My diary: an interactive project. Sort of.

12/31/11. Also, 1/1/12

So here I am, the last day of 2011, sitting on my bed, writing about my life instead of reading Gulliver's Travels,listening to a sold out Paradise Fears CD, hoping for the best next year. And typing on my new laptop that is all mine :). So I apologize in advance for the spelling errors and punctuation problems that are sure to follow now that autocorrect isn't breathing down my neck. But typing is a lot easier and I can now use Italics and Bold. It's pretty cool.

I feel the need to explain why I don't consider myself a hypocrite despite my complaining about money problems in one chapter and talking about my new computer in the next. First of all, it's not a name brand computer. It's definitely an off-brand, so it's not sleek or shiny, but it's perfect for me, and it does everything I need. Second, we didn't tell our mom she had to get these for us( Well, I didn't; S may or may not have pushed a little). We knew we didn't have the money, so when our mom told us we probably weren't getting them, despite the fact that she most likely already had them at that point, we didn't really have a problem with it. We didn't beg or throw a fit. Our mom just wants to give us everything we want, everything she says we deserve, because she didn't have much as a child either. So on holidays she tends to spend more than she has. That, or she has a secret stash of money saved up for Christmas that we don't know about, which is completely plausible. So I don't feel bad when I say we have high bills. Which actually went down; insurancemanaged to get that $10,000 hospital bill down to $3000, which is much more reasonable.

So I've been procrastinating on writing this for three reasons: I was waiting for more stuff to happen so it wouldn't be short, I did something kind of embarrassing that I am reluctant to write about, and I just have a terrible problem with procrastination. Really, it's amazing that I get anything done at all.

The embarrassing moment of the week is brought to you by Olive Garden, a restaurant that I will try to avoid for the rest of my life, or at least my childhood. So you know how I hate restaurants? Well this one is kind of fancy and expensive, which made it even worse. As soon as I wen in I felt out of place. We went there because 1) our grandmother is visiting from Pennsylvania and we wanted to go somewhere new and 2) our brother, the one we haven't seen in years decided to cause us more stress before he moves out to Las Vegas, which is a couple states away. More on that later.

So we were at Olive Garden, and I was feeling super uncomfortable, and it was time to order food. Of course the waitress decided to ask me first, which made me feel like a deer in the headlights. But our mom took over and told her that we were going to share something, upon which the waitress became very, very insistent that the portion was too small to share (It wasn't, we decided once the food came). I was just sitting there kind of speechless, so our mom just ordered something different and ordered something for me, and I could just feel our whole family watching me the entire time, which would considerably less stressful if our other brother hadn't been there. After that it was a little better for a while, but of course I couldn't stop sweating, which happens when I get uncomfortable. Then the food came, and I just looked at mine, with my stomach already full ofbreadsticks and my mind on-edge from the earlier embarrassment, and I did not want to eat. I thought for sure I would throw up. Which of course made everyone stare at me again. Then they started pressing me to eat, which nearly made me cry in itself, and I tried to say I wasn't feeling well, but my voice sounding all shaky because I was on the verge of tears and they all thought I was so weird because who cries at a restaurant? Those thoughts kept rushing through my mind, so I couldn't do anything but sit silently and wait for the tears to fade. Luckily I didn't actually cry, because at that point I probably would have had to excuse myself, which would have been even more embarrassing.

If that wasn't bad enough, my mom and our brother brother started a shouting match in the parking lot. Classy, right? 

Let me explain. Our oldest brother, who from now one shall be known as B2, because despite being the oldest he is not worthy of number one, is kind of a douche, similar to our father. When we were in fourth grade, just two years after our dad left, he went on a date with this girl who said she didn't have a place to say, upon which he moved in her. Less than a week after they met. Over theinternet. Within a few months, she got pregnant and they got married, in that order. They went to LasVegas and eloped. Her parents, who apparently have all this money, flew out there to attend, but we weren't even invited. Throughout all of this, our mother, while still coping with the divorce, was nothing but supportive, despite it being completely against her morals. somewhere between then and now, B2's wife started hating our mom. Then B2 tried to leave her, but she wouldn't give him visitation for their son, so he went back, and that is the last we heard from him, save for  occasional visits, each of which made our mother cry for hours. He does nothing but hurt her, all because he is under complete control of his wife. Which wasn't helped when his wife went and became friends with our Evil Stepmother just to spite our mother. That friendship didn't last long, though; two women who are that possessive and mean can't pretend to like each other for that long.