The Room Adventures, Part One: Stripping in the Basement

Goober hates it when my room is messy. Hates it. When she first said we would be cleaning my room together, I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was that she meant it - I had taken it as a subtle hint that I should really clean my room.

Several months later, she was once again sure that we should clean my room - thoroughly.


Oh, I know the fridge there and the edge of the carroll look messy, but that wall is missing posters, papers, necklaces and the like hung from pins, my mirror, and a bookshelf that should be off to the right there.


That wall, obviously, still has its posters and junk. And there's another carroll. And Siri's chest of drawers. And bookshelves. And stuff hanging from the ceiling.

Have I told you about my ceiling yet?

This ceiling? Or lack thereof?

I am much in the habit of hanging things from it. It can be quite useful at times.

And there's my closet. And the scoring on the wallpaper that I did when I was ten or something.

I had to clean out my fridge before moving it.



Maybe I should clean out my fridge a little more often. (If you guessed that that's a chunk of cheese there, you win the prize!)

And things over here are vanishing too! And DUST!

Are you wondering where we're putting all this stuff?

In the boy's bathroom, meaning that we couldn't shut the door and were therefore forced to put up this makeshift door.

In the hallway in front of the door to the boy's room. (And no, I couldn't be bothered to turn these pictures properly. You try doing what I did today and then see how much you want to fiddle with images.)

In the family room, piled on top of junk that was already there.

In boxes in the family room.

Tomorrow I'll put up a picture of what the family room looks like right now. For the moment I'll leave you with one word: inaccessible.

Wow... it's all empty-like.

Ducks! Also, the age-old question: my room is the darkest in the house. I never get direct sunlight. So what idiot decided to paint and wallpaper in dark colors??

I think it's time for that dark wallpaper to go down.









All that stripping left me and Goober with appetites, and so we quit and feasted on festive New Year's Eve snacks.

What was I doing New Year's? Stripping in the basement.

Huzzah?

It seems we have officially pinpointed what is making me sick this time. Yay! Except that we can only be so sure because I'm sick right now. My mother will be keeping an eye on me for the next couple of days to make sure I'm at least getting water in me, and after that I should be recovering again.

Yay?

In other news, the hamster that my sister was promised for Christmas was purchased. She's a pretty little thing, and I would post a picture of her if, you know, I had one. Taking pictures of a hamster is a little hard when one is confined to the couch. Boo named her Rocky and is a little obsessed by it. I feel rather guilty about the fact that I purposely pay more attention to her when she's looking in the cage, ready to pounce on any hamster lore she made up or order her away when I think she's been there too long. I'm a jerk, but sometimes that poor thing just wants to be left alone.

Ow.

Unfortunately, things have been so *something* that I had to abandon my Twelve Days of Christmas stuff, unless I feel like trying to catch up today which is unlikely.

And right now I would like to fall asleep.

Rock Band

Patsy, the non-singer of the family (can sing but doesn't, so doesn't have as much training as the rest of us): best at the mic.

Draik, bob, Random (aka the singers): good at everything but mic.

Best way to watch while not playing: lie on the floor under the TV and watch it upside down.

Only way to get Siri out of our hair: let her play drums every once and a while (and then redo the song) or turn of the mic or guitar and give it to her.

Cait: in the way.

Wrists: hurting.

Hilarity: ensues.

My Genius Brother - Again

You remember this guy? Well, he's just told me that he has a blog. It's called The Legend of Dextrose, and it may be rather amusing at times. Especially if he starts putting his comics up regularly.

So... y'all should go check it out? 'Cause he's my brother and all, you know.

So Much Scrooge

So, apparently, when I've been up since seven and watching Scrooge movies since nine AM and it's now past nine PM, I go a little batty.

For one thing, after that many movies, the Scrooges start seeming very stupid. "What are you doing? Haven't you learned yet? Are you going to let Belle/Emily/Alice go again? Why are you still surprised by these ghosts? How could you not know about Tiny Tim? You've saved his life five times already! How are you not realizing that you're the dead guy they're talking about? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, MAN.

And then there's the actor-in-training in me that notices all the things wrong with the movie and the actors. I do that all the time, but when it starts getting late I start saying things out loud. Usually people would tell me to shut up, but last night we were all a little batty and I actually got laughs instead.

Yes.

But there were many happy things yesterday that either saved me from going insane or made going insane more fun (not quite sure yet). Things such as dead people, covered in chains and coming through the floors and walls and ceiling while singing; Scrooge singing a song about how he hates people; memorizing the "boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart" line without trying; discovering that, out of eleven movies, only three Ghosts of Christmas Past were male, all Ghosts of Christmas Present were male, and only one Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was female; guessing what parts/names are actually in the story (I've never read it); and have I mentioned the "I hate people" song? And that pole-dancing barely-dressed Ghost of Christmas Past in particular was pretty interesting.

We've all learned a lot this year. Next year, the Sesame Street one will be on at eight in the morning, we'll ditch about three of the movies entirely, the offerings will be more than scones and hot chocolate (sugar overload ahoy!) and we'll have a lunch break. We'll also probably have five-minute breaks between movies to get some cleaning done so we don't have it all to do the next day, so if you're planning to come next year, save potty breaks for after the movie. : D

I would say that was enough of Scrooge movies to last me the rest of the year, but we're already planning to watch two of them again today, so I suppose I'd be lying.

I'm rather sad that I didn't take pictures at that party last night, but then I still don't know where my camera cord is and my new one won't be coming until next week, so I wouldn't be able to put them up yesterday.

But there was a party yesterday, even if I have no pictures of it. (No, wait, I have maybe two pictures. And then there was that time I let Siri use my camera...)

This was probably our least boisterous party to date. Goober/Sexy Paper Snowflake and I arrived in remarkably high spirits, but sleep-deprived Fred did a good job of getting us all down and the party was past over by 10:00.

Don't worry, Fred, love you anyway. ; )

I also wasn't my favorite party because Siri was being a complete brat half of the time (at one point she was an extremely embarrassing brat...) and I rammed my pinkie toe into a chair at one point and, as such, have been hobbling around all day.

Final final tomorrow; hopefully my toe will feel better. And hopefully I'll get some studying done.

Bedtime!

AHHHHHHHH!

So, today was the day I had set aside to get my Music 201 test done. It's a test that takes several hours for me, since I don't do the reading, often don't go to class, and often don't take notes when I do go to class; but it's an online test and open book, so I don't flunk.

So, I pretty much spent the whole day on it, with breaks for interneting, taking care of siblings, and eating. At 7 PM I finally hit "submit."

And then an error happened.

I freaked out and hurried back to look at the test. My grades showed that I was still taking it. I opened the test again.

Questions 1-15 were the only ones done.

I freaked out again. I groaned and carried my sister in to the living room (somehow it was my job to hold her most of the day, despite the fact that I was taking a final) and grumped at my mother, who was properly sorry. I sat back down and unhappily told my siblings, also sitting at the dinner table, that I had to do most of the test over again.

And then Random burst into song.

"When the news is all bad
When you're sour and blue
When you start to get mad
You should do what I do:
Tell yourself how lucky you are!

When your life's going wrong
When the fates are unkind
When you're limping along
And get kicked from behind
Tell yourself how lucky you are!

Why decry a cloudy sky
An empty purse
A crazy universe
My philosophy is simply:
Things could be worse!

So be happy you're here
Think of life as a thrill!
And when worst comes to worst
As we all know it will
Thank your lucky stars you've gotten this far
And tell yourself how lucky you are."

It's from Suessical, a song called "How Lucky You Are." The Cat in the Hat sings it to the Whos as they're falling through the air toward almost certain doom.

In another half hour, I had finished the test for a second time, and submitted my score. 84%. Not bad.

Hi, Random. This one's for you.

Good To Know

I think I'll be a good mother.

Today was a hard day. I was trying to get homework done, homework that was actually due on Thursday and that will fail me if I don't turn it in. And my mother was gone, so I was the primary caretaker (dad needs direct orders most of the time in order to be of much help ; D). And Boo was so rrrg. And Siri was desperate for more attention, desperate to get in the way, and possessing more energy than she knew what to do with.

And yet, aside from one outburst, I was able to deal with everything calmly, even getting Boo to clean the living room, the rest of the children to do their chores, dinner made, Boo and Siri bathed in record time and off to bed, and Caiti fed, dressed, and in bed. I may not have gotten all my homework done, but I do feel somewhat accomplished all the same.

Yep.

I would just like Sam, chilly, m&m, and bismark to know:

That how BYU are you thing? I totally beat all of you. I got 20.

Lying

My mother has been having a problem with my sister. She (my sister, not my mother) is going through a lying phase. You know, the kind where the parent starts referencing "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Yesterday mother really got upset; my sister insisted she hadn't been the one to take the new hat loom ("I'm serious!"), but after a quick search of the living room I looked on my sister's bed and there it was. She got a long talking to and was rather subdued for a while.

This got me thinking about the lying phase I went through. I don't remember when mine started, but I do know I hit the top when I broke a downstairs window by twirling around in the front yard with a can on a rope and then releasing the rope. My parents weren't home at the time, and when they did come home I tried to blame it on a boy who lived across the street.

They, of course, didn't believe me; I don't think they even mentioned it to the boy's parents. A few days later I sneaked some microwave popcorn while they were out and denied it when they came home, despite the fact that they could smell the popcorn. I eventually admitted yes, I did sneak the popcorn, and they said, basically, that they had known that and it was things like this that really made them wonder if I was telling the truth about the window. And, I don't know, sometime after that I confessed to the window too.

The point is that parents know things. All the time. Kids think they're being sneaky, that their parents have no idea, when in fact their parents are two steps in front of them shaking their heads. I, as the oldest, have been endowed with some of these powers too, and I can tell you I don't know why my parents let me think I was ahead of them for so long. I can tell, from the way a sibling hesitates or changes the tone of voice or something, that they are lying, and yet they think they're being all sneaky. NOT SO, MY GOOD SIBLINGS. We can tell when you haven't really cleaned your room. We can tell when you hurriedly put away the Wii as we pulled into the driveway. We can tell when you've been on the computer half the night. We know who woke up Caiti, who played with my laptop without permission, and who stole the last of mother's poptarts.

And yet they keep trying, and we keep letting them.