FML

Thursday, January 13, 2010
2:39pm

I am having a bad afternoon. My mom called me when I was walking around in a room with a head full of hair dye to tell me my sister had been in a car accident. She was fine, but I might want to be prepared to go get her soon. Grand. So I plopped my ass in the shower. So cold it hurt then made me numb. I thought I was back in Bolivia, taking freezing showers with nothing but a bar of Dial soap, too cold to waste time on things like washcloths and conditioner. Then it was just so miserably cold I wound up on all fours with my head under the spigot. About this time I realize I forgot the conditioner for the dye. Ugh... we've cut the damn heat back due to the expense of having it truly warm, so I had to trek through the trailer, hair dripping wet, covered in freezing water to get the conditioner. So I'm in the other bathroom, conditioning my hair on hands and knees under the spigot, because there's no way in hell I'm getting back in that shower, and all I can hear is the running of the damn toilet. OMFG. I'm about to have an aneurysm. I thought John was going to do something with it, but with Carly's accident and the hot water heater going bust, I lost my patience today and proceeded to take it apart myself. I just need to screw in the screw that holds the floater in place, but thanks to the infinite genius of those who previously lived here, there's a shelving unit that includes a back support bar so that I can't slide it out OVER the toilet. Nooooo... It has to be either lifted in its awkward, bulky, 60-poundedness up and over the tank... OR... it has to be taken apart piece by piece. Why is this important? Because the lowest shelf of the unit sits so low that I cannot effectively reach a screwdriver underneath it. I tried using tweezers in lieu of a screw driver, but the effectiveness was limited at best. I got fed up with flushing and reflushing the toilet, watching it fill up with water, hoping that THIS TIME the floater would float on up and close the valve. Fuck the toilet. FUCK THE FUCKING TOILET!!! (I feel mildly better.) Try again when John gets home and can lift the shelving unit with me. Yeah, I could take it apart, but that would probably take me clear up until he gets home. I flipped the breaker on the hot water heater. Hoping it just needed reset. There is WARM water now, not hot. So it could either be an element or just that it needed to cycle through a tank before the next one comes out with strong heat. omfg, argggggg... At least it's heating somewhat, so the tank itself doesn't need to be replaced. Still... we've been getting hit really hard lately. Heating this winter has been stupidly expensive since it got cold so early, and all those lovely back-to-school expenses. My lovely department gave us all a 500 dollar bonus. I appreciate that they see the need for that, but that's still not enough to cover the graduate fees at the beginning of the semester. I don't blame the department. I blame fucking WVU. All these fees. My tuition is waived, I feel that these fees should also be waived. I'm not using the PRT, that old, broke-down piece of shit, so why should I have to pay for it? If I have to pay for the Rec Center... whatever, I use it a lot. However- I should be able to take a guest without them having to pay $10.00 if it's going to be that expensive. They call all this shit "free" but it's very expensive, and we never have the opportunity to use most of what we're forced to pay for. But the fees are not optional. You cannot opt out of paying for medical or psychiatric services you don't use, a gym you don't go to, a library you never visit, a PRT you never ride in, buses that are always full. I'm getting pissed. I'm not saying I don't use any of it, but 700 bucks at the beginning of every semester is outrageous. It's about a quarter of our tuition for God's sake! If I could just have hot water and know that we're going to be able to use the toilet, I would calm down. GRRRRRRRR!!!