Well, I finally did it. I've been pondering this task for weeks. The instructions are so simple, and yet, for me this task was complex.

You see, this semester I had a new roommate. We were friends previously, so we thought it would be cool to share a dorm room.

Little did I know that I will NEVER meet ANYONE even half as mesy as her. Something falls to the floor, she lets it stay there (even if it had liquid in it). At the end of the night, her expensive, designer-brand (purchased on ebay) clothing goes on the floor. When her parents send her a care package, the packing materials are everywhere and the wrappers for her candy are all over our desks, floor, and fridge. Last week, she ordered Chinese takeout, and left the dish half-full and out on her desk for three days before I came back from Thanksgiving, smelled it, and took it to the dumpster for her. She puts empty bottles back in the fridge and NEVER takes out the trash or vacuums. I love her as a person, but CHRIST is she a stressful roommate.

However, despite her slovenly manner, I find myself forgiving her again and again. She is still a friend of mine, and this is her last semester in Alaska. Soon she will be returning to the continental US and it will probably be years and years before we see each other again.

We've been on shaky ground with each other ever since she got drunk, acted a fool, and threw up all over a man I was trying to chat up at my friends party last week. I was so mad that I ignored her completely for the next few days, and then just when I was ready to make amends, I found that half-rotted Chinese food in our room. I'm pretty sure she thinks I hate her. A lot of my friends think I should. But I don't.

We've had our good times. She's taught me a lot about music and Japanese fashion and we've shared a lot of laughs. We've also cried to each other about our problems, which have been plentiful this semester. She's become like a little sister to me, even though she's three years older than me. We've grown close. Perhaps too close, which is why it's hard to be roommates right now, but there are less than two weeks left in this semester and I -really- want us to still be friends when she leaves.

I want to let her know that even though our experience living together has overall not been very pleasant, I still consider her a friend and care a lot about her. I don't want her to leave the state thinking that she has no friends here. So I made her a little gift to leave in her bed, just a little reminder that I care. She told me once that she has saved every card people have given her since high school because the fact that someone thought of her enough to give her a card is touching. So I hand painted one.

I waited until she left the room for a bit, which was tricky because she sleeps extremely strange hours (sometimes she'll fall asleep at 6 am, get up at 3 pm for a few hours and then go back to sleep for 10 hours. x_x). Then came a new part of the task. I had to put the card in her bed. As you can see from the pictures, her bed is actually a pile of food wrappers, cords, colouring pencils, and clothes on top of a mattress. In order to put something in the bed, I had to clean and make it first. Which kind of activated the housewife in me, lol. I ended up cleaning a lot of things, both on her part of the room and on mine.

After all this is said and done, I can honestly say that making her a card and making her bed actually made me realize how much I'll miss her. Maybe I should take her to the movies this weekend before finals start...