August 25, 2001
3:01pm

I'm finally moved in! The move was absolute torture! I live on the third floor and there are no elevators in my building. My mom was the only person there to help me. (I think my friend Nick tried to find me but couldn't.) The most difficult thing to move had to be the futon. First we took the mattress up. I couldn't get a good grip on it, so it kept slipping. It was so wide and long that I couldn't see. My mom (who was holding the other side) would unknowingly jam me into the corner while trying to get up the stairs. She'd only stop after hearing my muffled screams of suffocation coming from the other end. Then we had to take the frame up, and it was so long it didn't fit in the stairway properly. We had to carry it over our heads, which was no picnic.

This morning I was late for work because I couldn't find my work clothes. It took a long time to locate them because my apartment currently consists of an endless sea of boxes. I was kind of embarrassed to have to tell the manager that when I called; but as a fellow college student and frequent mover, I'm sure he understood.

I passed throngs of frustrated parents and tired students on the way in to work. These are the symptoms of move-in day on campus. Moving into the dorms is a big pain in the butt. Not that I want to profit from others' misery, but seeing them made me even more happy that I now live off-campus.

Friday night I called my grandmother and father's houses to give them my new number and address. I love them both dearly, but I never get to see them or talk to them. My grandmother and her family live pretty far away, and my dad and his family are in another state. Giving them my number was a good excuse to get to talk to them.

I never really knew how out of the loop I was until that night. After talking to my grandmother, I found out she recently had breast cancer. She said she had surgery and radiation therapy. She wanted to call me, but she's been sleeping a lot because the radiation therapy makes her tired. Anyway, the doctor's told her that they have removed all the cancerous cells.

No one ever tells me anything! What if my grandmother had died? Would they have even remembered to invite me to the funeral? I know she has over 17 grandchildren (not counting great-grandchildren) and it's easy to be forgotten, but this was important! My grandmother lives with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. If she couldn't call me, they could've. I suppose this is just another thing to add to the list of important events people have failed to inform me of. This situation reminds me of the births of my little brothers. Both of them were a year old before anyone told me they existed. (and people wonder why I posses a fanatical obsession about not being forgotten).