And Now for Something Completely Different...

I just don't understand Mao Zedong... Ok, so I know that this is a random turn of events, but I honestly don't know what the guy was really about! Part of me wants to say that he was an evil, despotic, sick and inhuman individual who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of individuals. The other half of me wants to believe that he was genuinely trying to make things better for China and her people. I honestly can't make up my mind!

I think that the problem lies in the fact that there is so much myth surrounding the man. You honestly can't get at the truth. So much of China is hellbent on attempting to fuzz Mao up... It feels like there is too much political cover up surrounding him. Biographical survey talks about this man who burned through women and political supporters like a wildfire. He had many children, yet few of them lived and far too many of the dead died alone, casualties to their father's political ambitions. Although he was fanatically confident in his own abilities and marginal education, the man took on the task of reinventing China, to the point of destruction several times. Yet he is a heroic figure to the Chinese and earned the trust and adoration of millions. I honestly do not understand how he did this though.

Then there is the question of his personal life and health. What happened with all of those wives of his?! And the supposed "orgies" he engaged in with young girls? What about his supposed STD's? Did he really die of heart complications due to the effects of tertiary syphilis, or was it really just the last heart attack to do him in? Does it even really matter though, what his personal life was like? Does who he was in private really affect or influence his god-like status?

So can anyone honestly tell me who Mao Zedong really was? I doubt that, and I wish I didn't but that is just that. The man died, the country loves him and even if they were able to assign truth to Mao's life would it really change anything? Sorry, guess this is a little silly of a diatribe, but here I am encountering Mao for the second time in my life and even though it doesn't really affect me much personally, Mao's influence is all over modern China... What does it mean to me as a student entering into a world that will probably be heavily dominated by China as they gain more and more of the affluence that Americans are abandoning? How do I compete with a mentality so hugely dominated by Mao if I don't understand him?

Rar...

Because boy trouble is where it's at...

So, here I am in Boise, it's Friday and there are oodles of activities that are chartered for this weekend as part of the BSU game tomorrow, but none of that matters because, of course, I'm preoccupied by "The Boyfriend." So to fill in on the History Lesson: Boyfriend and I have been together for about 4 years and of those 4 we've lived a few hundred miles from each other for at least 2 years. Long distance is old hat to a large extent and here we are just cresting that 4 year mark and looking at a third year of an 8 hour separation... While it may be old hat, long distance is by no means pleasant... It sucks... I hate it... I could go on for a while with that.

Moving on, Life for Boyfriend and I has been a little insane this year. Both of us changed schools and locales. Mine was a fresh start, his was a visitation to the scene of previous disappointment. I'm really proud of him for going back to U of I (rival schools... whatever shall we doo....) to keep his in state standing, especially when his last turn at the place involved a total lack of maturity which spiraled him into failure that actually shook him into Responsibility. Overall the experience was good for him; it wasn't fun but I think he made it into a lesson of sorts...

Going back to Uof I has been a little hard on him, but the factors are totally different for his return. He's surrounded by friends and they are all pulling him into different directions. Then there's the pesky voice of that make believe girlfriend on the phone begging his attention because she happens to be going through some pretty big changes... Oh and the whole point of this is that he's supposed to be going to school... yeah...that one...

Well, lets just say that we're both stressed and trying to find that miracle of balance which supposedly makes life pleasant! We're nowhere near that... To top it all off, Boyfriend is sick and he's not having fun with it... (who likes being sick anyway!?) Did I mention he's in the dorms too??? So no privacy, he's sick, I'm Captain Anxiety and we're trying to keep a relationship afloat...

Oh! Because the whole point of Boyfriend's stint at U of I is to keep his in state residency status so he can transfer down to BSU fall 2011... Yeah! It's complicated...

Meanwhile, two of our really good friends are having major relationship upheavals which marginally resemble something we went through during U of I round one! This has made him at turns insanely attentive and crazy distant... I love the attentive, I hate the distance with the fiery passion of a thousand suns... With the Boyfriend version Sick.0 I mostly get the distant....

Distant Boyfriend is essentially a lesson in monosyllabic 20 Questions. The general pattern is me yammering and him occasionally grunting a word or two, or mumbling something that may have been a sentence... Well, that is just NO FUN!

Lets just conclude with this little thought: All I really want right now is to snuggle up with Jackson and have him say sweet little geeky things to me as I relax. There's an 8 hour drive, or a $160 ticket in between that situation and reality...

I miss him. I miss him so very much and he is more than just The Boyfriend...

I want the Long Distance frustration to end.

Drama-Rama!

So! School began and of course I counted down the days before the next holiday when I could zip up home and see my people. Boise, as nice (and flat...) as it is not my place, nor does it really have many of "my people" in it, yet! So, Labor Day weekend was being looked forward to with immense anticipation.

My roommate and I took my giant purple eggplant of a van up and thought we could double duty the trip to also retrieve our couch! We arrived, we had fun and we got the couch. Then we made like the wind back to college and work and the place that actually needed the couch only to land in Kennewick, at a gas station with a car that would not move...

It was silly really: park car for gas... move car to be courteous, park again... move car to air pump to inflate perpetually leaky tire....... Car. Refuses. To. Move. Ever. Again.

I hyperventilate and my cucumber cool roomie whips out her phone and assembles a bevy of her people to the rescue. I am from the school of thought where to ask someone for a tissue may be asking too much so I generally feel that asking people for anything is a bad idea... It's not that I think people are evil or that they don't like me, or that they wouldn't want to help me... Ok, the last two are lies... But I share a generally positive view, most of the time, about my fellow man. I just really don't feel like I deserve to have people drop what they are doing and come to my aid!! (unless you are my boyfriend, which carries a totally different toolbox of expectations... poor man...)

Within a half an hour, Rommie's friend is there hemming and hawing about the state of the now defective eggplant... After about an hour or so of deliberation and such, we are spending the night at his parent's, they are feeding us and we have a PLAN! I was still internally sputtering and freaking, but things were "under control."

So while being graciously put up at our host's home, I decide to check my email... BAD IDEA!

When It Rains, It Pours! They say, I wholeheartedly agree... So, you don't know this, but I have a terrible relationship with my mother... In a "we just don't talk" kind of way... So when I moved down here I didn't actually get around to telling her about the whole moving part of the equation... Oops. Sitting malevolently in my inbox is an email from my mother from which no good could possibly come... I open it and there she is acting self righteous and hurt about the fact that in her mind I have cut her off and unjustly hurt her with my disrespect and malice by refusing to tell her that I was moving... As such she was now going to cut off my health insurance...

Not good...

To be quite honest, she is not altogether unjustified in her feelings, but my mother and I get along only slightly better than Nazis and Jews... Maybe a little bit of an overly colorful exaggeration, but BAD, unhealthy and depressing couldn't be overused in describing our recent interactions... Now to some, this would seem to be a minor setback because, plenty of people have crappy relationships with their parents, why not me too!?

Well, my mother is an alcoholic, so while some people can argue reasonably with their messy family members, mine likes to babble somewhat confusedly and illogically about things that really don't have anything to do with the problem at hand... She also has this selective hearing mechanism that I am thoroughly convinced should be studied. My mother has the awful talent of picking apart any argument and not only internalizing anything that could even possibly be considered insulting, but also regurgitating it for you on a moment's notice, even when slobbering drunk... This makes talking about the issues we have bordering on impossible, and our relationship got so bad at one point that I honestly felt that there was no better option than ceasing to talk to her.

And it was surprisingly easy. I didn't send cards on birthdays and holidays, and neither did she. I didn't call or come knocking on her door and she never came back for me. It was so easy to just stop having a relationship with my mother that it was seeing her that would give me jitters... Now, my mother knows I have these bizarre aspirations for higher education including getting my PhD so when my parents' divorce was getting really ugly, about a year or so ago, I went to the dentist and was told that I required a crap-ton of insanely expensive work. I gave into my wonderful tendency to spaz and ran to my mother asking if she was cutting me out of health insurance because at that time, that is what she was doing to my dad... She vehemently reassured me that she would carry me throughout college and I believed her.

She has great insurance by the way, and given that I have this amazing ability to injure myself at inopportune times, or get sick from random things, I need good health insurance... So, here I am, having recently waived my Student Health Insurance Plan, freshly moved in and spazzing out over the newly defective state of my car and I start to cry... Not noticeably, but, there was that terrible stinging sensation and that feeling that the bottom of the world is opening up and and munching on your toes... I proceed to be open and honest with her in a heart-wrenching pair of emails that are only met with anger and disdain. I tell her how I miss her, how I want to have a relationship with her but I just don't know how... But I don't think she heard that... She must hear an odd conga-line of insults and jabs that I honestly don't see myself saying...

So I go to sleep and try again to make life stop biting me in the morning. It didn't. The mechanic does some magical voodoo that somehow multiplies what is considered a $150 part into over $1,000 worth of repairs and diagnostics, and it may be this, but it's probably that, until I just start bawling. At which our host comes over to me, gives me a hug and offers me tissues. I didn't even have to ask. I call my father and he attempts to rescue me and we end up abandoning the car for future dealings and summon another one of the Roomie's rescue squads to take us the rest of the way down to Boise...

Talk about an interesting contrast of events... The kindness this weekend of the people who came to our aid put in contrast to my mother's insanity is hard to comprehend. I know that she is sick and that is the only reason I resisted calling her and screaming at her on the phone for a few hours when things were getting really ugly. I know (somewhere inside of me...) that my mother is not ok, less ok than I am even after the insanity of the past week! It's not comforting, but I suppose it's just perspective...

On the positive side:tomorrow is Saturday and I can sleep in till 9:00. Boo-yah.