfast. I wanted to punch her in the throat.) So not only have I felt like shit for months now, I can’t even comfort myself in carbs. And I get to poke my fingers with needles four times a day to test blood sugar. Hurray! To convince myself it’s not my fault, I often recall that one of the prettiest, skinniest, fittest people I know - a pilates instructor - also had gestational diabetes. And then I lust for cinnamon rolls. 

* Hemorrhoids - You think this is TMI? Tough cookies. This is pregnancy. I used to think the ‘roids only happened to obese people who played on their phones too long on the crapper. Nope. They also happen to people who have a growing human being sitting on their rectum, i.e. all the pregnant ladies. They can hurt so bad that walking is painful. They can burst and bleed everywhere and make you think you had a miscarriage in the toilet. My personal favorite is how in my latest cold, I’ve had this awful cough, and when I would hack, it would make my butthole hurt. Special, no?

* Unsolicited touching - People think they can just touch your abdomen - the most central, vulnerable part of you. Like without permission. In no other situation is this OK. Make a little mental image of one guy in a business suit just walking up to another guy in a suit and putting his hands on the other’s stomach. See, it’s weird! With one chronic offender, I tried touching her belly back, saying, “Since we’re touching stomachs now,” and she still didn’t get it. She just kept touching and cooing at my stomach. No boundaries, that one. Our society has an issue with consent, and I think a good place to start some education on this topic is with pregnant women.

* Bones out of place - Your body makes this hormone in pregnancy called relaxin that basically makes all the parts of your skeleton up for moving wherever they please. Some women’s foot bones spread out, and they are forever two shoe sizes bigger. I haven’t had that, fortunately, but I did lose all the weight from my first pregnancy and still had to permanently go up a pant size because my pelvis spread out and will never be the same again. Right now, I have to have a chiropractor put my tailbone back in place twice a week because it wants to keep slipping around, making the real tricky stuff like walking and sitting excruciating. I also coughed some ribs out of place, and relaxin does not want them to go back to where they were. The baby enjoys kicking them from the inside for a little literal added insult to injury. Most people would get a narcotic painkiller for this. I get what is basically placebo (technically Tylenol, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing).

* Bending over = most difficult physical feat - Not so long ago, I could shake it at Zumba, shape myself into a pretzel and shock people I was helping move with how much I could carry up and down stairs. In short, I was strong and capable. Now I am whale-like and must cross my legs to put on socks. I’ve reached the point where if I drop something, and it isn’t that important, I’m just going to leave it there because bending over is way too much effort.

* All the other stuff - stretch marks, puffy hands and feet, always having to pee, accidentally peeing oneself, inability to sleep, constipation, heartburn, shortness of breath, congestion, etc. etc. 

Does all this sound like “a magical time you should truly embrace?” No. No one should truly embrace hemorrhoids. Note I’m not even getting into the perineum-ripping good time that is labor and delivery. 

The “magical time you should truly embrace” comes later. It comes when you’re sad, and your kid sees it, and he reaches out and tells you he loves you and hugs you. Or when you see that child you made learn something new or say something hilarious. Or when you get to eat a big piece of carrot cake or have a fabulous workout or are on the trip of a lifetime or do something really impactful in the world. While scientifically kind of unbelievable - I’m making a pancreas and a brain and a whole other person inside me! - pregnancy is not magical. It is something to be gotten through to get to the really magical stuff. I’m going to keep telling myself that until I can take ibuprofen and eat pasta again.