Apartment Pants

This last week has been so crazy! Andrew has been studying for his first two tests, so school and the anatomy lab own him for awhile, and I've been by myself in the apartment trying to keep busy. I read Pride and Prejudice, sat outside for a couple hours, cleaned, caught up on my Bachelor Pad, and most importantly... discovered how to download old SNES games onto the computer! This came in handy because I applied for a medical billing position and I was told at the end of my second interview I would get a call on Monday about whether I was hired or not. This was on Friday. She wanted me to wait three days to find out, and Andrew was gone preparing for his exams, that weekend could have broken me.


But instead I spent the weekend playing Secret of Mana and Zelda: Link to the Past, and when I couldn't play because I was eating or getting ready, I watched a guy on Youtube do walkthroughs. 

 Basically I've lived a pretty pathetically nerdy life for the last several days. However, I feel that I have justification for being a bit of a loser: when playing games I don't analyze real life, I just get sucked in and forget about things like time and food & water. So I was able to keep my mind off the job for the majority of the weekend, and I didn't have any breakdowns. (Showering was really the only part of my day I was nervous, ten minutes of just me and my thoughts... worst parts of my day.) My sister was so sweet, she sent me four Nintendo DS games so that if I got bored with theses ones, I have more! Thankfully I got the job, and I start next Tuesday! (Another side note: I was more anxious for this job than I was on my wedding day. Too funny.)


Don't worry about the state of things around here though; I'm not the typical video game slob. I shower and clean everything and make sure that when Andrew comes home, it isn't evident that I've been sitting for ten hours playing my stupid games. I like things to be clutter free, I can think better and it keeps me calm. Walking into the kitchen and seeing dishes drives me a little crazy because I can't enjoy what I'm doing, in the back of my mind I'm thinking about what I have to do. Or cleaning the bathroom. Or taking the recycling out. I would prefer to take care of those things first so that I can sit down and focus on what I'm presently doing. That's really the one major difference between Andrew and I, he doesn't mind things jumbled in corners or having loose pens everywhere. To him it's easy, but to me it's a weight dragging all my thoughts and attention to something I don't want to think about. Here are some good examples of such things...

           

Where Andrew stores the coffee grounds.

Recycling pile after two and a half weeks. The dumpster is far away.

Even though he doesn't mind messes and somehow they always build up, I don't mind spending five minutes dispelling them. It gives me something to do, and the little accomplishments make me feel useful. Being unemployed really can make one feel like a useless waste of space, even if nobody else thinks that. Although, there is one spot that he can have any mess he wants because I only have to deal with it once per day: the floor by his side of the bed is his area for clothes or trash or coins and I only look at it when I make the bed. I tell him the night before I do laundry that it's coming so if he needs things washed he can put them in the hamper. We have a system : ) Anyway, my point is that I love Andrew and it doesn't bother me that he has a different approach to cleanliness. He takes care of me in so many ways. A couple weeks ago I had a sinus migraine and it kept me up for hours  that night over the toilet (in case I succumbed to my nausea), and he made sure that I was still drinking fluids and sat by me until I could fall asleep. Well, I had another headache like that one last week and he ran to the store to pick up some special medication so that it wouldn't progress and keep me up all night again. A couple days later he took me all over Pullman to find the movie Pride and Prejudice because I had finished the book and was on a Jane Austen kick. Along with P&P, we bought The Lake House. Apparently I had a chick flick moment, and Walmart had a $5 movie collection. 

He makes coffee everyday!

Also, Andrew doesn't mind that I can be a total game nerd and use terms like 'grinding' or 'sprite' when playing video games. I introduced him to Facebook's Bubble Island, and game emulators so he can spend his free time on the computer next to me nerding out too. 

Our neighbors were having a loud party...
He was using his stethoscope to find out what song
was playing.

Just another anecdote: the other morning I looked out my sliding glass door while drinking my coffee, and there was a dude relieving himself in the trees just below our building. I didn't have the guts to go out onto my deck and yell at him, and I couldn't think of what to say anyway. And usually once a guy starts, he can't really stop so I let him finish. But not before I got a couple pictures of his car. If I see it around town, I have the license plate memorized and I'm not afraid to leave a note. Pullman never ceases to amaze me.