failed-to-say.net

I haven’t posted in a while. Oops. Things have been a bit hectic. Work has been busy. Then I got my new car on Friday. My sister wasn’t too happy about the trade, but then we’re not too happy with her right now either. She’s pregnant again by a guy that already has a slew of kids he doesn’t take care of. My mom chewed her out. She told her that she was ruining her life. Since she’s moved out, she’s dropped out of college, wasn’t able to make her car payment for two months (thus the trade), probably ruined her credit and she never has Tori. How is she going to raise another kid? We’re about all convinced that she’s on drugs, and if I thought it was possible to get her into drug rehab, I’d gladly pitch in to pay for it. I hate seeing her ruin her life this way.

On a brighter note, I really like the car. It drives so much smoother than the old one. It just feels massive by comparison, but I think that’s just because it’s higher off the ground than my old one – not like that would take much, though.

I’ve also been reading the Left Behind books by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. I started reading them back when I was in high school. I probably got about halfway through the series before I stopped for whatever reason. Now I’m picking them back up, but I had to start over because I couldn’t remember much of anything that happened.

Also, next month Half-Blood Prince is in theaters. Blaine and I are already planning to go see it. I’d like to go to the midnight showing, but I have no way of knowing if I’ll have to work the next day, and, if so, I’ll be completely useless unless I don’t have to go into work until later in the afternoon, so we’ll see what happens. I’m really excited about it, though. It’s been a long wait!

So it rained cats and dogs pretty much all day today. Tori’s preschool class was supposed to go to the zoo today, but that was canceled due to the rain. It’s weird, though, because it’s still kind of muggy out, though. But because of the rain, I can’t even open a window.

I finished reading City of Glass by Cassandra Clare over the weekend. I have to say I really enjoyed the trilogy, and I definitely think I’ll be rereading it. I like series like there where you’re sure there is some foreshadowing, but you’re not really sure what it was until the end. Usually on the second read, I can pick up on more of what I missed the first time. It’s fun.

My sister didn’t make her car payment this month, and, according to my grandma, it has put my mom on the warpath. I can’t really blame her, though, since she cosigned for it. I guess she went ahead and paid it just so it wouldn’t come back to her. I don’t know what my sister’s thinking. I make more than her and work more than her, and there’s no way I could try to make a car payment and try to keep an apartment. I have no idea how much she pays for car insurance either. Mine is really pretty cheap, so anytime I get offers for insurance quotes, I’m really not that interested. It would be pretty hard to beat twenty bucks a month.

Stupidly, I forgot that Lost came on at nine tonight, so I’ve already missed the first fifteen minutes, and it’s one of those shows that once you’ve missed the beginning, there’s really no use in trying to watch, so I’ll have to try to watch tomorrow. I hope they have it on the website by then, at least. I have tomorrow off, and I’d really love to find out what happens in the season finale.

Shoo-wee! It’s hot in here. Outside, it’s pretty muggy. For a while I thought it might rain, and I suppose there’s still a chance it might, but thus far it hasn’t happened. I feel all hot and sweaty. I’d say we could forget about treadmills because I’m likely to melt away, but I don’t think fat really works that way – unfortunately.

Mother’s Day is on Sunday, and I went and bought my mom a gift. I stopped by Bath and Body works and got her some more cherry blossom lotion, body wash and spray. We’re also going out for dinner on Sunday, but I don’t know yet where we’re going. I tried to find something for my grandma as well, but I came up empty, aside from a card. I really hate trying to buy gifts. I suck at it.

Man, it has been a long week. I feel like I’ve been totally out of it. I went to the dentist on Tuesday. I’m getting the tooth that’s been bothering me pulled next Thursday. They gave me a prescription for some the pain and an antibiotic. The pain medicine makes me tired, and they both kind of make me sick to my stomach. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about the loss of an appetite, though. It sure beats walking or running on a treadmill. In fact, it saves me from exercising at all. Of course, it’s just a temporary thing.

There’s also been a lot of family stuff that’s been going on. I don’t really feel like going into detail, but the short version is my mom kicked my sister out of the house. I think the whole situation has us all stressed out. My grandma and I met her after she got off of work last night and went to IHOP. She didn’t look good, but I guess that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I want to feel bad for her, but the truth is she’s the one that brought this all upon herself.

I cannot believe that it’s February already. Times has a crazy way of flying by way too fast. Sometimes I feel like I waste too much of my time doing stupid stuff, and I should be focusing on the more important things in life or something.

I guess I don’t waste all of my time, though. I love spending time with Tori, and very rarely do I take that for granted. On Friday, my mom didn’t have to work, and so she invited me to tag along with her and Tori to the movies. We went to IHOP for brunch and killed some time shopping before we went to the movies. We went to see Hotel For Dogs. It was a cute movie, and since we went around one, it was one of the showing where there was hardly anyone there, which I tend to prefer. Not to mention, Tori likes to talk and ask questions during movies, so I think a nearly empty theater was in everyone’s best interest.

Blaine and I are planning to go see the remake of Friday the 13th this Friday. Allyson might join us, but I won’t bother with holding my breath. She’s always busy, always on the go. I wouldn’t want to slow her down. I’d also really like to see The Uninvited. I think that looks pretty good, and I’ve been hearing about it for ages.

I find that I’m very selective about movies. Not just the genre, but about when I feel like watching them. I still have movies I got for Christmas that I haven’t watched yet. I think part of it’s that the only place I can really watch them is on my computer. Someone else is usually watching TV in the other room. I figure if I were one of those people lucky enough to have home theater seating, then I might be more apt to spend some serious quality time watching movies, and, thus, probably more time with my family. Alas, I cannot afford such things. Stimulus check, please?

- How is it possible that it’s nearly February already? That’s just crazy.

- Yesterday, I had the bizarre experience of chatting with my mom on Google Chat. She’s switching over to using gmail, and she wanted my help figuring some stuff out, so we were chatting about it. Very, very weird. My mom isn’t especially technically savvy, so it was a bit of a mind boggling experience. Apparently, she’s into texting now too. My sister says that they probably have more convos through texts than they do when they’re in the same how. Sad.

- I think I posted about my brother getting expelled last semester, but luckily still getting to go to school after it was over and getting credit for the work he did. Well, he went back to school earlier this month. It’s so weird that he’s 15 now. Next year he’ll be in high school. When he and my mom had to go meet with the principal, they asked him what he wanted to go when he got older. He said he wanted to be a mechanic. I can see Blaine doing something like that. I think it really depends on how serious he is about it. He does have some trouble learning, but I think a lot of that stems from the fact he’s never been very good at reading. But I can see him taking the same route as Allyson did when she was in high school, and going to vocational schools and colleges part of the day or something. I worry about him sometimes, but I’d really like to see him be able to do something like that so he can do what he wants to with his life. It’s just frustrating because I feel like he was never properly taught at school, and as much as we all try to help him learn, we’re clearly not teachers, so we’re basically at a loss.

- I got the cutest gift from my friend Becca. She went to Hawaii, and I told her I was totally jealous. She told me she’d send me a coconot. I thought she was just joking, but when she got back from Hawaii, she said she was sending me something. Today, I got a vanilla scented candle in the shape of a flower inside a coconut half and a necklace. I love them both, and I’ll take pictures as soon as I locate the camera.

- I’m trying to get back into writing. I’ve been pretty slack about it since November. I started a Twilight fic in December, but with the holidays and all of that jazz, I kind of put it on hold. I still need to sort out some stuff anyway. But to get back into Hanfic, I signed up for the Hanfic Genre Challenge. I’m writing a Mystery/Detective story. I’m resurrecting an idea my sister and I had years and years ago. Luckily, I saved the notes on the story. We never got far with it, and what we did have was terrible, so I’m obviously scrapping all of that and starting new, but the premise is still pretty much the same. I’m excited about it. I’ve been trying to outline things a bit, but it’s kind of hard to do without actually writing it because I’m sort of playing around with the idea of telling parts of the story out of sequence. I think it will be okay, though. If I had more time I’d probably actually just write the scenes straight through and then split them up into where the go in the chapters, but I have to have 6 chapters posted by February 22, so I think I’ll just make due with winging it. But I am really excited about it and ready to get going. Plus, it looks like there are quite a few people participating and the genres are all really cool, so I think it will be fun.

- I’m not sure if I’ve gushed over my favorite Twilight fanfics, but my two favorites have been Wide Awake and Innocent, Vigilant, Ordinary. They were both totally different, but absolutely amazing. So amazing that a soon as there is an update, I am there reading it regardless of all else in the world. I think I might have found a new third fave. The other night I started reading Horizons, and I was worried because it is very sad, but it is so good. I read it over the course of two days. I only stopped reading out of the necessity of sleep. Then I got to the last chapter posted and wanted to cry because there wasn’t more. So if you read Twilight fan fiction and haven’t checked out any of those, you should definitely do so. Immediately. They can all by found on fanfiction.net.

Today was my grandma’s birthday, and we had a dinner for her. My mom made potato soup, and it was really good – and that’s really saying something since I typically don’t care for it. And we also had chips and lunch meat for sandwiches. My mom made a caramel apple cake. Cakes seem to be her specialty. She likes to experiment with them. Most of the time they turn out pretty good, but there have been a few botched efforts, such as the Kool Aid cake.

After we ate and the presents were opened, my mom, Allyson and I went to Goodwill, TJ Maxx and Kohls. I found a cute shirt at TJ Maxx, and a couple of pairs of shoes at Kohls. I also went shopping yesterday and got a shirt at Maurice’s before I stopped by Sears to pick up a gift card for my grandma’s birthday.

I really need to buy some new make-up. I’ve been trying to take care of my skin, washing it at night – especially when I’ve been wearing make-up, and then moisturizing with some facial lotion. I almost bought a blackhead remover while I was at Target yesterday. I know that Clean and Clear has a product for that, but sometimes that brand dries out my skin, so I was kind of reluctant to get it. I might go to Wal-Mart tomorrow and see if I can find some other brand for the same thing, and see about buying some new foundation while I’m at it. I’ve almost spent all of my birthday money, which is just kind of depressing.

On a completely random note, I burnt my tongue eating the potato soup today and it hurts.

Whew, I’m trying to play catch up with watching Heroes. I missed out on about the last half of the second season last year because I was busy writing for NaNoWriMo. I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it again this year, but I have a feeling if I do, then I’m going to be behind on several shows pretty fast.

My mom, sister and Tori stopped by earlier. They went shopping. No surprise there. There was a show on about a couple that has sextuplets, and we were trying to fathom having that many babies all at once. It would be such a huge job. I mean, even if they had a Bob stroller with the two seats, that still wouldn’t be enough. I have seen the three seater kinds of strollers, but I think they’d still be hard to come by. I think about trying to deal with six of Tori, and there’s no way. I couldn’t deal, and she’s not even here all the time. Crazy.

My Labor Day weekend was pretty uneventful. We just had a cookout yesterday. Pretty standard – Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw, brownies, and a few other miscellaneous items. It was all delicious, of course. We stuffed ourselves silly. Then my mom suggested we go shopping. It is without a doubt her favorite past time. Allyson managed to find quite a few good buys. Then I got three of the $5 graphic tees from Old Navy, and two pairs of their pajama shorts, which were also $5. I wish I could have found some pants. I always have the hardest time with them.

I can’t believe it’s already September. It’s nearly time to start boxing up my summer clothes and bringing out the fall clothing. I cringe at the thought of going out into the garage and moving boxes around. It’s pretty scary in there. Every year my grandpa claims he’s waiting for that perfect day to get my brother and cousins out here to help him clean it out. If he’s waiting for the perfect day, I can pretty much guess that it’s just never going to happen.

Tori had her first day of preschool today. I can’t believe she’s old enough to go. It seems impossible that she’s already four. Time flies entirely too quickly. I have a birthday coming up this month, which I’m adamantly trying to pretend isn’t happening, and at the end of the year my brother will be fifteen. That’s just too bizarre to try to fathom. I still think of him as a little kid. Maybe because I just don’t want him to grow up. It makes me feel old, but I guess he’ll always be my baby brother regardless of how old either of us are.

Well, I’ve had a busy weekend so far. Friday I went shopping with my mom, Blaine and Cody. The boys wanted to buy some new clothes for school. They managed to blow all of their money pretty quickly. I didn’t see too much, but I did buy Tori’s gift.

My brother is a hoot. He loves to do impressions of people. He was doing them of Bart and my uncle. Crazy kid. Along the way he and Cody spotted some used Harleys for sale along the road and babbled about that. Then my brother was trying to convince my mom to buy him an Eclipse from some guy that was selling them somewhere. I really didn’t get the details. I usually just sort of shut off after a while. I think I’m getting the hang of this selective hearing thing. We dropped Blaine and Cody off to meet their girlfriends at the park, and I hung out at my mom’s house most of the day.

Tori was with Mitch, and Allyson was supposed to pick her up at his house while she was in town. She had to go straightened out some stuff with the financial aid office at school, and she was going to get her afterwards, but Mitch decided to change plans and said he’d bring her into town later. He was supposed to drop her off between four and five, and Allyson called when she didn’t hear from him, and he’d made some more plans and said it wouldn’t be until later, so, naturally, she was upset. Then he called back a couple of hours later to say he was on his way into town. It should have taken him thirty minutes to go to the house. He didn’t show up for another hour and a half. So Bart had a few words with him. I won’t get into the details, but I think Allyson and Mitch had talked through things enough to be civil and have a tentative schedule for seeing Tori.

Then today we had Tori’s birthday party out at the park. She had a strawberry cake with chocolate chips in it that my mom made for her. She seemed to enjoy opening her presents and she played in the park with Dennis’ (Allyson’s new boyfriend) niece.

Tomorrow I have the last of the family reunions to attend. I’m anticipating a lot of food and a lot of people, as there is every year.

Another day closer to Breaking Dawn. I should start singing “I Will Survive” to convince myself I’m going to make it to August 2nd. I doubt it would help and would probably only result in embarrassment, but whatever.

I went to the mall with my mom yesterday. She wanted to see if she could get some waterproof pants – like a pancho – for my brother since his jeans were getting soaked during detassling. Then I came home and listened to the live MuggleCast. I think I’ll have to download it and listen again because it cut out a few times on me and Firefox also froze once or twice. Very annoying.

So my grandpa got in trouble with my grandma last week. She looked out the window and saw that he decided to attach some of his ham radio antenna’s to Tori’s swing set. It’s one of those wooden swing sets, so it’s pretty sturdy, but even so, it looks ridiculous. I think he might had taken one of them down. He’s such a clutter bug sometimes.