Brats

They make me wish I were an only child. Yes, you'll use elimination and finally realize that I'm speaking of my younger brothers, rather than of anything else that I may call "brats" once in a while. Fact of the matter is, school was absolutely fun and cheerful for me, because I got to see my friends and live out the last day of the week (because UEA fall break is Thursday and Friday). You all know there is a catch, however. Why else would I be divulging my wildly rocketing emotions in blog form? No, by the time I got home, I didn't have a five minute break of being home alone like I usually do (considering I get home around 3:00PM and the others get home around 3:05PM) and ended up walking into the garage with David. I doubt that's the reason why, but my mood plummeted. It might be because I realized I have to spend a whole weekend with the likes of them. Either way, I came home to a mess. I checked my email after I got home, and decided to start on my heinous chore of hand washing the dishes. It was at that point that I realized how grotesquely "hobo-ish" the house was beginning to look. (I'm not kidding. It was a huge mess.) There was clothes and shoes and backpacks strewn about the room. Not only that, but there was painter's tape stuck in the carpet, scraps of crumbled, ripped, and shredded paper in various places of the living room and family room and kitchen. Toys. There were toys everywhere. I do not claim that sentence as a fallacy, because it was true. There were toys all over the house.

I wouldn't describe this horrific scene to you if I didn't have a conclusion. Because I had to get dishes done, I took my time on them. I wiped down the walls around the sink and everything: something I usually forget to do. I swept effeciently. My reason for making the kitchen sparkle was mainly because I didn't want my parents to be in a pissy mood  when they came home. (It worked.) I have an OCD problem when it comes to cleaning though. It's odd that my OCD kicked in on a day that I was sore and hurting and frustrating and pissy. I ended up turning on the vacuum while my brothers were on the floor playing and firmly saying, "You got one minute before I vacuum up all your crap." The threat worked beautifully. They were jumping around like grasshoppers shoving things into their arms and transporting them (mostly) to where the items belonged. I lied though. I turned the vacuum on thirty seconds after my declaration and the youngest, Ryan, began to cry about how his toys were going to be vacuumed if he didn't hurry. I told him to "hurry then".

I was extremely shocked when they still insisted on doing a half-assed job about cleaning, even after I explicitly told them to pick everything up from the kitchen floor. I had to tell the youngest boys four times to pick up. I'd rather not think about Tyler's complete ignorance of my wishes (by that point, they were beginning to turn into commands, since technically, I was in charge). He just sat like the lazy couch potato he is and read "without hearing me". I told him twice to put his backpack in his bedroom. Instead, he just sets it on the couch next to him. Yes, that definitely helps me extract my vision of a spotless living room. Thank you, Tyler.

My parents got home just after I started vacuuming the family room. It irritated me that I couldn't get it done before they got home. I mean irritated me. I honestly expected to feel elated and pleased with myself when my parents gave me praise for cleaning without being told to. Instead, I just felt numb. Eric was the only (bless his soul) one who helped me clean, and for that, I try not to snap at him too much.

I think my pet peeve of the day, however, was picking up the never ending flood of papers that were associated with Ryan's stupid little first grader papers. I'm quite concerned he might have lost his homework while I cleaned today, but at the same time, I feel no sympathy for him. There was so many bolded two-digit numbers being added by single-digit numbers that flooded by vision during that time, that I most nearly screamed my head off. Every paper I lifted, I yelled at Ryan to come to me and tell me whether it was important. "Is this homework?" "No..." I would viciously crumple the paper and throw it away. I believe I found a notebook's worth of paper that just went to waste. Trees: I feel no sympathy for them. They have a nucleus, but they have no feelings.

I took my rest. I accomplished 74 long pages with tiny font of Stephen King's novel It. I experienced what it might be like to be a psychopath that killed his baby brother because he was worried his parents might love the baby more, and I finally read the last bit of the main character's childhood. I feel good and accomplished, and after I finish that section, I put my ironically clownish-looking Joker Card in to mark my page number. All I wanted was to get some computer time, and my brother's technically aren't supposed to play computer games on the computer, so I asked to get online and email my friend. I didn't lie, it was a true fact. I had to email journalism notes for mine and my partner's first articles. It's just that I used a divergent and went to Facebook and Goodreads to let off some steam.

Mom does it with her computer time, so why can't I?

Ah but no. Those little brats--namely Tyler and David--decide to get mad at me for getting on the computer. I've stopped playing Facebook games, and they go on accusing me that I'm playing "computer games" when in actuality, I'm typing and reading and following up socially online. David is a clever little punk sometimes. He tends to sit somewhere where I don't realize he's sitting, and watch what I'm doing. The minute I exit out of my email account and go to goodreads, he accuses me immediately. "You said you were only emailing! What's your problem?!"

Oh just shoot me now and save me the pain of relaying this gruesome side of me. It just pushed me over the edge. I immediately fired off the projects I've done for school, the studying I've done to earn me my A's for this closing term, and the stress I've gone through to get the house nice for our parents. Apparently it wasn't good enough for him. He looked at me like the little snot he was with this look of smug indifference. "So?" He merely asked. I had to explain to him that I certainly wasn't playing computer games, and neither was he. I also pointed out that I had just read for three hours straight and that I wanted a break from it. "So?" he asked, since he's such a damned little reader himself. "It is a 1,000 page book with small print and big words. Shut up." Oh but he doesn't. He decides it best to just match my attack by saying Lord of the Rings was probably more pages and just as hard.

I'll be honest with you. I'm a pretty tolerant person. Any other day, I'd laugh along with him and say "Yep, you got me." Today wasn't an ordinary day. My friends have assured me that I haven't changed in a bad way, as my slowly-pulling-away-best-friend says I have, but I've changed for the better. I've been happier more, especially with the start of this year. My theory is that kind of happiness doesn't last forever. There's bound to be bad days, and those bad days have caught up to me real quick. Fact of the matter, I was like this yesterday. If Fitness hadn't left me jello-legged and exhausted, I probably would have gone running today as I had yesterday when I was feeling angry. I'm convinced that running makes me happier, even though it didn't work yesterday.

So anyway, I've gotten to the point where I tell him to go away and leave me alone. I turned back to the computer, prepared to ignore anyone else who dares to challenge me with this issue.

Thirty seconds after David leaves, Tyler comes up behind me and suddenly explodes in a rant about how I wasn't emailing my friend, I was on Goodreads. His words were wasted, the end. Ignoring him worked out well. After a few seconds of yelling to no prevail, he left. That was when I wrote up my Facebook status and decided to type out the day's events in a blog post that is only somewhat organized with punchy text and complaint-filled words like "heinous".

I think sleeping will be the next best thing for me tonight.