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feeling: sore
listening to: Utena - Missing Link
Today was a nifty day. Hugged my mommy twice and went to a big mother's day shendig at my daddy's parents' placeymabob. Which means I got to hang with Dumplin' for hours and hours. And a bonus... got to see my nephy too ^___^ I hardly ever get to see him anymore, now that my mom gets to watch him at least once prety much every week... but anyway. Had yummy food (cheesy hot dogs >:D hoohah!), wrestled with Dumpling over a bandana for 15 minutes, whooped her at Jet Moto 2 and Steel Reign (aibou, we must do that again X3), and for the most part avoided - and was avoided by the evil that is our demon spawn, torment of a cousin, whom we've dubbed Gaki. In fact, my dad (and me, kinda... hoo!) actually won a small battle against Gaki and her father, who's had the same history of being... well, unable to grow up... as the little brat has.
Ok, the story shall follow. Me and Dumplin always take our art folders and pencils to these dinners and sit around drawing together after the meal, right? Well, eventually we realize that our pencils - we only had one each - were missing. We suspected Gaki's father, because he has a habit of doing stuff like that and thinking it's funny long after it stops being funny. So, we went inside where he was with Gaki and my dad, screwing around on his computer, and we asked him if he knew where our pencils were. He said he didn't have them. So we turned and started to leave, and immediately he does this "Hehehehehhhh." thing, which of course means he thinks he's just pulled the funniest prank in history. So we turn back around, glare at him, and ask, "Where are they?" and he again says he doesn't have them. This goes back and forth a few times, and each time Gaki sticks her nose in and "My dad doesn't have them. My dad showed you. My dad didn't take your stupid. Stop bugging my dad. Leave us alone." Us...? Anywho, so we got sick of it and started to leave, but only after I told Gaki that nobody asked her to fight her dad's battles for him. So we left the room, while her dad is yelling at me for being nasty when his precious daughter didn't do anything "rude" to me. Dumpling and I rolled our eyes at each other, snorted, and just walked outside. Later Gaki's dad comes to the door and snappily informs us that he put our pencils in a flowerpot in some junkpile in the garage. We get them, sit down, and start drawing while everyone around picks on us for making a "fuss" over a couple pencils. Hey, they were all we had, and we wanted to draw. Besides that, mine alone cost me upwards of three bucks. Not your average pencil. But we shake off the raggings and sit around doodling, all the while knowing that Father of Gaki is going to be mad at me indefinitely for snapping at his perfect angel of a daughter. *rolls eyes* Luckily though, there were no problems for the rest of the afternoon. Not about that, at least. I'll make another paragraph about Gaki later. -_-
Anyway, this is what I learned on the way home from my dad, who as I mentioned was in the room with Gaki and her dad when this stuff went on, but didn't really say anything. He told me that after me and Dumplin' left, he and Father of Gaki went at it for a while about the whole thing. I was a little concered that my dad wasn't happy with me snapping at Gaki, but as it turns out, he was fully on our side. He and GakiDaddy went at it about how he'd taken the pencil thing too far, it stopped being funny after we came in and asked him for them, and of course, about how me and Dumpling exclude Gaki from our socialization. He doesn't seem to understand that I am almost 20 *shudder*, Dumpling is 15, and Gaki is 13 with the mentality of about an 8 year old. He also doesn't understand that me and Dumpling share a lot of interests, which is why we hang out on our own, and why Gaki doesn't join in. Why doesn't she? Because she doesn't share those interests, and because she sits there on the couch watching reruns of old stupid shows even after we actually invite her to come draw with us if she wants, and then when her shows go off the air she whines that we don't include her in anything. And of course, her dad takes her side, as does our grandma, who has custody of her. Everyone understands except Gaki, her daddy, and grandma. And NO ONE can make them understand, no matter how we try. Anyway, so my dad and Gaki's dad went at it for a while, Gaki's dad got up and left, came out and snippily told us where he'd put our pencils, then later went back and apologized to my dad, agreeing that he had been out of line when he bit my head off. But he still couldn't understand why we don't include Gaki in our socialization. We invite her, for crying out loud. But what he and grandma want us to do is dote on her, lavish her with attention, and cater to her every whim, just like they do. And we refuse to do that. Everyone understands this except them.
So, long story short... it was a minor battle, but my dad won. >:) He is good. Very good.
Now, I shall relate our experiences of the day to which Gaki contributed. First of all, my nephew (and his parents) arrived considerably late. And while some people were still eating, I overheard Gaki talking with her dad about how she was gonna pretty much claim the baby to herself for the duration. Which she always does, every single time she seems him, because no one dares stop her when grandma is around. Anyway, that ticked me off enough. Then, nephy and family did arrive, and I actually got to hang with him for some time, a good thing since I so rarely see him anymore. But some time later, Gaki did stake her claim, and brought him into her little 'bedroom' corner of the living room, where she laid him on her bed and started fussing over him like he belonged to her. Then my dad came in and picked him up, saying that Gaki had seen him more today than he had in weeks, which was true. Gaki of course has a hissy, saying he's lying, that she hasn't seen the kid for almost a year. So my dad, snorting, asks her how old he is. She ponders for a minute, then, in her snottiest, most know-it-all voice, says "almost a year". Dad laughs and says "Try four months." then starts to carry him off. And Gaki gets even madder: "I SAID almost! I said ALMOST a year!!" God help me, I could've slit my own throat then and there...
Oh, my nephy's five months old, by the way. ^_~ Which is still nowhere near a year, so yeah.
So, more Gaki adventures. She seems to think everything in that house, and indeed everything on our grandparents' property, belongs to her and is at her discretion. Dumpling and the lady who lives between her and grandma has several cats that theyfeed and care for, and Gaki claims them as her own, saying they're the "spirits of her cats who died years ago". Someone hurt me. Oh, along those lines... at our last family dinner, one of those cats, Sparky (formerly Rufus, the name I prefer :3), strolled in to visit us, and of course Gaki claimed he was hers now, calling him some stupid name like Patches or Freckles or something (he;s a solid black cat). Now, here's Sparky's story: late last year or thereabouts, Dumpling and a couple of her friends found Sparky as a tiny stray kitten, all alone in the city, and brought him to Dumpling's house, where her neighbor lady kinda took him in and called him Sparky. I hope I got that mostly right ^^;; but I do know that he was a kitten when he came here, and that was not many months ago. So on Easter, when Gaki claimed him as her own, me and Dumpling challenged her by asking her how old the cat was. Or who his mother was, or something. She pondered it, and replied that he'd been there when she moved to Ohio, three years ago. Me and Dumpling start laughing and inform her that he's less than a year old. She gets extremely hissy, stomping around and yelling and declaring that we're wrong and she's right. Then, to prove that the cat is "hers", she pickt him up, sets him on the table, and starts singing. (that's another thing: she thinks she's the best singer this side of the Mississip.) So the cat perks his ears up at her screechy singing voice, which is enough to convince her that he responds only to her and that, therefore, he's hers. Then, I simply snap my fingers and Sparky comes right to me. Dumpling, her brother, and Steen, my kinda-step-nephew, do the same, with success. He is a friendly cat with sensitive ears, as cats go, and that is why he looked at Gaki when she "sang". But of course, there's no telling her this. The kid is thirteen years old, for God's sake.
Anyway, back to the present. As I mentioned, Gaki thinks everything on grandma's property belongs to her, including her father's Playstation and many games. She has a couple goldfish too, which i>are actually hers, but they sit in the middle of the living room. Well, Dumpling was looking at thefish, running her finger along the side of the take as they followed it, and Gaki snapped at her, telling her not to play with her fish, that she trained them. Trained them to follow her finger and take food from her hand, etc. Which even if it WAS true is still a stupid reason to tell Dumpling she wasn't allowed to look at them. Besides that... my Mitsu follows my finger along his vase and jumps to grab food from my hand, but I didn't have to train him to do it. Fish are pigs. They eat like pigs. They'll do what it takes to get food. Deal with it. But of course, again, there's no telling her this. And the final adventure: me, Dumpling, and Steen played Jet Moto 2 for a while, then paused it to say bye to Steen and my nephew (and his parents), who were leaving. We came back, and Gaki and her father had stolen our game. We didn't mind, though. In fact, soon, GakiDaddy got tired of it and left to get some ice cream or something. So me and Dumpling sat down to play some more, and Gaki got up and said "I think that's enough Playstation for now", which was supposed to be a cue for us to leave it alone. She also throws out that it's been left on for long enough; any longer and it'll get messed up. It couldn't have been turned on longer than an hour. I've had mine running for ELEVEN hours, for crying out loud. She just didn't want us to play her (her dad's, actually) games. Wanted to be our boss and the like. But of course we didn't listen, and started playing Steel Reign while she went to whine to her daddy, which didn't work. Five minutes later she comes back, and gets huffy because she wasn't done playing. We remided her that she said she was. She said she'd only left to go eat some dessert. We reminded her taht she hadn't eaten, only whined to her daddy. She said she hadn't eaten yet and was just about to. In which case, she wouldn't have been ready to play again. So we tell her to go ahead and eat while we play. She stomps off, having failed again in her effort to rule the world, while I kick Dumplin's butt at Steel Reign. *cackle* Then after a few rounds I had to leave and twas all over for the moment.
I hope this gives you non-Cottrills some idea of how ridiculously torturous this cousin of ours is, how mentally immature she is, and how her father and grandma refuse to change anything about the way they raise her, evidently thinking she's no less than a perfect angel. She has no manners, she is rude, she is possessive, she is snotty, she is selfish, she thinks the world lives to serve her... and so do they. Guess what, grandma? She's not in Arizona anymore. She was deprived while she was there, but those days are over. It's been THREE YEARS. She doesn't need to be spoiled utterly rotten anymore. She needs to be raised like any other kid her age. Though she acts eight, she's thirteen. Of course, her dad had a bit of a slow mentality as a child too... still does, really... he never did grow up (evidence: the pencil thing). Sad things is he thinks he did. Pretty much the same with Gaki... she thinks she's thirteen, but acts like she's eight. Her dad lives with grandma and doesn't really plan to ever move... he even rented an apartment last year, but almost immediately ran back to Mommy's house to be with his daughter. Yet he won't actually try to get custody of his daughter and take her to live with him, much as he wants to be with her. Makes no sense.
The ultimate truth is that Gaki is tearing our family apart. We were all quite happy before she came along. Now it's building up inside of every last one of us... we all want to tell grandma that she's not rasing Gaki the way she should be, but no one dares, for fear of her wrath. And I mean WRATH. That woman is just as spoiled as Gaki - once she makes up her mind, not a soul can stop her, nor do they dare to try. But one day someone's not gonna be able to take it anymore. One day Gaki's going to push someone to the edge, and someone's going to blow up, thus severing that someone's family's ties with our grandparents, thus severing our family. It's already happened a few times, but not major... Dumpling's parents had some fights with grandma, my dad had a spat or two with grandma (and GakiDaddy), I've had to snap a Gaki a few times, as has Dumpling... those were tiny though. One day it's not going to be so tiny. Last weekend I actually had a dream that we had one of these family dinners, and in it I told Gaki off bigtime. I mean BIGTIME. Then after a few days I found out we were having a Mother's Day dinner, and I was worried that it'dbe kinda bad omen. Cause every time we go there, something like this happens. Today the pencil thing/my being snapped at. Easter, the cat ordeal. It's something different every time. it's only going to get worse unless something is done. But there's nothing positive that can be done at this point. It's gonna take someone blowing up. That won't help things, it'll destroy things. And there'll be permanent grudges, and the family will just tear to shreds. See why no one dares stand up to grandma? It's one of those neverending cycles. -_-
*sigh*
It feels good to rant. But now my fingers are extremely sore because 1) I've typed too much and 2) me and Dumplin's wrestling match over the bandana essentially destroyed my knuckles. But hers were the same, so it's all good. XD
I'm going to go watch Utena now. Then do homework. Double sigh.
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 5/12/2002 10:30:00 PM
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