A Fine Example of Douchebaggery

as of saturday, my dad is in the hospital. he had been in a lot of pain since thursday morning, but he stuck around with us until christmas was over and didn't complain once to any of us. i didn't even know he was in pain on christmas day, but i remember teasingly pointing out to him that i didn't think i had seen him smile once that day, which he answered with a big, cheesy grin. he helped my grandpa move their heavy TV and replace it with another. i didn't know that he was hurting at all until he left for the emergency room saturday morning. his face was red and his voice was strained, but he was still trying his best to hide from me that he was really sick.

after blood tests, x-rays, and a CAT scan, the doctors found a two-inch abnormality on his colon. this could be an infected scratch or hole, or it could be cancer. they're doing a colonoscopy today, and the results should be in around one o'clock. the doctors say that he's really young for cancer, but there's still that chance. and if it is cancer, that's the very thing that killed his father a few years ago. grandpa had throat cancer from chewing tobacco, though, and we got dad to quit chewing so that he won't die a similar way: too early, too painfully.

i'll admit that i really haven't been concerned at all until today. i hadn't cried at all until i started typing this up and after i realized that he really is trying to be strong for all of us even when he's probably pretty scared. i just told evan yesterday that i wasn't too worried about dad because he's a strong guy and i'm not all that close to him, anyway. what a horrible thing to say! i don't know what i was thinking. i love my dad, and i would be devastated if something happened to him. our whole family would. i would have to be the strong one while mom cried and cried. i would have to take over the chores that dad does every day without once being asked. i would end up chopping wood for the fire, endlessly cleaning dirty dishes, cooking, cleaning, all the tedious things that dad has to do for us without any appreciation. i know that he feels that we're not grateful for him, but we are! we would be nowhere without him. i would be nameless if he hadn't adopted me way back when. my older brother would be, too, and that's where the title of this post comes in.

the majority of my readers know that my brother, eric, and i were legally disowned by our biological father, rusty rauscher, when i was nine and eric was thirteen. lyle hannes married our mother and gave up all of his freedom in life to take us in and help raise us, no matter how disgruntled we were about some strange man taking over our lives. we treated him horribly, and we still do, but he's been there for us and hasn't given up. well... he hasn't given up on me, at least, but eric is a lost cause that we've all given up on. rusty didn't want anything to do with us. he didn't want to have to pay child support, and he didn't want to have to spend time with us for just a couple of days a month.

i know for a fact that rusty wouldn't have disowned us if it weren't for me, and i guess i feel kind of guilty for being the cause of eric's abandonment, but it wasn't my fault. maybe you don't believe me. maybe you think i'm being melodramatic, as i am so apt to do, but mom herself told me that eric was rusty's favorite, and when i asked her if rusty would have kept eric if i hadn't been born, she gave me kind of a sad look. but even still, rusty disowned eric! he willingly gave him to lyle, and he just as willingly signed the papers that stated that he would not be in any sort of contact with us until we were eighteen or unless we sought him out. only eric would be careless enough to leave our whole family to go back to the man that didn't want him. it pisses me off, it really does. guess where he's going right now, before knowing dad's test results? that's right; he's going to cedar rapids to be with rusty, and then he's going to fucking mardi gras.

eric lives in a world all to himself now, hitchhiking around with no connections to anybody. he's more selfish and narcissistic now than ever, but if rusty was in the hospital, he would be there. he doesn't give a flying shit about our real dad, and he won't let mom show him the proof that rusty has been lying to him about what happened. our dad could die while eric's away, and he wouldn't come back. when grandpa hannes died, eric stayed away. he never showed any sort of sympathy about it, and he more or less told mom to fuck off whenever she brought up the funeral.

what did we do to make eric into such a terrible person? mom tried her hardest to raise her all by herself for so many years, and she did alright for a single parent. i'm okay, aren't i? i haven't touched drugs or alcohol. the only times i'm even exposed to such things are in my own house when eric comes back to "visit." evan and i came into the house at ten-thirty last night, only to find eric and his buddy zach matson surrounded by giant bottles, hooting suggestive things at us. mom told me that it would be best if evan left and i went straight to bed so that eric and matson wouldn't mess with us at all. we did as she said, and everything was fine. honestly, though, i have never been around any underage drinking except for in my own house, and that's unacceptable.

eric believes that society is ruining our society. does that make any sense to you? he thinks that we should all question everything that goes on, but then we'd all end up questioning everyone else's questioning. questions would go unanswered forever, and we'd all die unsatisfied. being suspicious doesn't get anything done, it just makes us paranoid and unhappy. if you're part of this society, accept that and get on with your miserable little life.

to put it all bluntly: my brother's a dick and i often want him to die a gruesome death.

i still think that my dad's strong enough to get through this. it won't be cancer, and he'll be fine. i'll post the test results when i've learned them.

Bleach Thing That You Don't Care About!

1. The first character I fell in love with:
uryu ishida.

2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
mayuri kurotsuchi. i adore him SO FUCKING MUCH and I DON'T KNOW WHY.

3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
ichigo kurosaki. lil' fucker. i don't hate him, oh no, he's fine, but i don't love him.

4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
mayuri again, i suppose. i don't know that everyone hates him, but bethany doesn't like him much.

5. The character I would shag anytime:
uryu. he's just such a great nerd boy, and he's chivalrous to boot!

6. The character I'd want to be like:
shunsui kyoraku! he's all laid-back and wonderful. i'd like to think i'm already kind of like him.

7. The character I'd slap:
orihime inoue. all the fucking time. little bitch. YOU DON'T HEAL THE ENEMY, YOU DIPSHIT.

8. A pairing that I love:
shunsui x ukitake!!

9. A pairing that I despise:
um... ulquiorra x grimmjow?

10. Favorite character:
i uh ohmigosh. mayuri? kenpachi? i, uh, kenpachi! um, wait, no... i... auuuugh

11. What are my five favorite things about the fandom?
squeeing at bethany, screaming at new episodes, having watched every episode yet to be aired, staring down t-shirts online, thoroughly enjoying bleach yaoi.

12. What are my five least favorite things about the fandom?
not being able to buy the t-shirts i want, being jealous of bethany when she gets bleach anything, the fact that the characters aren't real, not being able to watch whenever i want, wanting to viciously hug uryu.

13. Who are my five favorite characters?
mayuri, kenpachi, shunsui, byakuya, and sometimes uryu. but then there's ikkaku... and renji... and i AUUUUGH

14. Who are my five least favorite characters?
orihime, haineko, tobiume, um, i... erm? wait, wait... omaeda... hmm... that lame first-squad vice captain who's name i don't even know.

15. What are my five favorite pairings?
shunsui x ukitake, mayuri x urahara, rukia x renji, renji x byakuya, ichigo x orihime. (woah, i chose some STRAIGHT pairings?) but i also like matsumoto x ichimaru! there's also hisagi x izuzu, and izuzu x renji (just 'cause they've got tattoos), and mayuri x akon, and ikkaku x yumichika and SO MUCH DEAR GOD I LOVE IT ALL

16. What are my five least favorite pairings?
damn it, i don't know... ulquiorra x grimmjow, toshiro x matsumoto... yoruichi x byakuya, kurosaki x kurosaki (C'MON!), ishida x ishida (SICKOS).

17. Which character you are most like?
um... i still hope i'm like shunsui, but then i kind of haven't compared myself to many characters. what do you think, bethany?

18. What is my deep, dark fandom secret?
i... i don't know that i have any. i guess i ... hmm... uh? kon. i'm in love with kon. i am so in love with kon. i want to put kon into evan's body and let him huggle my breasts for as long as he wants.

The Envious Sourpuss: That's Me!

every day, i'm finding more and more that i am the most jealous person i know. if someone does something right, i start sending off sparks of fury. the people that make me angriest in this way are those closest to me, of course. evan, my brother eric, and bethany especially. because i don't want to fill everyone's twitter pages with my ranting, i'll ramble at you, blog friends.

evan is good at mostly everything. he's a prodigious musician, as you probably all know. he can sing like no other, and if you hand him a strange instrument, he can learn how to play it impeccably it in a matter of weeks.
he's handsome as sin, as well. sorry to hint at my sexual behavior, but his entire body is my favorite work of art. his eyes are somehow green and blue at the same time, with just the right amount of freckles in them. his fucking eyelashes go on for longer than the universe itself, and his lips are shaped perfectly and are always juicy and nice. there isn't a single iota of chub on him, and, in my opinion, he has just the right amount of muscle. he's just strong enough to lift me (and let's face it: i weigh a helluva lot more than he does), but not so strong that i'm afraid of him. how could anyone fear someone so sweet, anyway?
which leads us to another factor of my jealousy: how can someone so fucking talented be so humble and kind? until i started shooting darts of adoration his way, he was the most insecure little bug i knew. but he's still modest, even with me mumbling constant compliments through just as frequent kisses to his rock-hard abs.

now, onto bethany. (i promise these paragraphs will be far less sexual. i can't promise they'll be less cheesy, though.)
i met bethany in fourth grade. i knew of her existence before then, but i was always afraid of her. envious of her. everyone knew that she was the best singer in our class, and i hated her for it. in fact, i still hate it. when she has a solo at a concert, i can't help but let a big, proud grin spread across my face, but i still envy her voice. mr. hosbond, her musical theatre director and the one teacher i wish i could impress, thinks that she's the best soloist he's ever heard. i used to think that i had a chance at being a great singer, but insecurity has prevented me from trying.
and bethany, you're beautiful. i've always envied your hair for its amazing growth rate, and it's always so smooth and soft. your eyes are like, BAM! and, whether you'll accept it or not, your skin's fantastic. you somehow manage to look lazy and still oddly pretty in pajama pants and nerdy-as-hell t-shirts. you're the perfect example of a desirable nerd girl, which you know i wish i could be.
you're a great writer and an even better artist. you've got more of a personality than i do, which i always thought was a difficult feat to accomplish. mr. hosbond says you're a character. you're better in school than i am (doesn't take much, but still), and you're one of the reasons why i've never tried for speech team. you and ashley are too good, and i don't want to have to compete for the stage with you.
doubtless you'll retaliate to this whole post with, "don't envy me! i envy you! you're better at drawing than i am and you've got boobs and great eyes." thanks, but i've heard it a hundred times and i don't feel any differently.

and lastly, stupid eric.
my mom just worships him. i don't know what happened. i used to be the good kid, the smart one. now that he's away, she sees him as a fucking genius, and oh, isn't he cute in his hobo clothes? christmas is already hell for me. the relatives that we barely know are down, and they've never met eric, never heard his disrespectful comments, his hypocritical notions of peace through force, his suggestions of smoking pot to achieve happiness. the stories mom tells are all so admirable, enviable. don't you wish your kids were like eric is? he doesn't care for material possessions, you know. oh, no, he's never asked us for money. yes, he's in california right now and he hopes to eventually go to normandy to be an organic apple farmer. he says the apples there are great, but he's never tasted them. he's so silly, our son.
nothing is mentioned of the drugs, the alcohol, the sleeping around. no one hears of the story where he left the Hannes family to go back to the father who knowingly and willingly disowned him seven years ago and attempted to murder his mother. no one hears about the things that he screamed at mom, the false accusations, the lies spread from father to son. no one knows that eric asks for money regularly, nor do they know that my christmas money was taken from me so that mom could send it to him.
how can someone so utterly horrible be so well-liked? eric always treated us like shit. are people forgetting this just because he's too far to yell at us? i was on the B honor roll for the first time since middle school, and i got nothing more than a, "did you know?" out of my parents. eric refuses to go to college, and he gets over five hundred dollars from his family members.
i finally got a higher chair placement in band, i'm in select choir, and i'm in the advanced group in my composition class. i don't ask my parents for a cell phone, i told them not to get me the car they got me, and i don't want them to buy me excessively flashy things. i do the chores i'm asked to (most of the time), and i try not to mouth of too much of the time. but even with all of these things going for us, i am their nobody child. i'm not doing anything exciting; i'm just here. i guess it's understandable that they're not jumping up and down with pom-poms and screaming my name.

i suppose i'm done ranting for now. i envy many, many more people, and i'm obvious about it, but i envy these three the most of all.

oh yeah.
merry christmas?

It's Been Decided

as soon as evan hooks up his scanner and we start scanning the crap out of my sketchbook, i wouldn't mind posting my drawings here. i would have to change my blog to a mature one on account of... well... recently, my drawings are slightly... er, pornographic. furries and whatnot. kitties, red pandas, rams.

i'm sorry. i'm a horrible person.

but other than a few errors here and there, my drawings are pretty good. the red panda girl has a weird face, and a snow leopard girl has a clubfoot, but i'm still learning. i really don't know how to draw feet, and the red panda was one of my firsts, so those are understandable flaws. right? it's all practice.
maybe i'll have a website for these drawings some day.

this is different from being a whore myself. instead of sleeping around, i am drawing pictures to improve my ability and to entertain nerd boys. i'm still being a whore, but with my drawing ability instead of my blowjob ability. isn't that so much better?

anyway, not every drawing of mine is pornographic. i will doubtless upload many, many adorable, cuddly pictures, and many failures that i will scream about. this post is just warning you of what is to come so that you'll be careful when you open the link to my newest posts.

My Doomed Friend: Lieutenant Prurient

because i went to a faraway city with bethany and ashley today, i brought home a new friend. he is a crowntail betta fish, and his name is lieutenant prurient. like my super-old fishy friend, general libido, the lieutenant has a name dealing with lust. it's fun to use words that my parents don't know, because they're too proud to go, "what the hell do prurient and libido mean?" so i get to go on naming my fishies sexy words.

sadly, lieutenant prurient requires a certain temperature that i cannot provide him with. my bedroom is usually in the fifty- or forty-somethings temperature-wise, so he can't stay down there. my other fishy friends, general libido, dictator cadaverous, and sergeant pepper, are all little goldfish that i have saved from being fed to pet sharks, so they can live in pretty much any temperature. they're not finicky. actually, i think that the dictator, general, and i are nearing our one year anniversary. i think i fell in love with the lil' buggers on the last day of january. they've lived forever. i can only hope that they'll endure the cold of my bedroom and last long enough for us to have fun with an anniversary party. i'll probably just lug the tank over to ashley's, where the dictator and general will be reunited with gary and cristoff, who are ashley's original fish from january. bethany's first fish died almost immediately. it's quite sad.

i really do love fish. they're beautiful, and it's so interesting to think about how their little fishy bodies work. besides, they're dumb as fuck and you get to invent personalities for them! also, they will NEVER RUN AWAY. they're very easy to take care of (depending on the fish you buy), and they're super fun to talk to because they look like they're paying attention if they're hungry. sergeant pepper is especially attentive. he's always hungry, so he's always staring at me. the general and dictator weren't always like that, but the sergeant has helped them to develop a new habit. so now i constantly have three goldfish staring at me. it makes me happy. i know they're fish and they're probably terrified of me, but i like to pretend that they respect me and rely on me because i feed them.

ooh, i almost forgot to tell you why i picked the lieutenant. i wasn't going to at first. he's a different kind of betta, which sucks because he needs different water temperatures (i didn't know!), but he's very cool-looking. his fins fan out in a way slightly different than regular betta fish, and he was showing off at wal-mart, where i bought him. out of all the fish, he was the only one that was absolutely freaking out and puffing up all over the place. i've never really seen a betta get pissed off like that, so i decided that i really liked his attitude and that i needed to have him. of course, bethany and ashley helped me make the final decision after around five minutes of picking up and staring at all of the other options.

i feel good for getting him out of that itty-bitty bowl that places like to keep betta, but i feel bad for freezing him. i hope that he acclimates quite miraculously and lives for a very long time. or maybe the internet lied to me and he's just like normal betta and can live in my house without a problem. that would be very nice.

i bet you're wondering how i successfully created such a prodigious post about fish. i'm kind of wondering the same thing. i guess i really like fish. how do you feel about fish? THAT'S GOOD. I'M GLAD YOU LIKE FISH. I'M GLAD WE'VE EXCHANGED OUR OPINIONS ABOUT FISH.

also, does anyone other than bethany read my blog? please, make your presence known to me! reveal yourself! let me know that you read my rants about fish with badass names.

Blogger? What's That?

erm, hi there. did you miss me at all? i'm sorry. i wasn't avoiding you or anything, it's just... nothing exciting (or is it nothing appropriate?) is happening, and so that's why i haven't been talking with you lately. i know that we used to be the best of friends, and i know we've grown apart... i am sorry. maybe we can hang out for a bit today, just you and me? but it has to be quick... i have plans with bethany and ashley in a few minutes and then more plans with evan after that. yes, i know... i know i'm unreliable... but please, blogger, let's just relax and try to have fun for the short time we've got together.
the marching band has been working very hard for quite some time now. mr. edgeton says that the march that we're currently learning is the hardest to ever have been brought onto the field. i feel special. and i feel even more special because i was one of seven people to be tapped on the shoulder by mr. e. while marching. the people who get tapped are the people who he catches doing something right, and we get to rush up into the bleachers and watch our band march without us. i don't know what he caught me doing right; i believe that he just really likes my red satin pajama pants.
bethany and ashley are no longer friends with (SECRET FRIEND). it's really quite disconcerting. i still love all of them, but now it's kind of difficult to talk to them without bringing the other friend too close. i have to walk away to go talk to either bethany and ashley or kahlise. it's strange, but it doesn't bother me. if being apart from each other makes their lives more peaceful, then they should be apart.
evan and i are continuing our realistic relationship. what i mean by realistic is just that we know for a fact that we are going to break up at one point or another. we don't try and pretend that we'll be together forever or anything silly. when he leaves for basic in the summer, it'll be the end of our blissful little fling. sometimes it's disheartening to think about, but it would be worse to believe that i would stay with him and then get my heart broken. being realistic is safe and easy. besides, marriage is damn creepy.
i've been told that i am turning into a nerd. the elite group! am i truly becoming more like my beloved rulers of the world? sure, i like pocky. it's tasty. how does that make me a nerd, though? i like the anime Bleach, but you don't become a nerd from watching 207 episodes of one anime. do you? as thrilling as it is to believe that i could be undergoing a wonderful transformation, i can't accept that becoming a nerd is so simple. i still don't like D&D or Munchkin or any of those silly board or card games. i find Lucky Star completely worthless, and Samurai Girl is a random, half-assed show that appeals only to lonely loser boys that like the panty shots.
well, i've had fun chatting with you, darling. however, my friends are on their way and i must be going. i hope to talk to you again soon, blogger.

The Story of A Girl and Her Meatball

i have a car.

i have a car.

my grandpa drove it over from my great grandma's house last night. it's a dark blue 1986 BMW. my friends dubbed it Meatball long ago, so that's what my car's name is. i was locked out of my house for an hour in the rain, so i camped out inside of Meatball and it felt so right. we're perfect for each other, him and me. we fit. his chair caresses my back. his seat hugs my butt. he tells me i'm pretty.

everyone is in agreement that Meatball is the perfect car for me. he's vintage, he's roomy, and he's got a badass car phone. i don't even care that the phone doesn't work.

i've already picked out my car creeper. i just need to go over to bargain box and get him, and then Meatball will be ready to go. too bad i'm not as ready as he is. i still need my license, but hey, that's no big deal!

Excessive Worrying: Junior Year?!

our school schedules are finally up on the fairfield school website. mine goes like this:

1. select choir (A day) / band (B day)
2. spanish 2 (love it)
3. composition (HOLY SHIT)
4. algebra 2 (FUCK)
5. advanced art (yay! i love you)
'A' lunch
forum
6. biology 2 (JESUS CHRIST)
7. P.E.

now, i must tell you how i feel about my seventh period class. in our school, we are required to take a physical education class. that's no big deal, i can deal with that... but if we're forced to exercise, we should have a choice as to how we do it. we used to be able to choose P.E. or weight training, and i enjoyed weight training. i've never been much for P.E. we've done it since elementary, and i was so relieved to be away from it for the last four years of school. now they've taken away weight training from us! we are young adults, and we should be learning to make decisions for ourselves. sure, "P.E. or weight training?" isn't really an important decision to make, but it's something.

it doesn't make sense to me how this is going to work. we've got a whole lot of students. when we had weight training and p.e., they sometimes had to split classes down the middle so that one half went to the weight room and the other stayed in the gym. now everyone's combined? how does that work! i would very much like to petition against this, but i've never petitioned against anything in my life (though i've always wanted to).

my whole schedule just looks more terrifying than any of them i've had so far. last year was as easy as an thirteen year old girl with no daddy. my classes were relaxed and sometimes fun. composition scares the crap out of me! i like to write, but i never finish what i start. i had this story in eighth grade that went on for 149 pages (though i admit that they were double-spaced), but that was just the beginning! if i had continued, there would be so much more to it. things don't just end. if you're writing a story about someone, it should go to the very end of their lives. their story doesn't just end, you know? it's just hard for me to end what i start writing. luckily, though, i have bethany in comp with me.

i always have ashley in my math class. it's really fortunate for me, because i stopped liking math after sixth grade. it was my favorite then, and i did really well, but then i got sent to advanced math the next year and decided that i hated it. it was no fun without mr. bradfield, whom i really liked for some reason. he was a good teacher, though the majority of students seemed to hate him. so i suffered through eighth grade math while i was in seventh grade, and then in eighth grade i started out with ninth grade math and eventually decided, "fuck it. i'm not doing my homework anymore," and opted out of advanced math. so, yeah, i took eighth grade math one and a half times.

so that's why it's great to have ashley in math with me. sometimes neither of us know what we're doing, but usually one of us knows something and then we work together to get the nerve to ask for help. and if we don't ask for help, it's usually her who knows what she's doing. i'm really great at some of the things that she doesn't know much about, but usually she's good with the majority of things, and i don't know what the fuck she's talking about. she's much better at math than i am.

biology 2 is another scary class. we don't have mrs. septer anymore, which depresses the hell out of me because she is the best teacher ever. not only is she fucking crazy, but she's really great at teaching and planting the facts in our brains. she doesn't just tell us that "this is how it is," but she tells us "this is how it is and here's an innuendo that'll help you remember it." i didn't speak to her much at all in the two years i had her, but on the last day of sophomore year, i spun around in the hall and yelled, "mrs. septer, i know i didn't talk to you or anything while in your classes, but i'm really going to miss having you." surprisingly, she replied with, "dani, i know what you mean. i always really looked forward to getting your papers and seeing all of your drawings and commentary. that's what i'll miss most about you."

i am lucky to have ashley and evan in my lunch shift, though i don't think ashley is happy about it. there is nothing that bethany and ashley hate more than being stuck with "the couple." evidently, no matter where we are or what we're doing, evan and i are all over each other. i hardly even notice anymore. it's just instinct at this point. my nerves just scream, "LOOK, IT'S EVAN! QUICK, GIVE HIM AN INAPPROPRIATELY SWEET HUG IN FRONT OF YOUR FRIENDS!" we try to be a bit more discreet with our school ground kisses, but once mrs. septer caught us and screamed very comically. she told the whole class that i had been "sucking face" in the hall, though evan and i only give little pecks good-bye before classes.

there are also the lunch ladies, who all have an eye on me because my grandma is a "substitute lunch lady" and knows them all very well. every lunch lady knows that i'm marilyn's granddaughter. i like the lunch ladies, though. the vegetable lady doesn't even bother with me anymore. she just gives me a look, and i grin and pass her repugnant green vomit. anyway, evan and i have to hide from the lunch ladies when we kiss after lunch or they'll tell my grandma. grandma has called me on more than one occasion just to tell me that i can't date until i'm thirty and that i had better not be kissing that boy because i'm giving him the wrong idea. she's not serious, of course, and she knows very well that i am dating evan. she's fun like that.

it's just scary to think that i've only got two more years before high school is done. i mean, i haven't even got my license. i am getting a car in a matter of days, though. i've already picked out my car creeper and everything! i don't know what to name him, but it'll hit me as soon as i buy him and strap him into my back seat. i'm getting a beamer. or... i think that's what it's called... it's a BMW, anyway. i'm spoiled out of my mind. i grew up poor and now my mom's the most well-known photographer in the area and now she can afford to spoil me, i guess. i feel bad, though, because i intended to pay for my car's insurance, but now the car's coming too soon and i still haven't got a job.

i've got marching band in three hours. phooey. evan's a drum major, did you know? it'll take some getting used to, but i think i'll eventually be happy to have him lurking around the field while we march. though last year he was only three places away from me and would walk over and hang all over me during breaks, even though we weren't dating. i'll miss that, but it won't be so different. and he can help me mark my music! because i'm going to make him help me. i would have bethany help, but she's so far away from me when we march. for a lot of the march, i'm the second closest person to the front of the field. bethany's in the middle. i'm happy, though, because i got placed in between one of my favorite sophomores and a timid freshman. my first words to her were, "hey, are you a freshman? are you terrified out of your mind by all of this?" and she was. i've introduced myself to her as the most incompetent upperclassman in the band. i've told my sophomore that he is my guide, and that all of my steps will be his responsibility. i'm not going to be the asshole upperclassman that screams at the underclassman about being half a step off of where they should be. i'm not such a moron that i can't tell what's right and what's wrong about marching - it comes naturally after a certain point - but i'm not going to scream at poor, scared freshmen.

i can't, actually, because that would make me a total and complete hypocrite.

Dauntlessness at Six Flags!

did i even have an "Excessive Worrying" post about going to chicago? i don't think i did! that really surprises me. i kept on moaning and groaning to my friends about how when i went to six flags i was going to have my feet severed or that a ride would collapse while i was on it. i went on and on and on about all the horrible ways that i was going to die.

the trip in itself came up quite suddenly. "hey, your cousin sami invited you to go visit her in chicago," mom said, and i immediately started to panic. i very rarely see sami, so i was worried that we would have nothing in common and that we wouldn't speak at all the whole time. i worried about the ride to chicago because i was going with a strange family member whom i have barely spoken fifty words to in my whole life. i honestly just didn't want to go at all. but if you're stuck with something, you should allow yourself to enjoy it. so i shook off my negative thoughts and i climbed into my great uncle john's car.

the ride was somewhere between four and five hours. we did the whole thing in silence. neither of us spoke at all. i flipped through a far side gallery book before i finally just gave up and stared out of the window for the entire ride. the scenery in illinois is no different from the scenery here, in all honesty. they have different stores, but it's essentially the same. trees, buildings, lakes. blah, blah, blah.

after the long car ride, i finally arrived at lake zurich. i was a little confused, since mom had told me that i was going to chicago, but whatever. lake zurich is close. sami wasn't there at first, but her step mom talked to me and quickly discovered that i was very different from sami in that i was wearing thrift store clothes and didn't wish to change that. she was just asking me what i would like to do, and in moments she discovered that i had no interest in manicures, pedicures, getting my hair styled, or shopping for brand-name clothes. i mean, i wasn't sitting there going, "ew, no," but she figured me out. the whole time i was there, though, my answers were mostly, "i don't care," "sure," "whatever you want to do," and "whatever's convenient." i guess i was trying to be helpful by letting them decide, but i just made decisions more difficult.

the first time i really showed that i could get excited about anything was when we picked sami up from work. she got in and said, "that was the most pointless last half hour of work. i just sat on the floor and listened to my coworkers talk about digimon and pokemon." so of course i screamed, "YES!" and made a fool of myself. but i guess it's good to let people know what is staying in their house, and i let them know right then and there that i am kind of a nerd. well... i don't think i'm a nerd. to be a nerd is something truly spectacular, and it takes work. i have not reached the level of nerdiness to be classified as a nerd quite yet. i may never be. nerds are the rulers of the world. they're everywhere! they're everything! they are the truly elite.

one of sami's half-brothers, nathan, was a total car fanatic. he isn't even three, and he was rattling off more car names and brands than i ever plan to know. "can you get poppie his corvette?" "nay-nay, where's the hummer?" he always knew, too. he even talked about his dad's toyota. i don't know the differences between those sorts of things. toyotas, fords, whatever they are, they're all the same to me.

we went shopping the second day i was there, at some mall called Gurnee Mills. gurnee is the town that six flags is in, but i couldn't even see the coasters from the mall. the towns are much, much bigger in illinois. anyway, the whole mall was an adventure for me. i hadn't seen the majority of most of the stores before, and all the styles in the popular stores seem so silly to me. we spent way too long in rue 21 while i squeezed between giant masses of neon cloth, laughing at the animal prints and getting way too confused over shirts that looked like skirts. a rainbow must have thrown up in that place. i eventually just started grabbing the most insane things i could find so that i could try them on.

i have a question. aren't big breasts good things? don't men sweat to the thought of big, bouncing, luscious breasts? for some reason i've always thought that. but when i tried on these things, my boobs were hanging out all over the place. the dresses and boob shirts all scolded me for having breasts! what the fuck is wrong with you, rue 21? you're supposed to make my chest look really great, not put a stranglehold on my tits.

i ended up getting a vibrant yellow v-neck shirt. that's all i got. after hours of being there, we had barely even touched a quarter of that giant mall. mostly we had just been trying on the fanciest dresses in the fanciest stores. we didn't accomplish much, and soon sami's step mom was stressed out because of the boys' behavior. we got lost trying to leave, and we found a used, red condom on the steps. that was entertaining.

the day after that was the day i had been both dreading and looking forward to since i arrived. we headed toward six flags, and i was surprised to find that i was not feeling sick to my stomach. i felt strangely calm and determined. i wanted to ride all the roller coasters, just to prove to everyone, including myself, that i wasn't a total wuss. i was especially looking forward to Superman, which is a ridiculously dangerous roller coaster that turns you so that your body is more or less parallel to the ground. you go through flips and drops and everything while like that.

here, i'll give you a list of the rides we went on, in no particular order:
the ragin' cajun
batman, twice
the iron wolf
the dark knight (ridiculously long line for a sucky, sucky ride)
superman (I AM A GODDESS)
american eagle, both sides
the viper
the demon (last roller coaster we went on, made us both very light-headed and dizzy for the rest of the day)
king chaos (NEVER AGAIN NEVER EVER EVER EVER MOST TERRIFYING THING EVER)
roaring rapids
uh... some log ride
a double-decker carousel!

i hope i'm not forgetting anything. it was really a fun trip, and sami and i got along just fine, if we weren't just a little awkward.

i tire of this post. i hope you all are very, very sick of reading my ultra long rants.

Why I'm Truly Worthless

this morning, twitter isn't working. it's not even loading the homepage. it's almost as if it doesn't exist. i feel like i can't do anything at all with my life until i can tweet about it. this is wrong. i can't be social this early any other way, though. i can't call people up and talk about random shit; they'll find an excuse to hang up. twitter is the same as texting, and i hoped i would never become addicted to texting. i'm ruuuiiinned!

even the facebook status thing isn't working! what is the matter with today?! is this a test? is this to see who is the strongest without electronics leading them? no, no! this must be the day that computers finally turn on us and take over the world. my laptop is giggling maniacally behind this monitor. she wants tweeple to post on their blogs about twitter being down, and then she wants to take blogger away. soon enough, there will be no way to be social without speaking to anyone at all. that's the best way to be social, though! i don't want to actually see people; that's insane! i only ever see bethany, ashley, evan, and galen on occasion. besides, twitter is for selfish people, like me. we don't have to have conversations, we just keep tabs on everyone and talk about ourselves. though i do rape twitter with bethany and/or ashley quite often. we like sending out massive tweet conversations to all our followers.

regardless of robots taking over the world, i'm sure twitter will be back up in a little while. maybe it is now! i'll go check again and again and again and again and again until it's working! :D)

My Reaction to Watching Pokemon All Night

i just got done watching pokemon with evan, and this is what i have to say:
FUCK YOU, SUDOWOODO; YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A GRASS TYPE.

also, i always really loved brock. though i sure do wish he would open his eyes. he could better appreciate my curvaceous body if he did. (i am learning to love my chubby body, by the way. thus the term, "curvaceous.")
i used to sit at my biological dad's house and pretend to have my arm around brock.

YES, THIS IS A POST ABOUT POKEMON.

Excessive Worrying: Things That Go Bump in The Night

hi there! i am using blogger to calm myself down, because they always say that writing about it makes you feel better. though i'm not quite sure if that works with fears, because then it just makes you think about them more and it's not a very good distraction at all and i'm certain i'll die any minute now.

you see, i've been having a bit of a problem with sleeping recently. it's because of these inexplicable scenarios that keep creeping up in that mind o' mine. within the past three weeks or so, i have steadily been getting more and more afraid of ridiculous things. i have had the laundry room light on for the last couple of days to shed some light on my room, but i'm not sure if light would help or hurt me. it all depends on the creature that's trying to kill me, you know? real life murderers would see me so much easier and would come stab me in my bed or whatever. but if we're thinking, you know, implausible, impossible critters from movies and novels and such, the light could help me! there's one scary thing in particular that goes toward the light and leaves everything else alone, and that's this scary dead nurse thing from the movie Silent Hill. there were a bunch of them, and they moved jerkily and swung at the main character with rusty syringes and other scary hospital tools. sure, that's just one example, but i'm sure there is some other one.

i kind of don't want to sleep in my room tonight. we live across the street from the cemetery, you see, and my room is in the scary, damp basement and i'm afraid that a zombie would somehow either be buried beneath my house and dig through my floor or a zombie would dig all the way from the cemetery to my wall. either way, the basement is a scary place. but what about the middle floor?! there are so many large windows to break in through! OH GOD WHAT ABOUT THE CRAWL SPACE I AM NEVER SLEEPING IN MY ROOM AGAIN.

it would help if a certain boy would remember that, before he went to georgia for a week, he used to let me call him and would convince me that i was not in any danger at all. catch my drift, boy?

ashley is helping now. we're making cracks about zombies on twitter, and i'm feeling a bit less afraid of these impossible monsters. i might have the nerve to sleep in my room, but only if i take this metal baseball bat with me. my brother, eric, told me that a golf club would not help in a zombie invasion, and because of his explanation, i don't think a baseball bat would help much, either. but i can fend off other things with a baseball bat, right? but shit, i'm more afraid of zombies than anything else tonight. i don't want to go to sleep! but i don't want to stay up and fret all morning, either. it's already past midnight... SHIT THE ZOMBIES WOKE UP NINETEEN MINUTES AGO, I AM GOING T

Getting a License, Maybe

my parents are officially bribing me to grow up. the deal is: if i get a license in the next week or so, i will eventually get a cellphone. EVENTUALLY. if i don't get my license in this set period of time, i will never get a cellphone from my parents.

hmm.

i know that most teenagers can't understand either of these things, but i don't want a license, and i don't want a cellphone.

i've been over the license thing. i like to walk, and if i get a license i won't ever walk. i'll get fat, and i'll die a painful death. but mostly i just don't want to grow up. old people always talk about how much they miss childhood, and i don't ever want to be like them. i want to stay young and wrinkle-free! i want to keep my brain cells and my aerodynamically curvaceous body. i want to keep my same sense of humor without being creepy. can you imagine an eighty-year-old telling my kind of crude jokes? i can't really tell if that would be awesome or if it'd be insanely inappropriate.

now, for the cellphone... i guess i wouldn't mind having a cellphone if i don't have to pay for it. i certainly wouldn't have one if i had to buy the phone and the plan and all of that. but if my parents are doing that for me, i don't see how it'd be a bad thing. it's not really a good thing, but it's not a bad thing, either. i don't need a cellphone. i have never in my life seriously asked for a cellphone, and i wasn't planning on doing so. i would be unhappy if evan just texted me at night instead of having me call him. but using twitter on the phone might be cool, though i would drown everyone else's twitter feed all of the time. i'm almost always home, too. i have a home phone, and though it is crappy and screams static fuzz into my ear, it gets the job done. i don't really see the need for a cellphone. the only real plus is that evan would be able to call me at any point during the night without waking up my family and that my friends could leave as many inappropriate messages as they wanted. i don't really want a texting plan, and i don't need a camera phone.

it seems to me that the bribe my parents have chosen isn't going to work too well.

on another note, it bugs me that my parents are so eager for me to get my license. they have to buy a car. and on top of that, they're now willing to buy me a phone and a plan for that phone? i don't get it. they don't have to drive me places, you know. i have rides. i don't need their assistance in getting places, so it's not that. i'm not a waste of their gas. it kind of worries me, like they want me to grow up RIGHT NOW so that i'll move out as soon as possible. i don't want to leave them or my kid brothers just yet. my parents take good care of me, and i'm not ready to take care of myself. i'm a kid, alright? I LOVE MY MOMMY AND DADDY.

i don't like change. i don't want to have a car to take care of, i don't want to have a job to wake up for. ashley works at the co-ed theater now, and bethany applied for it yesterday. it sounds like a fairly easy job, and it's only for two days a week, but i still don't want to do it. there are too many people there. also, i'm terrible with technology. when someone bought a ticket or food, i would not know how to use the touchscreen cash register thing. i wouldn't know how to use it even after they taught me how to, and then i would get all frustrated and depressed over it. it's like when i worked for mom. when i didn't know how to do something, i would ask her and she'd get all pissed off and ask me if i was retarded. i don't want to always make people react that way, but i'm sloowwwww. i'm the dumbest person i know because i truly believe that ignorance is bliss.

but i guess i'll begin driving practice today. last time i drove, i got illegally passed and flipped off when i was going the speed limit. i don't know what i was doing wrong, but those people were pissed.

what really worries me is the DOT. i don't have a problem with driving with my dad, and if mom ever agreed to take me driving, i wouldn't have a problem with her, either. but driving alone with a stranger? would they take points off because of all the mumbling to myself that i do when i drive? i don't even notice when i do it, so i can't really stop myself. ashley and mary beth told me that i talked when i drove in driver's ed, and dad gets mad when i talk when i drive with him. this DOT isn't just going to be judging my awful driving ability, they'll be judging me as a person. they'll think i'm insane!

bethany said that the test with the DOT isn't hard, but it just worries me so much. i don't want to be in a car with this strange person. and what happens when i fail the test? do i get grounded? do i not get that cellphone that i don't need? or will my parents finally accept that i cannot properly use any method of transportation other than my feet? i never did learn to ride a bike, you know. since my biological dad left my mom when i was three, no one really tried to teach me until i was eight or nine and too stubborn to learn. now i've no desire to try because, hey, i'm about to get a license. also, i have no balance whatsoever. i almost fall over when i'm just standing. i don't want to try this awful balance on a bike.

anyway, yeah. i guess we'll see what happens. i'll inform you of the outcome.

I Am A Female On The Internet, Hear Me Whine.

i have been feeling strange as of late. i've been crazy moody, but never angry. it has been like this: contentedness, FRENZIED PANIC, bliss, HORRIFIED SOBS, euphoria, OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE! of course i laugh at myself the whole time, like, "what the fuck? ha-ha, i'm such a crazy schizo person," but it does get to me a bit.

i wasn't able to tell what was wrong with me for the longest time, because i refuse to think. but i finally allowed some thought to the problem, and i've realized that i'm just a big baby. i don't want to grow up, and that is my problem. of course i kept taking it back to evan, telling myself that the only reason i was so upset was because i was in a relationship. i don't know why i do that. evan is one of the four people out there who can always, always make me happy. he's not the problem at all. well... maybe a little bit. being in a relationship certainly can't stay innocent and childish forever, and that terrifies me. i also realized that i am too dependent on him and his car, because i really don't want my license and he takes me wherever i need to go.

bah. it's pathetic that i've been so sad about growing up. i suppose it's just that i'm going to be a junior and i realize that i've taken school so lightly and i slacked off and messed around and how will i ever get a job? (by the way, i like making long sentences like that, shut up.) it's really too late to fix my GPA. well, not too late, but... i know i'm not going to take this next year seriously, either. it's not that i'm trying to rebel or anything ridiculous like that, it's just that, well... it's no fun. i like fun! fun is good! schoolwork is not fun, therefore it is not good. this is one of the things about me never growing up that affects me negatively. if something isn't fun, i won't do it. if something is fun but it hurts someone else, hell if i care. i only think about it and feel bad after i've done it.

what really sucks about my current, self-induced misery is that there is no solution that lets me have my way. the only thing to do is to give in and grow up. i should maybe brush off my main distraction for a bit, practice my driving, and get my license. that's the biggest thing, i think. dad has been angry with me because i refuse to get a license, and that upsets me a little. i don't understand it, though; does he want to waste money on a car for me? but when i get my license, i'll have to get a real job so that i can pay for gas and insurance and i just don't want to do it. jobs aren't fun! i don't want a job, so i don't want a car, so i don't want my license, so i don't want to grow up.

i need some chocolate ice cream, but i don't have a car and i think that evan has decided not to come over today.
see my problem?

on another note: HAVE I BECOME BORING? OHMIGOD ANOTHER THING TO FREAK OUT ABOUT.

Waldo Update

hello, there! yesterday, i bought some sharpies so that i can properly draw and color Waldo. by the way, i feel that it is necessary to remind the world that i am fully aware that Waldo doesn't belong to me. WALDO IS NOT MIIIINE. it's not illegal, now, right? since you know i'm not claiming him as my own.

the first Waldo drawing is temporary, and it moves.

if you find it, i might kick your ass.

so, since i don't expect you to find it, i'll just tell you where Waldo is this time. he's on evan's back.

i'm practicing drawing Waldo lots lately, but i don't think i'll be drawing his body just yet. where can i draw a huge, striped man without getting caught or without ruining property? a little Waldo head here and there isn't going to hurt much of anything.

by the way, friends, a man's back is a perfectly harmless location. because i drew on evan's back does not suggest anything awful about evan and me. we are virgins. i would draw on your backs, too. does that mean i'm having sex with you? no (maybe).
just thought i would remind you of that. not that i'm suggesting that you don't trust me.

the next Waldo update will be a real one, i promise.

I Get Paid to Play Wii and Sims 3!

kind of. one of my main babysitting jobs is for a ten-year-old girl, and it's not that easy. i mean, it really is incredibly easy, and i really do get to sit around and play video games for a vast majority of the time, but i also have to get beaten physically and emotionally. my mother has suggested that i have some sort of problem that encourages children to insult me. i guess my pores just scream, "I AM INSECURE AND IT IS FUN TO MAKE ME SQUIRM." i guess it isn't really just kids that like to poke fun at me, it's everybody. including myself. i've been told many a time that my reactions are incredibly fun.

i've also been babysitting my kid brothers, jace and teague, a lot lately. teague is only two, so i have to change diapers. and recently jace has been eating rolaids like candy, and has been having some problems internally. i'm babysitting them right now, and jace spent around an hour in the bathroom. he came back downstairs and flung himself on the couch without a word, so i immediately began to interrogate him. i had to ask more than once, but he clogged the toilet. we've been trying to prevent him from using excessive amounts of toilet paper, but he's a brat and never listens. i'm going to make believe that i don't know that the toilet is clogged, since he used the upstairs bathroom and i only use the downstairs one.

i got paid a while ago for babysitting jada, the ten-year-old, so i immediately got evan to take me to the bank to cash my check. we had some troubles because i'm an idiot who had never been to a bank and because he had only ever used one bank, but eventually we had sixty dollars to waste! he took me to wal-mart and i blew fifty-three dollars of my paycheck on the Sims 3. it's not a bad game, it's just... lacking. it'll be better when they have some expansion pack thingies to add on. it's a little overcomplicated as well. you have to have just one main household in a town. you can switch to other ones, but then the household you were just on loses its wants and wishes. it's not like the Sims 2, where you could very easily switch to another household without any trouble.

you know, it's really quite fun to compare blogs and what they're about. from what i've read of ms. nelson's blog, it talks an awful lot about theater, whereas my blog talks an awful lot about video games. that's not all i talk about, but when i do, i go on and on and on. i've talked about paper mario, pokemon, super smash melee, and the Sims 3. maybe i talked about kingdom hearts eons ago, i don't remember.

bethany's blog is updated every sunday and talks about her entire week, whereas mine updates randomly and talks about nothing at all.

evan's blog seems to mostly talk about work, galen's bitches about everything and occasionally says something too scientific for me to understand. though i've never read auriel's blog, i assume it is mostly about theater.

i feel almost kind of guilty about bitching about theater all the time when my friends are so involved with it. i just honestly don't think that it's something i should be doing. what does it do for me? i suppose it's supposed to help with my socialization skills and confidence, but i only talk to bethany and ashley and i don't really feel anything on the stage. after i get over the initial stage of complete humiliation, i mean. i'm not denying that it can be fun at times, because it can be! i know that. but it's just being with my friends that makes it that way. if bethany and ashley hadn't have been in Children of Eden with me, i would have been completely miserable. that's not to say that Children of Eden wasn't great... i had fun, i did. but i could have had more fun doing something else with my friends.

besides, it's not like i could possibly do anything with theater in the future. what are the odds that anyone i know will have a career in drama? it takes serious talent (or serious good looks) to be an actor or actress. i don't see the point of getting practice in something that will mean nothing to me later on. i want to say something like, "i should be taking an art class instead," but, truth be told, i probably won't have a career in art, either. that's what i want, more than anything, but there is little to no chance of that. then there's writing, which would also be nice, but that also probably won't happen. i'm not sad about it, though. i'll always draw and write, even if i don't get paid for it. so i'll always be happy.

i'm getting slightly bored with summer. i've only hung out with bethany and ashley a couple of times, and kahlise has spent the night once. evan's here almost every day, but it's not like we do anything different. it's nice to snuggle up on the couch, but there's only so much of that i can do before i'm itching to do something. we go to the park sometimes, but there's not too much to do there, either. i hop on the swings, and some instinct tells evan to push me, but then i'm up high and my butt's in his face so i get down. we ride on the springy animals, but i'm always worried that i'll be the next kahlise and i'll break the duck.

last time we were there, it started pouring. i was infinitely happy about it, and i wanted to get completely drenched, but evan is not so hot on getting wet. we headed back to the car, though i was definitely taking my time. it was wonderful! it had been so hot and humid, and the rain was the sweet relief i had been craving. of course, my room has been getting awfully flooded with all of the storms lately. one of the worst storms cracked one of my trees in half and covered the entire basement in rainwater. by the way, the basement is my room. it flooded again this morning. i'm going to have to clean out under my bed and on the floor of my closet to prevent mold, buuut there's just so much mold down there already. i honestly don't care. there's this one bottle in my bottle collection that i filled with water, and now there's this huge mold in there. i'm trying to come up with a name for him.

i know i'm gross. i'm a total and complete slob, and when i have my own place, it'll be repulsive. i'll clean it for guests, though. and i intend to have guests all the time! my friends and i will make feasts together. we'll have "girls' night" all the time, but you can't expect us to do regular girl things. we're too cool. though this might not actually happen at my place, since i'll probably only be able to afford an apartment and my neighbors might get angry with our loudness. no matter. we'll have fun when we have our own homes.

i can't believe how very soon we'll be out of our parents' homes, though! we're going to be juniors in august! evan will be a senior! i don't even have a real job. i don't even have my license. i just don't want to grow up. i'm a kid at heart, and i hope to always be that way. i hope to always be entertained by sidewalk chalk and bubble soap. oh! that reminds me: i need to learn to draw Waldo so that i can draw him randomly in town and then maybe have my friends find him when they're out and about. i'm going to go practice drawing him. i'll tell you when the first Waldo is in town.

Excessive Worrying: Getting A Job.

i just read bethany's newest post in her blog, and it made me think. i'm not ready to grow up, i'm really not. but summer's fast approaching, and i have to get a job. i passed driver's ed, so that means i'll be expected to get my license soon. i don't want to, but i'll have to eventually, and then i'll have to pay for a car and gas and so i need a job this summer.

my driving instructor made one of my driving partners drive to Chapel Studio, and then he made me get out of the car, walk down the path that i grew up walking down, and go into the building that i spent hours and hours and hours sitting in, bored as hell, as a child. i then had to ask the girl at the front desk for an application. she stared at me like i was a crazy person before handing it over. maybe it was my expression - a mix of humiliation, disgust, and amusement - or maybe it was my bright orange shirt and mario pajama pants, but i don't think she found me suitable for the job. well, i don't want to work there. my mom worked for that shit hole for seven or eight years, and i spent most of my childhood sitting around doing nothing there.

so it seems i've only one other choice, since i refuse to work at a food place. i'm going to have to babysit, maybe four days a week. for the whole summer. i'm really going to miss lazy summers full of runescape, pokemon, and spur of the moment escapades with bethany and ashley. i suppose i will still have plenty of time to do those things, though, if all goes according to plan. mom says that the mother of the four girls i might babysit works from nine to three, four days a week. there's still plenty of day after three. but. i might not even be able to babysit them. there might be some other babysitter already. or maybe that babysitter works a few of the four days and i'll work the rest? i don't know; i haven't talked to the mother yet.

mom says she'll pay me to babysit my kid brothers for two or three days a week, so long as i take them outside and keep them completely entertained instead of sitting on the laptop while they fall and crack their heads in the other room. i think that would be cool. sometimes i really adore my kid brothers, and i wouldn't mind spending more time with them. if i could honestly help them develop their own personalities, that would be great. i mean, i don't want little dani clones; i like myself too much to let anyone else have my personality, but still. i want them to know that it's great to have fun - they should probably definitely have fun all the time - but there are boundaries. and i want them to know that their sister supports them fully and wants for them to be individuals in all they do, and that they don't have to be what mom and dad want them to be. granted, i know that my kid brothers are way too young to understand any of life's secrets, but i like mumbling truths at them every now and again and then laughing at the absurdity of it.

besides, i really like spontaneously deciding to blast the music and dance around the house with my brothers.

there's another thing i've been worrying about, and that is that maybe i've changed too much in too short a time. i feel guilty constantly because of my relationship with evan. i mean, i like it. i really, really, really like it. but that may be the problem. i feel like i've abandoned my friends, though i still love them just as i always have and i think that if bethany and ashley called me and asked me to do something at the exact time that evan called and asked the same, i would choose the escapade with bethany and ashley. i love hanging out with evan, but i do it often enough. besides, there's nothing better than running around with bethany and ashley. you know that, right, guys?

i wouldn't cancel plans with evan to go hang out with my friends, and i wouldn't cancel plans with my friends to go hang out with evan. my grades didn't drop because i'm with evan - did you ever notice my grades before now? they're just as they've always been. i'm not wilder than i was, and i'm not making bad decisions. i'll admit that i'm excessively cuddly when evan's around, and i'm sure that's annoying as fuck, but i don't know. i got used to (SECRET FRIEND) and her beau - i actually think they're really adorable - so i assume that you guys could get used to evan and me, if you wanted to. but i know you don't want to, and i understand.

i just really hope that you don't feel abandoned. maybe i'm being silly; maybe i act like this relationship is my entire life. but it's not! i know that. i'm not so engrossed in romancin' that i can't think clearly or make rational decisions. i'm not so lost in evan's eyes that i can't have fun without him. i still dance around the house when i'm alone, i still go on walks and have long discussions with myself (and they're not all about him). and bethany, since you're a persistent little bugger, i sometimes have fun in children of eden, but only because you and ashley are there. i guarantee that i would not have any fun there if evan was also there.

and i like going on drives with you guys, singing loudly, and laughing wildly at god only knows what. i'm still the same dani! i promise! please don't start to avoid me because you assume i would rather be with evan.

i'm sure that i'm making a fuss over nothing, but i worry. i don't want to lose my friends because i have a completely different kind of relationship with someone else now. it's not like tons has changed recently - we didn't hang out all that often, it's always a random decision at a random time - but some has changed. myself included. i'm not trying to play the victim. there's nothing to be the victim of! but i'm worried! i'm so very worried that i'll lose you over one boy. he's just a boy... just a boy that i like a great deal, i admit... but still. you guys have been around for years and years and years. he's been around (i mean, really around, not like before, where i barely acknowledged his existence) for only about three months now.

i don't think i have to choose between you, because they're entirely different relationships. i can have both, though my intimate relations may irk you at times. but i know (or at least i think i know) that you're not going to blow me off just because i'm too cuddly with evan and i spend a shit ton of time with him. YOU LOVE ME LIKE I LOVE YOU, GUYS. I KNOW IT. I KNOW IT.

PLEASE DON'T EXCLUDE ME FROM FUN TIMES.
I NEED YOU.
I NEED YOU TO SURVIVE.
YOU ARE LIKE... LIKE GUARDIAN ANGELS, MANG.
YOU ARE MY GUIDES.
YOU ARE MY LIFE.
IF YOU DIED, I WOULD DIE.
OH MAN, IF YOU WERE A VAMPIRE, I WOULD TOTALLY WANT YOU TO BITE ME SO THAT WE COULD LIVE TOGETHER FOREVER (IN LOVE).
YOU'RE MY MORMON WIVES. HE'S JUST A PLAY THING, YOU UNDERSTAND.
I'M REALLY SORRY, EVAN. I KNOW YOU READ MY BLOG. BUT I ALSO KNOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT I WORRY ABOUT THIS AND YOU ALSO KNOW THAT YOU'RE NOT A PLAY THING AND THAT I LUURRRVVV YOU AND ALSO ENJOY SPENDING TIME WITH YOU BUT I REALLY LOVE SPENDING TIME WITH MY FRIENDS AND - AUGH. YOU HAVE FRIENDS. YOU HAVE ME. I'M SURE YOU GET IT.
I'M REALLY SORRY, BETHANY AND ASHLEY, FOR THAT LAST BIT. I'M SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MY AFFECTIONS FOR EVAN.

GODDAMN IT, SORRY EVERYONE. I'M STILL DANI, JUST DANI IN A RELATIONSHIP. I STILL WORRY THE SAME AMOUNT, CAN YOU TELL?

Waffles Are Awfully Hard to Butter.

i feel the need to write a blog post, since i have to tell you that evan's not leaving and i want to rant at you about other things as well.

what have you been doing lately, dani?

well, i've been playing a whole lot of Pokemon, as i am apt to do. currently i am playing Pokemon Diamond, and i have reached Victory Road, which is the cave leading you to the Pokemon League and all that jazz. i don't want to go through the cave, so i'm not going to.

instead, i am trying so very hard to catch this Pokemon:

and it's really starting to piss me off. it's name is Uxie. it's a legendary. it's not all that cool. but i must have it, along with the other two similar legendaries, one of which is being a dick and flying around all over the place and then fleeing battle when i find it. Uxie's just in a cave, but i can fucking paralyze it and get it to FUCKING ONE HITPOINT and i still can't catch it! it breaks free of the pokeballs and it PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF. the other two are Mesprit (pink) and Azelf (blue).

Mesprit's the dick who thinks it's funny to make me chase it all throughout Sinnoh, which is the, um, region? i think? that this game takes place. Azelf is also just sitting in a cave like Uxie. anyway, that's just about all i've been doing, and now that i've started this post, i don't really want to continue it. i've just been wasting three to four hours on Uxie and not being able to catch it and it's starting to piss me off.

on friday, i went to watch the musical A New Way of Syncing (i really hope that's what it's called), which was written by a bunch of high schoolers. evan, galen, and auriel were in it, so of course i had to go see. they had all said at one point or another that it was a really sucky musical and that i shouldn't go to see it, but i actually liked it. maybe i only liked it because i had NO idea galen could sing that well and because evan was a sexy guitar man, but i liked it.

on saturday, i actually got the nerve to go swimming. i haven't really done so since 2006 or something, so it's exciiiiting. i wasn't going to swim at all, but i somehow ended up dropping my pants and jumping into waterworks. poor evan had to swim in his pokemon boxers (kickass) and was freezing the whole time. i made him hot cocoa when we got home. ^^

well, i have to go KICK UXIE'S ASS. bye. or, wait! tell me which one of these legendaries you like best and i'll pursue it. THANKS.

Excessive Worrying: Evan's Leaving?!

i'm a moron. evan's joining the national guard band, and it didn't even occur to me that that means he's going to basic training. so when he told auriel and samm today, i was appalled. crestfallen. heartbroken, even. my first reaction: get sad. second reaction: get mad. third reaction: get apologetic and very sad.

but it's okay. it doesn't even matter right now. i kind of wish that i hadn't found out that he's leaving, because i don't want to be sad over something that's months away. dwelling on that would just make our relationship no fun at all for now, when i should be thinking, okay, he's leaving. guess we'll have to have twice the fun now, then! and obviously i've thought about that, too. i'll be perfectly fine with all of this tomorrow; i always am. tomorrow's always better for me. i let my mind get crammed full of scenarios and tire itself out, and by the next day it's perfectly satisfied.

would you like to hear some of the scenarios it has come up with so far?
1. the long-distance thing doesn't work out for us.
2. he and some sexy band geek with perky tits will lock eyes from across the room, and later that night they will be drawn to a supply closet or something where they will accidentally meet and have wild, rough, unprotected sex.
3. he gets all uber sexy muscular and finally realizes that he is too good-looking for me.
4. all those sexy sweaty man beasts all fall in love with each other and have a six-hundred-and-four man wedding.
yeah, i haven't come up with much. the only thing to worry about is that he'll leave me. he's not going to die or anything, he'll just leave me and it will be sad.

but it's okay! it's okay! i have proven that i can live without a relationship, and after a long time of mourning the loss of sexy army man, i will get on with my life.

or, you know, he'll stay with me and we will continue our relationship?
i suppose that is also a possible scenario? maybe? hopefully? please? he'll only be gone for a couple of months, and then he'll come home and we'll be fine! right? maybe?

you know what's terrible, though? when evan started to notice how upset i was, he tried to comfort me by saying, "there's still a chance i won't get in, you know." how terrible is that! is his failure supposed to make me feel better?
evan, if you want to be in the national guard band, be in the national guard band. i'm certainly not going to wish for the opposite. if you really want to be in the band, your agnostic girlfriend will even pray that you get in the band. i'm terrible to you, i know it, but i want you to do whatever makes you happy. (CHEESY, CHEESY, CHEEEEEESY.)

Feliz Dia de Madre! (or something)

happy mother's day! i don't speak to just the mothers who may pass by my blog, but to all women who may ever be a mother as well. today's for us! todays' for those of us who have to live through seduction, and then the heavy, hungry, moody nine months that follow said seduction, and then the unbearable, agonizing pain of childbirth, and then we have to raise this child, through all his/her life - smelly baby stage, reckless toddler stage, annoying child stage, awkward, smelly preteen stage, angry, wronged-in-some-way teenage stage, even the struggling adult stage.

suuure, men deserve their father's day, i suppose... they have to endure through those terribly moody nine months as well, and they have to help raise the kid, i guess, but we've got it harder. that creature grows in our body, not the man's. that creature rips through our reproductive organs, not the man's.

so, here's to us, women. may our maternal days be full of just as much happiness as they're full of misery, if not more. a nosotras!

Green Grass! Lilacs! Swine Flu!

oh, how i love my silly adolescent body and mind. everything's so critical and explosive. oh, no! my friend got mad at me. it's the end of the world! but everything works out just fine. it always does. friends don't stay mad because they're friends, and they're not there to be angry with you. they're there to love you, and that's just what they'll do. and i love them, and i don't mean to make them angry, but it happens. i'm sorry that i upset you at times, friends. you upset me sometimes, too. mostly you just make me sad on occasion, but i don't mind. that's just how i know that i love you: even if you punched me in the face, i would still go back to you afterward.

there's something about spring that just makes me want to do everything. i want to go have that midnight picnic with bethany and ashley, i want to buy streamers with those two and whoever else and run around town with the streamers flying behind us, i want to have rubber ducky races, i want to go fishing, i want to enjoy myself!

i was grounded for a while because i was failing weight training, but now i'm not! unfortunately, i broke the rules the day before i was ungrounded. if i could have waited just one more day before deciding to have evan over, i would be free to go to the art walk tomorrow night with bethany, ashley, and (SECRET FRIEND), who is usually working during art walks. and my grandpa's band, Van and The Movers, is playing on the gazebo in the square! i've waited an eternity for him to play again, and now i'm going to miss it? i suppose there is the slightest chance that my parents will let me go, but i'm thinking that i'll have to agree to do a shit ton of chores before they even consider it.

school and i are fighting currently. he (school is a he because it is an asshole) decided to slam a bunch of projects on me at one time - history, biology, and spanish - and i just won't have it. he can kiss my ass. oh, well. it's not like i'm the only person doing projects. and i wasn't the only person who ran the mile, either, and i even wasn't the only person who ran it in a terrible time. i wasn't the only person to finish last in their class. granted, i was the only person to finish last in my class, but that's a given. i don't care about weight training in the least. the mile left me kind of comfortably in pain, and i even felt like i got to do it again after school, when i had to get to the radio station as quickly as possible to galen and evan's show (Midweek Songstreak - wednesdays at 4-5 on 100.1 KRUULP, Fairfield, IA) after i found out that i was ungrounded. everything's awesome.

everything is so awesomely awesome.

You Want A Blog Post? I'll Give You A Blog Post.

bethany told me that i don't blog enough anymore. well, fine! i'll take time away from my obviously busy schedule to type up another halfhearted blog post. here goes it.

i've started driver's ed. today was my first day to actually drive for the class, and since i've only driven three times before, the class was nerve-wracking. ashley was my driving buddy, and she went first. her only mistakes: the instructor told her to take a left and she took a right, and she wasn't the greatest at parking. i wasn't confident about my turn at all, so for the first twenty minutes i only had to do figure 8's in the high school parking lot. ashley said she had never felt like she was going to die in a parking lot before today. yeah, i'm that bad. after doing backwards figure 8's (that would be pretty cool if someone who could actually drive did it), the instructor directed me onto the road. my turns are too sharp, i don't slow down enough before stopping at stop signs, i'm not confident, i don't use the hand-over-hand thing that i should, i don't give parked cars enough room (the instructor cursed at me!), and according to ashley, i mumble to myself at all times. for my last turn, i started losing focus and ended up taking a right turn onto the highway when i was supposed to go straight, so all of our hearts were fluttering and the instructor was angry. ashley's second turn had been perfectly fine, of course. they went on the interstate and she listened to him and paid attention to everything and was fine with going sixty-five miles per hour and you suck, ashley. but it's not all bad! i am very happy that i didn't kill anybody. my goal was to only kill one person, hopefully myself (i wouldn't be able to live with the guilt of killing someone else).

hmm, what else? oh, i'm grounded. i didn't to a paper in weight training, so i'm failing the class. first off: who does papers for weight training? secondly: who cares what my grade is? it's weight training. thirdly: the paper isn't worth anything anymore; how am i supposed to raise the grade? hmm, i guess maybe i could get half credit at the most if i begged, but that's still an 'F' on the paper. of course i've tried to convince my mother to not ground me... i tried the obvious "weight training doesn't affect my GPA," but she doesn't care. weight training matters, apparently. so i tried "even if i do the assignment, i'll still be failing. will you unground me anyway?" of course not. "i won't start screaming, 'i love him, i love him!' at you, but i do enjoy hanging out with evan and i will be sad if you ground me from him." nothing. mom's more stubborn than i am, and that takes a lot. but the fact that we're both stubborn as hell doesn't make this easy on either of us. i've got a more easy-going way of confronting her, with chuckles and smiles and heaps of my sense of humor, but she doesn't understand that kind of humor and thinks that i am going out of my way to make her angry (who even does that?). she, on the other hand, just gets pissed off. there are no chuckles or smiles, and there's only humor if she's laughing at my misfortune. she said something along the lines of, "danielle, if you steal from a gas station, you go to jail. you knew the rules, you broke them. this is jail. there are consequences." oh, isn't she clever. so of course i told her, "yes, mother, if you steal from a gas station, you go to jail. but you only stay for a fair amount of time and are released accordingly." but she thinks this is fair. you want to know what i'm grounded from? i'll tell you. the computer, the phone, my friends, walks, favorite snacks. mom says that i'm grounded from "whatever makes you happy." nice, right?

basically, all i've got left is television. i hate television, and she knows it! goddamn her! see, it's just her that is the problem. dad doesn't really care. he was the first to tell me that i was grounded, but he went, "you're failing weight training, so you're grounded, starting next week." when mom found out, it changed. "what? she's not grounded next week, she's grounded now. evan shouldn't even be here." so evan sat in the other room while mom and i went at it. i know i've done wrong, i do, and i understand that there are consequences. but being grounded for the rest of the school year, because of weight training? it's WEIGHT TRAINING! and i told mom, "do you know what they do to you when you fail weight training? they put you in the class every day the next semester. isn't that punishment enough?" but she ignored me completely. no acknowledgment. i just love it when she does that, and she does it often. she told me once that my opinion doesn't matter because i'm a teenager. because teenagers are just so much different from everyone else, you know.

yes, i'm aware that i'm sounding quite melodramatic, but keep in mind that i have been just about the happiest person alive recently and most of what i say is laced with sarcasm. i am still quite euphoric, and i intend to have a plan at some point. i can still have fun, regardless of what my mother wants. maybe i'll convince her somehow. maybe i'll turn in the paper and then clean the whole house, and she'll let me be ungrounded for a weekend or something. maybe i'll bribe her. i've thought about pointing a gun at my own head, but i don't think that's very convincing, so i've thought about pointing one at her head, but i haven't got the nerve and she would send me away (because she just doesn't get my sense of humor, ha-ha. that means i'm kidding, people). i'm sure everything will work out just fine. i have a good feeling about this. i'll do what i can (and some of what i can't) to enjoy myself. i guess i'll be playing a lot of super smash brothers until i'm grounded from that, and then i'll... i'll... I WILL NEVER COMMIT TO WATCHING TELEVISION, GODDAMN IT! I ONLY WATCH IT WITH FRIENDS, AND I DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO IT. I WILL NEVER USE IT FOR ENTERTAINMENT, AUUUGH! i'll read a book or something. :D

Can't Wear Pants, Will Not Dance, Arcade Romance.

just a warning: this post may be boring and written with very little detail on account of i'm very tired and sickly.

good morning. i've been without sleep since 6:14 yesterday morning. it's 11:27 AM now, and i normally can't pull that sort of thing off. granted, i did have a nap or two, but they hardly helped anything. the reason why i eschewed sleep? it was PROM! that's right. dani actually got permission to stay the night with her prom group at her buddy duncan's house after prom, and she actually attempted to pull an all-nighter.

evan came and picked me up at one so that we could go to duncan's and get our pictures taken by a huge crowd of parents with cameras. our prom group stood awkwardly, plastering fake smiles to our faces, as the room filled with flashes and clicks and all matters of "oh, don't you look great!" evan himself had said, "wow," at me enough that i didn't need another compliment, and i had awkwardly muttered about how he looked pretty spiffy, too, so i hope he felt good about himself as well. we stood around for way too long as those relentless parents snapped photo after photo after goddamn photo, and then the parents began to slowly disperse (evan's mom hugged me!), and we were finally allowed to head off to the civic center to wait for our party bus.

the party bus wasn't at all what i was expecting. it was just a smelly, gutted-out school bus with sideways seats on one side, regular seats on the other, a space cleared out in the back for dancing, a nice lil' balcony outside of the back door, and another platform on the top of the bus. there were pictures of a line of people mooning the camera, which was weird but funny. i actually kind of liked the bus. the music playing was usually of no interest to evan or me; we're more into "indie" music, not the shit that plays on the radio all day. well, actually, he's into indie music, and i basically just listen to whatever he or galen throws my way. not always, of course; i'm a tad bit picky, and i'm devoted to the bands i already listen to. anyway, i grumbled at evan the whole time to Fun City, and played silly games with (SECRET FRIEND) after she caught me kissing evan.

when we got to Fun City, i put on my most ripped-up pair of green hi-tops and headed inside. evan and i got twenty bucks onto our fancy little card and immediately went to spend seven of that on bowling. i am really bad at bowling. i lost. but evan got second-to-last... he still kicked my ass. after bowling, we ordered our food at a restaurant inside of Fun City and ran off to spend more of our arcade monies while we waited for our food. i'm addicted to that game where the light goes around in a circle and you have to hit the button just as the light goes under some arch thingy, then you win the jackpot. i got a shit ton of tickets from that, but i didn't win the jackpot. i played ms. pacman (evan kept saying, "wow," at this; maybe the one thing i'm good at is playing video games?), and soon enough we had to head back to eat. the food was tasty, and someone had ordered a freakin' pizza that had a... 28? inch diameter. it was fucking crazy. i didn't eat any, but it looked delicious.

after we ate, there wasn't much time to spend the last of our arcade monies. i ran off to the gamblin' machine, as i call it, and evan tried some Deal or No Deal game. i probably won around 150 tickets. he won eleven (damn Deal or No Deal). we pooled our tickets together and came up with 313, but evan still had arcade monies left, so we went to the gamblin' machine again, and he spent the rest there. he got the jackpot once (victory kiss), but he and i both swear that we won several other times but the game is rigged. anyway, we ended up with around 550 tickets. we waited around for service, chose our prizes (two inflatable bats; why the hell not?), and ran outside to find that the party bus was waiting all the way across the parking lot. we ran, bats in hand, as the bus driver pretended to drive away from us. my shoe fell off (that's how beaten up they are). the ride home was fun. we played old classics like michael jackson, and i could actually sing along this time around.

riding in the parade on the back of that party bus was great, but prom in itself was really not that exciting. of course they played pop music that i didn't care to know, and i don't dance. i slow danced with evan a couple of times, but there were probably only two slow songs! i don't know, if you're going to be all fancy and gussied up, shouldn't you preserve your lovely appearance for as long as possible instead of jumping around, tangling your $50 hairdo and stinking up your $300 dress? i don't know, maybe i'm the only one who feels that way. evan and i decided to leave a little bit early and went to duncan's house, where our prom group would watch movies and play video games for most of the night. evan and i left at around three AM to go get some funky energy shot, which kicked in almost immediately and, for me, caused a crash just as quickly. evan was fine, but soon i was sleepily curled up on the couch with a sudden stuffy nose and burning sore throat. evan did everything in his power to try and make me feel better (who says chivalry is dead?), but my sudden sickness is still with me now. he cuddled with me, he asked around for medicine, he took me to find my own couch to lie on, etcetera, etcetera. he was just being a total sweetheart and i appreciate it to no end. it's only a cold, but he seemed genuinely concerned for me. i was feeling sickly, tired, and giddy, and eventually i just kind of went, "aww, fuck this. it's not doing me any good to sit around and dwell on how awful i feel. i'm going to go upstairs and i'm going to do the all-nighter i told evan we were going to do." so i went upstairs and watched Dogma, and evan and i tried in vain to fall asleep on the floor, since all the couches and chairs were taken up by other members of our prom group. there were a bunch of us, and the majority of us got the floor. it was itchy and so was the blanket that evan and i had snatched from the couch earlier, but evan was nice 'n comfy. i could hear duncan's parents making us breakfast at around five or six in the morning, and in a few hours we all pulled ourselves out of our restless slumber and chowed down. over all, prom day was really fun. i'm glad i agreed to go, since i was never planning on doing so.

i stayed responsible, like i said i would. no alcohol, no drugs, no sex. i'm a good kid. i told my parents i didn't do those things, and they believed me. they let me stay at duncan's and i'm grateful that they trusted me, even if i had to go into an in-depth discussion with my mom about how i couldn't be doing anything wrong during prom night before she finally gave in and agreed that there was no time for me to get away with anything (even though there was time, but i still didn't do anything that i shouldn't have. for the most part).