You aren't an official blogger if you don't complain about something in your life.

For me its housework. (you can just skip down to the stars if you want to.)

Now as you guys know, I wasn't able to get a job this summer. Except for babysitting every other weekend which pretty much takes up all of Saturday and Sunday, along with my class at St. Rose, I'm pretty much always home. I try to hang out with friends and go to the gym to get out of the house, but its hard when your parents always require 1 car in the driveway, just in case something comes up.

Since I'm home, I might as well be doing something while I'm doing nothing. This means housework. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem doing laundry and dishes everyday and keeping things clean. Although I feel like its kinda come to the point where the house is my responsibility.

Greg works mon-fri from 1-9, or at least is supposed to, and when he's not working he's out with friends, usually sleeping over at their house. Dad works all day every day but has started to take it easy on the weekends, and god forbid he has to lift a finger or else all hell breaks loose. Mom's physically disabled, which makes it extra difficult to do normal chores. So that leaves me.

Every morning (I'll admit not that recently) my mom gets on me to do the laundry, or else we "get behind." Throughout the day I monitor the laundry and do the dishes. I clean the toilets and dust all the rooms. I scrubbed the shower doors for hours and they still aren't perfect. I dusted every room since mom's allergic. I feed the animals and clean up their puke (a lot). I vaccum the whole house and people's bedrooms. Last week mom and I- hold on, the washer just finished.

. . .


Ok, so last week mom and I cleaned the entire basement, reorganized my dad's office, and rearranged furniture, despite both of our chronic muscle pain. I vaccumed and dusted the stais on my hands and knees. I dusted/mopped/vaccumed the linoleum floors. I clean the litter box. I think its safe to say that I do my fair share around here.

***But the problem I have is why I can't ask for help. "Well, Greg works." . . . So? When I had a job last summer I still helped out. How come that excuse didn't work for me? If I ask him to help he just says "I don't really want to" or "Well, how come you can't do it?" Once in a blue moon he'll do something big, like mow the lawn one day, and vaccum the car the next. This makes him exempt for a good few days. "Well, he did [insert here]." Nothing I do can measure up to mowing the lawn.

Dad goes grocery shopping, will piss and moan as he put something in the dryer now and then, and sometimes beats me to the garbage. How come its ok for him to lie around and sleep all weekend, and when we try to do the same, he gets upset? Oh yea. . . he has a job.

I told my mom I feel like some of my work goes unnoticed, and for the reasons above, I feel somewhat unappreciated. Her response was that she used to do all the work, and no one thanked her. Now that I'm an adult, I shouldn't expect someone to thank me for helping out, since Dad expects us to always thank him and it annoys her. I understand where she was coming from but it still kinda hurt my feelings. She just said this morning she'll be lonely when I go back to school. I couldn't help but think about the house going to shit after I'm gone, and all the work she'll have to do without me. I do worry about her, and I'm afraid I'm turning into her.

[/rant]

Another teacher-esque look at literature

So I've been spending some time in Barnes & Noble at Colonie Center, browsing through a bunch of books that I could buy and never read, when I came across the display tables of required summer reading. I saw some old goodies, some old baddies, and some that I've never seen before. But I came across some books that I was surprised to find in a section specifically for required school texts, and I do not think it belongs there. Before I show you, please read this defenition of "literature:"

Literature, belles-lettres, letters refer to artistic writings worthy of being remembered. In the broadest sense, literature includes any type of writings on any subject: the literature of medicine; usually, however, it means the body of artistic writings of a country or period that are characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal: English literature of the 16th century. Belles-lettres is a more specific term for writings of a light, elegant, or excessively refined character: His talent is not for scholarship but for belles-lettres. Letters (rare today outside of certain fixed phrases) refers to literature as a domain of study or creation: a man of letters. (dictionary.com)

Now that you've read the above, please tell me if you think these books qualify:







These books are written entirely in AIM format. Each page looks like a chatbox, complete with usernames and emoticons that substitute complete sentences. Its as bad as you think it is; instead of "you" she writes "u," the only dialouge is what is written after someone's username and any actions are typed out by the person with asterics at the end. *she shows then an example.*

All three books have made the list of censored books, yet the issue in question is the actual content, not the way it was written, but "because the book includes "curse words, crude references to the male and female anatomy, sex acts and adult situations like drinking alcohol and flirtation with a teacher that almost goes too far" (http://www.marshall.edu/LIBRARY/bannedbooks/books/ttyl.asp).

I myself am a fan of banned books. I think they have the best morals to learn from, and they're the ones that really leave an impact on you after you read them. Yet this one I have to make an exception. I know graphic novels in the classroom is pushing it, but text talk? Teachers all over are trying to keep their students from writing this way, and this book says its ok. Sure, I guess it can be seen as cultural with our high-tech generation, but the fact that these were on the REQUIREMENT LIST FOR SUMMER AND SCHOOL YEAR READING IS RIDICULOUS.

Homade sushi photo diaries

Ingredients! avacado, rice vinegar w/ sugar & salt, lemon juice, crab sticks, seaweed wrap, cucumbers and special sushi rice :3


Rice soaking in the pan, mom making the vinegar mixture


mom stirring the rice- "We forgot to use Pam!"


bad avacado :c


we managed to salvage half the avacado and cut it up into yummy pieces, with strips of cucumber and crab sticks <3


rice fluffing! :D time to get "rolling" ololol.


our hands were too sticky to take pictures of the rice and ingredients before we rolled them. (mom was really messy xD)


SO STICKY- we just couldn't get the rice off our fingers- i even found some between my toes :/


mine came out nice and neat in the center <3


. . . mom's didn't xD


and then we decorate with sesame seeds and dip in soy sauce mixed with our special wasabi and ginger dressing.


<3

I'm A Cheater, Guys

Thanks, SparkNotes