Listmania (à la Amazon website)

Dear Diary, ((5 PM on 4/8/10. Thursday.

Well Tuesday is when I started it. But I keep findin' little tidbits of information that I keep feel like sharing. GAH. Will I ever finish this post to publish it in all it's glory and wealth of words sharing wisdom and knowledge for generations of young adults to enjoy in it's full-fledged amazin'-ness??

Sarcastically speaking, of course. I just wanna finish up my thoughts, dude!))

(Where shalt thy starteth? Yes, how'd you know I have been reading Romeo and Juliet in English?)

So much has happened in the past few days that I don't really know how to start. Like, really, dude. There seriously has been so many thoughts and rants in my head just waiting to get out. I want to go over in general all the stuff stuck and taking up way too much room in my mind first so that I can finally get that load off my back and start with fresh thoughts about what's been happening daily, not in the past.

But (of course) I'm going to start with

-bubbly old man voice- "An old school favorite, you youngin's!"

I like to call it...A list.

This first part is about my home life. I never talked much about it, so if you're wondering what it's like...welcome to my dysfunctional family. There's a couple dark-humored, make you laugh-out-loud-because-of-the-harsh-reality lines stuck in #1 of my list, so if you're feeling less morbid and cynical, you can just skip over this part and go to #2 of my list which will be much more light-hearted (besides the one-sided monologue to myself contemplating the meaning of the word "home" which you can skip if you feel the need).

Just sayin'! Gotta give you a heads up. Like in Fear Factor (I used to love watching that show SO darn-tootin' much with PrincessGiggles while we were growing up) you can't just flash a screen of the show title and then unexpectedly go into an intense round of "Walk across a mile of needles barefeet" before bringing the winners to the next challenge while your squeamish audience is looking forward to some happy-go-luck family sitcom, though they have to endure watching "Open your present and eat what's in it. It will be a bug of some sort. Probably meal worms. Have fun," or something similar to that.

Then again, I'm crazy squeamish and I love that show. They seriously need to be showin' some reruns of that amazingly sick and exciting reality/awesome category show.

I think they cancelled it when some people had to blend up rats and eat them as a smoothie one episode. "Save the World and The Animals in it!" kind of people probably sued them. Damn those people. Where's my Monday night gonna go on from there?

1. [Number 1 of the list, that is] The Fam. Welcome to the House of [That] Girl.

The other day my mom was in a good mood. Yeah, pigs must be flying high in the sky. She said that she missed my dad because he always did goofy things that made her laugh.

My dad always called me "Goofy" as a nickname.

I used to see him every Saturday. For 14 years. Then my mom moved me to her new house right before I turned 15.

Now I hardly see him once a month. He used to pick me up from my house every Saturday and while my grandma went grocery shopping he'd walk around the area with me and we'd grab a snack together while catching up on what's been happening.

I broke my cell phone a while ago (and even though I have a new phone now, I don't think he has my new phone number) so he never calls randomly to see how I'm doing anymore.

It's like he doesn't care about me anymore.

He never called me or gave me a present for my birthday. Never even told me "Happy Birthday."

When I think about him I have the urge to start bawling and I feel so upset. Betrayed.

But I can hold back the tears now.

I hate that my parents are divorced with a strong vengeance. I almost immediately get tears in my eyes when I think of a kids my age coming home with supportive, regular parents home. One mom and one dad together with their child. Not one mom with her kid who visits her dad once in while.

I absolutely hate it when people my age with non-divorced parents assume that divorce is an over-dramatic sob story kids make up because, "That just means you get whatever you want from both sides of the family. So what? You have two houses and your parents are split. Yeah, yeah. Wahwahwah," with a hand in the unhappy kid's face to stop them from talking about their parents. What I hate more is when kids with non-divorced parents give you advice on how to deal with your crap, parent-wise. I mean, I told MissStuckey one time in total confidence that my dad likes me more than my mom does. (Though now that I think about that, I have three words describing how I now feel about what I said: My effing ass.) She said, "Like, why don't you just move in with your dad then?" I couldn't explain. Normal-family kids think everything is so simple. No real favoritism and feelings of real betrayal, that's how my parents would feel. That I was picking one as a favorite and the other as a spec of dirt on my shoelaces. My mom would disown me. I'm not even kidding. My brother lives with my dad and the only reason she acts nice to him and still talk to him is because of one reason: favoritism.

ExBestFriend told me that I should just tell my mom that I was moving out of this new house and going to live with my dad. She is so effing insensitive. Sometimes I feel like I have completely outgrown her, not physically, but miles mentally. She doesn't care how anyone feels about anything. I hate telling her about my feelings. I just feel like shit when I talk to her now. I don't even care that I'm cursing now. UGH. Sorry. No more cursing for me.

I feel like a beyotch, but this blog IS meant for ranting, yes?

But moving on to my dad...

I just wince when I think about him and every Saturday I remember that my mom doesn't want my dad to know out address for some unidentified reason I can't figure out. And now on Saturdays sometimes I don't take the bus myself over to his house to maybe (25% chance) see him there. I just feel incredibly unhappy. I just snap at anyone who talks to me.

Is everyone so much in their head that they forgot why, possibly, I'm constantly on the brink of tears on Saturdays?

I never told anyone this...but about every 4ish days I go into the bathroom before I go to sleep, and sob angry tears quietly to myself sitting on top of the toilet with the seat down.

Then I wipe my tears away, brush my teeth, grab a book, and lay in bed trying to get lost in the words of my novel. Even though I usually finish it in 2 days and make myself fall asleep watching TV instead.

The TV usually wakes me up around 3AM every morning when I leave it on. It usually has an infomercial on same product such as a book titled, "God's Way to Living Your Life the Way You Always Wanted (with 2 and a half easy steps which God would approve of!)" or a drink called KillingFat which you drink and your body suddenly rushes all the fat out of your body without you even knowing, or something similar to that (MY question is why you don't just lap up a bowl of some sewage drainer instead. I'm sure your body accepts it the same way.).

And that's that.

Oh wait. Did I ever tell you what my dad does? Not as a job I mean, but in his spare time? He goes to bars with his friends and drinks and plays pool. Sometimes when I saw him he smelled bad. And when he asked for a hug or kiss on the cheek when I was a child, I held my breath first. He's never drunk when I'm around though. And he's never mean to me.

My parents (though they don't admit it) plays favorites with me and my brother.

My dad loves me the most.

My mom loves my brother most.

I live with my mom and my brother lives with my dad.

Sometimes I really hate my mom.

She's always insulting me. If I missed what she said, she would tell me I am deaf. If I accidentally did anything wrong, she'd call me stupid.

She always calls me a bitch and when I seriously ask her what I did wrong, she never gives me an answer. She says, "You know what you did already," every single time. And every single time, I'm not joking what-so-ever, I have no idea in the effing hell I do wrong.

As a child she said I looked like my dad. So she would compare me to my dad as an insult.

No matter what I did, the answer was, "You're just like your dad."

I wanted to scream at her.

Enough for dysfunctional family facts for now.

It's all a little bit too

FUN

to talk about for me.

One more thing though. My dad smokes. He's always smoked; for the long as I remember. And I always thought he smelled horrible. I hate the smell of smoke more than anything.

Just a year ago I was looking through my mom's purse to see if I could clear some junk out, like papers not necessary anymore or makeup she used to use, when I spotted a box.

It was a box of cigarettes. I hated her more than anything in my entire life at that moment.

How could she do this to me?

I have asthma when I get sick and she's smoking. No wonder I have problems breathing when I get sick. But there were signs in the past.

One time there was a box of cigarettes not opened yet supposedly dropped on the side of the road by someone we didn't see. I was with my mom and aunt and my mom picked up the box. She said that these things cost a lot, so she should just take it. My mom says weird stuff a lot so I didn't think much of this. My aunt aunt asked her if she smoked. She sounded worried. My mom said of course not.

But now the dots connect. The etch-and-sketch isn't much of a mystery anymore.

There ARE signs though. One or two times the car had a very faint scent of smoke. I pointed it out one time and she said, "Oh!" and opened the window like it was horrible that I had to be around smoke at all. My mom doesn't have the tell-all signs of smoking. That's because she's an occasional smoker while my dad smokes regularly. My mom has yellow-ish fingernails sometimes when I look at them. You get them from cigarettes. I learned that in Health Ed this year.

I hate smoking and I hate cigarettes. I will never smoke, never in my whole life will I even come close to trying it.

2. Home, Buses, and Precious 4th graders wearing skinnies while discussing what "tight asses" are. AKA: today's generation of young adolescence talking like middle-life-crisis-esque housewives with overly macho douche-bag husbands. And they're only 10 years old? OH MY.

Diary dude, I have WAY too much thinking time now that my mom moved me to this house all the way across the city to the point that's it's borderline out the city. So I take 2 buses home everyday, which kind of sucks. Takes me an hour to get to this stupid house.

(Home. That word, though familiar and natural in everyday vocabulary, makes me feel empty and desolate inside. The word almost mocks me, in some retrospect. What is a "home"? In the movie Are We Done Yet-the sequel to Are We There Yet? which was way better-the characters make a distinction between a "home" and a "house." Subconsciously I think of this when referring to the place I live. When talking to my friends I call the house I am living at right now as "home" but when I talk to my mom I call our old house our home. And I call this "the house" instead. Maybe I do it just to spite her, or maybe it's because I'm in denial. I can't quite get over the fact that I moved from such a nice, rich, and safe neighborhood within 10 minutes of bus to my school, to this small house about 4 blocks up from the "low-income living facilities". Just a block above mine is slightly wealthy people, kind of like a small downgrade from my old house, and my block is just average people, with the less fortunate people's homes a couple blocks away. The whole situation is weird, to describe it in one word.)

But anyway. There was this conversation on the bus between 3 little kids-oh I'd say they were in about 4th grade-which I found incredibly enlightening, particularly focusing on the modern child's mind, and kind of really funny. And sad at the same time.

So. There were these 3 kids who got on the bus and sat in the very back of the back of the bus.

There were 2 girls and a little boy. Naturally, knowing the long waits on buses I endure on buses everyday, I brought a book like always and only slightly eavesdropped on their conversation.

I found the Nikes the 2 girls were wearing kind of adorable. They were miniature size! I didn't have a pair of Nikes until I was in 8th grade. Stuck with Converse and slowly converted to Vans throughout my childhood and middle school years.

Anyway. They were talking about going to the boy's house to hang around. One girl was a little chubby and wore a tee with her sweatshirt on her lap. She kept bunching up her sweatshirt and covering her belly, which kind of made it obvious she a had a teensy bit of a "jelly belly." She looked uncomfortable and it pained me so much to see a girl so young...so insecure.

(I didn't start feeling insecure whatsoever until 6th grade when I went through a phase of finding myself and who I really was. I acted like a beyotch for half a year until I realized how uncomfortable it was to give a front to everyone else. 7th grade I was quite shy. 8th grade I converted back into being a class-clown type of girl. I never purposely said anything to disrupt class though. Since 8th grade I've kind of grown a lot. Now I'm sort of...the girl who has a witty or outlandish comment for every situation and response to make you laugh out loud. But I can be serious. I can be whatever I want; it's liberating really. I like where I am now and I hope times can always be like this. But with an added bonus of a boyfriend of course.)

But anyway. So there was the other girl, the smaller one, talking to the boy. He said that in his neighborhood you can wear anything besides blue and red. According to him, they were gang colors and he knew which gang stood for which color, which he explained to the girl. Of course, the girl freaked out and her eyes widened. Like as if she just saw a marshmallow on his shoulder burst into song and dance in the style of Cabernet. The girl said, "But I have a blue shirt on!" and tried to cover it up using her arms unsuccessfully. The boy responded by saying that nothing bad would happen to her because "being the 'man'" he would protect her.

I stifled back a laugh.

He literally said that he would fight off anyone messing with her. It was kind of cute, actually. "Speaking as a completely objective third party observer with absolutely no personal interest in the matter.." (Quote from She's The Man. Great movie, by the way) I could clearly see that he had a crush on her, unless he was an early-developed flirt/player, or as I like to say lamely: Playahplayah!

As interesting as this was to witness, it got even more interesting as a couple about my age-15 years old I'd say-got on the bus.

First the kids started straightening up their backs.

Good job kids, NOW you look taller. Say, is that Denzel Washington sitting there? A-Gasp!

I wanted to say. But I didn't, of course. Cute kids.

I think that at one time we the bus passed a gym and the couple started talking about it. The girl said to her guy something including the word "shit" and so these kids mimicked it trying really hard to sound cool. I heard the boy say "shit" in three sentences, all in a row. He was really beefin' it too. Enunciation is key, and the kid was the best; the bomb, the lord-level in hierarchy, the Drama teacher doing word pronunciation warm-ups.

Seriously!

And then the girl who kept trying to cover up her stomach with her sweater leaned over to the guy, and it sounded a lot like she was trying to impress him with her new-found "super-dupery-cool!" word. It was the word "ass." On the bright side, she wasn't saying "asshole" which would have been profoundly disturbing to be used in the context of words spoken.

The subject of conversing was if they had ever been to a gym before, subject brought up by the guy, of course. The slight feminist portion of me says that it would have been cooler if a girl brought it up.

So the "ass" girl starts saying, "Yeah, I have been. I want to tighten MY ASS."

Note that she says it quite loudly and slowly, for pointing out the word to those hard-of-hearing on the bus, I would guess.

He asks her if she had really been to a gym, "No, not like a pool or something. I mean like a real gym?"

She says, "Yeah, yeah I know! I want to tighten my ass!"

Then, "Did you hear me? I said I want to tighten my ass! Like lift it up and stuff!"

What, are you an old middle-aged woman with drooping boobs and a sagging behind saying this stuff? Really, kid? Your "ass" isn't even developed yet!

I had a hard time keeping back a rant and giggles and an exasperated sigh after hearing this conversation. When I was their age I pretended to be on Fear Factor with PrincessGiggles at the park. It was so much fun. Are these kids riding on the back of the Muni bus to go to a dangerous neighborhood of the guy's house really having fun discussing asses and who is "hot"?

When I talked about guys and girls at their age, we said who was "cute," not "hot." No one is hot at that age. Squeaky voices convert to cracked voices and skinny girls become toothpicks so skinny that they become invisible when they turn sideways (Yes, I was pretty close to this puberty description at that age) or overly-developed lumps of baby fat.

Hey, at least you can have a cute face...which you can be sure will start breaking out in zits and chiseled cheekbones later on.

You're better off not worrying about looks here. And definitely not bodies. Those things change freakishly. The cootie-cat-loving girl WILL be on the cover of Maxim when she gets of legal age. You bettah watch yourself.

Chill.

3. CCAN no more. How about CING instead? CoolInGeneralGuy. Yeah, that'll work.

It sucks when you thought you liked somebody, like REALLY liked them, to the point where you thought they were perfection, even having the occasional dream about them, when you discover that they weren't what you once thought they were. Or rather, they've always been them, you just couldn't see it. I thought that CCAN was amazing. But now I can't help but to see so many flaws with him.

Our relationship;or rather, complete lack of relationship;was moving at a snail without-a-body pace. As in, it wasn't going anywhere. Dead end. That's it. I hate that. Eye contact once in a while and strangely find the person checking you out/always wanting you to check them out just doesn't do it for me. I don't do the lingering, hopeful for a "miracle on the prettiest star in the big, wide, sky!" thing. If we don't move on to bigger and better things, as in: a friendship or talking...at all! It's just so hard to date in high school.

On the other hand, it's really easy. Everyone wants to be in a relationship. Even the few "stalkers" and weirdo guys who asked me out this year. I used to feel bad, bad about rejecting them, but if you really think about it; who are these guys who I know nothing of to be asking to be a relationship with me? It might be different if there was some kind of strong attraction, I must admit. But hey, I'm only human. What works, works. And what doesn't work, well who cares? It's over. But on a more positive note...ahem, I like someone else.

Which is why I didn't have to go into the slight-sulking, let-down mood you usually get after you stop liking a crush.

And my new-crush is really cool. Well-rounded. Not as attractive as CCAN, but I really don't care much about CCAN at this point. Actually, my new crush isn't a new addition to my life though. He's my friend. Although, friendship-crushes are hard to deal with.

In all friendships with a guy and a girl, one of them will eventually end up liking the other one. I don't think it's an openly acknowledged crush most of the time, though. Who wants to mess up a good thing with a confused mindset?

I have no idea-slash-recollection of mentioning this guy before. I might have, though. I hung out with him when I was with EXBFF. He's sorta...goofy to be truthful. But he's actually really smart and decent enough looking. He takes Japanese and wants to go there for some kind of foreign-exchange program or college or for any reason when we leave high school. He's a sophomore which sort of lowers my expectations even more for getting him to be my guy.

It's kind of a sweet way I found out that I was over CCAN and likin' uhm...let's call him SSAF (Sophomorian-yeah it's not a real word, but that's fine with me-smart and funny).

So we had the Springfest a little while ago. Friday actually.

I was trying to bust out the school and skip Springfest like most sane people were since it was supposed to be mandatory, but if you found a way to get out, the teachers really didn't care and neither did the security. I guess they figure that if you find a way to make it past security and get out, you must've been a ton of effort into escaping and you deserve to be let free.

Well. That's what I think, at least.

Eventually I did get out with some friends such as Veronica who I've mentioned before. We actually didn't get out until 15 minutes before this nice security guard was letting select people out an hour early, only if you were standing by the door. I called my uncle and my friends made an elaborate and excessive plan on what to tell the security guard to let us out (that we were cousins going to Disneyland for our grandma's wedding who is now in the hospital and we must go pick her up and make sure that she's well enough to ride the dolphins in SeaWorld right now.) although he let us out when I saw my uncle's car outside and we all started shouting incoherently that we had a ride, and that we wanted to leave.

But before that I was walking with this fun and cool group of girls who later I went with to "SeaWorld and Disneyland." We passed some club booth which I wasn't paying attention to. See, during Springfest all the clubs and organizations set up booths to sell food and drinks and hosted lame games to raise money for their activity. I think the booth SSAF was at was the fencing club booth. I was a little bit spaced-out and not looking whatsoever at anything besides the 4 exits around school with added secret ways out such as the whole in the fence next to the parking lot which people were escaping from until a mob of people came over and the teachers started to get suspicious wherein they shoo-ed everybody away, watching over the area. People are so conspicuous and obvious. So dumb sometimes.

Anyway. I was passing by the (most likely) Fencing Club when I am ambushed by a hug. All of a sudden I'm in some guys arms wrapped around a warm and soft gray sweater. He felt very huggable, it's just too bad my backpack was in the way. I was surprised and kind of tripped on his feet and feel farther into him, which he probably misinterpreted ("Yay" for disoriented me?) as me trying to get a better position for huggin'. That was really surprising. I looked up at his face and said, "Oh! Hi SSAF!" as I looked towards Veronica on the side half-observing what she knew as a hug from a guy you know but aren't THAT close to. It happens to her a lot in P.E. and I always try to rescue her from his reach. My other friend once joked that a little part of Veronica dies every time she is hugged by that guy.

So, I kind of wanted to stay and hug SSAF and talk to him about stuff. It was nice and cute that he hugged my even though we haven't hung out in like a month on my birthday a while ago. I like to know that he still cares. He's just busy with after-school activities now.

But, I had to continue my adventure of finding a way out of school and I had to break away from the hug sadly enough and caught up to Veronica flustered while shouting back to SSAF, "Oh, I'm bye! I'm leaving now, but have fun!" as I got out of his reach. My voice sounded kind of high pitched in my flustered-little-girl kind of way. I haate it when my voice decides to make that pitch. It's not too bad though. He smiled and waved.

And I got the hug.

You can never have quite enough epiphanies.

-That Girl, crushing on a decent crush for once?!