Tis the Season

Well, it's been a mighty long while since I've last written a journal. A couple days, sure, but I feel like a lot has happened that I should have wrote about as soon as possible. Now it'll all just get lost in the hubbub.

Y'know, I probably should be watching Dexter so that Nate doesn't feel the need to keep bugging me about it. I asked him today why he was so intent on me watching it through the season finale so quickly, and he said that he didn't want to give anything away. That's rather sweet of him. Then again, Nate's a really nice guy. But still, it's not like we talk a whole lot anyway. It's funny that every time we do, though, he brings up that show.

On the other hand, I just redownloaded the Sims again. So I kind of want to play that. Even though Olivia took all of my expansion packs, so I can't even play with those.

Anyway, where did I leave off on my last journal? Well, maybe not the last journal. Because the last one mostly talked about Puddin trying to destroy my room.

Ohmydear, I just read the end of my last journal and I laugh at my continuous ability to want to do something and then never fucking do it. So, I was in bed with Facebook was texting me messages Katie and people were posting so I didn't really read anything until the end, but apparently it wasn't skating everyone was doing tomorrow. That's probably the only thing that would have gotten me out of my house. No, instead they changed it to the movie theatre at 6:10. And then Katie texted me a little while later and said they were going to Alyssa's house. And then another text, a little while later, said that they'd be going to McDonald's first. Well, I had family coming over, so that was a no go. And I didn't leave the house. Not all day.

I really don't remember much of Christmas Eve. I debated leaving the house later that night, showing up at Abbi's, giving her a hug and the rest of the Christmas present that I finally mostly pulled together. I'm still hung up on one little detail. She's been falling back in her rut again. Even worse than before, if her journals are allowed for any scale. I feel like I'm a terrible friend, simply because I cannot help her. I suppose I could, but I'm so fucking lazy it's not even funny. I'm so lazy, it makes me a terrible person.

Yeah, whatever.

Grandma and Grandpa showed up in the afternoon and Grandpa took over the TV in the living room. My mom was cooking roast for dinner, which turned out rather terrible, but there's no way that I would say that outright. At least I could still eat it. She hated it, though. She wouldn't let herself live it down. Said that dinner was terribly awful because of her. I said it was good ... just the meat was absolutely way too dry. It was so dry, it had to suck moisture from the air around it to stay together. Haha. Yeah, no. I know I'm not funny.

After dinner, I basically did dishes. My mom asked me what I wanted, because I never do such a thing, but I didn't want anything out of it. I kind of just did it. Grandma stood by my side and dried everything off, though I have no idea why. We don't normally do that.

Then, once dishes were done, I had to make up the vanilla popcorn. Grandma kept telling me that if I didn't do it, my ass would be grass and Dana would be the lawnmower. I have no idea when she decided that it was okay to swear in front of me, but I've only recently discovered that both of my grandmas are very hilarious people.

I did make up the vanilla popcorn. Mom, Grandma, and I basically hung around the kitchen until it was done, and then afterwards as I ate about a quarter of the popcorn I just made. My mom was appalled at how much butter the recipe called for. I never said it was healthy shit. Ever.

I meant to go to bed early. I really did. I put everything away, was all snug and whatnot, and then I pulled out my book. I read the book to finish, even though I still had just a little less than 100 pages to go. I don't think John Green is as brilliant as some people make him out to be, but that could just be because I'm used to Sanderson. He is a great author, I'll give them that. He really is. I'm just used to the mastermind of authorhood. So, I didn't go to bed until four in the morning.

I kept telling Joe that he wasn't allowed to wake me up before 9:30. So, Christmas morning, he waltzed in at 9:31. On the fucking dot. At least, that's what he told me. Grandma had my alarm clock so that she could wake up for Christmas mass. It took us a while to get Ben out of bed, though. Once I figured out that I wasn't the last one up, I got all mostly fake mad at Joe for waking me up earlier than I needed to be up.

We went through stockings first, which is what we do. I ended up getting two things of Altoids, since Mom screwed up sorting the stocking stuffers the night before. I think I put everything in Joe's stocking, but Mom was supposed to have everything sorted out fair and square in separate plastic bags. So I got two Altoids containers and some puzzles. Which aren't that hard to figure out. I was rather proud of the fact that I could figure them out. I love puzzles, but sometimes they kick me in the ass.

After stockings, we ate breakfast. My mom made this brilliant oatmeal mix with dried fruits and whatnot in it, and ohmydear. It was delicious. So cinnamony. I love cinnamon. Ben decided that he wasn't much hungry, so it took us a while to convince him to eat so that we could open presents. I found it rather weird that my almost five year-old brother wasn't so very excited about the whole gift-getting part of Christmas. Joe was certainly excited.

It took us a long, long time to get through presents. Joe got a punching bag, which will take Dad a while to get up, but I was happy at seeing that. Maybe finally I can vent some of my frustrations. I'm a physical and violent person. Though I'm not a terribly physical person in relationships. Like, at all. Yeah, whatever. I really hope he sets it up downstairs and that I can beat at it when I need to. I don't feel the need anymore, which is good, but there's been a couple times the past month or two that I just needed to punch something. Never did. Like, that one night when I screwed up the delivery, Abbi kept me from attacking something. I would have if she wasn't there. I felt itchy to punch something the whole night and the next couple days, but if I'm not over that by now, we have problems. Maybe I just don't feel that way anymore because my hands have more than enough cuts all over the fucking place. Plus, my wrist still hurts, so that pains me any time I move it too much in one way or have too much weight on it. Seriously, I got a brilliant papercut across my index finger Christmas morning.

So, besides Joe's punching bag, I feel like I did nicely. Dad gave me $100. Just, five twenties in a box. He said it was for my trip to Colorado. Even though I had over $100 in my wallet before I cleaned it out. Now I have that much just sitting on my desk. Over that much, since Dad helped me out. Well, I finally feel rich. It's awesome. I also got 3TB worth of external storage for my laptop. I got a warm sweatshirt and fleece bed sheets. I got Prison Break: The Final Break, which completes my Prison Break collection. Now I'll work on pulling together Dexter and Flashpoint. Maybe Lie to Me while I'm at it. Seriously, I love my TV shows.  I got THREE TERABYTES THOUGH! What the fuck am I going to do with that much space. I dumped about half of my stuff onto the storage already and it took up one thirtieth of its space. And my laptop is finally loving me again. All my music, my pictures, and everything trivial like that is in my storage now. So, I was happy. I got warm things, as well as more space than I would have ever bought myself. I needed that.

My aunt Lisa also gave me a $25 American Express giftcard when I wasn't up at Grandma Gordon's. Meghan got my name, and she didn't go up, either, so I didn't get any presents, but I wouldn't even be that bothered if she never got me anything. I bought Red's new album that's coming out February 2013, though. I got a free download of one of the songs off of there, and I've been listening to that, which is a little more poppy - especially in comparison to where they've been going the past couple albums - that what they're usually like. Very guitar-heavy, though, so it can't even be close to considered pop. They're still my religious metal band. I was so very excited about that, though. I'm going to see them in March in Ypsilanti, because no way in fucking hell would I miss that, and now I'm getting their new deluxe album. More music! Which makes me realize, I don't even have all of their music. Though I'm going to buy their first album in deluxe. I'll just download the extra tracks from their second album, since I bought the regular one of that. I don't think I like the third album enough to even consider buying the deluxe version of that. So I'll just download those tracks, too.

I'm so excited! I fucking love that band! Eep!

Oh, I also got a natural light for my drawing desk. So I can paint. I haven't painted in so long. I think I've decided to use colored pencils for that rabbit comic. I want to do it right, though. So that I plot out each book completely before I even touch a pencil to that paper. I need in depth character sheets. I got five main characters, though it starts out with more. I got Costello, Enigma, Mafe, Libby, and Gala. Two bucks and three does. I think I've decided they'll be Netherland Dwarfs instead of Holland Lops, though, since my bunny gryphons are Holland Lop rabbits morphed with Americana chickens. I still haven't decided whether or not I want to try markers or just stick with colored pencils, though. I hate being stuck in the middle like this. I don't do decisions.

Later, Dana and Eric showed up. We ate our crab legs for dinner, in which case I just ignored the throbbing pain in my finger due to the cut earlier. It wasn't really that bad, actually. And dinner was just so good. Seriously, you can't beat crab legs. Plus, my dad cooks it just right so that the meat just falls right out of the shell. Eric gave me some of his lobster, too, which I think I enjoy more than crab legs. But I was so full at that point that I could barely eat the little bit he gave me to taste.

I don't remember if it was before or after dinner, but Dana pressed me to try some of her beer. My mom was standing right next to her, and she pretended like it was a big deal that she had to leave the room, but she more or less was fine with it. So I did try some of the beers Dana put in my face. I didn't like them, though. I just don't like beer. I didn't like the Heineken Julie had me try. Dana asked me if I'd drank before, or if I've had any drugs - and my mom was out of the room by then. She said just by my hidden smile that she knew that I did. She asked me what I had. Then she pressed me about drugs. Thankfully I was more or less able to sidestep those questions by asking her what the hell the drugs she was listing off were.

Grandma bought me some sparkling juice, though, so I drank that all night. They all made me drink it out of a wine glass, but whatever. The juice was good stuff.

Then we all started playing the game Joe got for Christmas. It was actually pretty fun. I don't even remember what it was, though. Something that involved a lot of physics. Ben kicked ass. I'll admit, I was pretty good as well, but even Ben beat me with his skill. He's fucking five years old.

Every time I disappeared for five minutes or whatever, and then I came back upstairs, my family asked me where I was. What? I couldn't hit the toilet? I couldn't check the status on how much data  has transferred to my external harddrive? I can't say hi to Puddin? What the hell? I don't people well. Don't expect me to be upstairs all the time.

Later that night, I told Joe that he could transfer music from my laptop to his new iPod. My music is very different from what he listens to as well, but I have more of what he likes than he or my dad has. I have a lot more music than anyone in the house.

We opened presents again, since Dana and Eric weren't around for the first time we did it, and they got me a repeat of what my parents got me. Which is weirder than weird, since Dana and my mom are almost psychic twins. Even though they were born almost ten years apart. Not quite that much. So now I have to figure that all out with them, since the only place they could find this movie was on Amazon.

Since my family wouldn't just let me go to bed, I ended up laying down on the living room floor and pretty much fell asleep. Dana or my mom kept massaging my head with a metal massage thing, and once they finished that I curled up with Daysie on the floor. Ben stepped on my face once, and Joe stepped on my arms a couple times, but I did almost completely slip away. It was enough of a nap to keep me up for the rest of the night, though. Once Dana and Eric left, one of them trailing a trail of stink behind them, they gave me a couple more encouraging words for the airport, but I wasn't able to go to bed. I went downstairs to my room, but didn't even approach my bed.

I was on the computer, probably doing Sims things, when Grandma peeked her head in my room. She asked me why I wasn't in bed, and I told her it was because I needed to remake it because I got those new sheets. She wouldn't leave my room until she helped put my bed together despite my protests. Ohmydear, though. Those sheets were so soft and warm and fuzzy and ohmydear. I fucking love them. I let Puddin out of her cage before Grandma left my room and she laughed that she was scaring her away every time I moved. Nah, Puddin doesn't get scared unless Daysie is in the room. I also brought J into the house earlier that day. So it was a day of rabbit love.

I was going through Mod the Sims last night instead of actually redownloading the game last night, so now I have about fifty tabs of mods that I want to download for the game. The first tab was a smoking tab. Why? I don't even fucking know. It's not because I work with a bunch of smokers. It's because of Gambit. I swear.

Y'know, I still have four of his monthlies on my desk that I haven't read yet. Four?! What the fuck? Three. Okay. So I didn't go the Vault for three months. That's fucking nuts.

I don't even know how, but I slept in until three this morning. I didn't mean to. I meant to wake up before 1. So that I could text Wes and ask if he'd go skating with me before I had to go to work. Well, that wouldn't have worked out even if I wanted. There was a fuckload of snow on the ground when I woke up.

I went out a half hour before I had to work to clean off the car, and my dad came over before I even had the windshield cleaned off. He asked me what I was doing. "Going to work...." He said that I couldn't take the Milan. So then I asked him if I could take the truck. No. I wasn't allowed to take the truck. Then how was I getting to work? He was going to drive me. So what did he do? He drove me. We hit the library real quick beforehand, and then he dropped me off in front of the shop.

I didn't like showing up an hour early this Wednesday. I was with Amy, which doesn't help, but Ralph seemed a little short today. Then, once he left, it was me and Wes pretty much because Scott is worthless. But Wes had me go do bread sticks. I got a tray or two done before Wes came back and started talking to me, mostly about food. Since I had to count cuts, I just turned and talked to him for quite a while before he said that he needed to leave so that I could get sticks done. Oh ... okay. I think I got maybe five or seven trays done before I went back up front and asked him if he wanted me to take over my station before the rush.

I was phones and carry-out today. Nate and Matt were on the road. John was in the back. Von - whom wasn't even scheduled to work - was cut table. Owen was late, but he was up front with Wes. It was pretty bad for the drivers. John left for a delivery, since Nate and Matt were getting backed up. And we ran out of cheese. At one point it was just me, Wes, and Von in the shop because Nate, Matt, and John were on deliveries and Owen was out getting cheese. He came back and told us that he spun out three or four times while getting it. Jake showed up to pick up an order a little after Owen came back. I saw this huge ass truck in front of the employee door and it took me a while to figure out who it was. Jake came in, said hi to us, and then just started plowing our parking lot. He had to plow around Owen's car, but he cleared it up a little for Nate and Matt. Wes gave him free food for that.

Once things were slower again, I went back to do bread sticks again. I was at twelve when Wes came back around nine and asked how many more I had to do. He said twelve was enough. Well. I told Wes that he could go out with Nate on his next delivery. Of course, Wes couldn't just pick on me for my word choice. No, he had to go up to where Nate was doing dishes, and I couldn't even figure out everything they were saying back and forth. Well, not Nate. He's soft spoken. So Nate did take Wes home. Almost as soon as they were out the door, Matt asked me what I wanted him to do with open flour bags that Wes left out. I have Wes's home phone memorized, and I don't have his cell phone, so I had to call up Nate and have him be our middle man.

I couldn't let Owen go until after close again. At one point, Von came in the back where I was talking to Matt and Owen, and told me that he saved my ass. He told a customer we weren't delivery about 9:20-ish because of the roads. I said about nine that we weren't delivering anymore. I got to make up the time when we weren't delivering anymore. I'm pretty sure we were the only pizzeria delivering tonight. At which point I told Matt and Nate they could count their money whenever.

I was almost certain that Matt fucked me over. For a little over half an hour. I kept it to myself, though. But I kept thinking what I would do if he did. I'd call him up, for sure. I have his phone number. I have almost everyone's number. I don't think I have Jazmin's. And ... that may be all. I have Wes, Nate, Matt, John, Dumb, Abbi, Galya (even though she doesn't count anymore), Jake, Owen, Von, Ben, um ... am I missing someone? I know I am. But who? I always forget Ben. Who is it now? Beh. Whatever.

Von brought in his new knife today. He was talking about it, and then he said he'd just bring it inside. Matt was playing with it while I was doing bread sticks and just sliced his hand right open. It's a sharp motherfucker. Later, after Wes left, Von was playing around with it and just sliced the whole front of his shirt open. Then he just made his shirt worse and worse, and I told him that he needed to find another shirt or cover himself up. Because he still had a couple other things to do. He ended up wearing a sweatshirt over top.

Finally, after Owen got his prep finished, it was just me and Nate. Nate disappeared for a long while after Owen clocked. I started counting and made it to the pennies when I realized that Nate hadn't counted his money yet. So I just threw the pennies back in their spot, zeroed the calculator, and scraped trays for Nate. He still didn't come inside. So I pulled catch pans. He still didn't come inside. I could have gone outside and yelled at him, but I didn't have to wait much longer afterwards. I kept busy, at least. Cleaning and shit. So when he walked inside, I told him that I was counting money before I realized I didn't have his money yet. He smiled at me. Pretty sure he said oops, but nothing else. He did thank me for scraping all his trays, though.

Once I had his money figured out, I recounted the money. I was glad that I didn't settle the credit card machine like I almost did, since I had forgotten about Nate's money for a bit there. He had some credit card tips. I'm not sure what I would have done if I had forgotten and actually settled the machine. Something held me back, thank the Air.

I was done counting money fairly quickly. I was surprised to find that I was $1 over, which is fine by me. So I walked out of the office and kind of just stared at Nate for a bit. He still had a whole bunch of dishes to do. A lot. So I asked him what he had swept, he told me, and then I realized we still needed to take boxes out. So I did. When I came back inside, I swept the rug, rolled it up, and mostly finished Nate's sweeping. He kept telling me that I didn't need to. But he was still doing dishes.

We didn't do a whole lot of talking tonight. A few words here and there, but Nate had his music going. We had a little minute there where we were chastising each other for doing stupid little things. I forgot what he did, but I tripped over the dust pan and he actually tisked tisked me. With a huge ass grin on his face, but still.

We weren't out of the shop until twenty after eleven. This time it wasn't my fault. I was doing a whole lot of waiting on Nate, and I was doing half his shit. It didn't bother me at all, but now he can't give me shit about the first night I closed ... which was the night I closed with him. I like closing with Nate. I like closing with Jake, but Nate's a lot more chill. Plus, I still have that crush on him.

My dad said he could pick me up after I was done with work, and he texted me about eleven asking if we were almost done, but I told him that Nate said he could take me home. So, after he cleaned off half his car, Nate drove me home. He was driving extremely slow, since there was still a fuckload of snow on the road, and we didn't do a whole lot of talking. I mean, we talked almost the whole time there, but it was more small talk than anything tonight. He asked me if I decided on which gym to go to, and he confirmed that the gym in town is probably cheaper than the one he goes to. He goes to that just because he has friends - besides Kevin, that is - that goes there. I think that just may make Abbi's and my decision for us. I don't think I can spend $45 a month on a gym. No matter how often I go.

I told Nate he could just drop me off at the end of my driveway, but he asked how long it was and I told him it was very long. With a huge hill, which is why he should drop me off at the end. He refused. Drove me up to the very top. I thanked him, hit my head on the roof of his car, and said he could back up in the grass. But he looked behind him, laughed, and said if he could see out the back of his car. Well ... I couldn't. I watched from my door, and I'm pretty sure he backed all the way down my driveway. Which is more impressive than anything. There's a huge ass curve in that driveway. He just didn't want to back into my car.

Nate is a very nice guy. I'm not getting this unfriendly vibes from him again. He confuses the hell out of me.

I hate myself for this, y'know. I hate it.

I feel like I owe Nate now. He probably won't accept anything, but I'll come up with something. If I feel like I owe someone, that feeling stays until I make something up. Now Nate's drive me to school and he's driven me home. I owe him. I don't care what he says. I'll bug him about this now.

Yeah, so that's about that. I think I'm going to download some mods now and play Sims. Despite the fact that it's past two in the morning.