Worst Days of My Life

Today I’m going to share with you the worst days of my entire life. Actually a majority of that statement was false. First, these are “funny” worst days of my life, let’s not get into anything too serious here on ATIACF (Yay abbreves! Can’t believe that’s the first time I’ve used that). Second, I can’t say these are from my “entire life.” My memory is really bad so it’s more like whatever random stuff I can think of from the past few years.

1.  Taking the GRE

Taking the GRE will make you feel really dumb. I don't like feeling dumb because I am always right. When I decided I wanted to go to grad school, I quickly realized I was going to have to take the GRE. I wasn’t worried about the writing or verbal reasoning sections, those were painless. But the other portion of the test is Quantitative Reasoning (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis). I had to take one stats class in undergrad, other than that I hadn’t worried about math since high school. Luckily I had this video to help me prepare:

Everyone knows that I am a worrier, so it’s no surprise that on test day I was unbelievably anxious even though I had studied really hard. The math portion of the test is adaptive – so if you keep getting questions right the questions get harder, if you answer wrong then questions get easier.  So I didn’t feel too confident when I saw the question 2 + 2 = ? come up. Just kidding, but the math portion did make me very uncomfortable and I probably have never been more nervous in my life. All in all not a fun day. But the story has a happy ending because I got into my first choice grad school and am now a Master of Everything ...or of Interpersonal Communication.

2.  AΔφ Canoe Trip 2003

While I was excited for friends, drinking, canoeing, and fun, I already had a fairly pessimistic attitude for the weekend given that I hate camping.  I tend to get crabby if I have to spend time outdoors while the weather is anything outside of the range 68-78 degrees.  I also despise peeing outside.  The trip started off on a high note: as we drove to the campsite, we passed poor Bambi lying mangled and dead in road.  Don’t worry, CT told me the cute little deer was just taking a nap. For the second year in a row it rained all night and our tent definitely did not keep all the water out so that’s pretty miserable. Then we awoke to find that all the food and beer we had purchased for the weekend was stolen out of the cooler we left right outside the tent. LAME. As usual, me and camping just do not get along.

3.  Spider. Bed. Eeek.

My parents' house is notorious for spiders. My parents live on a lake and the spider population is rampant. Usually they stick to the basement and leave other parts of the house alone. Usually they are of normal size and I can kill them no problem. But sometimes they are gigantic and have nasty super thick legs and are so gross I want to die.  One Summer night I came home after a night out with friends. I got ready for bed, pulled back the sheets, AND THERE WAS THE BIGGEST SPIDER I’VE EVER SEEN WAITING FOR ME. A huge spider. In my bed. Waiting for me.  I stacked up about 184 tissues cause there’s no way I wanted to feel any of the nasty creature when I grabbed it and smushed it. I never took my eyes off the thing because I knew if it scurried away and I couldn’t find it, I’d never be able to sleep in my room again. I stood there staring down the spider for at least 10 minutes, trying to work up the courage to grab it. I kept being like “Ok. One ...two ...three... go!” But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was way too scary. My dad was very pleased to be woken up at 2am to go kill a spider.

4. Easter Morning 2011

The Saturday night before Easter, I went out. Hard. Having a roomie that works at a bar can be trouble. Rooms says she can tell how drunk I am when I come to visit her by how high my voice gets. According to her, that night I sounded something like this:

Needless to say, I paid for it the next day. On Easter, I’m always in charge of dying eggs. I hard boiled them the previous day but I didn’t have to be out to my parent’s house until the afternoon (and I was anxious to meet friends out) so I figured I would just dye them Sunday morning. Big mistake. Because I wanted to die Sunday morning.  It was a “I’m never ever drinking again” kind of morning. I finally forced myself out of bed around 11am because I didn’t have a choice - I had to take care of the eggs and get ready to go out to the burbs. Dying eggs was a challenge and quite inefficient as I had to stop every few minutes to run to the bathroom and barf. I managed to get the eggs dyed and throw myself together right before my brother and sister-in-law picked me up. But then things went from bad to worse. I had planned to just nap in the backseat and try to feel a little better. However, Chuck and Amber had decided to give Eli a bath that morning and he wasn’t dry yet. Guess what doesn’t make a hungover person feel better? Wet dog smell. But wait, there’s more. The other dog, Kagan, doesn’t do well on car trips and he spent a good portion of the trip throwing up. Guess what makes a hungover person feel the worst ever? Wet dog smell + thrown up dog food smell. It was the most excruciating car ride of my life.

There you have it. You should probably feel pretty good about yourself right now since these things didn't happen to you.