How was yours? Particularly unlucky?

I woke up to being screamed at that I hadn't done the dishes (because I'd overslept), went down to do them only to be told to go away, so I hid in the bathroom while mother did the dishes herself, crashing them around like they'd done something wrong. I then had a very paltry dinner of a bit of salmon and salad - you'd not think I was the only one in the house not on a diet. I've seen my mother for less than five minutes and she's spent half of that shouting at me, and the rest of it either ignoring me or speaking to me like she might throw something at me. I do the dishes when it's my turn, pretty much every time. I even do Amy's turn when she's out or not up (and Amy didn't even cover for me, thanks kid), and it seems to me that there's no point in my doing anything at all because whenever I forget just one time it's like I never do anything anyway.

Being lazy and being yelled at for it seems like it would be a lot easier on my confidence than doing things and having them completely brushed aside because one thing is forgotten.

I feel so distanced from my family here. They don't know me at all (to take the emo teen angle). My sister and my mother are very alike, they both like soaps, they both like (ew) Twilight, they both like to shop and all those girly things. Me, I'm a nerd. I like Star Trek and computers, and politics and history. Things that mother won't even humour me about. I'm just stuck inside my own head. It's a bit depressing really.

Also my lady week, as nasty_show calls it, started today, and I was curled up for four hours with crippling cramp before the painkillers kicked in.. or it went away on its own, I don't know.

First of all, arakni666, I apologise for the delay in the last chapter of your gift fic, I wanted to write it last night but ended up falling asleep x.x I don't know if you'll actually see this but I'm writing it right now and will have it done by tonight.

I've spent all day moving files over the wifi (again), though I spent most of the day downstairs so the signal was better :1

I'm going to Iceland in two weeks aaaaaaaaah XO AND I'M MEETING nasty_show ON THURSDAY AAAAAAAAAH

Last night, I went out with the family for dinner. I'm not much of a staying-out-drinking kind of person so I came home after we'd eaten (at about 6pm) and wrote the first chapter of my usxuk Secret Santa fic for arakni666 (and the fact that it was well received was also a nice gift). I'll be doing the second chapter today and the final one tomorrow. My sleeping patterns have been a bit off for the past few days so by 9pm I was feeling a bit meh and sitting in my room drinking Baileys. When the rest of the family got home, mother and Amy were rather squiffy, not to the point of being annoying but definitely to the point of everything they said being absolutely hilarious (two classic quotes from the night from my mother - 'Old people are beige' and 'Old people don't go on Facebook').

From not feeling terribly festive last night once I got home, I woke up in a rather good mood and got up once I heard movement downstairs. I've noticed as I've got older that my 'haul' of gifts has got smaller, but I've also noticed that I don't really mind. My Christmas has been staggered over two days for as long as I can remember - on Christmas Day we (my sister and I) get our gifts from my mum, stepdad, each other, and various relatives/friends of the family, and on Boxing Day we get our gifts from our dad and that side of the family, though they mostly stopped giving presents several years ago. :1

Anyway, on to the gifts. I took pictures of some of them, but not all, because I don't really need to take a picture in order to explain a pair of socks. Speaking of socks, I got two pairs of fluffy purple ones. I rather like fluffy socks since I don't leave the house that often and they're better for keeping my feet warm. I also got a scarf, and two jumper-cardigan-thickandwarm-type-things that I will now wear the heck out of until mum decides she hates them and buys me new ones next year in an effort to make me get rid of them. I also got a onesie. Ehehe. I will be taking that to Iceland. I have some bracelets and some fudge, and some nice smelling spray stuff that will probably last me forever because I don't really use it that often.

On to the things I took photos of.

From my sister, I got these two things. A mug shaped like a moose (the top comes off) and some hot chocolate, and a Union Jack hot water bottle cover (plus hot water bottle), which is just awesome 8D



From my friend Kitten, I got a Union Jack teacup and saucer set~ It was terribly unfortunate that one of the saucers managed to break while it was on its way but I don't much mind since I'm only actually using one of them, the rest are being kept nice and safe in the box.



Mother managed to do quite well with DVDs and such this year.



From my dear friend Ammy, I got these two lovely things, which I'm almost wary of actually taking anywhere for fear of losing them.



Lastly, iiluov got me a TY Beanie Baby, after I found it online. I had it when I was much younger, and I have no idea where or how I managed to lose it, but now I have another <3



I'll likely do another entry tomorrow when I have all my presents from my dad, as well as (finally) a new laptop that actually works, which dad has been taking care of for me.

Just when you think that something is over, it gets worse. The S key on my laptop has finally packed in, but thankfully I have a USB keyboard from the last time this happened. It feels weird, but it's better than nothing.

On Thursday, after spending an hour on the phone with Laskys I thought I'd finally sorted everything out. Then, on Friday, I find two emails from them which I didn't really understand, and I sent them to my dad so he could have a look. To him, it looked as if they were trying to send me a replacement. I don't want a replacement, I just want a refund so I can not have to deal with them anymore.

I was out, which I'll talk about in a minute, but I was stressing out so dad called them for me. The man he spoke to said that the refunds department was closed, but that there was a refund marked on my account and nothing to be delivered. So I'm thinking this email I got must have just been an error in the system. Dad rang back this morning to get through to the refunds department, where he was told that there WAS a replacement on order, though I have no idea how they were doing that since they were telling me there were none in stock. He cancelled it for me (though I'm surprised they let him do it) and I will hopefully get an email confirming that by tomorrow.

If I don't, dad is gonna call them back for me, and I'm rather glad he's taken over this for me because I am at the point where I just want it to be over with and I would have snapped on the phone with whatever unfortunate soul happened to end up speaking to me. I'm feeling like I'm being messed about, but I don't think it's happening on purpose, it's just a load of miscommunication and I will be writing a strongly worded letter to them when this fiasco is over.

On to the 'out' part. I was at a church in Liverpool on the door for a charity concert by an acapella group. I had no idea what I'd be doing when I got there and didn't know anyone, but it was alright and my night was significantly brightened by winning a prize in the raffle. 31 is now my lucky number. It was nice to get out of the house, I suppose.

So, after a week of being horribly oversensitive to everything my laptop does, mistaking every tiny noise for a My Hard Drive Is Crashing sound and worrying every time it does something that I didn't think I told it to do, it's managed to break anyway.

Oh, I'm still using it, but this morning (and yesterday morning) when I opened the lid after leaving it on overnight the screen, aside from a strip maybe 100px high at the top, was a washed out grey/white colour with a pink pixel line and a green pixel line which slowly filtered down for about another 100px before the screen flicked back to normal. I couldn't screencap it, which leads me to the conclusion that it's a problem with the screen itself, not the software. I've contacted Samsung, who told me that it was certainly not normal behaviour (I had held out some small hope that it might just be because of the lid being shut, more fool me) and that I should look into repair or replacement. I don't really want to faff about with getting it repaired, because it would have to be sent to Samsung and god knows where they'd send it or how long they'd keep it, so I called Laskys.

Since the laptop is still under warranty they've offered me a replacement, which unfortunately won't be for about another month since the laptop is out of stock at the moment. They're going to call me when it's back in and I guess we'll sort it out then. In the meantime I'll be getting a cheapish external hard drive so I don't need to go through all the bother of spending three days transferring everything from my old laptop again. I'll just have to make sure I turn off my laptop at night and don't fall asleep with it turned on - since that's when I tend to wake up all out of it, close the lid and go back to sleep - until I can get it replaced.

Bleh.

I have my new laptop, this being my first post from it, and at the moment I'm hyper-aware of anything at all being wrong with it. I keep hearing clicking sounds, the same as my old laptop makes, but the new one isn't doing it - I'm hearing phantom clicking =o= I've been using a noisy laptop for so long that having one that barely makes a sound is weird. The only noise this one makes is a faint hum when the fan is running, and I can't hear the hard drive working even if I press my ear next to it. I guess laptops have really come a long way since I got my last one.

From the not-so-noisy to the very loud, the weather this past week has been completely mental. I don't remember the last time the rain and wind was this bad for days in a row and it doesn't look set to get any better. It's so cold outside that it's pushing the temperature in my bedroom down to 13 degrees during the day, uncomfortably cold, I can't really stay in there in the daytime unless I'm curled up until all my blankets. I've been camping out in the living room with the fire on during the day and waiting until the heating comes on before I go up to my bedroom. Mum won't leave the heating on at night because it's expensive as hell so I don't really blame her, but it gets quite cold. I've been sleeping in two dressing gowns under two blankets and my nose is usually cold when I wake up, it's not very nice.

And we're forecast snow over the weekend, though whether we get it or not is a different matter entirely.

I've finally given in to the urge to get a new laptop. The one I'm using now has been in near-constant use for the past three or four years, and I've noticed upon looking at laptops that the standard laptop now (say, 320GB of storage, 3GB RAM, etc, for under £400) is twice as good as what I'm using. That's not to say that my laptop doesn't work. It works. When it wants to. Lately it's been becoming more and more cranky and I think it's about time for an upgrade. The hard drive is a little damaged I think, which isn't surprising from the three reformats and four different OSes it's had on it over the course of its life, and will occasionally degrade into locked-up, sporadic clicking that will last about a minute and has twice resulted in a full-on BSOD, and recently the S key and Shift have started to stick. Only a little but enough that I notice it, and it's annoying.

The one that I have my eye on is £379, reduced from £649.99, and a friend of mine who is good with computers tells me it's more than enough for what I intend to use it for. 6GB of RAM and 640GB of storage is making me drool a little, I have to admit. I'm rather hoping that they don't sell out or that the reduction on it doesn't suddenly end (though why reduce a laptop by over £200 if you weren't trying to sell them all) before Thursday, which is probably when I'll buy it. It's only two days, I can't imagine they'll sell out by then.

I do feel a little bad about giving this one up, but it's had a good run. Hopefully I can recycle it. That would make me feel a little better.

I'm so tired lately =O='' I think I might be getting sick.

Or something. I don't really care, we don't celebrate Halloween over here like a lot of Americans do and at twenty-two I'm certainly too old for it. I don't live in an estate with a lot of kids so we don't really get people knocking on the door (and we're far more interested in Bonfire Night anyway).

I didn't get a wink of sleep last night thanks to being wound up and annoyed over something that I shouldn't have really been so bothered about, so I was tired as all hell this morning, but when mum wanted to go out for lunch I thought 'why not' and went for it, rather hoping it would wake me up. It didn't, really, and I was flagging on the way back home, at which point mother decides to try and talk to me about important things. She always does that. I wonder if she's trying to catch me off guard but she always tries to bring up important topics when I'm half asleep or otherwise impaired. This time it was telling me there was a job in Manchester, at which point I informed her that it would take me two hours, possibly more, to get into the city for a 9am job. Somehow, she didn't know this. Clearly she's never tried to get into Manchester for 9am on public transport.

So I was basically told 'if you can't get a job in Leigh you're going to be knackered'. Thanks mum, jeez, that's really supportive. I have zero desire to end up with a job that I hate, while having to get up at 6am to get there and not getting home until 7pm. My town has no rail link so I'd be relying entirely upon the buses, and there's only one route from Manchester to Leigh that all the buses take. I'm looking at pretty much the same situation in any of the towns around here that I could find a job in which is why I'm hoping for one that's nearby, or 'off peak' hours so it won't be hell to get to. I don't want my entire life to end up being comprised of working and sleeping, because I cannot tell you how much that would mess me up emotionally, as well as cutting me off from all of my friends. Mother would probably snappishly tell me that that is what being an adult is about. I don't agree with that.

Something else she tried to talk about was what was going to happen when my boyfriend comes over. He's already staying in a hotel because she doesn't want him here for the whole ten days, but she's now complaining about having to ferry us back and forth to said hotel because it gets dark early. Maybe she should have thought of that before she said he couldn't stay here, it's not like my not being able to drive is a secret |= Pfh. I don't think she actually knows what she wants. She said something stupid like 'I don't like the idea of you two being in the same room together late at night, awake' and I was just like... for god's sake, what does she think we're going to be getting up to? And even if we DID get up to those things I'm TWENTY TWO and if I WANT to sleep with a guy then I WILL. Jeez. =-=

Anyway, I talked to my dad - as I usually do when I have a problem because he actually listens and I don't feel like he's quietly judging me while telling me to just get one with it - and he's emailed someone at work that he knows worked for Oxford University Press. I've got some addresses that I can write to. Getting a foothold on the publishing industry is really hard x.x

Until then I guess the best I can do is show willing to keep the mother creature off my back. Blargle.

Still got a lot of writing to be getting on with. I'm going to be using NaNoWriMo to be doing a lot of it.

I've finally begun making a start on my prompts so expect a flood of fics over the next few days. We have...

• Eight US/UK
• Four Sweden/Norway
• Two France/Canada
• Two Denmark/Norway
• One France/Spain
• One Spain/UK
• One UK/Canada
• One Prussia/UK
• One Prussia/Austria
• One Spain/US/UK
• One Mexico/Canada
• One Lestat/Louis

Spot the odd one out. Ahaha. I should mention I'm still open for more xD I like having things to occupy my time. I'm currently working on finishing Eternal Sonata, Dragon Age II, and Fallout: New Vegas, and have recently finished Fable III after playing it for three days straight.

It's been a bit odd around here recently, for more than one reason. For one my sleeping pattern has turned completely around over the past week, and I've gone from being practically nocturnal to actually having what most people would call a 'normal' sleeping pattern. It doesn't sit well with me, I haven't been sleeping very well. Another odd thing is how my mum's been behaving. I'm tempted to say it's hormones. Yesterday she yelled at me for telling her a pan was oily. I thought it was just me, but after I spoke to my sister I found she'd noticed it too. If it was something we'd done, we'd sure as hell know it.

I don't really want to end up as one of those people who never speaks to their mother after they leave home but to be honest I can see it happening. Of course that requires actually having the money to move out, first... which I don't.

She said today, that she was going to start leaving jobs for my sister and I to do. I should stress here that we don't mind this at all and have in fact been saying for some time that it would be fine if she did it. She said it like we were going to kick up a fuss. Sometimes I just don't know what's going on in her head.

I've decided that today is going to be a writing day. At least I'll feel like I've done something constructive (even if it doesn't look that way to certain people who think I'm just lazy.. looking at you mother). I have all of those things to do from the Alphabet Meme and I'm rather determined to do all of them, as well as replying to all my roleplays bar one and I want to get some ideas down for the Jack the Ripper fic I've had in mind for ages as well as this Hetalia/Fallout one that's been bugging me for a few days.

Speaking of Fallout, I'm still plowing my way through Fallout: New Vegas. I've done the Honest Hearts DLC, and I had a go at Lonesome Road for a while before I got annoyed by the stupidly overpowered deathclaws (linked for reference) that kept killing me in four hits despite my HP being almost 500. After my repeated failure at that, I caved and downloaded Dead Money and Old World Blues, the latter of which I'm playing and it is eating all of my stimpaks because of the goddamn nightstalkers, which are like horrible hybrids of coyotes and rattlesnakes, which annoyingly high perception. They attack in packs and when I'm backed into a corner my aim isn't terribly good, so I tend to panic 8| Not cool.

Still can't wait for Skyrim. 8)