This is probably going to be a huge, drawn out, ranting post. Because my mother pisses me off more than anyone else on this planet. My brother comes in a close second, though.

I’d like to start off by saying that yes, I love my mother. As much as a daughter should love her mother. The affection is definitely there. But the way she sees me, and portrays me to other people, constantly makes me feel like smacking her teeth out from her mouth.

Currently, I’m twenty-two years old. And I swear to God (or any other amazingly powerful deity you might believe in), that I stopped aging at fourteen for her.

I’ve been taking big steps in my life to better myself, and feel like more of an adult than I have. At this point in my life, I want to have responsibilities. I want to do grown up things. I want shit to worry about that goes beyond ironing my hair before I go out. I want real, important obligations to attend to. I want to feel normal.

With that said, I created a free student bank account at Citibank a few days ago. No big deal, right? Well, you better believe it’s a huge freakin’ deal to my mom. Let’s just say that I receive compensation for a lawful claim. Do I see any of that money? Nope. Not a dime. Up until this point, I’ve always had to ask to use some money from my mother (my OWN money!), in order to get small items or make an online purchase or two.

I’m sick of having to ask mommy to use my own money. So thus the account was born. The hard part will be convincing her to connect the settlement to my new bank account. Even harder would be to convince her to let me pay the house bills.

I actually want to pay the bills. I want to learn how to manage money. I want to take charge of my damn finances! I’m twenty-two, dammit. I should have already obtained a bank account years ago. The huge problem is that my mother has always taken care of the bills. Always handled my money. I don’t want her to feel like I’m robbing her of any money. I’m absolutely fine with continuing to pay bills with it.  I want to pay the bills she’s paying with my own money.

So it’s not like I’m ripping her out of my life. And running away with the money. No, I still want to contribute. But in my own way. Like an adult.

Actually getting her to agree and go through with this? Ha. That’ll be one Hell of a day for me. As I said, she treats me like I’m fourteen.

The last few weeks, I’ve been going out to hang out with friends and my boyfriend. I don’t go out every day. At most, I go out three or four times a week. I don’t think that’s all too bad. She gives me crap about her not being able to sleep, because I’m going out every day.

So many things wrong with that. One, I don’t go out every day. I really don’t. Two, I dunno what her problem is, but I’d suggest taking sleeping pills if she can’t get to bed. It’s not my problem that she stays up and waits for me to come home. It’s pretty aggravating. I’d understand if I came home completely wasted. Or if I was going around town, men having their way with me. But I don’t. You know what I do? I watch movies at friends’ houses. I play videogames. That’s it. That’s the extent of my wild lifestyle.

She hates my friends. Absolutely hates them. We had a huge fight over it last night before I went out to watch How to Tame Your Dragon (amazing movie by the way. I highly recommend it!).

Augh. I need to wrap this up. I wouldn’t be surprised if I came home one day and she set up like home security systems on the windows and doors or something. She’s just that nutty. Hell, maybe she can call the cops on my friends again. Whatever floats her freakin’ overreacting, dramatic boat.

I’m not much of a cleaner. In fact, the whole idea of pulling on some gloves and scrubbing down a surface with a bottle of bleach or cleaning spray really irks me. But sometimes, you just need to dive in head first and take care of things.

I’ve ranted on and on about my twin brother here before. He’s the same age as me, but I swear his brain stopped growing once he reached ten years old. He’s absolutely the most disgusting person I’ve ever had the misfortune of living with. But I guess I should thank him for my newly developed OCD-like tendencies now.

It’s thanks to him that I’m slightly nutty with cleaning. I still don’t enjoy it, mind you. But I can’t stand a mess any more. Items in the sink? NO. I must clean the sink! Toilet paper roll just tossed around in the bathroom, not hanging? How dare he! It’s weird crap like this that I tell my boyfriend about, and he finds adorable. It’s not adorable, Lebbie. It’s nuttery. NUTTERY. And I blame my brother!

My brother isn’t only just messy. He’s a collector of crap. Things that don’t work, things that he’ll never use. We’ve had a broken minifridge in the bedroom for over two years. We have a treadmill that he’s never used, because he always goes to the gym. Why don’t I use it? Because it’s broken. But you’d think he would’ve known that, before snatching it up. Hell, we have an ancient futon folded under my bed!

Until a few days ago, that is. With help from my mom’s boyfriend, we chucked all that crap out into the huge community trash out front. And booooy, was he pissed!

What my brother doesn’t understand though, is that living with other people is a two-way street. You can’t have it all your way. You can’t be an inconsiderate jerk all the time, or it’ll eventually bite you in the butt. So, for good measure, I dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. And made sure he saw it sitting there, too.

What? He’s done it to me, before!

Well, now that I’ve started off with a really misleading title, let’s begin.

My cousin Elizabeth is recently going to be graduating high school and she’s been looking around for universities. There was one in particular she wanted me to look over (being the “Big sister” of the family, I’d say my views are pretty important! … ha). She wanted me to take a look at an online university. My initial instinct of course was that online universities aren’t usually any good. And you’re better off studying at a local campus.

But seeing as how I’m not attending any online universities, I’ll at least take a gander at the website and let you guys know what I think of the site. We’re taking a look at Western Governors University’s website, and their online degree programs. Let’s dive right in!

Okay. At the website, the first thing that jumps out at me is the slogan. Learn More. Become More. Online. Not too bad. I’ve seen much worse slogans. Good job! Underneath, what gives me a good feeling is that they are NCATE and CCNE accredited. This is hugely important. Just posting this makes me feel a lot more secure about what they’re offering. If you don’t know, accreditation basically means that they are acknowledged and given licenses to partake in providing education for people. In other words, they’re not bums off the street cheating you out of money.

Moving on to the main event, the courses and degrees they offer. Looking at their Programs page, it’s pretty impressive. They separate the programs into sections: For Teachers, Businesses, Information Technology and Health. Their range of degrees is pretty nice, too. They offer from licenses to post baccalaureate, even masters degrees.

With that said, the offerings aren’t all that bad! Pretty impressive. But I would always be very careful before jumping into something like this. The school is accredited, and there are no red flags or alarms. But some people just study better at a campus.

I will however give them a positive thumbs up for being accredited, and having a very detailed but simple website to get into.