Aurora X

This morning, mom went delirious.

LITERALLY.

I mean, just because I wouldn’t get out of bed when she asked she decided that that meant she needed to slap herself silly. And jump around like a leprechaun. And scream, “Curse me for wanting to be a mother! Curse me!” in Chinese.

I know that she’s trying to get a divorce set up, and I know it’s hard on her. But seriously, get ahold of yourself. Just because your fourteen-year-old teenager didn’t want to get out of bed because she couldn’t sleep doesn’t mean you should go insane.

She claims that it’s because I never listen to her. I NEVER listen to her? Psh, yeah right. Hello, the only reason why I’m studying Chinese and piano is because SHE wants me to. So sue me for showing resistance to studying Chinese and practicing piano. Heck, it’s not like I WANT to. Does she really think that I’m going to willingly jump around, squealing, “I love studying all this extra stuff!”? Hell no! Just like any other NORMAL TEENAGER, I’ve got my own ambitions.

And she needs to learn that just because she isn’t in control, doesn’t mean she has no reason left to live. I don’t understand why Asian parents just won’t tolerate the fact that they won’t always have control over their children’s lives. Everyone else does it pretty well, and MOST of their kids turned out fine.

While mom was still screaming at me, I told her that she expected too much of me. She went, “Well, am I not right? Do I not have the right to have my children listen to me after all I’ve done for them?”

What she doesn’t realize is how much I DO listen to her. I help her all the time when she asks for help, I grudgingly continue my Chinese and piano studies even though I have no motivation whatsoever to, and I even do her little favors every now and then. Why can’t she acknowledge that? Why?

And okay, I admit, I’ve been pretty ignorant of her lately even though I’m suppose to sympathize with her because of the divorce thing and whatnot. But all I’m asking, is that for ONCE can she look past my bad qualities? I mean, I don’t completely ignore her, I help around with the family whenever I can (and when I’m allowed to) I manage to keep my things relatively clean and organized, I’m enthusiastic about taking care of Jerry, I’ve been getting good grades, and everyone always compliments me on my dancing, artistic, and even musical ability. Why, even she herself admitted that I’m good at drawing and dancing.

Besides, after all of the verbal abuse she’s thrown at me for all these years, does she really think that I’ll go back to obeying her like a good little puppy? She’s called me a pig, faceless, skinless, and coldhearted (Faceless and skinless are Chinese expressions, and they’re pretty harsh). She’s even told me to go die when I didn’t arrive to take my shower on time during the summer. I reasoned that it was the post-baby-birth hormones talking, but still, it hurt.

She has ALWAYS been comparing me to other people. “Oh, look, Jason plays the piano much better than you! Why can’t you be like him? And look at how many extracurriculars he’s taking! Why can’t you multi-task like that?” Well, for your information, he’s probably taking the classes, like, once a week each. I, on the other hand, am taking multiple ballet and art classes a week, and I’m still continuing piano.

“Oh, look at Alice! She’s washing the dishes and the toilets at her home, and she’s swimming about an hour and a half everyday! Why can’t you be like her?” Whenever I try to help you during school days, you always brush me off and tell me to study, because that comes first. So, lo and behold, I’m not doing the dishes or scrubbing the toilets? Gee, how did that happen? And plus, I would take ballet everyday if I could, but the ballet school is HALF AN HOUR AWAY, and even YOU admitted that there was no way I could handle that. Heck, I’d love to take art classes everyday, too, but one of my teachers is about forty-five minutes away, and even the one who comes to our house every Saturday lives at least half an hour away! Alice, on the other hand, only has to go to either the community pool or the YMCA, which is only about fifteen minutes away, max.

But now that she’ll be a single mother of two, she taught me how to make dumplings, vacuum, and wash the dishes today. Well, FINALLY. I wanted to learn how to cook ever since I was, what, eleven? But nooo, mom said she had no time to teach me (Even during non-school days) and to go back to my studies.

That doesn’t mean I felt bad for mom after she went insane and started slapping herself. Heck, I was scared that she would start banging her forehead on the wall any minute, or drive herself into some sharp object. And I felt so sorry for her that the first thing I did was finish my daily dose of Chinese and piano, then willingly obliged to clean up my room (Which was, like, SPOTLESS anyway compared to some people I know… wait, Zoey, stop acting like mom! Don’t compare yourself to other people!), learn all this, do all that, blah blah blah.

I just told Grandma about this, and she said that mom needed mental help because she seems insane.

It’s probably the housewife syndrome that’s making her go crazy. Locked up inside the house, taking care of the kids, feeling alone and invisible all the time… well, that got to her a long time ago.

But the thing is, she ISN’T invisible, nor is she alone. I admire her for being a somewhat strong woman. Jerry probably will, too. And she has all these friends who think about her and bring her food all the time. In fact, I think she’s pretty much friends with every Asian mom in our area. And she can always talk to any one of them when she feels like she’s about to implode.

Oi. I hope this situation doesn’t get any worse. A delirious mother and a path to divorce for Christmas. Oh, and about forty dollars worth of books, but that I got last month.

This is just great.

My parents were arguing tonight. Again. And my mom threatened to divorce my dad. Again.

Seriously. If it’s bothering her so much, then why doesn’t she just get a freakin’ divorce?

She’s been crying and yelling about it for probably months now. And it’s not like the rest of the family isn’t being affected by their constant nuclear-war-level rowing. Jerry keeps on screaming his little lungs out whenever they’re shouting at each other. I try not to listen or bother with it, as it “isn’t my business”, but that won’t work when they’re yelling so loud that the neighbors two houses down can probably hear them, and I can’t turn my iPod on that loud to cover up their voices because I would go deaf. Grandma keeps on telling me not to worry about them, and that if anything serious happens to call 911 (Although since she’s lived in China all her life, she told me to dial 110 instead).

My mom admitted that the main reason why she wants to get a divorce is because she doesn’t want me or Jerry to grow up listening to them bark at each other everyday (Next top reason is that she thinks Dad doesn’t respect her enough).

So then why doesn’t she just get a divorce already? Face it. Both of you have your flaws. Both of you can’t stand each other. Both of you want what’s best for the kids. What other option is there? Either get a divorce, or someone needs to move out.

I’m not trying to be cynical, but this is just an outrage. I’m sick and tired of hearing them bombard each other with insults and threats. I don’t want to crawl into my bed, crying about this whole ordeal anymore.

And I definitely don’t want Jerry to have a bad childhood just because someone refused to sign the papers and move on.

I guess the top reason why I’m so worried is because of my baby brother. I’ll take him in during college, if it means he’ll be away from Mom and Dad’s personal war. And if I can’t handle him, then I’ll hand him over to my extended family back in China to raise. They did a good job of raising me when I was a toddler. I’m sure they’d do the same for Jerry.

And it’s not that I really want them to be apart. Like any other sensible kid, I’d much prefer if they somehow try to work it out and stick together, at least until Jerry’s all grown up and ready to handle divorce.

But that obviously isn’t going to happen.

And I appreciate mom’s efforts to try to mend the family by venting out her anger about dad to her friends, but I’ve seen how well that works: It’s only a matter of time before she explodes again.

I just hope this’ll be over soon.

YEEEEESSSS! THIS CRUEL SEMESTER IS OVAAAAH!

I got sidetracked with the whole updating about school thing. Too much stuff going on during school. And even though it’s winter break, I still have a few holiday assignments (Why are the teachers so cruel?), such as figuring out how to raise fifty dollars for the Relay for Life thing (Otherwise I’d have wasted ten dollars with the registration fee) by January 11, and prepare an oral for the Greek myth, Icarus and Daedalus.

But I won’t worry about that now. I’ll bathe in the glory of having finished all of my semester exams and surviving so many boot camp mornings (Wake up at six in the morning, get shoved in a vehicle with a bunch of pessimists, a.k.a. Sean, Apurva, and Jason).

ENGLISH

Frankly, I don’t think we’ve done much in English besides discuss stuff that’s been happening in the books we were reading (To Kill A Mockingbird and A Tale of Two Cities) and listen to Mrs. Allen ramble on and on about random things. We now know a whole bunch about her personal life, including her romantic life with her husband and what happens when she takes medicative drugs for her recent dental operation (“… and when I sat up, I swear I saw the refridgerator move… Then my sister came, and I was like, ‘Who are you?’ and she went, ‘Your sister’, and I went, ‘Which sister?’”).

And now Sean, Jason, and Apurva have no more respect for Mrs. Allen because of her ongoing blabbing and habit of not teaching us anything about English, but I think they’re just being too hasty in their judgment. I mean, honestly, which of the previous English teachers that we had ever really taught us English? None!

Well, maybe with the exception of Ms Pullara, who actually taught us some decent grammar in sixth grade.

But no one else. All the other English teachers pretty much did what Mrs. Allen did–drone on and on about random things, and maybe once in awhile tell us something related to English.

We did a lot of writing work, but they were mostly paragraphs and prewriting. We didn’t do a single essay in English, which is pretty astonishing, because we did them all the time back in eigth grade. Plus, my eigth grade Language Arts teacher, Ms Brown, said my writing was pretty darn good, too. I couldn’t believe I went from the top writer in the class to the lowly basics: paragraph structure.

And no offense, but paragraphs written in the topic-sentence-followed-by-support-and-examples with the basic transitions are a bit boring. I don’t know how Mrs. Allen can sit through so many rigidly structured paragraphs in one night. That’s one quality of teachers I admire: Being able to put up with repetition. They can put up with grading the same homework day after day, and repeating the same curriculum year after year…

But point is, we sunk from amateur essayists to elementary paragraph writers. And I write a lot more coherent, quality essays in American Government than in English. Heck, I do more writing in American Government than probably any other course (Besides maybe IS, but I haven’t counted all of the essays we did in that class).

Oh, and we also did a project on literary gifts. I was pretty darn proud of my Tale of Two Cities French Revolution scene, but already, the clay figures I made were knocked down and broken apart by stupid people who don’t know how to keep their hands off of fragile-looking projects. I mean, seriously, did my little two-inch clay people look like it was meant to be touched? No!

Good thing Mrs. Allen graded my project already.

Note to self: Never use a hot glue gun on clay. Not only will the clay figures fall apart too easily, but you’ll get too many finger burns whilst hotgluing.

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

Mr. Mills is persistant in his belief that we can teach ourselves the entire course with only the textbook and a corresponding CD. If that’s so, then WHY IS HALF THE CLASS FAILING?!

Well, not me. I’ve managed to earn A’s for both quarters of this semester and on the semester exam.

But I mean the other people. True, part of the reason why they’re failing is because they don’t read the textbook at all and pretty much just blaze through the chapter homeworks and tests as quick as a they can, but I’m spending three freakin’ hours reading each chapter, and maybe another hour doing the homework! I mean, since we IB kids are always short on time, perhaps Mr. Mills should consider condensing the course a little bit for us? Yeah, I appreciate how he’s lecturing us on Government stuff during class just for the sake of teaching us things that aren’t on the test, and he sometimes goes over homework questions during class.

But still.

So, since he doesn’t really teach anything “important” during class, the people sitting around me find that it’s much more amusing to talk to me instead, even though part of the time I’m trying to listen to him, and the other part of the time I’m completing homework. And every once in awhile I find myself trying people like George Bush (For my AMGOV notebook) and the characters in my novel.

Plus, I can’t even hear half the stuff they’re trying to whisper to me.

And then sometimes I’m forced to twist Shreenath’s arm because he’s stretching them out obnoxiously and for no good reason. This I only do when Mr. Mills is off in his own world with his computer.

ALGEBRA 2

I sit with Apurva, Jason, and Diana (Who, by the way, has moved on from liking Jason to Apurva, and now from Apurva to Sean, even though she has sworn a few months ago that there would be no way she would crush on Sean) in this class, so you can imagine just how little I listen to the teacher in this class. I listen part of the time, so that when Dr. Emil calls on me to answer a question, I wouldn’t be like, “Ummm… what was question again?” like some people are half the time.

But mostly we four just talk whenever we get a chance to talk, pass notes to each other, and do that day’s math homework in class. It’s been a pretty easy semester in Algebra 2.

And now I’m really happy about Algebra 2, because I just got a perfect score on my math exam, while Jason, the alleged math king, received a 94 because he forgot to check for extraneous roots.

JERRY

Teehee. I love my baby brother. Even though he’s a spoiled brat who just won’t put up with the fact that he’s not going to be held in someone’s arms 24/7, he’s pretty amusing. For one, he throws a baby-sized tantrum quite frequently. Especially when he can’t get what he wants within, oh, a nice, long, space of two seconds.

And he can crawl a little bit now, too. Well, more like getting up on all four and falling flat on his face, then repeating the process over and over, but still. He’s moving! Yay!

Then, in a couple of days, he’ll be crawling around and destroying stuff, and we’d have to watch him every single minute. Oh. Maybe it isn’t such a good thing that he’s crawling.

Oh well.

Jerry can do Indian yells, too. It’s so hilarious. It can come out “awawa” or “ababa” or something completely different, but in the cute baby voice of his, he’s got the whole family listening.

On the disgusting side, his face turns red whenever my family’s eating dinner. There’s only two reasons why his face is turning red: 1) He’s about to cry, or 2) He’s… um… exerting a lot of force into his diaper. He never cries during dinner, so whenever his face turns red, my mom and dad turn around and start laughing. And then, while Grandma’s wheeling Jerry away, they make me shut my mouth about it for the rest of dinner because they don’t want to lose their appetites. Even though they were clearly laughing and thinking about it not to much earlier.

Well, since now I have to listen to sixty minutes of French for my French audio log (Which is due tomorrow), I guess I should update my blog as well.

WARD VS. WHITE:

White attacked Ward again as revenge for the cow hearts incident by sticking a tiny little brain on a straw, marching right over to Ward’s room, and declaring that she may need a heart, but he needed a brain.

And it looked like Ward did the cow heart thing instead of the spider prank because some MORONIC STUDENT just had to go blab to White about the prank that Ward had so carefully planned out and bought the mechanical tarantula for. Oh wait, I think that moronic student was Jamila H. (Who’s in my homeroom), who told Ms White all about what Mr. Ward planned and all the stuff that he called her (e.g. older than dinosaurs, bacteria don’t live on her because they’re scared of her).

Jamila H. is not to be trusted.

So, what’s the score now?

Ward:
-Rat prank
-Dissected starfish
-Cow hearts

White:
-Dressing said dissected starfish like Ward
-Ward pumpkin
-POSSIBLY Toilet Paper-ing (I haven’t gotten confirmation on that one)
-Brain on a straw

So, if the TPing holds true, White is winning, 4:3. Otherwise, if she had dropped the whole subject and a lot of students were disappointed because that meant no extra credit opportunity, then it’s tied, 3:3.

And now I’m depressed because I didn’t make it on the math team AGAIN (And I paid a whole seven dollars to try to make it on the team), and I usually made it all the time back in middle school. And it’s not like I’m not good at Algebra II (I’ve got like, what, a 97 average in the class? And I never study, either). I guess it’s just not my year.

My parents are now cracking down on me just because I didn’t make the stupid team. It’s like the fact that I have other classes that are WAY MORE IMPORTANT (Such as English, American Government, etc.) than making the team doesn’t even matter, and that they’d rather have me fail the graduation-required courses instead of not make the math team.

I’ve been busy maintaining my A average in each of the other important classes and balancing out my extracurricular that I hadn’t had time to study Algebra II in depth for the math team.

Quite frankly, I’d rather sacrifice the team than my grades. Seriously. And it’s not like last year, where any of the competitions we went to could go to state. They’re all regional or county-wide, which isn’t much of an experience, seeing how the news reported that half of Florida’s high schools are considered dropout factories, and the county I live in is part of one of the largest school districts in the state of Florida.

Now, at the state competition last year… THAT was a true experience. It was so scary, seeing all these individual students go up there and solve confusing problems even before the announcer person finishes reading the question. I would be no where near comprehending what the heck the question meant, and one of the kids down there in the center of the giant basketball court we were in would slame their hands on the buzzer and go, “THE SQUARE ROOT OF TWO PLUS PI!!!” or whatever.

Well, of course, it’s always scary at any level above local region (County, district, etc.). That’s when you get into scary students who do nothing but drill facts into their head all day just so that they could win math competitions (BORING!)

And besides, I can still compete in the individual competition with the rest of the math team. After all, the only advantage of making it into the math team is being able to participate in the team competition. I’m sure I’ll do well in the individuals after I practice math over the winter holidays, which I’m planning on doing to make up for all of my math team “failures”.

I can safely add math practice to my list of holiday assignments. Whoopee.

I was going to make a huge long post about stuff I’ve done in school for the past couple of weeks/months, but I’ve gotta get to the craft store to buy stuff for my English literary gifts project (Which I just found out was due THIS FRIDAY, and Ms Allen failed to mention it at all in class the ENTIRE QUARTER), so I’ll update everything tomorrow. I swear.