The Girl-Fiend

So I called my dad to talk to him and instead got the Girl-Fiend… She was nice, polite, sweet… That’s when I remembered that she’s not all bad all the time, she’s only unbearable half the time. You know, when she’s not purposely trying to get under your skin by doing things like… making two boxes of pizza rolls and forcing them on you and your friends, and then later claiming that you ate both of them without her permission and refused to share…

This Is Why I Love The Internet...

Kit: I think I have a stomach bug...
Savvy: I got that around this time last year....those are nasty...feel better!! ;_____;)/
Hunny: NUUUU FEEEL BETTER I IS COMIN TO SEE YOU
Kit: *falls dramatically sideways, yelling as I go* I love you booooth~! *lands on bed*
Nikki: Almost everyone at the home is sick with it too even donna *dances wildly*
Kit: *flails happily across the bed*

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." ?

The Halloween Cat

I love Halloween, but I doubt that I'll ever be able to spend another one without remembering what happened. In my mind, I'll forever remember Halloween as the anniversary of "the Cat Incident".

It was about this time last year that I was living in an orphanage, obviously I would've been over the age of 18, but a year before just before I moved in they'd started a new program where they "trained" you to be an adult between the ages of 18 and 21 if you had no where else to go. Well, being homeless and basically an orphan anyway, this sounded pretty good to me.

Now, it was a Christian orphanage, a Pentecostal one to be exact, and as such we weren't allowed to do anything for Halloween. It was "evil", so instead we were supposed to celebrate the harvest festival... which is funny in a sarcastic and hypocritical way, because that's exactly what most of the pagans were celebrating before their festival became Halloween... Basically, we weren't allowed to go to haunted houses or watch scary movies... they should've thought that one through better, because they put us nearly grown girls in a house all to ourselves with no adult supervision, you know... other than breathing down our necks every single day and using it for free labor, but I digress... We were alone at night, and that is when this incident happened.

Nikki and Nicole, respectively.

Well, I lived with two other girls that Halloween, Nikki and Nicole, and since we got a $5 a month allowance (which wasn't even an allowance, it was donated by a very nice lady) Nicole and I decided we would walk up the road to where there was a Halloween haunted trail.

Normally, this is what I look like when scary things happen.

Though terrified of the unknown, I laugh at monsters.  Who knew?

So we waited til after midnight and we bundled up nice and warm and Nicole and I left the Home and started walking out along the road. We laughed and talked, because at the time we were pretty good friends, though when I was kicked out earlier this year she started treating me like a pariah. Well, on the way over a bridge while we were laughing, there was a sudden sound. A sudden, unmistakable, sound, coming from the edge of the woods across the road on the other side of the bridge where there was a small dirt half circle that cars used to turn around.

It was the sound of a kitten crying out for help.

I didn't think, didn't look for cars coming (fortunately there were none), I just took off running towards the sound. It could've been anything, halfway over I even toyed with the idea it was a rapist trying to lure us over there, or it was those people we'd heard about on the news recently, the ones who'd leave car-seats with baby dolls in them on the side of the road and kill and car jack the people who stopped. I didn't stop, though, and I wasn't the only one: Nicole was right there beside me.

I got there first though, and bent down, making soothing noises and reaching into the bushes, praying silently that the cat would understand I was there to help. I felt something warm and furry bump my hand, so I reached down to where I felt the neck was, grasped the ruff of fur on the nape, and pulled the kitten out.

I was surprised to find that, while still a kitten, the cat was older than expected.

Nicole and I cooed over the kitty and held and petted it, wrapped up tightly in our jackets to stay warm, though we both knew the Home had a strict no pets policy. It was okay, though, because we were going to find this kitten some help.

Well, we were right there at the Haunted Trail, so we walked up there and talked to the people to see if they could hold onto the kitten for us, explaining we had just found it abandoned and crying. They agreed and even docked the price of admission for us, and we went on the trail... and ran for our lives because of chainsaw killers on the loose.

I "died" so many times.

When we got back it was to discover that the nice people had found out something awful about the kitten: both of her back legs were broken. Heartbroken we held the kitten and cuddled and petted her, swearing to call every vet in North Carolina when we got back to the Home. The nice people who ran the Haunted Trail even offered us a ride back up there, even though it was less than a mile. Well, it was cold out and we didn't want cars to scare the kitty, so we took them up on the offer.

After reaching the home, knowing no one "in charge" was awake, we decided to ask one the house parents if it would be okay to hold  on to  the kitty for just one night, because, after all, we would definitely find the kitty somewhere to go in the morning. One of the nicest house mothers in the place was where we went on Nicole's prompting, waking her up and showing her the cat, explaining what had happened. We could tell she was heartbroken, too. She also knew it was strictly against the rules, but she cracked and gave in and said that surely for just a night it would be okay.

So we crossed the driveway and went into our house and put the kitten on the floor and gave her some tuna and some water, and petted and loved on her, while I tried to find a vet that took emergency calls in the middle of the night. Obviously there were none, so frustrated we decided to go to bed...

That's when we discovered another heartbreaking thing: the kitten refused to stay still and sleep where we left her, she wanted to follow us, and she tried the best she could, hobbling after, mewling pathetically, dragging her legs.It hurt so much to lock her in the bathroom that night, but we figured it was the only way to get her to not hurt herself anymore.

The next morning I sat down with the phone book and the kitten and tried calling vets offices again, but no one would take her. I tried the Animal Shelter, and found out from them, blatantly stated, that "When we pick up cats we put them down right away." So I hung up on them and turned to Nicole. What would we do? Well, she suggested seeing if someone in the office could clear the cat staying on campus with the other mouser we had out by the barn. That is when all hell broke loose.  

(Pictures omitted because they're too damn sad.)

All night long we'd met nothing but nice, kind, people, and for doing such, the world was going to show us it's other side: using everything short of curse words, the lady in charge of our Independent Living program yelled and screamed us, even when we tried to explain. Using her infamous "no excuses" line, she told us we had to get rid of that cat right then and there, and she told us specifically to call the Animal Shelter.

I wasn't doing it, oh hell no. I knew what would happen to that kitten, so I tried calling places that took in abandoned cats... and that's when I got told something so heartbreaking and horrible I can still remember it. "There are a million abandoned cats in North Carolina and no one who wants them. We routinely have to put down healthy kittens because we don't have room. We can't take in a sick cat, we need that money to take care of the ones we have. Just think of it this way: if you hadn't found the cat she would've starved to death on the side of the road. At least now it will be quick and painless."

We were running out of time, we'd only been given an hour to get rid of the cat, and I'd just heard something so terrible and heartbreaking that I couldn't handle it anymore. So, crying and sobbing, I called the Animal Shelter back and told them our address, and I sat there, crying, holding the cat, until they came.

When I opened the door, it's like she knew what was happening. The man held out a cage for me to put her into,  and she clung to me with her claws, fur puffed up, looking panicked and struggling to escape, and I lowered her into it. I was sobbing, horribly, and one of the house parents, my old house parent, was standing on the porch with the man, staring.

I went back inside, closed the door, and tried not to feel so awful about myself.

Yes, our door was eggplant color, and no, I still felt horrible.

And I wish that's where this story ended, but it isn't. Because the lady in charge of our program showed up later to yell and scream at all three of us, even though Nikki tried to explain she'd been in bed asleep and hadn't known until she'd come into the kitchen that morning. The woman demanded to know, "Are you so stupid you don't know what goes on in your own home?!"

Nikki has the world's best poker face.

I held my tongue and cried, but that still wasn't the end of it. The next morning one of the men in charge of the whole orphanage came by to yell at us, and he said some things I just couldn't ignore. While he was demanding to know if we understood what we did was wrong, I couldn't hold my anger in any longer.

"It was against the rules, but we did the right thing." Was what I told him, and for the trouble of speaking up he yelled at me and demanded to know if I was looking to get kicked out. The Home routinely kicked us out if we didn't hold up their rules and regulations, even if they knew we had no where to go, and I had less places to go than most... but I couldn't help my anger, and my mouth moved on it's own when he kept yelling at us about how wrong we were. "I thought this was a Christian facility."

I thought he was going to explode when I said that. He certainly looked that way. He yelled louder and even told me I should've left the cat on the side of the road to die, and then threatened to kick me out once more if I didn't watch my mouth.

"And if you see me on the side of the road with a sign that says 'Hungry, please help', will you just keep on driving?"

It took them a few more months to find enough reasons, but when they finally kicked me out, they brought incident back up as a reason why I didn't follow the rules and had to be kicked out. I looked up, through my tears at loosing the only place I had to live, and said exactly how I felt, "I wasn't wrong. It may have been against the rules, but I wasn't wrong. I'd do it again. No one should be heartless enough to say they could've left that cat to die."