I escaped!

 I have escaped from my first ever job: running the hook-a-duck stall. The good news is, I managed to talk to every single person who approached me (I hate talking to people who I don't know). Some were more polite than others. And here is a list of the things that went wrong:

• I think about 70% of the people ran off without taking their change.
• Two kids, in quick succession, handed me five-pound notes. I ran out of change.
• Then the lady on the stall next to me asked to borrow some change from me. I HAD NONE.
• One kid thought that the prize was the duck, and had a tantrum when I didn't let him take the duck home.
• Most kids didn't talk at all.
• I had to keep trying to catch the eye of people standing there holding money, because it was too noisy to try and get their attention.
• The woman on the shift after mine was late; I spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at the clock.
• The guy selling tickets on the door is my neighbour, so I stopped to chat with him and then a family arrived thinking that I was the one selling tickets. Oops...

 Apart from that it was fine! I especially liked it when one mother told her kid to 'give the money to the lady' (I'm 13). I also found it amusing that a lot of kids were afraid of me. Gone is the time of me shuffling from stall to stall being afraid of each cashier person. Now it's my turn to be the scary one!

 

 My mum has finished stressing about the Christmas Fayre, and is now stressing about a concert that her choir is giving. She evidently doesn't believe in taking life easy. So everyone else now had to take an active role in running the house: I went shopping and Marmalade is currently making a lasagne - she's a girl of many talents. She's just perfected the technique of using makeup to make herself look like a zebra, and I'm telling the truth here - it's for a GCSE art project, don't ask.

 

 My mum being out means we can have 3-hour TV marathons in peace. :) Looking forward to a lazy night in.



Alimonsoon the elf

  I'm home alone tonight: my dad's at work, my mum's at the small peoples' school organising the Christmas Fayre and all my siblings are at my Gran's house. I stayed late at school doing art so I missed the chance to go to Gran's; instead I cycled home in the dark and then went to the school to be a little elf and help my mum. Then I went to the school again. It was quite awkward - I walked all around the school trying to find a way in, but it was all locked from the inside so I went back home to find my phone to ring my mum to get her to let me in.

  That challenge overcome, I set up the elf stall and sorted out some presents, and discovered that there is no comfortable way to carry three crates of presents to Santa's grotto. (It was actually the first time I'd ever seen inside the grotto - it was always to expensive. It was disappointing.) I always help out at the Fayre. I clear up afterwards: recycling the raffle tickets has always been my special job. Last year I helped out in the craft room. The year before, I sorted out the change at 'Pin the nose on the reindeer'. This year, I asked if she wanted me to help, and she said that they desperately needed someone to run the Hook-a-duck stall.

 O_O

Hook-a-duck is my FAVOURITE game. How weird! It's such a strange dream to come true.

 Eventually I went home to eat burnt toast and sardines, with cheese and a cup of strawberry juice, and then I ate a satsuma and a biscuit. Some people, when they're home alone, throw a wild party where everyone gets drunk and breaks stuff. No, thank you! I'd prefer to burn some toast and eat a satsuma.

 My Drops of Jupiter project will have to wait because the program I'm using SUDDENLY DIED, and my dad says he can fix it but that'll take a while. So that's on hold right now.

 As for the crazy pirate story, it's coming on very well - we just need to work on a few scenes. I spent my music lesson drawing a pirate with an emo fringe.

 Random otter fact: The otter is a member of the weasel family.

Update on Stuff

 I remembered to eat my lunch today. Admittedly, the pirate story is taking over my life. Megan took me along to a meeting of the school newspaper, which she does drawings for, and I would gladly have contributed something to an article because I love writing, but nobody asked me to so I just did some more sketches for the pirate story.

  Marmalade's told me a few scenes that she wants to include, but if she's not careful Megan and I will end up writing the story. We have so many ideas.

  I also have a lot of homework, but that's not important.

  Yeah, nothing else remotely interesting happened today. Small Person #2 keeps on showing me his Lego models. There is a rule that he's not allowed to talk to me when I'm Working (blogging obviously counts as Work) but he keeps trying to find a loophole ... As for Small Person #1, she's being a child prodigy as always and her design for the program of her Christmas play got selected. At least she's stopped with the trumpet.

 She used to be in a choir as well, and I will say this for her: she's better at singing than she is on the trumpet. That's all I'll say.

 The Christmas Fayre which my mum is single-handedly organising is on Saturday, and all I can say is THANK GOODNESS. There will be no more tasks. In the past week I have designed some elves, wrapped up a million lucky dip presents, made a display of prizes, gone round sticking up posters for a competition and done the ironing while my mum ran up some stockings on her sewing machine. Can't wait till it's over.

 Guides tonight. Not sewing this time.

 Random elephant fact: I like this one. A plant in the African savannah, which is a favourite food of elephants, has developed a coating so thick that it can survive being digested by an elephant. However, now the coating is so thick that the plant's seeds can't germinate unless they've been digested by an elephant. So weird...

The crazy pirate story, featuring cookies

 We have LOADS of new ideas for the pirate story. Megan and I were talking about it at lunch break. I had my ideas page out and was doing rough sketches for scenes, until the bell went for lessons and I realised I hadn't actually eaten my lunch. I'm so intelligent :). Anyway, I showed Megan my ideas for scenes and she agreed that they were OK, and she showed me some more sketches of characters that she'd done last night. Megan and I invented a sub-plot and confronted Marmalade with it and Marmalade agreed to include it yay!
 The sub-plot is all about cookies.

 Marmalade was telling me last night about all the dark, foreboding stuff that she'd thought of, and Megan is all about the ridiculous, funny/ cute, romantic scenes. They're an interesting partnership... Megan and I decided that cookies, made by Roger the little ginger girl, are the one weakness of a certain character. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the plot's coming together, but it looks like it will one day, which is promising...

 Oooooh, it's Thursday tomorrow. Will I do any sewing? Time will tell.

 Random fish fact: One species of catfish, which lives in fast-flowing rivers, prevents itself from being swept away by anchoring itself to the ground with its lips. Bleugh.

The crazy pirate story

 My crazy friend Megan, my sister Marmalade and I have been challenged to make a comic book. I've shown you some of my drawings and I love doing stories too; Megan and Marmalade are kind of the same, although Marmalade has more of a problem with writing her story ideas because she's always doing something else, like her nails. Megan does sweet manga love stories - her favourite is Romeo and Juliet - so she kept suggesting sweet manga-ish storylines and we had to yell at her a few times.

 Anyway, we had a heated discussion and ended up settling on the idea of a vengeful pirate. Megan insisted that the pirate captain employ twin crew members called Jolly and Roger (not their real names); Marmalade adopted the character Roger and made her into a little ginger girl who works in the galley, and I took on Jolly and made him be a depressed boy with an emo fringe. He's the lookout but they have to check up on him occasionally to make sure he hasn't jumped out of the crow's nest. You can really see why they call him Jolly. There may be something wrong with me: I love creating depressing characters. But he ends up happy in the end! I also have to draw the evil king. Megan's characters are the female pirate captain and her love interest.

 As for the plot, we eventually settled on a vague outline of what happens (Megan and Marmalade clashed over ideas a lot) and I've been scribbling down some ideas for individual scenes. Now I just have to convince the others to use my ideas!

Random bird fact: Flocks of chaffinches have been known to fly as high as 4000ft.

The random fact challenge

 For the past few posts I've been signing off by giving a random fact at the end. My challenge is that I can get these facts from anywhere EXCEPT the internet. If I don't manage to think of a random fact without going on the internet, I FAIL. Let's see how long I can go for.

 Here's a random fact for today.

 Random rabbit fact: Because rabbits eat grass they need to digest the leaves for a long time to break down the cellulose. So they digest the food twice, by eating their own droppings.

Posting out of boredom

 Having a break from writing my essay on the Russian Revolution...

 My day yesterday mostly featured my siblings. Activities included chasing Small Person #2 around the house pretending to be a ninja and arguing with Marmalade over how to teach Small Person #1 to knit. She's eight and we're the sort of family where every female over that age has to know how to knit. I was listening to Marmalade trying to teach her and at one point I was actually sprawled on the floor laughing because she was failing so badly. Next week is the Christmas Fayre at the small peoples' primary school, and my mother is organising it single-handedly - our house is now full of elves and laminated signs and lucky dip presents. Marmalade's just announced that she wants to dye her hair ginger, and I think that's all the news at the moment.

  If life throws you lemons, duck.

 Random bird fact: Road runners in the Arizona deserts give their chicks water which they produce inside their own stomachs.