2008!

Happy New Years all!!

xxx
Maxime

Hey All!

Okay, so i know I should be doing something more valuable with my time, but blogging is addicting.
No time to write, that's the problem.
Oh well.
So let me try to catch you up on some things:
1) My mom's boyfriend has moved out (thank god)
2) One of my seven dogs died
3)My dad, his girlfriend, their dogs, and my sister and I are moving.


To Italy.


No one could describe the feelings that currently revel inside of my tummy.
My mom doesn't know if she wants us to go, but I don't really mind.
This is how it would go.
My dad leaves on the day after Thanksgiving (friday?)
His girlfriend (Mary) stays is beautiful California until our house (in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt) is sold.
My sister and I stay with our mother in town (where I actually have a life)
On the last days of school Olivia (sib) and I (Max)pack like the madwomen that we are.
We leave from SF Int. the next morning.
Fly from SF Int. to Schiphol, NL.
Stay with family (btw, I'll get to see Bas again. To find our more, read the entry before this one)
I will declare my love fearlessly and we will be happy.
Two weeks after, we fly from Schiphol, NL to Lombardy, Italy.
Take the train to Bologna.
And we're here!!

I am ecstatic. Not so much the idea of Italy rather then the idea of seeing my boy .
he looks like this:


Yupyup, this is my McDreamy.

What a guy, I know.
The last time I saw him he took me out on a boat and made dinner for me, and he slept (not sex, just hugging, god...) under the stars on the deck.
And that morning we sailed around the Harbor.

mmhmmm...
I'll write more when I'm actually there :D
_______________________________________________________________________________

Now while I'm swooning over Prince Charming here, I have totally forgotten about everything else in life. My sister has gone from stupid, prepubescent little girl to my best friend and my father is becoming... *Gasp* ... old.
Dun dun duuuuuun (dramatic music)
My mother has gone from nice neighbor lady to insane housewife, and I'm stuck here with nothing but a pad of paper and an orange gel pen, writing and observing everything I can.
Well, this should turn out interesting.
________________________________________________________________________________

So last week my and a good friend went Job Hunting.
Yes, it's every teen's nightmare. In fact, I thought I was going to die, but it turned out okay.
Everybody thought we looked pretty old (not wrinkly, but "mature". Duh.) and I scored some awesome apps.
One to the Regal Cinema 9. The benefits for that one are great! Five free movie tickets a month and 50% off at the snack counter.
Not bad...
Well the best one is at New Leaf (an all organic grocery store in CA)
On all the merchandise you get 25% off and extra discounts on beauty product (score one for Max!!!)
I love the hippies here.
They're so open about everything.
EXCEPT! for this one man.
I was walking down the main drag with some of my friends when we spied a pizza place. Being the bottomless pits that we are, we went in and ordered a medium pizza extra cheese.
With sodas.
So! I ate a lot, they ate a lot, all was well. We had about 5 pieces of pizza left over when all was said and done.
I asked the girl behind the counter for a box and I bought another drink. As soon as I step outside, I see this frumpy looking old guy, and his sign says "Hungry and Homeless"
(PLEASE NOTE: the sign says hungry. hungry.)
So I go up to this poor man and introduce myself.
"Hi, uhm, me and my friends have some pizza and a drink left over, would you like it?"
and what does he do?
He takes the box, throws it at me and says "I DON'T WANT FOOD I WANT MONEY BITCH. GO FUCK A DOG YOU WHORE!!"

...

Yeah.




Whoa.
Over reaction much?
Well, needless to say we booked it down the street, laughing out our lungs.
_________________________________________________________________________________

SO that's what's been going on in my life.
Message me so we can discuss the meaning of life!

it's official.

I am in love.
with a boy.
named Bas.
somebody pinch me,
he's prefect...

<333333333333

hello to all!

I am oficcialy back from vacation.
It was very relaxing... except for the bears, but I just ignored them.
I kind of came to a realization while cruising down the river on my inner tube.
See, the day before I had gotten into a squabble with my dad, and while the fish nibbled at my un-manicured toes, I thought; "What difference does it really make"
In other words, why should you argue with someone if in the end, it's really just going to clutter everything up?
Right, well feel free to opinionate guys.
Well the strong pull of cheese pizza is luring me down to the kitchen.
until the:
mantenere la pace <333

an update

on the babysitting situation.
I got the SuperMom's house this morning quite early, actually.
I brought my beloved Harry Potter book (The boy lives!!) and settled down in the living room with a a sleeping guy who's name has been changed. Let's call him BagelBiter, shall we.
Anyways, after being notified that someone had pulled another "Fake Barf" of me, I settled down again and read.
Many exciting things happen to Potter in the end of the middle of the book. I couldn't quite grasp how many pages J.K. Rowling must have written. 759, wasn't it? Well, it's a staggering amount.
I could never see myself writing that much.
When BagelBiter finally awoke, I got up and began taking orders for breakfast, because four boy eat A LOT. Instead of the measly one and a half sandwiches or waffles or any other breakfast material, it immediately becomes double or triple the amount.
When all the fighting over the last egg had subsided, I cleared the table and set BagleBiter out to sweep the garage, Whiner to clean up all the bionacles/ legos/ action figures, Tigurr to load the dishwasher, and Baby to make the beds.
Quite surprisingly, they listened and did as I asked.
You know, it's quite hard getting four boys between the ages of 3 and 18 to do as you say, especially when you are a girl, let alone who is younger.
But never mind.
I picked up the remote while Whiner made vaccuming noises and scooped up the stuffed animals that had been lying on the floor into his grubby hands and ran off.
It was quite for about two hours, until BagelBiter decided to shoot birds/ cars/ people with his newly obtained BB gun. I watched in amusement while he tried to show off his muscles by pumping the loader.
I reached down to swirl the little shell on a string that was my constant accessory. I gave it a hard testing jerk to see if the twine would hold up.
It didn't, so with my broken bracelet in my hand and nothing else to do, I went in search of a new piece of string.
Safe to say I didn't find any, so I am currently repairing this bracelet with some kick ass purple yarn.
It looks really cool, my little homemade bracelet with purple twine. I would take a picture, but my camera is currently abducted by my mother for work related reasons of which I have not been informed.
The rest of the day went smoothly, except for the part where our crazy phsyco neighbor lady came over without a shirt on and asked for kotex and my Maroon5 CD. I closed the door in her face but she wouldn't quite. So I opened the door and offered to walk her home. She accepted and when we arrived she broke down and cried openly and told me that I was a great girl and that I should follow my dreams and love everything around me and that I was a great person again, and then she went inside and didn't come out again.
I felt bad for her. She married her stepdad. I'm not kidding, he was married to her mother and when they got a divorce he married this lady. But they didn't work out too well.
That image just keeps floating into my mind. Of her just openly crying, like she was two...
Well, she's a grown woman, right? If she needs to talk, I guess I'm here...
Wow, there's some great songs on fredflare.com right now, you should go check it out :))
Hope that's not too depressing, but I gotta go make some dinner for Bomb.
Cheers

to all the fab people who read my blog.

a list of nicknames.

mom + dad together = parental units
oma + opa together = GRANDparentals
my sister = Bomb
mom = mom
dad = dad
myself = anything that hops into my head.
the woman I baby sit for = SuperMom
her three sons (from eldest to youngest) = Tigur, Whiner, and Baby.

So this is the renewed list of nicknames.
Enjoy!

ahh yes.

I just thought of something:
"Confessions of an underage /under paid babysitter",
because that is exactly what I am.
Pati aka SuperMom told me today of a deal her and my dad have struck.
If I am watching her children and my sister needs a place to chill,
then she takes 10 dollars off of what she would have to pay me (Which at this point is 40 dollars for 8 hours of care. yeah, not bad).
The best part is: I didn't know about this until this afternoon when I nearly choked on a bite of tomato soup.
Yeah, the ten dollars she gets to take off my dad is supposed to pay me back for.
Problem is, Oliva (the sister unit)has come with me to this particular job on five, count 'em, 1 2 3 4 5, different occasions.
Fifty bucks I'm missing and I didn't even know it.
wanna know how I feel right about now.

that's right.
Look at that adorable face and think of all the teens who don't get paid correctly, fail out of highschool, take up flipping burgers @ In-n-out, and end up living in a box on the side of the highway with a cat who's name varies from "Assface" to "Precious Darling".

...

Yeah, complete dramatization, but you get my point.

Anyways, today was uneventful.
Except for one thing.
SuperMom's middle child, Gavin, has this testing thing going.
And well, it sucks major butt.
So today his brother Taghd was riding his bike, and Gavin began what by the looks of it was an extreme meltdown.
Yes, all mothers and au pairs alike know exactly what I'm talking about.
Fist, it's the whining and pouty "I thought you loved me" look.
Then comes the crying and "I hate you"s,
Which is quickly followed by the "I am a sack of potatoes, you cannot pick me up" phase.
It might have been something he had for breakfast, but I guess he decided to take this one a step further.
All the way to my house and back, in fact.
You see, I live right across the street when I live with my dad.
His latest girlfriend seems to be a nice woman, except for the fact that she has dogs.
Lots of then.
Only three, really. But when one of them acts like he's on crack, the other thinks he's still a puppy when in fact he's a 200 pound newfoundland, and the other will do anything to get your attention, well, it's just one big blob of organized chaos now isn't it?
Anyways, I'm trying to leash these beasts up when I just happen to catch Gavin in the act of punching his brother, who is riding his bike, square in the stomach.
You know in those really cheesy Asian fight movies, when one guy is suspended in the air for what seems like a full minute?
Well this looked exactly like that.
One moment Taghd was merrily riding his bicycle down my driveway, and the next he's on the ground with the breath knocked out of his doing his best to not cry and be tuff.
I was just about up to her -makes gesture towards eyebrows- with that boy and his scheming little ways. I yelled at his and when he smacked me across the face I couldn't believe my mind! I grabbed his arm and sent him home, like any good babysitter with nothing left to do does.
But (yes, the but has arrived)
But I was in for it when I got back to the house.
While I was trying to control 3 youngsters and a bear (Debra the newfoundland), Gavin had gotten his little paws on the phone and called his mum.
So when I got home, I had to face the mighty creature that is SuperMom.
He had called her and had made it sound as though I had abused him!
Needless (did I already use this today?) to say I did not talk to him unless I had to.
----------------------------------
That's basically all that happened.
If there where more going on then I will let you know.
Tomorrow though, is breakfast @ Gales (an awesome local bakery) for breakfast with Mom and Bomb (Olivia the sister's nickname is Olivia Neutron Bomb, aka Bomb).


Cheers until then baby!

good morning to you live...

from Santa Cruz.
Today, I am off to babysit my three favorite boys on the planet; Tahgd, Kieran, and Gavin. Awesome right? Well, their mother is a single mom and she's also currently supporting her brother (Mark) and his son, Sheamus. I kind of have this thing for Sheamus, but I'll have to tell you about that later. Anyways, this woman, her name is Pati, she's a total super mom. She wakes up every morning at five to be at her secretary job up at the University, then at 3:30 she comes home for about five tenths of a milisecond, and then she's off again. Then she goes to her bar tending job at this dive known to locals as "The Hole". She gets off whenever the after party winds down, and so I'm used to all kind of weird stories :))
But I'll blog later about this whole experience.
I tell ya, these kids are masterminds when t comes to a) playing hookie b) testing you wit/ patients/ everything and c) fake barfing.
The first time I figured out the fake barfing was when we where palling on going to the library because I needed to study for a project. I promised them all icescream if they behaved themselves.
Well, this obviously did not sit well with Gavin, so while I was cleaning up the mess of powerranger parts, leftover breakfast, and whatever else I could find, Gavin snuck into the kitchen and grabbed beans and the like. Then he came up to me and said, "Oh I don't feel so good, Maxime..." I just told him to go to the bathroom.
I was in for a surprise... :)
When I got in there he has smeared the bean/ketchup/bagel bits/salami mix all over his face and all over the poor bathroom.
Needless to say I didn't get to study for my project and Gavin got to stay home.

well, here goes nothing, right?

Good evening, afternoon, morning. These all, obviously, depending upon your timezone.
This morning I woke up with every intention of saving millions of lives and the like. But as the day drug on, I began to realize that something had gone horribly awry. Everywhere I went, people where frowning. And not just the "Oh I'm having a crappy day" kind of frown, but the "Back up now or I will do something that I might regret later" kind of frown. Now I also realized that trying to talk to these kinds of people doesn't work either. This story, for instance:
Mother had asked me to bike to the grocery to get some reduced fat milk and some half and half. I eagerly hopped onto the old rusted contraption that is my bicycle and peddled to the Savemart located in the strip mall down the street from my home. This grocery towers over a local bookstore, an auto repair place, and a sewing shop. This grocery is a big, squat, round building with the confidence any franchise has about it. As I pushed through the big doors a cool rush of dry, air conditioned oxygen swept the matted hair off my face and forced me backwards a few steps. Along with this welcome cool-down came a sensory overload:
The screaming of an infant hyped up on too many lollipops from the previous hour's birthday party , the constant beeping of cash registers and ATMs, and the baritone hum of the cooling section in the back of the store. I put on a debut ante (?)-like smile and began the death march that is the crossing of the grocery. First came the isle of crackers, chips, and feminine hygiene products. These weren't so hard to fight through seeing as there was no traffic jam of MILFs, shopping carts, and little boys. But the next isle would be much harder. I knew what was comming would be the hardest isle to cross yet. I started phsycing myself up. "C'mon Max, you can do it! It's not that big of a deal. Yeah, that's right! No big deal. All you have to do is walk ten feet. That's it. Only ten measly little feet" where the things traipsing through my mind as I approached the dreaded isle number 16. I thought I was ready, but you can never be fully prepared. The theme to the moment before a final shootout began playing in my head. I took one step, and was instantly teleported to another world. What had been boring old stands of Life cereal and macadamia nuts was now two full walls of heaven. Glossy magazine covers surrounded me from the lenolium covered floor to the heavy hot air six feet above me. You might think that I coveted these magazines for their fashion advice, or for the makeup tips that all teenage girls lust for. But no! ha ha! no no nonoonono. I cannot resist these overpriced tree killers for one thing and one thing only. The Contributor's Page. Oh how I wish to see my pimply round face on that page! But alas, can only look, and not touch. Still, I haven't thrown away my old issue of Marie Clare, so my glorious moments of longing will continue until the edges are worn and the colors have faded. I am rudely awakened from my daydream by a couple in their early 20s trying to decide upon which lubricant they should choose. I quickly recommend one I saw advertised on a billboard I had seen while driving to Los Angeles. They both give me the "but you're just a little girl, you're not supposed to even know about this kind of stuff yet" look, so I made myself as scarce as possible, which is hard, considering the fact that I have my yellow with purple track suit on. Hey! I thought it would look good on my bike... Finally, the dairy section. Hahah! I have conquered the magazine section once again, and I secretly turn around and stick my tounge out at it from behind an elderly man reaching for a carton of full fat milk. "Here you go sir" I say as I had him the milk. He takes one look at the track suit and gives me a big, toothless, saliva encrusted smile. "My young lady, that is quite the color combination you've got on there" he offers up as I collect my own half and half. "Thank you sir..." I say as I try to hide myself. God! What was I thinking? Oh well, time to check out, I guess. Now comes the fun part of this entire trip: finding the guy. I don't know what his name is, but he works express lane number four on weekdays from seven 'till 4:30. I spot his dark moussed hair and make a mad dash to the register. "Hello, did you need any help finding anything today?" he says to nobody in particular, because I'm still a good twenty feet away from lane four. As I reach the little "landing strip", as me and my sister call it, he is tucking away his comb and mirror. Let me tell you something about our nonexsistant relationship: One day about four months back, I came in for some fuit and the latest copy of "Details" when I notices a guy, about 17, reading the Oprah magazine. "Well maybe he's gay" I thought as I approached the counter. "He's certainly handsome enough." I placed my pleuots and Daniel Radcliffe's embossed face upon the rolling band on rubber and waited behind a man who clearly didn't belong here. In an armani suit, brooks brother's tie, and some loafers, this man needed two things: a pack of other men of his kind (designer covered, sports car driving, grey goose martini drinking business execs), and something to do with his hands. I swear, this man looked like a two year old, considering that his hands where everywhere and anywhere. It didn't occur to me that maybe he had some sort of disability, but I just turned around and glanced at Details. When it was my turn in line, Mystery Man was reading Oprah while scanning Nervous Rich Exec's items. When he caught me looking at it, he quickly tucked it away and turned a nice chardonnay color. "May I ask you something?" I asked him. "Uhh, sure. whatever dude" he replied. "Well, I don't want to seem like a stalker or anything, but uhh, I come here alot. You know, with my mom always wanting something from the store. You know, she's not what you think she might be. She's actually..." oh no. I was rambling. His eyes where glazing over. Frick with a trick and a tick... I had to do something. "...and then I said to him; well you just tell your mother..." okay, time for operation Shut Up. "and when she came back to me to tell me that I shouldn't..." I did the best thing I could do. I pretended like my mom was calling me on my cell phone. "Oh hey mom. Yeah I've got your fruit. No I don't need any kotex... mommm!" just keep going max... you're doing fine. "Okay, love you too mom. 'Bye." By this time I thought I might have to call 911, because this guy had fallen alseep, and by the looks of it was having a nasty dream. "Excuse me..." I asked quietly. "excuseeee meeeee" I singsonged to him. With a jerk he was awake, but had the buttons of the register emprinted on his face. "Huh...? Oh, sorry about that man. Hey has anyone ever told you that you talk like.... 90 miles an hour?"... yeah, they have. thanks. "Oh. yeah I get that alot. Lsten, I saw you reading Oprah, and I was wondering: are you gay or do you have a MILF fetish?" Again, the chardonay color. "Uhmmmm. Well I'm working on a small resume, and I get a kick out of reading the contributor's pages..." wow this was amazing. I had to know more, or at least let him know that he was not alone. "Oh my god! Me too!". I flipped through Details until five segments of people's faces came up, and we both let out a little sigh. At that moment, I knew we both wanted to be rght between the photograph of Ian Solotaroff and Peter Rubin. As we bonded over articles about anal and cheatng wives, I knew that if I wanted to make something out of myslef, that I was going to have to work, and work hard.
So now I go to bed, having shared my story of the Mystery Man and my day. Tomorrow will probably be the same as today, only hotter.
But until then: peace.