The now-can-you-hEAR-me one.

If you don’t feel like reading all this, scroll down a few paragraphs. The summary and important parts of all this bologna (which you SHOULD want to read) is in bold.

Two weekends ago I went to this retreat I’ve wanted to go to for 3 years. It always falls on the same weekend, which happens to be Fall Visit Day (a special event put on by the Admissions and Enrollment Services office) every year, which I’ve been required to be at every year until this year. (I can already tell this is going to be a long story. I’m being breathy. Sorry.) Well, when I arrived at the retreat Friday night, I naturally forgot to throw my sleeping bag on a bed and got stuck sleeping on a mattress on the floor. 15 humans… 14 beds… Gabe on floor. Did I mention I also forgot my pillow? Oh yeah, I forgot my pillow.

It was actually comfortable as heck. Don’t feel sorry for me yet. (You’ll know when to.)

Here’s the climax: Saturday morning I woke up and I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. Dun dun dun dun. I say this loosely, of course. I could hear. I just couldn’t hear EVERYTHING. There were some noises that were muffled, some silent, and it felt like there was something stuck in there. So I do what any insane hypochondriac would do and assume a roach, or a small colony of ants, or a baby mouse crawled in my ear while I was asleep and was now nesting in my wax. (ß That’s kinda graphic. Sorr.)

Fast forward to Monday morning. I went to the health center on campus (BOOOOOO) and the doc told me there was nothing wrong with me. Basically, that I’m making shi up.

Really? REALLY? You think I formulated a lie of deafness just to come hang out with you and vomiting humans in the campus health center? No sir. That didn’t happen.

I kind of wish this were a little
more graphic for the effect. Weak. 

Now fast forward through over a week of me griping about not being able to hear and having to take naps and medicine because I can’t concentrate because of everything being muffled and the constant ringing and blah blah blah to today at 1:45, which was the first availability the real ear doc had. I even skipped food lab for this appointment. And Lord knows that’s a sacrifice. I transform into a chef on Wednesdays at 1:00 normally. But when I realized my doctor is young and smart and hot and spicy, I suddenly didn’t care so much about not learning to season and cut different types of meat.

After the doc ran lots of hearing tests and looked inside my ear, and I looked/ drooled at him, turns out:

I have permanent freaking hearing loss.

Here, read about it here. Enlighten yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ménière's_disease

The real question here is: Is that chin cellulite?
Lord help me if it is. Just chillin' getting ear drum 'roids. 

Basically, he said sometimes this just happens to people. GOOD, INNOCENT PEOPLE LIKE ME. I have moderate loss of hearing in my left ear and I’ll receive 3 treatments of ear drum steroid injections (lit’rally a long needle into my ear drum) over the next two weeks, the first of which happened today and it hurt like **insert profanity** and sounded like a finger snap by your ear underwater (I always snap at myself underwater?). But my ear drum is gonna be like so ripped on roids so it’s worth it, right? ;) #springbreak13yall. There is a constant ringing in my ear that kind of sounds like wind, which he said will never go away, but after a year or so, I’ll become used to it. (A year is a long-ass time to hear one single sound, jtlyk. I’m already going crazy after 2 weeks of it. Especially when I’m trying to go to sleep or study or meditate which I never do.) It’s apparently just my brain compensating for my lack of being able to hear low-pitched noises. What am I? 90 years old?

Anyway. See ya, hearing! Hola American Sign Language! (ß dramatic.)

I know there are worse things. I get that. And I am very blessed. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m not going to miss not having to say “WHAT?” every time someone with a deep voice speaks to me on my left. So if you think about it, say a yittle prayer for me? God will be able to hear if you have a deep voice even if I can’t.

I'm practically a doctor. I made this chart that I copied from memory of my hearing test results for you to see. I think it's pretty freaking artsy, myself. 

So now I’m crying and laying in bed and sulking and eating string cheese and blahgging and charging my phone. If you want to cheer me up, I’d love a bowl of clear soup and some fried rice from Toyo (formerly Nagoya… sad), a California roll, and a brownie sundae without the ice cream (which I understand just makes it just a brownie) from Bop’s.

Happy HOLLARween, y’all!

The one with some of my thoughts and tips on Halloween

Drum roll for the pumpkin results paleaaaaseee…

Shout out to ma sista sista Mad for making me this little picture stitchure.

Winner is:

1 (Globe): +++++++

2 (Haunted House): +++++++++++++

3 (Mississippi): ++

4 (Owl/Pikachu): +++++

5 (Ghosts): ++++++

6 (Lyceum):+

Congrats. New kid, you did me proud. Really. I just would have been really bitter had the globe or Mississippi won. Why? Because Mississippi only worked on his for .5 seconds and Globe was my stiffest crafty competitor AND went out and bought special tools. Granted, I wasn’t the greatest competitor, regardless. My owl was UG (for being an owl), but it did get more votes than the Lyceum (ha… ha) the first vote of which was my sweet mommy’s.

Just when you think all hope is lost, your mom tells you you’re special. Thanks, ma.

And thanks to everyone who voted. That was fun. Awful for my self esteem, but fun nonetheless. Maybe we’ll do it again. Or maybe not. Or maybe once I find something else I’m “good at” I’ll have a competition involving that. Good?

On a different Halloween note, we watched Children of the Corn last night. Have you seen that movie? Okay, don’t. It’s weird as X. (Replace X with whatever profanity you want. My grandparents read my blahg.) Seriously. I wanted to be scared and I WASN’T. Not even a little. But was I weirded the heck out? Yes. 500%. First scene is just old-people-drinking-coffee’s heads getting cut off by creepy children—one of which is a ginger—and I normally really like gingers and I DEFINITELY like old people and coffee. Bottom line is: don’t. watch.

Even my own DEAR friends are
 succumbing to the sexy press. (pressure.)

Lastly, I thought I’d share my thoughts on sexy Halloween creature costumes even though most people seem to be set on their ways on this topic.

(Similarly to how all of my Facebook friends are suddenly extreme Democrats or extreme Republicans with EXTREME opinions and political knowledge….)

Anyway, WHY IS THAT A THING? If you want to be sexy, can’t you just BE sexy?? Why do you have to wait until Halloween to turn yourself into a kitten or a mouse or a dishwasher or a waitress and then put SEXY before your description? I don’t know about you, but I’m sexy by nature. I don’t need October 31 to make it offish. Nor do I need to tell you I’m sexy. If you’re sexy, you’re sexy. I don’t walk around saying, “Hi. I’m sexy Gabrielle.” So, I feel you don’t need to walk around on Halloween saying, “Hi. I’m sexy Batman.”

People will know if you’re sexy. Believe me. But if you need some inspiration from the many sexy faces of me through the years, here's for you:

Sexy Antoine Dodson. 'Cause they rapin' erbody out here.

Sexy fairies. Circa 2005.

Sexy sailor with a booger. Circa 2006.

Sexy grandma. Hey grandma! 

Sexy Augustus Gloop. Personal fave.

Sexy 4th grade nuns. (I'm the particularly sexy one on the back row, far left, second from the end. Don't I glow?)

And then I rewore the sexy nun costume circa 2007. It was that sexy.

The pumpkin carving one

This is me luring you into my blahg. Muahaha.

A few days ago, one of my friends told me he didn’t want to do the pumpkin carving contest that I had so carefully planned because he didn’t want to lose. LAME. This just made me GRRR because I knew I could beat him and (duh) wanted to beat him. He said, “Gah, I guess if it were a math or spelling competition, I’d want you to participate because I know I’d beat you. **flips hair**” So he agreed to partake in my extreme carving competition. Thing is, though, I knew I could kick his ass in a spelling bee, even though everyone put their money on him (just when you think your friends think you’re smart…). So, in addition to the carving last night, we had our first annual Shelley Cove spelling bee.

I lost in the dang preliminaries to some word-- "toboggan." And then I misspelled “hygiene” during my redeeming round. “I” before “E,” silly me. Can you befreakinglieve that? Ironic and annoying.

And on top of that, his pumpkin is better than mine. Or I think so at least. And so does everyone else. Ugh. Then we were under a tornado warning (WARNING, not watch… whatever the heck the difference is,) I freaked the freak out and pushed Morgan, and then I chipped my front tooth on an Abita Strawberry bottle and now it's sharp on the inside (wanna make out?) Bottom line: If I’m not good at what I’m good at (carving and spelling,) THEN WHAT AM I GOOD AT? I’ll be working on figuring that out. Stay tuned.

I shouldn’t say anymore (nor should I post a really cute pic of me and my sweet pump) about the contest because I don’t want to give anything away and thus influence your votes (because obviously you’d want to vote for mine.) Here are the pumpkin pics. Text, fb message, or comment with your vote—winner gets a special prize (aka bragging rights.)

(Number 1)

(Number 2)

(Number 3)

(Number 4)

(Number 5)

(Number 6-- not sure why I don't have an unlit pic...)

(...Number 7...)

This is such a bitter blahg. I should have had the best pumpkin. And I should have spelled Hygiene correctly.

The one when the BLAHG CAME BAHK!

I feel like I completely forgot how to do this. Similar(ly?) to how I forgot how to run (see last blahg post in which I describe the half marathon I ran… HA.) If I could run a mile right now, it’d be a miracle. My friend says that’s all in my head—but really, I think that’s all in HIS head. I can’t run a mile.

Again, to refresh your memory, I don’t plan on ever covering anything of substance in this online journal. If you want to read it, I appreciate it and then we’ll have something to talk about next time I run into you. If you don’t, I’ll never know. But just know, that I’ll simply cover the random musings of my mundane life—lightheartedly, of course. Because that’s how my brain works. I stopped blahgging for the past 6 months because:

A. I thought I had nothing to write about (ß Sometimes I think dumb things…)

B. Once I thought that for about a month, I thought I had lost all hope of my fan base returning, so I just continued drowning in my unblahgged sorrows for the next 5 months.)

But now I’m back. And I’m here to say that being a senior rocks. For me, at least. I love my classes. (Side note: I declared Dietetics and Nutrition as a double major.) We cook, and eat, and chat, and “study” and eat, and gahhhh IT’S AWESOME, especially when we eat.

Additionally, it’s almost Halloween (which I skipped last year on accident) and I am really excited becaussseeeee we are having a PUMPKIN CARVING CONTEST! I can’t even begin to say how serious I am about it, either. I bought a knife, printed my pattern, read tips online, and consulted with an expert carver (hi Sam) to make sure my pumpkin wins. Don’t worry. You’ll get to see them all. The contest is Wednesday and you’ll all have a chance to vote… unless of course all of my competitors withdraw (ß I couldn’t think of this word, so after an awkward and vague description, Ross helped me and then asked for a shoutout.) themselves. Then I guess I’d automatically win. Which would be totally fine.

Things I love right now: My new Keds, wearing my hair naturally, Orbit gum (the dark blue kind… that’s nothing new,) our 3^rd ex-roommate’s fancy bathtub that is now a spare bathtub, Honey Boo Boo, Switched at Birth (sometimes I start speaking in sign language, thanks to the deaf co-star, Daphne, who has taught me 8 words,) vacuuming, taking naps, going to food prep lab, having my phone battery last all day long, and going out (because I have time and I wear whatever I want.)

That’s all, for now, in brief summary. I promise my next post will be less spastic. Just kidding. I'm not promising that. Stay tuned for the pumpkin pics on Thursday! 

I wanted to include some visual aids for you to sleep on, but my neighbors just got home. And since I'm borrowing : / their internet and they just got online, it's going super slow. So I can't. Remind me to do that later. These are the only (really random) ones that loaded. First world pains.

This is me and the Pepsi commercial girl. Remember her? We look alike! Cool! I have a Doppleganger!
If no bells are ringing, or if you didn't exist in the 90's, here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C1I-IrOgyg&feature=related 

And here's my new Mississippi Driver's License (or "Driver License," rather...) I cried a little. A lot. Whatever. Happy to be Mississippian nonetheless, just sad to part with my swamp. You know.

Thank you all for reading. Really.

XOXO,

Gossip Girl (I've been watching that, too.)