This first part is mainly just venting, skip it if you like.
For the past several months I've been kind of fighting with my parents, especially my stepmom. I came very close to getting kicked out, because my stepmom was angry that I don't have a "career job" and wasn't taking any strides to get one. She thinks I'm lazy and, though she hasn't said it out loud, acts like I exist for the sole purpose of draining her wallet. The actual fact is that she's angry at my dad for how he treated my step-sister and she's taking it out on me now that I live here instead of with my mom. I'm not just saying that, she herself said it outright. She accused me of being "manipulative" and "trying to take advantage of [my] dad's guilt for not being able to live close to [me]" but I guess she... got into a fight with my mom and decided that my mom is actually the root of all the issues she has with me? Then she cried and hugged me and apologized and was nice to me for like 3 days and then went back to hating me and I still have no fucking clue what all that was. The ultimatum I was given was that I have to start school and start therapy again (because I am reclusive), so I enrolled in school and got in contact with a therapist because I am too poor to move out.
As an example, today I bought two cartons of almond milk instead of just one, and didn't realize until I got home that we didn't have the space in the fridge for it. While I was reorganizing it, I accidentally spilled a cup of coffee (like she has a whole jug of iced coffee in the fridge but decided to stick her Starbucks cup in there for like 3 days. Who does that?????????) all over myself and the fridge. First I got yelled at for trying to use paper towels instead of a washrag by my dad because I use too many paper towels I guess, then when I took 10 seconds to make sure the sliced cheese I just bought was in the fridge, she came storming over and asked me "Is this what you consider clean?" and started yelling at me to clean it all up and then did it herself instead and insisted it "wouldn't get done" if she'd let me do it. And she is going to seethe about this for days and avoid me, and then in a few weeks I am going to do something like forget to take the trash out on my Designated Take the Trash Out Day and she will lose her shit again.
Right now I am enrolled in school but have to wait a ridiculously long time for an appointment with an advisor. I told my dad this and then two weeks later he started yelling at me because he and my stepmom fucking forgot and then acted like I was being dramatic when I snapped at him about it. Stepmom literally throws tantrums at me. And they also make me pay rent, not because they need the financial help or want any compensation for something specific but just so I'm "in the habit of paying bills" (as if I don't pay for my phone and car insurance). Like it literally would have been fine if they just said that it was my contribution to the electricity/internet bills or the food money or whatever but no they specifically made sure to tell me that it's not for that and that makes me really, really angry. But I can't talk to them or complain about anything or else I'm being "disrespectful" so I'm kind of just stuck.
Sorry, I just really needed that out of my system. Moving on.
October is usually an exciting month for everyone who celebrates Halloween, and I guess I kind of did but I didn't really dress up or anything and I had to work on the actual day of (to be fair, I specifically took that day to work so my coworker could have Halloween with his kids). I guess that's just one of the parts of being an adult that sucks; holidays just aren't as magical anymore. The next thing I have to worry about is Christmas and god I do not want to buy everyone Christmas presents. I am too broke.
I did go to an in-person Halloween event at an arcade in the city, but the friend I was going to meet there ended up going to work that night and I was alone. I kind of just hid in the corner and tried to play Mrs. Pac Man and it turns out I suck at Pac Man. I regretted not dressing up because a lot of other people were and it made me feel awkward talking to them without my own costume. I did end up chatting with someone towards the end of the night and we exchanged contact info but we haven't really spoken since. I did end up going back to that arcade with the first friend at a later date and we had a good time though. There was one game that I couldn't figure out how to switch back to English and was upset about that for a bit. We're going to hang out again at the mall later this week provided he doesn't get called into work.
In less interesting news, I also had a duck egg for the first time yesterday. It was pretty decent, I wouldn't have known it was a duck egg if it wasn't in a box labeled "DUCK" and "WACK WACK WACK" with little drawings of ducks it, but there's a really subtle difference in the taste. My little sister did it all herself, including the spelling mistakes, and it's actually really adorable. Also duck eggs are super hard to crack? I'm not doing that again, it's not different enough to warrant the effort especially in the morning. I'll stick with chicken eggs since we have those too. My stepmom and also my coworker both refuse to eat duck eggs for some unknown reason. It just weirds them out. I don't get it but it's not hurting anyone I suppose so it's just one of those things I'll be confused about forever.
I'm trying to switch from Monster and soda to coffee and tea so I can minimize the unnecessary sugar, but I don't know how effective it is considering it's after Halloween and I am not skipping out on the clearance candy. I've learned that honey is actually a decent sweetener for coffee provided you also add milk of some kind. That's what I bought almond milk for, since I don't like straight cow's milk. You have to add a good bit of honey to taste it and mix REALLY well, but with the milk mellowing the bitterness there's a subtle taste of honey and I like it a lot. It's probably healthier for me than just getting flavored creamer.
You're probably thinking, "If you're concerned about sugar, why not switch to a sugar free drink?" and the answer is that I HATE the taste of aspartame. I can tolerate it for one drink every now and then, but drinking it regularly makes me nauseous. I tried Alani drinks (which have sucralose) for a bit and they were okay, but I didn't like the flavors they had. Also drinking a 0 calorie drink just made me hungrier because my body wasted energy processing something with literally zero nutritional value. So... coffee with honey it is. Drinking less carbonation has definitely been good for me though.
I bought myself a brand-new computer to play games on, a big fancy desktop instead of a laptop like I've been using. It's great, but I don't have a power cord for my monitor so I've been using my TV. Which is fine for games but it's kind of awkward doing things like typing blog posts on my big ass TV... Then again, my laptop is literally right next to me so it's my own fault for doing it like this. But now I can at least set my desktop background to whatever I want because I can use my laptop for things that my parents/siblings might see. ;)
I still wanted to do something benign for my lock screen, just in case, so I decided to set it to my favorite painting ever, by Ekaterina Tambovtseva:
I just love it so much. It's perfect, from the painterly style that transitions smoothly into the less detailed background stuff, to the expressions of all the cats, to the fucking knife crab in the middle. He is getting revenge on the people who ate his family. Or at least revenge on the tool they used. I'm probably going to set my laptop's desktop to that too.
It's honestly an achievement that I got this far without talking about my cats. I love them both very much but they drive me absolutely nuts. One of them learned how to open the drawer with my hair ties in it and the other one has taken to chasing the mouse cursor across the TV. Which sounds cute until you're playing Cult of the Lamb and your cat is standing with her ass in your face while you're trying not to die. Or until you're at the vet paying $4,000 for surgery to remove a blockage because your cat swallowed 20 hair ties. Sometimes I wonder why I have them at all, and then they roll over on their backs and look up at me with those big black saucers they have for eyes and go "mrrp?" and my heart explodes.
I'm stopping myself at one paragraph because I could go on forever about these stupid little shits.
I think this is... all of it. I've never been good at ending long posts lol. Thanks for reading some random guy's diary entry. I hope you're having a good day, wherever you are :]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
