I found out this morning that it was confirmed that the body found in Croatia was that of Britt Lapthorne. I haven’t mentioned Britt on this blog, because to be honest? Over the last few months, the writing here has sounded like one big pity party. I was sick of writing it; you were all sick of hearing it.

I’m mentioning her now because her death has been confirmed, and I wanted to mark the occasion, I suppose. I wanted to mark the date, so that people know that Britt meant something to me, made an impact on my life. I have so few memories of her, but they are all wonderful.

Britt and I were cousins* on my father’s side. I distinctly remember her convincing me to sing karaoke at a relative’s birthday party when we were just tiny little girls. Later on, we wrote letters back and forth, but by the time we were thirteen, we had moved so much that it was impossible to stay in contact.

The week before Britt’s disappearance, I had started actually using my Facebook account. She was on my list of people to find and add, but I hadn’t searched for her yet. I heard the news on the radio a few days later. Mum and I knew straight away that it was her, but it wasn’t until this morning that I really faced it.

From all accounts, Britt had grown into an awesome young woman, and I wish I’d had the chance to get to know her again. I’ll always remember her as that little girl urging me to get up on stage and sing; I hope I can live as much as she did during her lifetime, and I know that Mum and I will never forget her.

* Second cousins, I think, by marriage. We never clarified; as far as we were concerned, we were just cousins.

I don’t know if I mentioned this elsewhere, but my mother was scheduled for surgery this afternoon. We took her to the hospital at 12:30pm, and left about an hour later. As I write this, it is 7:00pm, and we still haven’t heard anything back.

I really wanted to be there when she woke up, but the staff won’t allow you in until the patient is ready to go, which sucks. It’s scary waking up from a general anaesthetic by yourself, and I’m going out of my mind without news.

Also, I have about a million pieces of homework to complete. As I’m sure you can guess, progress on work is going along fantastically, what with the worry and all. This post, really, is just to vent a little bit. And to ask a small favour.

Send good thoughts my Mum’s way, please.

I have much to do this weekend. That is, of course, why I am awake at this ungodly hour, because I have much to do. I was not awake all night because I just spent forty-eight hours sleeping off the world’s most persistent headache, and then I couldn’t sleep and INTERNET! Stop being so awesome! Of course not.

Just for you, all you lucky people, I have carefully constructed this post to inform you of how I will be spending my weekend, which for your information? Will be spent alone and surrounded by children (which is, to say, ALONE), and did I mention the homework, and the Hannah Montana concert (in 3D!), and the eight-year-olds?

What’s that, dear internets? What sweet nothings are you whispering into my- oh. I see. Yes, I know that my life is pretty much non-existent. Thank you very much, for pointing that out. And yet, I haven’t even told you that there’s three of them! Three eight-year-olds, can you imagine? And Hannah Montana: in my bedroom.

This is going to be the best Saturday ever. Like omygawd.

My brother bought a budgerigar the other day, a tiny little blue thing with no tail feathers. It spends most of it’s time hopping backwards and forwards along the back of the cage, and chirping. I never noticed this before, but budgies chirp and tweet in a way that makes you want to claw out your own ear drums.

I wish I was exaggerating, really.

The budgie – which he called Beowulf – is also pretty stupid. In fact, I think you could call it retarded, even. It scrambles all over it’s cage, literally dragging itself up by it’s claws onto perches and then flopping back onto the bottom of the cage again. And, earlier? It was sitting on it’s food tray, eating a little bit, right?

Then it stopped, and SLID RIGHT OFF THE PERCH. Seriously: retarded.

I woke up this morning - early, to take Dwain to work - and Tiffany was wailing in the kitchen. She sounded like a banshee, so I went out to her to find out what was wrong. She was holding her leg up somewhere around her neck, holding onto her toes with her eyes scrunched shut. There were no tears, just a lot of noise.

“It’s not clean, and Katie knew I couldn’t get the tea towel. Ouch, ow, owwww, it’s not clean! It isn’t clean, Lisa, not clean, not cleaaaaan.”

She wasn’t making any sense, so I asked Stephen what was going on. Apparently she stubbed her toe. Right. Tiffany is a drama queen; Katie may act out and want all the attention, but she doesn’t dramatise situations as well as Tiffany does. So, she’s hopping slightly, holding her toe at neck height, and wailing. It’s. Not. Clean.

I picked up the tea towel, checked her toes and assured her that everything was fine. Then I moved a white bowl from the (precarious) barstool onto the bench and went back to my room. Minutes later, the screaming started up again. Still. Not. Clean. Mum came into my room, holding the white bowl and a tea towel.

On the side of the bowl, there was a raised, off-colour bit of ceramic. The bowl has been like that since we bought it; the bowl is flawed. Mum and I raised our eyebrows and groaned about Tiffany’s OCD like symptoms (at eight, no less), and then she yelled out into the hallway that, “Lisa inspected the bowl, and it’s clean!”

Later on she freaked out because she couldn’t spread the towel out flat on her first try. I think she’s our best bet for carrying on the family crazy.

Just to give you an idea of how awful the girls are being at the moment: tonight they had a twenty minute argument about whose eyes were bluer. I KNOW. I’m living with it, and it is impossible to express in words how terrible they are right now. They spent fifteen minutes after that argument chasing one another up and down the hallway, squealing at the top of their lungs, ‘She’s gonna hit me!’

I used to hope and pray and WISH for a sister closer to my age; in fact I’ve always wanted to be a twin. Right now, I am SO glad that I didn’t have a sister growing up. They are so nasty and manipulative; constantly trying to get each other into trouble, or hurt one another. Did I mention I’m reconsidering the children thing?

I think Mum is reconsidering at the moment as well; one of those lapses in faith that mothers have from time to time. I know that other mothers feel like it as well, that they often feel like failures, that they don’t know what they’re doing. They feel like their children are insane, out of control, little monsters. That they are the only parent on the planet to ever have those problems; no one else’s children would behave so atrociously.

They can, and do; I know this because I read blogs that are blunt and truthful about child-rearing, and you know what? They all feel like that at times. In fact, some of those times are whole stretches of time. Motherhood is apparently not quite the blessing that (outwardly) many mothers would have us believe.

On a somewhat lighter note, I am redesigning the site. Again. I just want something.. lighter. White background, clean cut with those little flairs that really make the whole design. I have ideas, but so far haven’t actually sat down to create anything. I will, eventually. I’m also trying to streamline the categories and get a tag cloud set up. I will probably end up moving categories and archives from the sidebar onto their own page, and linking the header image to the home page, instead of that link in the sidebar.

My mother, Nana and I went to a party shop today - to sort out the rest of my party. Can I just say right now: I do NOT take responsibility for the cost of my 21st birthday. I refuse, absolutely will not accept it. Everyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I didn’t want a huge bash, and in fact when I originally planned the party, I didn’t want alcohol. At all. Then my aunty refused to come, so I had to give in.

That’s not the point though, the point is that I cannot possible be held responsible for something that I have had almost no say in, that I didn’t even want in the first place! Although.. as the date draws closer, I find myself getting excited. Just a tiny bit, mind you! Nothing to get excited over.

I actually managed to get some homework done today, and I did some work on SQ’s manual! I’ve been focusing on Computer Skills work, because it is all due in first, and because I was more motivated (probably because it’s the sort of thing I could do with my eyes closed) to finish it today. I’m finishing off the Word module right now, and will begin the Dreamweaver stuff soon after. I still can’t believe I have to use Dreamweaver.

My short story.. well. I do have part of it written, but I’m not quite sure how to end it yet, and I don’t know whether I like the beginning or not. I suppose for now, the Computer Skills homework is a little easier to tackle than Editing. Bleh, the editing work is awful; verbs are kind of beginning to make sense, but there are a lot of words that can be used in different ways. Confusing.

Katie and Tiffany were only marginally better behaved today, and I still think I could get away with tying them up and throwing them in the shed. Katie talks back constantly - about everything - and no matter what you say (or threaten, for that matter), she just won’t quit. Tiffany was back to her whiny self today, and although she was antagonising Katie (as usual) she wasn’t being nasty like yesterday.

Stephen went to a friend’s house tonight, and left his computer on, so I’m going to tape a sign to the screen informing him that the computer has gone on strike, and won’t be functioning for the next 48 hours. I’m also going to remove the power plug. He expected it to stay on the whole time he was gone, and I’m sick of him claiming that he doesn’t leave it turned on. Maybe the computer taking a ‘vacation’ will help.

Before I go, random tidbit:

Tiffany: “Lisa, What do butchie boys eat?”
Lisa: “Um, I don’t know?”
Tiffany: “Can you look it up on the computer, on Google?”
Lisa: *wishes Tiffany had never been shown Google* “Sure.”
Tiffany: “Well?”
Lisa: “They eat decayed vegetable matter and fungi.”
Tiffany: *tilts head to the side* “Do we have any of that?”

Only under your brother’s bed, sweetheart. Although, given the smell emanating from his room, I’m guessing it’s long past the decayed stage.