Sometimes, Kids do Stupid Things.

And sometimes, kids let stupid things happen through their inaction.

When I was younger-- maybe nine or ten-- a girl moved in down the block. This girl's name was Lissa. Well, it was probably Melissa, but I only knew her as Lissa.

Lissa was cool. Unspeakably cool. Her mother let her do whatever she wanted. Lissa was only a couple years older than me, and she didn't have a curfew. I was too young to understand that this was probably a result of bad parenting. I'd lived with my parents who wouldn't even let me cross the street by myself all my life. Hell, when I'd run halfway down the street to go play with another neighbor of mine, my mother would watch from the front porch like a hawk. So in my young and unadjusted mind, this older, rebellious girl was a badass.

Lissa and I hung out a few times. Everything was awesome.

One day, Lissa came over to my house to play. My older sister wasn't home. Lissa had a fantastic idea.

Lissa wanted to play with a Ouija board.

I didn't know what a Ouija board was-- and I assured her I didn't have any such thing in my possession. I was politely confused but desperately curious.

So Lissa left. My mother had gone to the store, and my father was puttering around outside. When Lissa returned, she had a black sharpie, scissors, and a large piece of cardboard.

And, on the floor in my room, Lissa constructed a homemade Ouija board. It was around that time, looking at the deceptively innocent-looking piece of cardboard laying on my floor, that I began to get a bad feeling. I asked her what the Ouija board was for-- what it did-- what kind of game lacked dice, chutes, ladders, or brightly-coloured fake money.

When Lissa told me that a Ouija board let you ask questions and talk to ghosts, all the hair on my arms stood up. This was sounding more and more like a terrible idea, and I was quickly growing sure that I wanted no part of this. However, Lissa, being older and cooler, was in charge. I didn't dare tell her that I didn't want to talk to dead people, because then she would think I was lame and wouldn't want to hang out anymore.

So Lissa and I hunched over the Ouija board and she started asking questions. I distinctly remember feeling sick as the piece of cardboard she'd cut out to be the planchette started moving to letters and numbers. I don't know if Lissa was pushing it or if it was actually moving on its own, and to this day, I really don't care.

I don't remember what she asked or what the answers were, but I know that when I heard my mother walk into the house carrying the groceries, I was unspeakably relieved. Lissa told me not to tell my mother about the Ouija board and to hide it. I did exactly as she instructed.

Lissa went home and a few days passed without incident.

However, it needs to be said that I am just terrible at hiding things.

My mother found the Ouija board and, understandably, freaked out. What followed was a long line of her angry questioning and me sobbing uncontrollably as I ratted Lissa out like a coward. I didn't even feel bad for doing so. I wanted to wash my hands of the whole affair and be free from talking to dead people.

My mother, thankfully, believed me, and told me that I wasn't in trouble, but that I wasn't allowed to hang out with Lissa anymore. I wasn't even that upset about it. Frankly, I'd started to realize that maybe Lissa was just a lunatic with parents who didn't care if she stayed out til 11 at night and spent her time talking to ghosts.

I've not seen Lissa since then. I'm okay with that-- especially because I now know what Ouija boards are actually capable of. The world of the paranormal greatly interests me, but I can safely say that I certainly don't bring Ouija boards along with me to possibly-haunted locations. As a matter of fact, I haven't laid a finger on one. Parker Brothers is stupid for deciding that those things needed to be made into a kids' toy.

Migraine Battle 2010

Four days ago, I woke up with a migraine. This is not unusual for me-- I get migraines pretty frequently, sometimes as many as two or three times a week. Usually, I get the migraine, take some ibuprofen/naproxen sodium/whatever is on hand. If I have to go to work, I just tough it out and pray the migraine goes away before too long. Typically, after I get some sleep, it's gone.

But this migraine is different. This one is special.

As I said, I woke up with a migraine four days ago. This thing hasn't gone away, despite my best efforts. It started innocently enough. The pain set in gradually, creeping in with such subtlety and malice that I didn't realize it was happening at first.
INDEED. If only I'd known what. I'd like to believe that if I'd started taking tylenol or something at that stage, I wouldn't be where I am today. Ah well, wish in one hand and shit in the other; see which one fills up first.

That was Friday. I was supposed to be playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends that day. We went to lunch beforehand. It was shortly before that, that I realized what was happening to me. Horrified and alarmed, I took some ibuprofen. I was not going to let the migraine defeat me.

I took the bottle with me in my purse to lunch and then to Dungeons and Dragons afterward, just in case. The migraine didn't let up and before long I was squinting at my character sheet and doing my damndest to laugh at every joke, not break character, and generally try to make everyone believe my migraine had gone away and I was, in fact, fine.

Many hours later when we called it quits, not all of us were ready to just go home, myself included. I'd taken some more ibuprofen and I was starting to feel a little bit better. Surely, I thought, my migraine had gone away. So a few of us decided to play Magic the Gathering.

Until 3 AM.

Well, I went home and went to bed. When I woke up later on Saturday, my migraine was reminding me that it had never gone away at all, and that the horror was only beginning.

The next two days were a blur of me laying in bed, feeling sorry for myself and drinking lots of water. I also tried putting vapor rub under my eyes and nose in the hopes that I was dealing with a sinus headache and that the vapor rub would open up my sinuses and everything would magically be fine.

This was not the case.

Last night ended with me going in the bathroom and turning on the shower as hot as it would go to fill the bathroom with steam. I hoped that perhaps that would help. I know, stupid-- but I was desperate at that point.

The migraine was winning. It wouldn't go away. So I went to bed.

It's still winning today. Like an army of rabid hamsters gnawing on my brain, it's winning. But I will not give up. This damn thing is gonna go away and I'm going to get back to living in peace.

Never stop fighting! YEAAAAAH!

On my Absence

Wow, I'm sorry I haven't been making posts the past few days. I know that makes me a bad person. However, I've been depressed about my job and that, I realized, has made me write... less-funny, more-angry posts. And nobody needs to read that. BUT there clouds on the horizon are going to break.

I had an interview today at Qdoba, which is kind of like the... I dunno. Subway of Mexican food? You build your own tasty burrito and it's kind of amazing. No lie. But I digress! My interview went well and now I'm just waiting on a call back about my schedule. Rest assured, I'll be keeping my phone glued to me, straining desperately to hear Lady Gaga singing 'Telephone' at me.

It'll be like this.

I'll be sitting by myself, quietly reading or playing around on the computer, when suddenly, I'll hear a NOISE! I'll flip out about it and immediately zoom in on my phone... only to realize that my phone was not responsible. I'll be disappointed and go back to what I was doing. This cycle will most likely repeat itself endlessly.

Also, I'm sorry about the abnormally bad quality of that drawing. My good mouse is wireless and uses AA batteries, but it died and I don't have anymore... so I had to use my crappy mouse which doesn't like to move or click. And as those are the two major functions of a mouse and it sucks at both, that's a problem.

So I'll have to get batteries today. I hope I remember them...

Happy Halloween!

So this year for Halloween I was gonna be Jem from the TV show. It was gonna be fantastic. Outrageous, even. I was gonna be CUTE, something like the drawing that I have so kindly provided. And seriously, you should be amazed because I definitely drew that in less than five minutes, because I'm under a major time crunch and need to get to work soon.

Now, my Halloween plans were not spoiled because of work-- I'm gonna be out of there by 9 at the absolute latest.

No, my plans were foiled by wigs.

You see, the Halloween costume stores in town didn't provide wigs that were large enough in size and volume to look like Jem's fierce 80s hair. I looked for pink wigs, but I also looked for blonde wigs that I could just dye pink.

Nothing.

I was a little bit heartbroken. I'm not gonna lie. But not to be deterred, I went to the internet. Ebay had a few wigs that were appropriately big and 80s-licious, but they were 200+ dollar drag queen wigs and I don't make enough money with my crappy job at Target to afford to drop 200 bucks on a wig I was going to wear once, or maybe twice if I went as Jem a couple years in a row for Halloween.

So as today drew closer and closer, my hopes dwindled. And today is Halloween. No wig. I didn't even bother to try and sew my dress because I didn't feel like wasting the time on it if I didn't get to dress up. Tonight I suppose I'll be sitting in front of my computer, lamenting the fact that I could be out partying.

So, my readers, I beseech you. Party hard for me. Be outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Headless Horseman.

This is a post about World of Warcraft. If you aren't interested in World of Warcraft... well, I can't say DON'T READ THIS because I honestly tried to make it funny, and not just in the realm of WoW humor. But yeah. If you're scowling right now at the fact that I decided to write about World of Warcraft-- I mean actually, scowling, mean-mugging and all that-- then yeah, you probably should sit this one out.

World of Warcraft does a lot of extra stuff to go with the various seasons in real life. I dunno if this is to remind 900-pound mouthbreathing neckbeards that there is still an actual outside world, or what. Either way, it makes for a nice diversion from the usual World of Warcraft activities.

Naturally, the current event, Hallow's End, is Halloween-oriented. You can visit inns and trick or treat, get candy, put on masks that look like other races, all sorts of good stuff. But Hallow's End has an antagonist.

I'm talking about the Headless Horseman. You see, the Headless Horseman is a pyromaniac. All he does is ride around on his magical flying horse and light towns on fire-- while players scramble to put them out. You get loot for doing this, which is nice, but there are a couple of problems with it. He seriously shows up like every five minutes. And he yells. In rhyme.

So you're minding your own business in a town, just chilling, and all of a sudden you hear this.

"Prepare yourselves, the bells have tolled! Shelter your weak, your young and your old! Each of you shall pay the final sum! Cry for mercy; the reckoning has come!"

This is followed by the most ridiculous, terrible laughter ever. EVER. It's kind of a.... "BAAAAWWWWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWWWW."

Other well-written (ha!) Horseman lines include:

• The sky is dark. The fire burns. You strive in vain as Fate's wheel turns.
• My flames have died, left not a spark! I shall send you now to the lifeless dark!
• So eager you are, for my blood to spill. Yet to vanquish me, 'tis my head you must kill!

So yeah, after you put out his fires, he comes riding down out of the sky and you get to kill him, but lo! You can't because that's not his head. So where's his head at? In a dungeon, of course.

So you and your friends form a bitchin' team to go into the dungeon and kick his ass, where he spouts off yet more awesome rhymes. You beat the snot out of him until his head flies off. You then have to kill the head of the Horseman. So you finally kill him, silencing him... until you next enter a town, or until the next day when you come back to the dungeon again.

And then you get loots! The most coveted loot that he drops is a special mount-- it's his horse! It's his FLYING HORSE. Dear lord, you people have no idea how much I want to ride around on a flying horse. My character would look something like this.



My mage would be all "HELLS YEAAAAH!" and would fly around in front of the moon and throw fire at people and--

And then I realized. The Headless Horseman was a pyromaniac. And when I thought about getting the horse for my character, the first thing that popped into my head was that.

Clearly, the Horse is what turns people into pyromaniacs. There's no other explanation. That animal is evil and ought to be taken out back and shot for driving its riders into a state of madness.

...That doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep trying to get the horse for myself.

*cough*

Truthfully, I've Always Been Evil.

Growing up, I hated school. I hated high school, as many kids do, but I also hated grade school with a passion. I enjoyed learning. I liked to read and study. But my mother had been very concerned with me growing up in a 'nurturing' learning environment where I would receive a good education. And, because my family was Roman Catholic, I was put through Catholic school from day one of kindergarten.

Now, the stereotype is that kids who go to private school are rich. I was not. My family was rather poor, and financial aid was the only reason I 'got' to go to Catholic school. Some of my classmates were obscenely rich, and there were only a handful of students who came from middle-income families.

Now, this coupled with the fact that I wore my older sister's hand-me-downs (which were in good enough shape, but clearly dated) and god-awful ugly sweatsuits my mother bought me from K-Mart...
(Except that mine were always like... royal purple and had teddy bears and shit on em) ...meant that everyone knew I was poor. I didn't even have a pair of jeans. Jeans were clothing that only the unspeakably rich and cool wore. Jeans were a status symbol. Now, my school instated uniforms within a couple years of my attending, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

I was poor and gangly and awkward and everyone knew it. I was by far the tallest kid in the class, easily a full head and shoulders taller than even the boys. I was also terrible at sports, and I wasn't involved in any kinds of clubs or Girl Scouts or anything else. And I was, essentially, a very young nerd. My mom had told me to always try my best and put forth 100% effort. I did that. I read books constantly. I sang louder than anyone else in music class. I swear I even PRAYED harder when we went to mass.

So in that respect, I shot myself in the foot. I was poor, awkward, and I was a geek on top of everything else. I was ridiculed constantly.

Constantly.

I was the first one in my class to have to have glasses-- I wore out my eyes playing Final Fantasy VII the year my family pooled together and bought me a Playstation for Christmas. So yeah. I was a video game and computer nerd, too.

But I've digressed. I was the first one in my class to get glasses, and that only gave the popular kids more ammunition to use in their daily rituals of tormenting me. I began to realize that even if I suddenly became rich and gorgeous, they would never like me. Nothing I could do would ever win them over and make them want to befriend me. So all the sadness turned into loathing. I despised my classmates. I had two-- maybe three friends. The rest of them, I probably would have thought about knifing in a back alley if I'd had a knife.

What? I was emotionally and mentally mature for a child. I was watching the Alien series by the time I was like seven. Blood and gore didn't disturb me, and I also took to listening to grunge music on my sister's radio anytime she wasn't around. I feel that I understood much more complex feelings than other children my age did. And at that time, I understood that I was very nearly alone in the world that I knew. It was a pretty miserable time for me. I was made fun of on a daily basis for being poor and wearing glasses and being different from the other kids. In hindsight, I should have told a teacher or someone that my childhood was a living hell, but I didn't. That would have been tattling. So I kept it all in.

When I was eight, I broke my leg. It's a fun story, but it's another story for another day. The accident, however, left me in a cast up to my hip for about six weeks. I was on crutches, of course. My parents had to move my bed down to the living room that winter because I couldn't make it up and down the stairs to my room. I had to have help getting to the bathroom. My mom took me to a local salon to have them wash my hair every couple of days because wrapping my cast in saran wrap and helping me stand up in the bathtub to take a shower was pretty much impossible. Long story short, it was just another chapter of Suck in the book that was my young life.

When I went back to school, the ridicule began afresh. And it was worse because I didn't even get to go out at recess. I had to stay inside and look out at them all while they played.

And it was there, in the classroom, that I began to concoct a plan for revenge. It had to be subtle and it had to look like an accident, because if I did anything overt, it would be obvious that I was responsible. And as I looked around the empty classroom, seeking some vessel for vengeance, I laid eyes on Male Classmate One's desk. I hated Male Classmate One. He was like the ringleader of the boys in ridiculing me, and all the little popular girls had stupid childish crushes on him. Male Classmate One was an asshole.

So I decided that I was going to make Male Classmate One look like a bitch.

Silently thanking my good fortune that all my teachers liked me and thought I was just some poor, kind, awkward nerd-child and thus didn't need supervision during recess, I grabbed my crutches and hopped my way over to Male Classmate One's desk. I took a moment to plan. And then it struck me.


I loosened all the bolts on Male Classmate One's chair. Every single one of them. It took a bit of work, but I got it-- luckily for me, all of the bolts on his chair were already loose enough that I could unscrew them. You see, Male Classmate One was one of those kids who would lean back in his chair all the time even though we were constantly told not to do that, because doing that damaged the structural integrity of the chair. Specifically, it put strain on the bolts, and over time, worked them loose.

I cautiously put a hand on the seat of the chair and tested it. It wobbled just slightly. Perfect. Satisfied, I hobbled on over to my desk and picked up my book and started to read.

Recess ended and my classmates came back inside. They all sat back down and class started again. I glanced subtly up from my textbooks every now and then. Yep, Male Classmate One was leaning back in his chair and trying to look cool. Time passed and I began to worry that I hadn't gotten the bolts loose enough.

And then, about a half-hour before lunch, with a loud crash, the legs detached from the seat of the chair and Male Classmate One, still sitting on the chair, hit the ground with a thud. It was too perfect. He literally went from sitting on the chair to sitting on the floor. He hadn't struck anything on his way down. And then, Male Classmate One began crying like a bitch.

Truthfully, I might have felt guilty if my actions had hurt him. But he was completely unharmed, saved for a bruised ego. And you know what? I never told Male Classmate One that I was responsible for it. I never plan on doing so. Score one for Laura. Revenge was sweet.

Work.

This was me at work tonight. Sad, but true. I officially hate my job. I hate working with bitchy females. I hate serving coffee to pretentious, rich assholes who think they have the right to talk down to me because I'm stuck making their drink.

And I hate people who show up five minutes before closing time.

Time literally CRAWLED by tonight. I thought that the clocks had broken at one point because it was seriously 7:39 for what felt like an hour and a half.

So when 8:55 rolled around, this was me.

Finally, it was almost time for me to be free from the soul-leeching essence of the Target Starbucks. I turned away for thirty seconds to start wiping down my countertops-- and then I saw this.



Alright, I thought to myself. One more customer wasn't so bad. It's obnoxious when they show up right before I'm about to close, but it's okay. I made them the yearned-for mocha latte and they went away. But then I saw this.


Okay. Fine, rude blonde woman. I'll make your drinks too. Stop pointing at me and waving your money in my face and I'll get right on that.

By the time I finished making THOSE drinks, it was 9:06. I looked around. The coast was clear. I ran for the lights and shut them off. As I came back, though, this is what I saw.

When I politely informed them that Starbucks had closed at 9, this is what I saw.




Some of them whined. Some of them protested. Some of them glared at me but stormed away. One woman tried to tell me she'd been waiting there since 8:55 and that she'd never been helped. I politely tried to assure her that I was the only worker, and that I had been at the counter at 8:55 and had even helped other customers who were there. So when trying to lie to me didn't work, she told me that she was going to call corporate and have me fired. I told her my name and wished her the best of luck. That seemed to confuse her. She asked if I had heard her correctly. I assured her I had. She left in a huff and I closed Starbucks without further incident.

I officially hate my job.