It's a gateway drug...

Coffee.

Coffee is a gateway drug.
I don't mean you're going to start smoking pot, shooting up heroine, and eating LSD.

For someone who has decided to stop drinking soda and other sugary drinks, coffee will fuck that up.

It starts out pretty innocent...
You drink a cup or two of home-brewed coffee in the morning before school/work.
One day you sleep in and don't have time to make your coffee so you grab something fancy, like a Cáfe mocha, since, you know, you hardly drink them anyway.
Then after a while you realize how easy it was to sleep a little bit later and just have someone else make you this delicious chocolaty caffeinated beverage...
So you start taking it every day.
You start to crave more sugar, and so you have a diet coke with your lunch every now and again, still drinking a lot of water too.
Then you want even MORE sugar... so you switch it up to be a regular coke...
THEN you're having a cafe mocha every morning and a regular coke with your lunch every day.
The sugar cravings get horrible.
You want more candy and chocolate and ice cream and you want more caffeine too.
So then you have a coke later on after lunch every so often...
Then every day...
Then one day you buy an energy drink, which you haven't had one in over two years...
You've hit rock bottom.

"Then next thing you know you're hiding in basements drinking hardcore energy drinks!"

Coffee turned me onto caffeine and sugar. It got so bad that I was gaining weight, always tired, and my skin looked awful.

So I quit coffee.
I will, from now on, only drink green tea for my caffeine.
Low fat milk, cranberry juice, water, and green tea with honey.

I started yesterday. I happily consumed four "grande" cups of green tea.
Today I only consumed two and a half.
I am sleepy, but I've also been exhausted from school.

The honey in my tea definitely helps me fight any sugar cravings.
I will eat a little bit of ice cream after I finish my dinner.
I'M NOT HOUDINI, OK! BACK OFF!

I quit coffee, and I think you should too. Unless you have fantastic self control. Asshole.

Dont' want a paper gangster...

I'm currently printing out 19 pages of information in relation to getting my husband's Visa.
19 pages of stuff to read on the computer is hell. Fuck that.

I'm printing out the whole Affidavit of Support stuff.

I'm a bit surprised, actually. I did think this was going to be ridiculously difficult work.
The only pain in the ass is reading everything to make sure you don't fuck up.
The only people I know with any experience in the Spousal Visa area is my parents... and things have changed in the past ten years.

What I have learned in my experience with getting a Visa. A Spousal Visa, actually.

Originally, we were thinking to get the Fiancé Visa, but it came to be our understanding that since I am a permanent resident (for now!) in Finland, it would be easier for us to get married and apply for the Spousal Visa.
So we happily got married, had a nice little wedding, real pretty.
I had my name changed to his, I no longer "live with my parents". A lot of fun and exciting things.
I'm a real person now! I'm almost an adult!

So, anyway, the process began.
We did all sorts of research. We discovered which forms we needed to fill out, the fees, etc.
First step was the I-130, the Petition of all petitions.
We also filled out the G-325, our biological information.
Included necessary stuff and mailed it in, along with a receipt to prove we paid the fee.

Who knows what we did wrong?
Yes, we fucked up by mailing it in.
But you know what was rad? I just had to show up to the Embassy a week after they got it, because they called me. I had to bring my passport (and apparently money).
They refunded the money, since it was to the wrong account, and then gave me all the forms which were needed for my husband to fill out, and plenty of instructions.

The lesson learned: Contact the Embassy if you're even remotely unsure about something.
Nothing is in black and white, except the text, as long as it's on a white background. I found that the forms really like the color blue...

So my husband is doing his part, working on the medical stuff and all the important papers he needs to prove he's not a criminal or will be bringing with him some crazy European disease, like Polio or Swine Flu (he needs the vaccinations :D).

My current job is supply The Affidavit of Support (I-864). The tricky part is I am not a permanent resident (although I am an American Citizen) and I have no income whatsoever.
So I have to rely on my family, or someone close to it for this.
Which is tricky, seeing as how the economy took a nice dump on my family.
We're not poor by all means, but our best choice was let go from his job (as we were expecting due to foreseen events) the day after he went to an interview, fingers crossed he gets the job!
Our preferred choice has been unemployed for two years, although they have the funds to take care of my husband, as the guv'ment desires.
So I'm just doing the research to see if my family member qualifies...

Let's hope for the best!

Once I highlight important information in these 19 pages of Affidavit of Support information, I'm going to "buy" new furniture, to see how much money it would cost us. Shipping versus buying new shit...

Teacher's Pet

We have a new teacher at the school.

The old teachers have put in their two weeks notice, two have completed that and they have left already. Two down, one to go. She'll only be there for one week when she returns from vacation.

Good riddance.

Stop putting damn question marks on my name. Stop telling the other students to "not give her(me) customers".

Maybe if she actually gave a damn and TRIED to teach instead of just getting all uppity and excited and doing the fucking hair cut herself or mixing the hair dye herself etc etc I would have learned something by now and been enjoying going to school.

Also, maybe, just maybe, if the teachers didn't look more bored than we did during Theory, we would have enjoyed showing up more. Maybe, instead of just reading highlighted paragraphs on this 30 sheet packet, you talked about it, we'd be more interested.

The new teacher, who is actually a teacher which was there three years ago, is fantastic.

In three days he's talked about the different techniques on how to do even just one specific style, the differences between them, how they end up looking. He actually tells you what it is that you just did wrong and tells you how to fix it. You know, rather than just yelling at you and then doing it themselves...

He also encourages creativity.

I made a hairstyle which the "principle" liked.

What does the new teacher say? "It's nice... but it's boring."

Son of a bitch I have to step up my game.

You know what else?

New Teacher has delicious pheromones.

When he gets close enough to me my ovaries light up and squeal, "LET'S MAKE BABIES!"

I cannot wait for this ridiculous thing to stop.

He's a great teacher and I'm thrilled.

I'll be done with school in no time.

It's History

When I was walking home from the bus stop I was happily reminiscing (not sure how to spell that and I'm using my cell phone for this post) about my careless life in the past. I was specifically laughing about a dating mistake. It didn't last more than twenty four hours, when everyone else heard about it.
Poor Lee. There was a power outage in the neighborhood and a full moon. He got romantic, we kissed. When my friends heard about it they tut tutted me. I broke up with Lee. He was sweet, but probably trouble. He was also the only guy I ever kissed who had braces. That was weird. :3
I continue reveling in the past this morning. I listen to old, embarrassing music because it's the only way I can hold onto my childhood.
I don't openly share my music collection because, well, I listen to ABBA. Nothing to be ashamed of...if you're Swedish.
Although I do find my longing for my care-free childhood stronger when I'm feeling down, lonely, confused, anything that might require some snuggles.

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Wanna go ride bikes?

Yeah, I am super proud of myself right now.

This is my bike:

It's older than I am. I'm 23.
This bike is at least 40 years old. I've had to do a bit of work to it. All I need are lock washers for my super sweet bike. I did a test ride to the grocery store down the street from my house, no more than a ten minute walk, and a little girl was with her parents and was talking so excitedly about my green bike lock. Pssh, I was like, fuck yeah it's awesome.
I also have a sweet basket for it. Looks like a picnic basket without the lid. In fact!

It's pretty fucking sweet basket, right?

Well I rode my bike to Iso Omena from my house, because I also needed to buy a helmet. Now I'm a pretty big fan of irony...

Here is the helmet before...

Yes, it's black with a skull and cross bones with! a viking helmet. Fuck. Yes. I'm rad, don't lie.

Here is the helmet after:

Little happy clouds, one has a rainbow

Rainbow with hearts

Happy Sun :)

I admit, I cannot get very good pictures of the cute little stickers I stuck on my helmet. I need some fabulous sunlight and like hell if I'm going outside again any time soon. It's hot and I'm exhausted.

Contacts

Two posts in like, one hour, go me!

I am blind. Not legally, no, but without my glasses or my contacts everything is blurry. I can wander aimlessly without my vision machines, mostly likely wont crash into anything, but I can't read or see clearly without them. I'm pretty blind without them. I actually can't see colors very well without them.

Anyway, enough about how stupid my eyes are, I do plan on getting my retinas lasered at some point.
But for now I have my glasses and my contacts.

My contacts at this very moment are the reason I'm even making this post.
I'll start with my glasses first, though.
My glasses are cute and trendy right now, sort of. They're big, with thick, dark purple frames. I loved them when I found them. Then after some time I learned that they give me a unibrow shadow in the right light if I have my hair pulled back and that's stupid and ugly and I hate it. You just can't pluck shadows!

So my husband now has a chance to choose my glasses for me. He wants me to have something smart. I've been thinking about the glasses without the frames. Open up my face a bit.

Anyway... so I just bought these new contacts a couple of weeks ago. supposed to make my eyes bright green. She said it was going to be really bright. Hardly a difference than my own eye color except, well, they're more noticeably green. They hide the hazel.
I like them though, they're subtle, but extreme at the same time.
Although they have this one flaw. It's either my contacts or my eye.
My right eye likes to suck all the juice out of the contact so that it's basically adhered to my eye and I have to dump a bunch of eye drops into my eye and try to get some liquid under the contact so I can even take them out, don't worry, it doesn't hurt and I have no intentions of scratching my retina. Gonna get it LAZERED! one day...
But so, anyway, this crap just builds up under my contact and I'm stuck with a family of those wiggly eyeball worms that float on your eye and you can't look directly at it because no matter how hard you try it keeps moving. Then it just annoys you and you want it to go away so you squeeze your eyes shut and you can still see it and all you want to do is scream!

Anyway... I think I need to take my contacts out. I'm pretty sure I can only wear them for like 8 hours before life fails.

Huey, Would you like to buy a Buick?

Dear Facebookers,

Some of you do something that make me want to sell Buicks. (For those of you not in the know, it means I would like to puke.)
Now, to get specific, it is you married folks that do it for me.
I get it, you're happily married. You love your significant other and couldn't be any happier.

I know this, because I, too, am happily married and I love my husband and couldn't be any happier. Here's the thing though, I have absolutely no intentions of setting my status as "ickle wickle cutesy poopsy wuv notes to my sweet hubby wubby shmumpkins because I wuvs you so much yes I do!"
That's the kind of thing that you post on their wall.
Unless your "cutesy poopsy wuvvable hubby wubby" is fixing the sink or changing a lightbulb, I don't want to hear it.

So please, if you want everyone to know how much you "wuv your sweet widdle cutesy poopsy amazeringest" husband/wife, just post it to their wall. We'll still see it.

It's posts like that which make me want to vomit.

There are other things my fellow facebookers do which exasperate me.

The Caps lock enthusiast:

I don't know what your deal is. There is no need to shout. Typing in all caps lock doesn't even look better. If you, for some reason, are unable to read regular text, just magnify the screen. You have the scroll button, click it and scroll until you can read.

The Baby Picture:

There are /very/ few exceptions to this rule. Actually, I only know one exception out of all my friends who can post their child as their user picture and I know who it is just by the picture.
If you want your user picture to have your child in it, please, be in the picture too.
There are too many times where things like that can get awkward. "Hey baby, last night was awesome," as a wall post when the picture is their child can be kind of creepy...

The Pet Picture:

See Baby Picture.

The Twitterer:

This is Facebook, not Twitter. I mean, for real?

My personal favorite...

Dumb and Deep:

You post song lyrics sometimes. You post your own personal feelings. You say something romantic...
I would be impressed if you spelled it correctly and didn't abbreviate.
"I'm right here in front of you and I can't stop shaking. come on and hold me still. Take my heart love, until I, cuz I feel as though I've never seen beauty until this night"
So close, yet so far away.
That is a direct quote.
There are also the ones which their posts are nothing but song lyrics. The best part is when it's nothing but song lyrics from the same band every time. Your status updates are nothing but The Beatles (Across the Universe, let's get specific) lyrics. It would be one thing if it was all just The Beatles, but no, it's only anything and everything from Across the Universe.
Stop it. Disco Stu hates Disco.


Don't worry. I don't expect you to stop what you're doing. People like you for who you are. I just hide your updates. It's easier that way. I like to keep my braincells.