School

           The first day of fall semester. I don't know what I was expecting, but there are quite a few more people milling about and walking purposefully around campus than I remember there being last year or the year before. Volunteers, or possibly work-study recipients, are handing out coupon books and trying to get people to register to vote. The school (a "no frills" community college of no real significance hitherto) now has an app that allows you to access all your class information and basically every part of your account with Front Range, but I'm pretty sure it's fresh out of beta testing because the fucking thing doesn't do what it's supposed to.

So many half-assed good intentions.

       I got back to Fort Collins two weeks ago. I had been gone for five months, in Loveland and Greeley respectively. When I got back, an almost staggering amount of student housing had been erected, the entire bus system shifted to work around CSU students, and rent got jacked up even higher than it was four months ago. The cost of living in this town is comparable to north Seattle now, and there isn't an ocean for at least a thousand miles. I thought about this a lot in treatment, not judgmentally or with a negative attitude, but objectively: Why would people pay the kind of money they do to live in northern Colorado? Living in a town that basically runs on revenue obtained by the students at CSU, I can see the economical reasoning behind fucking up the bus route to make it more convenient for CSU students. But what about everybody else? 
             The city of Fort Collins' website has a whole plethora of awards and accolades. Like, a whole lot. The second one currently listed is "America's most satisfied city," and that was from Time Magazine in May 2014. 
              I try to look at things objectively, I really do. So I can see how white, well-to-do people without mental illnesses or drug/alcohol problems could live here and be "satisfied". I could see how lots of people with college degrees, spouses, kids and disposable income could be satisfied here. College kids with trust funds and grants obtained by paying others to write their essays? Satisfied as could be. 

"Colorful" being a synonym for "White as Fuck"

              I can also see these "satisfied" people blatantly disregarding, incarcerating, harassing or otherwise maligning those of us who weren't so lucky; escorting the homeless drunks to detox in Greeley (because Fort Collins, despite the prevalence of addiction and mental health disorders, doesn't want a facility that handles these things in their community) or sending them to the already overcrowded jail. If these satisfied people hadn't adopted the self-righteous stance that "They brought it on themselves. I feel bad for them (and this part absolutely must be thrown in there, because pseudo-sympathetic "go to" phrases magically make unpleasant conversations about socioeconomic inequity and priority shifting less important) but they've made their choices," they might not walk around town looking like this:

Yeah, like that, except a whole lot whiter and less presidenty.

      

I know from personal experience what a clusterfuck getting everything together to go back to school can be. It's like playing 'Red light, Green light' with a methed out schizophrenic; one department telling you no, that isn't the correct form, go see this department, fill out this and come back with something else, go online to an account and format nobody explains to you, accept your award offer and BRING ME PETER PAN!

If you forget one little thing, your aid gets denied and you have to go through it all again, this time with the added pressure of classes already having started. It's enough to make you curl up in a ball and cry. Cameo learned this, and I think has been putting forth good effort and coping well. I tried reassuring her that this was a one time thing; that once she got this part out of the way it got so much easier.

 I may have lied to her.

 

Who, me?

             So in ten minutes I get to go down to the kitchen and dining room to clean up after forty nine cranky two year olds disguised as adult men.
             I just have to keep thinking "It's only a few more weeks," because if I don't, I'm going to turn into an insufferable, detail-obsessed pain in the ass, and quite possibly gouge out my eyes with a crusty fork.