How do you tell your parents that you changed your mind to a different major?

I don’t normally find flaws with episodes of shows I like because I don’t always know many facts about the places that they take place in. Of course, if you were paying attention to Criminal Minds on January 21, you may have noticed that it took place in Madison County, Alabama, with stops in Harvest, Madison, and Huntsville. As a Huntsville native, I thought I would take a note of things that I recognized as goofs.

• People of North Alabama have very little in the way of accents. This is a very diverse area, so people don’t really have a specific sound.
• The new theater is at a shopping center. If you’ve paid attention to the pictures I’ve posted in the past, then you might have seen the shopping center.
• There are very few palm trees as this is a temperate climate.
• Harvest isn’t hilly. It’s as far from the hilly side of the county as possible. Harvest is pretty darn flat.
• The hospital the little girl would have gone to does not have windows in the doorway area. (Though the little girl was found a ways away from Huntsville, she would have gone to Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children as it is the top hospital in the Tennessee Valley for trauma.)
• There are 3 “multiplexes” in the area near Harvest. There are two more further into town. The one that a child would most likely want to go to is closest to my end of town. A child would not want to go to the newest theater, and I don’t know if Monaco is big on having kids there, as they have reserved seating and alcohol.
• In this state, we have no “Highway Patrol”. We have “State Troopers.” No native Alabamian would ever call them Highway Patrol.
• Madison police would have been involved in the case, as they like to get involved in anything in their area.
• The weather when this episode would have taken place would be much cooler than was portrayed. We don’t wear light jackets in the winter generally.
• Our dirt is red. There is very little brown dirt. Most of it is just a variance on the rich red soil.
• The cars of the Fire Department are white.
• The malls aren’t laid out the way that was shown. Madison Square is a long mall with the “high end” stores off to the sides at various spots. You wouldn’t be able to just run out the door into the mall and head straight one way. Parkway Place has carpeted floors in the main part and is shorter and wider.
• Huntsville has very few alleys. They’re mainly in very old neighborhoods. There are even fewer completely flat topped buildings outside of downtown.
• They would have involved HPD once they were in Huntsville.
• It would take 2 hours for the aunt and uncle to get from Birmingham to the little girl.
• The woman who ran the RV Park at the beginning said there aren’t many foreigners in the area. There is a high population of Hispanics in this area, Germans are also to be found, and there are many other groups who speak many other languages in public, including various Eastern European tongues. I’ve heard languages ranging from Chinese to Dutch to Russian to Indian at the grocery store in my end of town. That’s nothing compared to what you would hear in the more integrated areas. Huntsville and the surrounding area is no stranger to “foreigners” with the placement of places like Redstone Arsenal, the US Space and Missile Defense Command, the Marshall Space Flight Center, etc.

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Last night as I watched Criminal Minds, I was also unloading the dishwasher during the commercial breaks. This is something I normally do, and while I’m doing it, I will leave the dishwasher open. Well, Xander likes to lay in the floor of the kitchen nearby. (He always likes to be near one of his people while they’re in the kitchen.) I came back during a commercial break to finish the load, and I got my toes caught in his tail “feathers” and I tripped. I fell into the dishwasher door and bent the door. Needless to say, it can no longer be used as a dishwasher. Of course, that was not the only injury. I hurt my left knee and got some scrapes. My knee really only bugs me now when it is touched or when it is bent. This makes it very difficult to sit, but I would rather sit with a little pain than stand and aggravate the crap out of my back.

I decided to change my second major today to English from Philosophy. I’m kind of a transitory creature. I’ll probably end up, by the end of the whole UAH experience, dropping my second major completely and having like 20 minors. I think it’s the BPD, because I’m not really an indecisive person.

I looked into the possibilities of why the X-Ray did not show my arthritis and, apparently, they could have missed it by not taking any images from odd angles. Of course, I think part of why they missed it is because I wasn’t standing when they checked. When they checked before, I was standing because that’s the only way that my kneecaps will stay in place.

I’m glad I don’t have an afternoon class tomorrow. Maybe I can come home and take a little nap. Yeah, right. That’s highly unlikely. Instead, I will probably come home, listen to Molly sing to the Law & Order theme, then work on my take home quiz for Asian Philosophy, and finish up by reading stuff for my Honors class.

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I missed my first two classes today because I felt really bad, but according to my X-Rays, there’s nothing wrong with my back and legs. I really doubt that there is absolutely nothing wrong with them because they hurt, but they couldn’t see anything on the X-Rays. (Of course, I kind of doubt that, too, because you can’t see my knees properly on an X-Ray since they’re kind of deformed.) Anyway, I still have an appointment with the Rheumatologist because they still think I have Fibromyalgia. I may not have arthritis since it doesn’t show up, which is weird because when I was signing up for disability, they said I had it. It shouldn’t be something that just goes away, should it? I mean, there’s the possibility that I still have it, but it didn’t show up. I don’t know. It’s all confusing.

I spent an hour getting my books canceled in the bookstore, which should have already happened. How hard is it to cancel books when someone emails you and asks you to cancel their order? Keep in mind that when said person sends this email in, they send a thing telling them their student number and the order numbers. If they had canceled the books two weeks ago when I asked them to, then they wouldn’t have had to spend an hour today canceling them.

Oh, and I had to return a book because it had already been charged to one of my cards, which overdrew that account at the time. I had to convince the manager that the book department manager had said to return the book and not sell it back. When you’ve never actually left the store because you didn’t want the book, then why should you have to sell it back? Selling it back is for the people who want to be paid for their used book. I wanted my money to be refunded.

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Okay, first of all, I have no nude pictures. Second of all, I’m in the Central time zone, which would mean that if they were on the news, then they would be on at 10. So the title does have significance, but mainly I have to tell you how my appointments went today. Well, actually, it was one appointment and one non-appointment.

I had a check in with my family doctor to see if he was writing my letter for Disability Support Services at UAH about my physical aspects of the disability. Well, he said that he would write it, but he wasn’t completely sure what to ask for. He didn’t particularly like the idea of writing one for illnesses that he does not treat, but since I claim to actually have problems with them, then he guessed he would write the letter. Of course, he needed to see with his own eyes that I have arthritis and he needed to check and see if I have arthritis in my lower back or if it’s Fibromyalgia. This, of course, means that I had to have X-Rays.

I don’t particularly enjoy X-Rays because they have this typical way of making me feel more pain and discomfort. They also tend to have the rooms too cold, and then, there is also the added annoyance at the people who do the darn things who refuse to give a lead thing. (I don’t know if the lead actually protects anything, but it still feels better to have one. Though having one with a lower spine and with bilateral knee X-Rays is kind of an inconvenience more than a help.) So, I didn’t really like the idea of having this particular imaging thing done because I’m in the middle of doing laundry. Actually, I just started it yesterday and haven’t gotten to the underwear portion of the show. (I would probably be almost done, but my mom, who had said she would help as she knows how much pain I’m in, is suddenly in too much pain to help me and my father, who will help my mom with laundry when she’s in pain, refuses to acknowledge that I might actually be in too much pain to do my laundry.)

So the technician tells me to take off my jacket and jeans. The jacket part I was expecting because I could feel the metal from the zipper, but I had forgotten that the jeans had a zipper made of the same metal substances…or some of the same metal substances. Anyway, I had to partially disrobe and put a gown on. If you knew the hospital running this particular imaging thing, then you would know that they only have gowns in one size. (It’s the same hospital that I had my gastric bypass done at, and, as I recall, they only had a one size gown. The more publicly accessible hospital has larger, more comfortable gowns.) Well, this one does not fit, so I’m clutching the back of it to try to close it, but it’s not exactly working properly. I kept it almost closed until the end, but I didn’t actually moon anyone, so that’s a good thing. So how does this relate to the title? Well, X-Rays are a form of imaging, which makes you think of pictures. Since I had no underwear on, I was semi-nude, so you could say that I had semi-nude pics taken.

I took a paper copy of my response paper to my Honors teacher after taking the (miraculously found) form to the Financial Aid office. The FA person told me to go pay my tuition. I asked her why. She told me that everyone who hadn’t paid had to pay, but I demanded to know why I had not been told I needed this paperwork back last year when I submitted the FAFSA. She said that I had been sent an email when they needed the form. Well, that’s all well and good, but they only send emails to the official school account and I never got a verification thing because my official school account wasn’t officially set up until my schedule had been set up in the system the day classes started. So, I asked, in my calm, yet unnerved voice, “Why am I being punished for a flaw in your system?” (I learned in ninth grade, when asking the school board for a transfer from Grissom to Huntsville due to medical reasons, that people become very unnerved when you refer to being treated a certain way as punishment, when it is in following with their rules of how to govern their organization. I also learned that asking this question often leads to the question, “Are you in therapy? If you aren’t, you should be because you have some serious psychological issues.” [Manipulation, though a personality flaw, is not a true psychological issue in most cases.]) She got unnerved and went to the director of Financial Aid to see what could be done, and told me that I would not be dropped from the schedule. They would check over my Financial Aid and see how much Aid I might receive. I would hope that I receive coverage for all my classes, though I would also like to receive coverage for the books I purchased for classes. (I would also like coverage for the overdraft fees incurred when paying for these books that I would not have received if they had let me know via “secular email” that my Financial Aid needed verification. [I would have had it verified last March, and Financial Aid would have disbursed already and I might have actually received a book stipend.])

I’m planning on starting an ezine again, and this time actually getting it to work. (Last time a lot of the staff disappeared after the name changes and regime changes.) This time I want it to be for women 18+, so if you either fit into that age and gender group, or you have a desire to write, which can transcend the age and gender gap, then please let me know. I’ll need to know your first name to set up an email account and a WordPress account. I’ll also need to know what things you’re interested in having in the thing.

Now, I have a test I need to study for that will be tomorrow. Fun, fun. It’s on Descartes’ Method and Meditations.

One last thing, if you want access to any private posts I make, then you need to request an invitation code from me.

I almost wrote this entry a few hours ago, when I was quite annoyed with my mom. I decided to wait, though. I kind of understand why she was annoyed with me, but she didn’t have to get so “huffy” about it. You see, I was supposed to write a response paper today for my Honors class “Tolerance in an Age of Persecution: Europe, 1500-1700″. Actually, I was supposed to write it sometime between last Thursday’s class and tomorrow morning. I had class Friday. I was going to write it Saturday, but I didn’t. I was pretty much told I had to go to church yesterday, which ended in me coming home with plans for the night that had to be canceled because I ended up with a migraine just about thirty minutes after I walked in the house. Well, that left either today or tomorrow. I chose to write it today. This evening to be more precise. I wrote it in response to one sentence from Article 3 of Question 11 in Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. (The sentence justified murdering people in the name of saving the world from heresy.) I hand-wrote my response, which I was going to type up tomorrow morning. I decided after I got done writing that I would hang out on the computer for a little while. Well, when it was time to go take the dogs out, my mom asked me if I had finished typing my paper. I was (stupidly enough) honest with her and told her that I wasn’t planning on doing it until tomorrow morning. Well, she got mad, cussed at me a little, and talked about how unreliable I am. Well, I got annoyed, and when she went inside because Willow didn’t want to walk, I pointed out to my father that I type and read quickly enough that writing a two to three page paper would not be difficult. Still, I had promised my mom (to quiet her down) that I would come in from the walk and type up the paper. I came in and had my three page paper written in about ten minutes, after editing it a little bit. Then, I sent it to my teacher via email, since I’m probably going to miss class tomorrow anyway. My mom was so happy when she heard it was all done. I was still quite annoyed. I’m sick of being treated like an irresponsible child. I’ve proven over the years that I can be trusted. I’ve proven over the years that I’m a good student. So why does she insist on treating me like this?

I was at the doctor’s office this afternoon to talk with the nurse about finishing up a paper for the Disability Support Services at school. We discussed my different physical disabilities, and she offered to have them write more about my mental health ones, but I told her I had already had that letter written. She said the doctor will look over the list and will let me know what accommodations that he thinks I need. Knowing my doctor, he won’t think that I need any. I just hope that he finally believes that I have Fibromyalgia after his office receives my doctor’s notes and tests from the clinic that diagnosed me. Maybe then he’ll understand that this pain that I’ve been talking about having is legitimate.

I was checking my email today and noticed that Krista, Hael’s fiancee, had heard about my migraines and my mom nearly dying. She was worried about me. It’s kind of odd that this person who has only known me for a short time was worried about me, when people who have known me longer don’t seem so concerned. It also seemed strange that someone who has just gone through something so traumatizing as unexpectedly losing her father would be concerned about me. Of course, Krista is sweet. So now two of my friends from YSA have checked on me, and neither of them is from my ward. That’s really making me wonder if my friends from my ward really care or not. Is that wrong to wonder about? Is it wrong to think that when you leave unexpectedly for two months that your friends should kind of look into what’s going on? Especially since these are the same people who helped initiate the whole fasting and praying thing where the entire YSA for the stake divided up 40 days of fasting for members of the group who had become inactive. It seems like when someone who had been going to virtually every event ends up just disappearing from the group functions, church, and from online stuff that people should do something. I’ve never had people not really care where I was before. I mean, even when I would get sick when I was in school as a kid (even a teen) and I would miss anywhere from a day to a month, someone always checked in on me, other than DHR, who still managed to do checks on me despite the letter on file that stated that sometimes I would fall ill and end up out of school for a month at a time. It seems like maybe these people that I thought were friends would check on me, but maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe they didn’t know that I expected that of them. Maybe I set my expectations too high. All I know is that other friends checked on me and it made me feel like I meant something to someone when they did.

So, tomorrow, the first biracial President takes office. Yeah, I called him biracial. I mean, technically, he has the same skin color as African Americans, and he is technically an African American, as his father was African, but Barack Obama is also half white. So, it’s like a half step towards racial equality, though you could say it’s more than that because it’s reported by some that people of more than one race end up having more discrimination than people of a single race. I guess that’s because they’re in an even smaller minority.

Oh, and if you would like to read private entries, please register so that I can give you access.

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Well, after receiving a call on Thursday afternoon which induced panic (basically my schedule gets canceled if I don’t fork over $3000 by Wednesday), I practically ran to the Financial Aid office with as much paperwork as I could proving that I’m on Disability. I gave them bank statements, promising that within a couple of days I would receive my Proof of Income letter which proves that I am, in fact, on Social Security Disability. That afternoon, I came home to the letter being in my mailbox, as well as my 2008 1099. I can’t find my 1099 from 2007, but since I have said multiple times and written a signed letter swearing that I did not file taxes in 2008, I don’t see how that would be a problem. I understand my income went up a little bit over the past year (I think cost of living increases by 3-5% a year), but that’s just a few dollars on the check. I rushed to the Office today with my letters I had received Thursday, which the Proof of Income letter mentions what I was being paid in 2007. I come home and check the status of my Financial Aid online, which no one had ever pointed me to when I was getting ready to go to this school, and I see that my tax proof has been waived, but they’re still trying to review my worksheet that says that I received SSDI payments that were less than $2200 last year. It doesn’t say what I was paid in SSI, but as far as I know SSI payments can’t be factored into taxes, tuition, financial aid, because they are pretty much only given to people below the poverty line. Well, I check my FA status a few minutes ago, and it says that I need to prove my benefits from 2007 with a letter from Social Security now.

1. Didn’t I just prove that I’ve been receiving benefits since at least 2007 by giving them a Proof of Income letter which mentions that I was being paid monthly a certain amount in 2007?

2. Even if I could find a way to get Social Security to send me the information from 2007 about how much they paid me total, how am I supposed to get all of that information by Wednesday before 5pm in order to get the financial aid disbursed in time to keep me from being kicked from the system? Keep in mind that tomorrow and Sunday are off-limits because the Fed doesn’t do weekends, neither does the school. Then, Monday is off, too, because we have to pay respect to the late, great MLK that day in both venues. So I have Tuesday to ask the Federal government, which is notorious for taking its time, to send me information for the next day. Uh-huh. Like that will ever happen.

I could try to get SSA to send me a crapload of information for Wednesday, but it wouldn’t get here until MAYBE next Wednesday. (More than likely, it would be AT LEAST the NEXT Wednesday before they’d get it to me, as it took 9 business days to get the last Proof of Income letter, and you have to factor in things like mail problems and all the other crazy people who have to ask them to do little things like this.) And there is no way on the Proof on Income letter request form to ask for back information. Why would you need back information? Generally all you need is proof that this is your source of income. Of course, it didn’t suffice for the state government when I was trying to get a disability exemption on property tax either.

I don’t get why people ask for information and say that they want one thing, then don’t accept it when you give it to them. It’s like you feel like you’re being punished when you’re disabled. The first way of punishment is the disability because most people don’t feel like they DESERVE to feel like crap in whatever way they feel like crap. Then, you get the way people react when they hear you have a disability. Then, you get the way that people treat you when they realize that because you’re disabled that they can treat you a certain way and get away with it because there’s basically nothing you can do.

Oh, and in case you’re having trouble with the math, I was getting probably less than $200 a month. I get a little more now. Still, I have to pay my other bills, which takes up all my SSI. So, let’s say I still have SSDI to work with and that’s about $200. In order to pay the school for my $3000 tuition, I would have to work out to pay them every month for the next 15 months for my one semester’s tuition. Now, factor in that I have 5 more semesters at this school to go, and it would be seven and a half years of paying that way to pay for 3 years of education. This is when I have filled out a FAFSA and prominently told the government that I WOULD NOT be filing taxes. This is when I have told them that I’m on SSI and Food Stamps. This is clearly a person that cannot afford their tuition and they have told me that my EFC would be 0. Now, I can’t pull off subsidized student loans and grants, which I would receive at that designation, without this financial aid and I can’t get the aid without them processing the form. How am I supposed to pay for my education without them figuring out another way to process my forms? It’s way too late to get scholarships for this semester. I don’t want to drop out of school. I don’t want to be the girl who can never get a college degree because she can’t get the SSA to send the Department of Education people proof that she didn’t have to give the Department of the Treasury any information about the money that the SSA gives her because she’s already crazy before dealing with this crazy system!

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