I Am Traffic Cone!

I dare you to hit me. I. AM. TRAFFIC CONE!

Today me and the Hedgehog decided we would walk all the way to Wal-Mart because he was bored and I had stayed up all night and needed physical exercise to make it 'till bedtime; it's something we do pretty often, but don't think  much of. Well, it was raining, and this definitely made a difference.

Thing is, it wasn't raining that hard when we left, so I only wore a hoodie and took along my obnoxious orange poncho in my pouch; halfway there the heavens opened up and so much rain issued forth I was soaked before the poncho went on; for the rest of the day my attitude changed: I hate being wet, particularly cold and wet. When we walked down the side of the road, I silently defied every single car to run me over, thinking to myself, "Bitch better recognize. I AM traffic cone!"

Every time they successfully made it past me, while I was still glaring defiantly at their vehicles, I would smirk to myself and think, "Pfft, that's what I thought... bitch." This isn't the first time a decidedly ghetto temper has made it's way into my actions; and no, before you go thinking I mean ghetto like black person, think to yourself about every person you've ever seen come from a tough neighborhood, no matter their race. There's a certain accent and manner you acquire... I had that manner, the attitude, and the accent; and it happens a lot when I get mad.

And She Does It AGAIN Ladies And Gentlemen! Part One In An Epic Series On How To Write A Book!

Alright, when you sit down to write a book, there are a lot of things you have to have in mind when you begin, a lot of things other than just a basic grasp of the English language; you need to have a feel for your audience, lure them in with a catch hook.. The following is how NOT to write a book.

"Blogging: A school project that blossomed into something more"

(Ah, so I see we're already off to a great start! That is so not a title that leads me to believe that the entire following post will be based off of something you had to do in class; I so didn't get confused when the About Me popped up.)

So this is the first "post" that I wrote for the book I started a couple days ago that is titled "Blogging: A school project that blossomed into something more" (for now at least). I'm not really set on how I'm going to do the date and time thing yet, and I'm not sure if I want to have the title be above or below the date/time, but eventually I'll figure it out. This is basically all I have of the book so far and it is about a page in length. (A fake blog is a book...? You do know most publishers won't take anything that's been published on the internet, right...?)

August 25th 2012 6:15pm (Pffft, silly Kit! You should've known this wasn't her just blogging from the get-go! It's in the future!)

About Me; Part One? Maybe? (I don't know?)

Life is funny thing; you think that one thing will happen(, and for added bonus of flowing better, add an and) then something totally different happens. Like today, (The comma works sort of, but you could easily go with a ; here, or a : As in the following is an example of something that happens you didn't expect.) I was assigned to do this blog all year long for my English class. I’m not sure what all there is to write about,(; because you're beginning a new thought) I am the quiet person who doesn’t really insert herself (Since you're talking about neutral gendered people who don't like to talk in an effort to describe yourself, use themselves. Say it aloud. Herself sounds funny...) in conversations, I (like to) keep things to myself. This is probably one of my down falls as none of my relationships have lasted very long.

Anyway, my teacher wants us to go over our pasts for at least a while in these blogs.(Combine these two sentences, they don't need to be separated.) But first I think that what I need to do is introduce myself. I am Leah, (This could sound a lot better if it was just changed to "My name is", and it would look and flow better.) Leah Myrna O'Reilly-Matthews, (and) I am (conjunctions are your best friends, people) nineteen years old and (Remove that and as it's unneeded, give yourself a ;) I am in my second year of college, (No comma, and) my major is still in the air (End the sentence there.) I have (Get rid of that part and changed it to, There are) so many things that I would like to do its (that) picking what I want to do forever that (Remove the that) is the hard part.

The reason for my ("I have" would be a better way to start the sentence.) two last names is because when I was sixteen I was adopted, (No comma.) by an amazing couple named Laura and Pamela (... Okay, the first chapter of her other book isn't up yet, but I'd like to say... She seems to be on a "I have two mommys" kick. Nothing wrong with it, but I just can't help but see the theme...) ,(;) when they adopted me they wanted to change my last name to their last name, Matthews, but I wanted to keep my last name (because) it was one of the only things I had (left) of my parents. I say one of because I do have a photo album of me and my parents,(;) I used to have more things, that (but instead of that) I lost slowly (reverse these two and put a those) though all of the foster homes that I had (have) been though. The thing I remember most that I lost was a locket that my parents had given me the day of the accident.(;) But the locket wasn’t really lost(,) it was stolen,(;) but that is not something I am going to talk to the world about(,) not today at least.

The accident is how I became an orphan. (Really? With an ominous title like The Accident, I thought it was just the day you wet yourself at school.) My parents(,) Myrna (... Your mom gave you her first name as your middle name...?) and Drummond O’Reilly(,) were Irish (Awesome, thanks, make me regret being Irish...) immigrants, (remove the comma...) who moved over(here instead of over, because over means they moved slowly from Ireland to America over several years...) several years before I was born. So when my parents’ BMW was crushed between one of those Toyota heavy-duty trucks and an eighteen-wheeler (... Yeah...? So when it was crushed, then what happened? Ideally this should be changed to remove the "so when", and then this sentence combined with the next.). The back bumper of the eighteen-wheeler went through the front windshield of their car and they died instantly(,) or at least that is what I was told. I didn’t have any other family, not in the states at least(,) so I was placed into foster care (Wait... what? You always go to your closest family member, no matter where they live, and if something happened and you didn't it's because they didn't want you and gave up the rights. If they wanted you they would've gotten custody.) (End the sentence and make this a new one.) and since I was four and people don’t want to adopt a child that old. (... And since you you were four, what...? Also, are you nuts?! Not adopting a four year old because that's "too old"? Four year olds are ripe for adopting: they're past the terrible twos, fully into their cuteness, and you don't have to wake up all hours of the night changing their diapers.)

(Take the last sentence of that last paragraph and stick it to this one... Though it still doesn't make a lick of sense...) I bounced around from foster home to foster home tell (until) I was fifteen, when Laura and Pamela became my foster parents(,) and then adopted me. I had (have) been though a lot in foster care, (No comma.) and I am very happy with who my parents are now. I’ll talk more about the foster care thing some other day (I can't wait for this! She's going to make me fact check everything!), right now I have homework to do and my roommate hates it when I stay up past midnight with the lights on as(when) she has classes early in the morning. (... So you just don't care if you keep her awake?)

~Leah O’Reilly-Matthews

After you write something you should read it aloud to yourself to find out if you wrote anything awkward; also, be careful of tense changes. Would you tell someone, "Yeah, I had been through a lot." or "Yeah, I've been through a lot." ?

I Am A Horrible, Cruel, Mean, Twisted, Evil, Passive Aggressive, Vindictive Person (but I just can't stop!)

I stand at the apex of war...

I am a horrible, cruel, mean, twisted, evil, passive aggressive, vindictive person... but there really isn't much I can do to help myself; you see, once upon a time I had a temper just like my mom, and then one day... she was gone. When I realized I could never take back my regrets and the things I'd said, I decided I would just never have regrets over things I'd said ever again... except now I have regrets over things I don't say. This isn't about that, though: this post is about my love of looking for things that make me angry so I can sit and feel insanely alive as my adrenaline courses through my blood. I am, needless to say, a terrible person...

There are things that must be said.

 Especially I am terrible when it comes to the subject of a certain young woman named Cathrin... I won't even try to hide her name, she's seeking out attention all over the internet, so it won't matter if I hide it, you'll still find her... eventually. See, we used to be friends in high school, she was younger than me and a lot more immature even back then, but we got along fine... only she had, problems...

I still worry about her...

Like she was completely obsessed with a boy she'd met at 13 or 14 named Chris over the internet. He was 18 when she met him, and her parents had already had him arrested once for cybering with her over the internet. How obsessed was obsessed? She'd write fanfiction, horrible mini-novels, all with the same plotline: underage girl meets older boy, gets pregnant, loses baby.

I'm talking physically ill...

Oh, and I do mean bad fanfiction... She wrote a Twilight spin off called What She Didn't Know. It was from the point of view of a male vampire who was obviously based on Chris. He met an underage girl over the internet and got arrested, then tricked his family into moving to her town so he could sneak into her room at night and have sex with her. The name of one chapter was basically But What She Didn't Know Was That When A Vampire And A Human Have Sex And The Woman Gets Pregnant The Baby Grows Really Fast And When It's Born She Dies. It was probably the worst thing I had ever read, but I did because at the time, we were friends, and I fairly liked her... also, I clearly didn't understand what delusions are and how it would've been smarter to do something about it before it ruined her life...

"I'm pregnant with his spirit baby."

And why did she do this? Why did she write stories about 18 year olds getting under aged girls pregnant against the wishes of their parents only for her to write in a miscarriage? Because despite having never met him in person and the fact he lived several states away, she used to tell us, quite blatantly, that he had sex with her in her sleep and she was pregnant from his spirit. When, normally a few weeks later, she wasn't showing any signs of actually being pregnant, she'd give up and claim miscarriage. Of course, she never told her parents and never went to the doctor, so you can see how this made her stories untrustworthy... especially when she'd claim a miscarriage then a week later say she was two weeks pregnant... Oh, and the spirit babies thing, too..

Still mad she used them, though...

A few years later she was on Facebook and she had managed to convince an entire community of women who really had lost children that this had all happened; oh, and she managed to manipulate her parents into letting her meet him in person, and now she's married to him... When I tried to tell these women this, a lot of them believed me because they had seen the holes in her stories and how obsessed she was, but a lot didn't because, well, it's the internet and they don't know me from jack, and they couldn't believe that anyone would do such a thing. When Cathrin told me stop after slandering me for almost a week, I let it go... I felt awful that her delusions were accidentally being reinforced, but I let it go; there was nothing I could do anymore anyway.

Am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing?

During NaNoWriMo, though, I saw her name on the site, and I read her book summary... and my petty nature had me silently competing with her in an effort to write better quality faster than she could. It got me through the book quickly, and it let me vent some anger, and all was well... until I saw she made a page on FB promoting herself as an author... and then I saw she made a blog... where she had put up the first three chapters of her book... She's completely convinced she's a writer now; I consider myself a writer, and even I know I'm probably never going to get a book deal: when your average book is more than 500 pages, you tend to have problems getting published.

... I'm a terrible person...

She butchered the English language though and did so little fact checking on her source material that a paragraph in I felt like, well... like taking her hopes and dreams and grinding them into a paste beneath my heel and rubbing her face in it. It was just too good to pass up... So, instead of letting my rage and anger take over me... I'm instead going to play the role of editor to these three chapters. Follow along if you dare, if you don't... Well then, you can return to your regularly scheduled programming and ignore those posts.

I Need A Job

Forewarning: I am angry. That is all.

I had been planning on writing this post out when I could think clearly about the events of the 11th when I had to watch both the Spawn and the Terror, and in fact was going to put it up today. After all, I had calmed down significantly since then and could think objectively about the whole day... Last Friday I was supposed to be paid. Now, if you read this blog, you might think I've been paid a couple of times since the first post on this blog... Well, I haven't. Today was only the second time I've ever been paid since I started watching the Terror.


The first time I got paid $85. Today? I got $80. I did the math on that... I'm still pretty much getting paid $8.50 a day to watch her kid.

Alright, deep breath Kit, don't get mad... just tell everyone what you planned...

On the 11th I had to watch both of the kids at the same time, and as you may know, the Spawn seems to think it's his job to terrorize the Terror and get her behavior going a thousand times worse. He was okay first thing in the morning because he was focused on his game, but... he beat it, and not 30 minutes after my post, he came out of his room and helped to cause near non-stop chaos for the rest of the day.

On top of their usual behavior of dashing up and down the hall and jumping on the couch, the talk of buttholes continued... non-stop... through every conversation... no matter what they were playing. Sometimes they changed it up and talked about dooky. I got them to stop for all of 15 minutes when I made up a game where they could only use five words to talk, all really weird words, like "ceiling fan"... That occupied them until the Terror kept on talking about poop and butts... I couldn't make it stop.

Before I move on, I will tell you the good things that happened: we all had a good laugh over the questions for the FAQ and my answers, and I had a couple of nice game conversations with the Spawn... There was even a kind of touching moment when I explained that when I was yelling at them to stop, I was yelling at both of them, not just him. They were both doing things that were wrong, and he should tell me when she was bothering him, so I could take care of it...

... You know, as opposed to getting a hard pillow and slamming it across her face while screaming at her.

That was pretty much the only good things that happened. The rest of the day was spent trying to make them play nice with each other, trying to get the Terror to stop trying to shove her finger up his butt, to leave him alone when he wanted to go back to play his game, to get him to share with her...

They had pillow fights and wrestled and stacked pillows on each other and jumped off of the couches onto each other, and for the most part... I let them. So long as they weren't screaming or arguing, I let them be and play with each other.

I could remember being six and playing with my older brother. My older brother terrorized me. We were both in Judo, so he called it "practice" and my aunt let him pound my head repeatedly into the floor or ground while they watched. Also, he was in football, and would use me as a target to practice tackling.

While the Terror and the Spawn pretty much screamed and hollered non-stop and made me wanna strangle something, they pretty much were having fun. Aside from taking an iPhone or iPod (don't own one and can't tell the difference nowadays...) and recording him talking and not sharing, and above incident where she was bothering him and he wailed on her, and all the times she tried to shove her finger up his butt, they played pretty well with each other.

Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't drive me nuts with the constant chaos, and the Spawn played his usual game of ignoring my authority and laughing at me when I tried to get them to stop, or getting way too offended and storming off... But talking with the Hedgehog cleared all that up later. You have to feel sorry for a kid who thinks everything's his fault.

So looking back on it, it wasn't as bad as it could've been... even though they made fun of me and hit me in the head with a pillow when my back was turned, said I had a "monster face" and that I was fat.

But my point is... would you deal with all of this for $8.50 a day?

And would you really pay the person who watches your precious child from 8am to 8pm some nights for 3 or 4 days a week so little...?

You Know You Play Too Much Assassin's Creed When...

I’m a bit of a clingy person, I can’t help it, really… Abandonment issues and all. The Hedgehog normally handles it very well, especially when it means right before he leaves I follow his every single movement from about a foot away from him at farthest, following him as he puts on his shoes and coat and gets ready to leave for work.

Hi! I was just following you from three inches away as you moved to get your keys!

The other day however, he got a little upset and demanded to know what I was  doing. Without thinking my  first reply was,  “Stalking you.” … And thus the greatest game ever was born.

You have no idea what's about to happen!

I crept in closer and moved quietly, following him as he crossed in front of the bed. “You’re not doing a very good job, I’ve noticed you.” He told me,  but I was undeterred: “Of course you have, it’s just the two of us in here.”

... Would you notice me if we were in a crowded room...?

Aw crap, it's flashing yellow... time to blend...

Well, since he had spotted me, I ducked behind something as he went to the closet, bowing my head and pressing my hands together to blend, peeking ever so  often around the corner to check on him. A couple of times he looked at me and laughed, but that was only because he had yet to realize he was my  target.

... What's he doing by that closet...?

No, seriously, what's he doing?

Finally he kept his back turned long enough that I could make my move. Quickly and silently I darted across the room, flicking out my hidden blade and aiming for his throat, but at the last second he suddenly turned, driving a dagger into my upper thigh. How could I not have seen that he was an assassin as well?

Getting hit in the leg does hurt...

Especially with a knife.

 I lost my balance and fell into him, trying one last time to take out my target, thrusting my  hidden blade for his throat, but I had been exposed!

Yikes! And away!

Where's a bale of hay when you need one?

 I fled quickly and hid myself, waiting until surely my target had forgotten...

Boop!

Resynchronization and my wounds heal!

 At which point I strode back out…

... What's he doing...?

My sync bar senses something...

But now he was flinging throwing knives at me from across the room! One hit me in the stomach, the other my shoulder, while another grazed my leg. I was injured, but no vital spots had been hit, I would get him yet!

Markers can hurt.

In reality I would've bled to death later...

As I lunged for him he grabbed a sword and swung it,  but I blocked it with my hidden blade, then grabbed the sword and pushed it away, pulling out my own short blade with which to do battle. But then he pulled out a small knife and we paused the game for a moment because I didn’t wanna hurt him or get hurt with real weapons, so he traded the blade for nun chucks made of Wii remotes.

He dropped those quickly however and went for the door, grabbing up a book. I followed him though and shanked him quickly… but he was civilian, worse, a holy man! How had this happened?

I'm changing the rules mid-game!

...

So I stalked him a bit and decided he needed to be interrogated…

I can't shank you, but I can punch you!

TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!

Fub Your Macaroni!

A while back the Hedgehog bought a crap load of macaroni to make some sort of tuna/egg salad thing with… Well, we were running low on food this week, but we had Italian dressing and balsamic vinegar, so I thought I could make cheap pasta salad, sans all the tasty stuff I like to add in like tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, boiled egg, olives, peas, bell peppers… bacon.

The huge box of macaroni made a huge pot full… it was way more than it looked like… The Hedgehog has pointed out that “it’s dried pasta, it gets bigger when hydrated” but at the time I simply didn’t think about… Should’ve known better, but I didn’t…

Now he won’t let me live down the huge pot of vinegary pasta in the fridge.

 

I informed him, “Congrats. You and your damned pasta make it in the blog.”

Oh! I said a while back that the Hedgehog didn’t know about the blog because I was keeping it from him so I could vent and not hurt his feelings, but he found out… I’m horrible at keeping secrets from him, at least my own secrets. I keep other peoples secrets for years, but not my own… He was fine with it, he said the only reason he wasn’t angry was because the pictures helped. See, I told you my pictures help! Besides, how would I have hidden the sudden $200 if Google had given it to me?

Spawn, Brother of the Terror

… Right now I am only thankful of one thing, and that is the fact that the Spawn is very rarely around when I’m watching the Terror. You see, the Spawn is the older brother of my adorable little Terror that I must watch everyday…

"You're a *giggle* butt hole..."

And he is at that age where he thinks talking about butts makes him adult.

It's hard to believe my Hedgehog is the uncle to these two...

See, when the two of them are together he takes the chaos that I barely have control over and stretches it to a  breaking point, snatching it out of my hands and turning the entire house into a disaster area. No, I am not exaggerating either. The Spawn antagonizes her on purpose, knocking over the few toys she’s allowed to play with and telling her, and I quote, “You have a hairy butt.” Not only that, but he also starts doing bad things on purpose in an effort to make her act out even more, like jumping across the couches and screaming at the top of his lungs and running up and down the hall…

And I sit there, terrified, because I’m not sure where my boundaries are with this kid. The Terror I know all too well, I’ve learned when and where I’m allowed to act like her babysitter, and that’s pretty much all the time. It took the Hedgehog reassuring me though that I’m allowed to punish her when she’s being bad, otherwise I would just sit there in a panic.

I panic way too easy...

Yet her brother is older and whenever he’s around it’s almost always with his dad in the house, though his dad is always in the shower. The Spawn knows this. He knows I’m terrified of overstepping my bounds. He can smell my fear… he knows his dad won’t hear him being bad… He knows that because he’s older I can’t just stick him in time out or send him to his room, and that’s something that he takes advantage of. He stands up to me when I tell him to stop, laughing at me and making fun of me and getting the Terror to do so as well, because he knows that there’s no real stopping him, that the only person capable of really punishing him is no where nearby… And the Spawn proceeds to be as bad as he can in as short of an amount of time he can.

So he starts talking about butt holes, and getting his sister to talk about them, and when I tell him to stop he just laughs at me with this… this look on his face that I can't describe and can't be captured with badly drawn Paint drawings… Then he dumps his sister’s tiny little pets onto the floor and jumps onto the couch, screaming and encouraging her to jump with him, when I yell at her to stop he starts yelling at her too, then giggles madly when she stares to cry and whine and I glare at him. After that he starts running up and down the hall way, yelling, until she goes, too. All the while the Terror smiles and giggles like the most adorable child ever, calling after him happily, “Brother! Brother!” She's all too eager to follow the Spawn's ever move, openly defying me when I try to make them stop.

"Brooootheeeer..."

 Once the Spawn has started, he can’t be stopped. He’ll just grin and giggle in this tittering voice and insult me, the Terror cheerfully repeating whatever he says. The louder I get, the more he laughs and insults, and the more the Terror gets out of my control…

He even got her to stop eating to do all this...

 He tried something new, this time, though. When he heard his dad get out of the shower he raced to the end of the hallway and crowed triumphantly, “Daaad! Kit’s being mean to me!”

My heart fluttered wildly with fear, but I grinned, knowing he had messed up. While I still look like a teenager, I’m an adult, charged with controlling the Terror from descending  into chaos, and his dad knew that. So all I had to do was call down the hallway, “Yeah, if being mean means telling him to stop using bad language around his sister and to not jump on the couch!”

... What? I wasn't lying.

 … I won the battle against the Spawn today, he was grounded… but I know I haven’t won the war... Mostly 'cause the Terror was an even worse Terror after the Spawn left with his dad...

... Victory comes at a heavy price.