@ Dane - No, my parents don’t know that I’m dating Clay. There’s quite a few reasons for this, actually. He works at the same company as my mom (which is how I met him). He’s older than me (a little over 5 years). He doesn’t have a post secondary degree. But all in all, that all pales in the face of the fact that he’s not Asian. More importantly, he’s not Chinese and he can’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin. And that’s a really big thing to my father  (and secondarily, my mom - although I think she’d rather I be happy than married to someone ‘perfect’ who makes my life a living hell). I’d tell them about it for a number of reasons. If the relationship gets serious (i.e. engagement rings, moving in together), then I’d tell them about it. I would certainly tell them before getting married because my mom’s already convinced that I’m going to get married to someone and not tell her or invite her to the wedding. Which kind of says volumes about the kind of relationship that I have with my parents. It’s not a perfect situation, but then nothing ever really is. I mean, even with a relationship half-assed detailed in a blog, I still can’t tell you when the relationship really started. Was it the day that I asked him out? Was it the day that he kissed me? Or maybe it was the day of the first hug, or the first date, or the first text message. I just don’t know. And I don’t think I’d very much like to explain a relationship to my parents (with him present) if at any given moment, they could ask “So when did you two start seeing each other?” and one of us answers with May 10th and the other with September 7th.

@ Georgina - I possibly said some really mean stuff last night. But then again… I haven’t seen him for 7 weeks. And yeah… If you read back in my blog, you’ll realize that we average probably around one argument maybe every two weeks? Well lately it’s been more like three, but still. We have arguments often. Usually he’s the one saying that he’s sorry though… because usually I’m pissed at him for canceling on me. But… (more…)

But in my defense, I did need some of the things that I got today. Plus, I was shopping with my sister and my dad told her to put everything I wanted on the credit card that is linked to his account. So, in reality, I wasn’t that bad. I mean, really, my parents are paying for it. Still, I managed to get almost everything on sale. So I mean, I do fairly decent in terms of getting things that were on sale (which was, umm, almost everything?). Other things that I bought today while out with the family was a giant box of Nature Valley granola bars (64 bars, 4 different flavours, $13) and sandwich fixings (non-Maple Leaf sliced meat, tomatoes, lettuce). Nomnom, food!

Now I’m going to go back to doing my biology assignment because I don’t feel like doing it tomorrow. (more…)

I texted that (”I was bad today.”) to Clay and the reply was “That’s kinda kinky.” Oy…

Anyways, happy Saturday September 13th, everyone! Today I went out for lunch with the immediate family plus my (paternal) uncle and aunt (by marriage). It was fun. Until they started telling me that I can’t become a nurse because (gosh) I won’t be able to handle all the blood and stuff. And then my aunt goes “You know what you should do? You should become a doctor.” [...] Right. I’m not going to be able to handle bodily functions and fluids as a nurse, but if I become a doctor, I wil magically be able to handle anything that is inside or outside of the human body. Uh huh. Thanks for the career advice, family!

I redid all my notes for one of my biology classes. It’s not as ambitious as it sounds as that class (vertebrate biology) has only had five lectures so far. But still, I redid them all. Into a nice 300-page, 3-subject green notebook. I even have neatly drawn images to accompany my notes plus I colour coded everything with my light green, light blue and pink Staedtler fine liners (a total product plug, I realize). I also completed (as much as I could without wanting to take a cordless drill to the side of my head) my English lit assignment, which was to analyze an 18th century poem (we’re starting 19th century in October!) that’s 5 pages long. It’s not the length of the poem that gets to it, it’s the style of the words that they used. Words that are no longer used in the English language today. Words that no longer mean the same thing. (For examples of words that no longer mean the same thing, take a look at the words “mistress” and “gay”. Mistress usually refers to someone who’s having a sexual relationship with a married man, nowadays. It used to be the female counterpart to a Master, of a house, and basically the woman who ran the household. Gay used to be happy and other synonyms for being happy, now it’s just means homosexual. And that concludes today ‘How definitions of words have changed’ lesson, brought to you by the letter B and the number 13.) So I got that done and all I have left (that I’ve planned to do today) is my psychology notes. I need to read up on the chapter that we’re going over on Monday and Wednesday and then get some notes jotted down for it. Tomorrow is (rewriting my) human biology (notes) and reading and doing questions for family studies. I am just super excited for tomorrow - you have no idea. At least I’ve decided to transfer everything into notebooks now instead of at the end of October when I’m already two-thirds of the way through the term.

What also happened today was my parents went and purchased the HDTV box-thinger. I’m really excited because we’re going to be getting the National Geographic channel. In HD. Squeee, so excited! Plus the box has a harddrive of 160gb and we’ll be able to record up to 30 hours of HD or 120 hours of regular digital cable shows. That’s 120 episodes of General Hospital. That’s about all four seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. That’s 120 regular-length episodes of whatever television show that I want to watch. That’s 120 hours of National Geographic, on the digital channel, or 30 hours of National Geographic in HD. So, so, so excited. If you haven’t been able to tell yet. Plus my dad’s been talking about getting a Wii (again). I’m hoping that pans out too. I kind of (really) want to play Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. Apparently Michelle has a violent side? Who would have thunk it?

And this is why I was bad today:

I went to Michaels with my sister because she wanted to buy a new cross-stitching kit (she did, it was originally $54 and she used a 50%-off coupon on it). The beads were on sale and I was… Well, I was a bit weak. But, I did get some really pretty things! Two strands of dyed shells (jet back and coral pink). Two strands of two different sizes hematite beads, silver ’stardust’ spacers, natural back fresh water pearls, a strand of cut aqua glass. There are three strands of beads not shown. Plus two packages of sterling silver earring wires. My grand shopping total? Well, everything shown (and not shown) together was only $42. And considering that if none of it was on sale, it would have been closer to around $90, I think I did pretty good, if I do say so myself. Granted, now I have probably around… I’d say probably close to $120 worth of beads in my room. Yeah. I have a problem, it’s called purchasing beads and not using them fast enough.

So I managed to spend the day with the family (and family friends, a husband and wife pair) and not want to walk directly into moving traffic. We went out for lunch and the adults spent most of the time talking - my sister and I were done eating fairly quickly and spent the rest of them talking. The wife half of the family-friends pair was very condescending and patronizing. She kept on talking about my sister and I like she really knows us well, which she does. She was going on about how my sister was just going to be getting married soon (she’s not even dating at the moment…) and how I’m probably going to have seven children (ahahaha). But the food itself was okay, except for one dish that had arrived cold (we spoke to the waitress about it, who referred to what I suppose was the head waitress over to the table and then she referred the manager over, who got us a new plate of the ordered food and made that dish complimentary). So, how many members of a restaurant staff does it take to get warm food…?

We walked around a mall for a bit. I wanted to get new head phones (didn’t get any). Instead, I ended up getting Mike-and-Ike candy at a dollar store. And ice cream (yum) at Purdy’s. We ended up going to a Michaels that I normally don’t go to and they had a fairly large clearance section. I ended up getting four strands of beads that are normally priced at $10/strand and were significantly marked down. My sister got two pads of watercolour paper for $6/each (15 sheets per pad). All in all, it was a good deal.

Of course, by the time we got back to the car, my father was busy complaining that all we ever did was go to the crafts store and spend copious amounts of money there and how we never actually did anything with it. I guess he hasn’t searched my room lately, or else he would have seen the boxful of earrings that I have. Anyways, with the new beads, I plan on making necklaces out of them (using one strand per necklace, adding in beads that I already own for spacers and accents). Maybe I’ll finally get around to starting an Etsy shop?

I went shopping today with the parents. I bought actual supplies for school (lined paper, notebooks, folders). I also bought a new usb jumpdrive (8gb, Kingston - it was on sale and half the price of the 4gb version) and a new pair of shoes (just runners, they’re white and light purple and match my ankle socks pretty well). I had hoped to find a pair of rainboots that I liked, but the rainboots at the store that had nice patterns (I’m picky) were for children and the ones in my size were just clear plastic with glitter. And I don’t particularly want to walk around in clear plastic with glitter boots, thanks. All in all, I did pretty well. My shoes were $35, the jumpdrive was $20 and everything else was $15-ish. Plus, the only thing that I paid for was the jumpdrive, my parents forked up money for everything else, which was nice.

I’ve been attempting to clean my room so it’s all clean by the time I start school, but it’s just not happening any time fast. I have stacks of books all over my floor because I don’t have the shelf space, I have strands of beads draped over coat hangers, I have boxes of binders, notes, lab manuals pretty much everything. I meant to clean it all up at the beginning of the summer but then work happened and… let’s just say that it never got done, at all. Oh well!