The worst thing is that my life isn't all hilarious. In fact, when I'm not tripping over myself, it's quite serious.

Numero dos:

My family is a ridiculous bunch. They make jokes and drink beer and sing songs to cats and dogs. My mother wrote an entire song about "hippopotamus fights." It had at least five full verses. My father's specialty is really terrible joke-telling. A favorite tidbit is playing tricks on my eight-year-old cousin Noah. When I was a kid, my mother used to babysit my three cousins daily. From sun-up to sun-down. It gave us a lot of time with these kids and during the summers my father would always ask Noah how school was, knowing very well that Noah didn't have school. "Good," Noah always replied nonchalantly and then my father would make whatever "hey gotcha" noises he could think of. As loudly as he could muster. "Ahhhh! I can't believe you fell for it again!"

Just a ridiculous group of people, but the strangest most unexpected part about my family is that we deal with a lot of serious shit. A lot, a lot. I could name ten kids right now who my family has attempted to save from lousy home lives. And I'm not just talking about conversing with these kids. My best friend Alexis nearly moved in with my family in the beginning of sophomore year because her crappy parents decided to unexplainably move all eight children down to Florida. My mother painted the room a soothing shade of lavender and bought a big wooden "A" from wherever Better Homes suggested. My parents put their hearts and souls into that room and I mean that in the least gay way possible. And then, once Alexis had been moved in for a week, her father came and essentially kidnapped his own daughter. Since then she's really not better. She's much, much worse. For reasons I can't explain on the internet.

I don't know if it's a trade off or if it's a fact of life, but even with my selfless parents and cozy home, my life is stock-piled with shitty situations. Sure, I am never TECHNICALLY in one of these situations, but I watch kid after kid after kid be used, abused, neglected and just generally knocked down again and again and again. This was why my parents nearly adopted foster child Jay. Nearly. He left a few days ago. For good. He finally pushed my parents to the place where they couldn't return from.

It's just so unbelievable sometimes. Meeting kids like myself who have totally healthy home lives is such a refreshing surprise when it happens.

I'm not going to pretend that my life isn't hilarious most of the time. I got some wonderful stories up my sleeve friends, but I guess all I can say is that life is most certainly NOT black and white. And trashy teen novels, more importantly, anything written by Meg Cabot is generally shallow and one-sided. All you hear about when you read these books are encounters from generally "unfortunate" girls with "super hot" teenage boys with dirty blond hair and sunkissed skin. The unfortunate girl always trips or says something embarassing in front of the boy and it's always the end of the world.

Why is that?

That's why this is real. My teen novel, if I decide to write one, will be about real situations that are funny and are unfortunate, but always have real understandably serious situations mixed between. It's important to have the balance. I mean, I don't want to sound like shallow drunken whore every second of my life, do you?