I don’t understand anymore…

A.B. says that people who write blogs, forced or not, should tell stories from their lives to entertain the people of the internet. The problem I’ve always had with this is, one, who, really, wants to hear my real life stories? They’re rarely anything super interesting when the whole world of fiction is out there to see. And, two, I don’t alway believe they’re true. Embellishment is too easy. Mostly, I believe that stories on the internet are creative nonfiction.

So, here’s mine.

I’ve been running off about three hours of sleep today. Normally, I’d blame being a student on this, though I’m usually good at going to bed at a sensible time. Last night, I couldn’t sleep too well and, as it got to about midnight, one of my housemates came home. Drunk. With her boyfriend. As I feared, their drunken chatter soon turned into a loud argument that I did my best to tune out since today was my longest day, with a 9am start. So, it got to about one and I was half asleep, waking up a little whenever they were being extra loud in the room next to mine. Then things get bad.

Imagine being so close to sleep that your brain is completely fogged and you’re comfortable and warm, then you hear terrifyingly loud banging from the room next door. That’s what I woke up to. I bolted up in my bed and listened. More banging. Then my housemate started screaming for help. I’m actually almost proud of the fact that, as this happened, I jumped out of bed and ran for the door. Not sure exactly what I thought I could do if she was being attacked by her giant of a boyfriend, but I was going to do something. I ran around to her room and opened the door, then attempted to pull the boyfriend away from her. Didn’t do much except get told to ‘f**k off’ by him, but I tried. Anyway, he was then kicked out and A.B. and our other housemate emerged to see what the hell was going on and why everyone was screaming. We managed to calm down our shaken housemate and ourselves. Talking later to A.B and my other housemate (who has just told me to call her Lee, as that’s easier) they told me they were less worried about the one who had been attacked and more concerned about the fact I was standing with them unable to stop myself from shaking. My knees were shaking the most. It was weird. They also said that if the boyfriend had hurt me when I went to try save our housemate, he would have been leaving the house on a stretcher. It made me feel terribly loved.

Anyway, as weird as all that was, it got stranger. The housemate called the boyfriend’s ex, who’s pregnant with his baby, and started talking about him, laughing, while the boyfriend was whimpering on the other side of our front door. Then, she let him back into the house to argue with him some more before they retreated back to her bedroom to argue even more than that. We were not overly impressed, considering we were waiting up to find out what was going on in the downstairs bedroom and no one stopped in to tell us anything.

It was about four in the morning before we got to bed. The same bed. Since upstairs was still a mass of shouting, we camped in the downstairs bedroom for the remainder of the night. We are all extremely tired and, for some reason, the boyfriend is still in the house.

I’m so exhausted, people of the internet, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t focus on anything. Not reading. Not writing. Music is helping a little, as is this, I must confess, and I know A.B. will crow about that when we’re all a little better. This just feels like I’ve fictionalised what happened. Like it wasn’t real. So, now, I can finally relax. My everything hurts.

Goodnight, Internet people.

Sandra.

Ok, I’m back now…

A.B. says I should apologise for being too insane to blog the other day but it is rather demoralising that people doing my degree don’t have a clue what to do once the course is over. Well, some do, and then there’s me. The career people look at you kind of funny if you tell them you simply want to be a novelist. ‘That’s not a viable career plan.’ I know that, please don’t crush my dreams. The common theme with the people in my house, two writers and one other, look to the future with both joy and despair. Looking forward to no more university, dreading being out there in the world. Like a real person.

Problem is, I cannot imagine having a job. Looking on the websites did nothing. I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and get on with life, but I don’t have to be happy about it.

Oh, people of the internet, life is getting closer and I’m so not prepared.

Sandra.

A.B. Sandra was crazy all of yesterday too. Laughing randomly. I’m glad she’s back. She can be sort of scary normally. Mad, she’s terrifying.

Writers are odd people…

A.B here today. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to get Sandra to write anything coherent because she’s been laughing hysterically for quite some time and I don’t know how to make her stop. All she did was type ‘jobs for cre-‘ and start laughing as ‘jobs for creative writing graduates’ came up in the suggested list. I don’t know if she thinks this is funny or terribly sad.

Glad I’m not a writer.

A.B.

This will never happen again…

So, A.B. isn’t in my room telling me to do this. She’s not actually in the house right now. I’m in someone else’s room doing work. Or, that’s what I’m meant to be doing. But, I have a killer headache and writer’s block right now. Which isn’t helped by the fact that my fellow writer and housemate starts to glare at me whenever I stop typing. So, seriously, this is to kill two birds with one stone. To her, it looks like I’m actually working and it means that, when A.B. gets back, I can tell here that I’ve already updated you, good people of the internet, on the mundane existence that is my life.

But, erm, nothing has actually happened to me since last time. Maybe this wasn’t as good an idea as I thought.

Sorry, internet people.

Sandra.

P.s. I guess I’ll have to figure out the tabs too. Really, not a good idea.

Apparently I’m supposed to be sorry…

A.B. is very cross with me because I haven’t posted in a few days. She says I must apologise to the good people of the internet who have been waiting for me to give them the exciting updates of my truly mundane life. I think she must have gone insane while I wasn’t looking. But, here I am again with her perched on the end of my bed like some demented grotesque (that’s the thing that people call gargoyles) making me type this instead of allowing me peace to continue with my coursework. Ah, well. A break is a break. Even if it still means I’m staring at a computer screen.

So, she says I must tell you of my Friday and Saturday. Don’t get your hopes up that I went out to any wild parties. I mean, some weird stuff happened, but nothing spectacular.

Right. Friday. It was poetry day. Early morning, went to the library to get some craft text quotes for the poetry essay I should be writing right now. I spend more than four hours doing that with little success, going slowly mad as a bunch of random people gave me contradicting instructions on how a poem should be written. And, with all that in my head, I left the library, only to have to go to my poetry class. And was then told to go back to the library, along with the rest of my class, and get a book of poems for us to play with for the rest of the lesson. Things got weird after that. Our teacher said we were to try our hand at writing a political manifesto to a tune of his choice. Which happened to be the opening theme song to the Tweenies. (If you don’t know what that is then please, for your own sanity, don’t look it up. It’s one of those bizarre programmes for children.) The other class, that can hear through the walls, must have thought we’d all gone insane.

That was Friday. Saturday I took the day off. No work. Not even a little. A.B. is gasping at me as I tell her this. I may hit her in a second. At least I was awake. She didn’t surface until four in the afternoon.

Sigh. At least term is nearly over. This month cannot end fast enough.

Until A.B. forces me to do this again, people of the internet.

Sandra.

A.B. I rule this blog with an iron hand. Muhahahaha.

I thought I was safe…

Thursday is the day A.B. and I usually don’t see much of each other on. I have an early start and she has a late one, so we’re out of the house at different times. I thought I was safe. I thought I wouldn’t have to do this today and would be able to work hard all afternoon, get some food and relax for the evening. She stormed into my room ten minutes ago, hair and face wild due to the stormy winds outside and told me to get on the internet. She looked so frightening that I didn’t hesitate. She’s telling me to tell you about my day.

So, woke up at four and thought that a monster was trying to break through the wall, the wind was that bad. Then realised the recycling was being collected and the boxes were at the mercy of the elements. I was too late. When I got there, there was nothing but blue shards of plastic. The council is sending us some new ones.

Had a nine am lesson this morning with another of the girls at the house, to we braved the elements to get there as our teacher had sent everyone an email about how important the lesson would be. We weren’t allowed to miss it unless we were highly infectious. Annoyingly, we were both in perfect health so had no excuse. So, we made it to our four-hour lesson, all the while worried we’d get attacked by flying recycling boxes, and played with a game making system. (Our class on Thursdays is Writing for Digital games.) Everyone left the class with an unnatural hatred of chickens, since we were making a chicken catching quest in our games and it was the hardest thing we’d ever had to do. We’re having chicken tonight.

We braved the weather some more to go into town briefly and visit the council office for more boxes, then finally collapsed back home. I’ve never been so physically and mentally tired. And now I’ve had to do this.

I feel like crying.

My advent calendar chocolate was a deformed snowman.

Bye, internet people.

Sandra.

A.B. I am not scary.

I have too much work to be doing this too…

She’s in my room again telling me to tell the internet everything that happened to me today. Like they want to know. Because, according to her, going to a writing class full of other weird writer people must generate thousands of brilliant, real life stories. I only have a few.

So, as A.B. correctly believes, most writers are weird. Today, I was sitting quietly eating lunch when another of the students from my year sat in an available seat two away from me. I vaguely know her so smiled when she walked in but made no move to make conversation. She started looking through her bag for something anyway so I just kept eating and not thinking for a little while. Until she started talking. I looked up and she was talking to a book. For a while. I thought, briefly, she might have been talking to me and tried to reply to a question she posed, but she looked at me like I was crazy. Who knows, I agreed to this, after all, so maybe I am.

I thought someone was following me home today, since I had to walk back alone and had, during class, written a brief story about that very subject. That was fun.

A.B. is glaring at me. I should write a story about her. She’ll end up on the news sometime soon, I reckon. With a reward for any information that will lead to her capture.

She’s practicing her evil laugh. Now all I need is the neighbours to call the police.

I’m going to knock her out with a hardback and get back to work now.

Bye, people of the internet.

Sandra.

A.B. I’m not crazy. The voices are.

This was a bad idea…

I think it might be time to call the police. It’s day two and A.B is in my room again, saying I need to update the blog. I guess she’s forgotten the once every other day part of the deal.

Oh, hang on, apparently that’s for once I’m established. Until then, as often as I have time. I think I might cry. It’s too early for this. Even I know that the internet people aren’t up this early unless they’re still awake. Actually, I think this is the first time I’ve seen A.B. up so early when there’s no class to get up for. It looks like I was her first call of the morning. There’s no sign she’s groomed herself or even gone to the bathroom at all. I think she might have problems if forcing me to blog is the first thing on her mind in the morning.

So, she says I need to tell you something interesting. Only thing is, nothing has happened to me since the last time she made me do this. But, she is refusing to leave unless I do something.

Damn her.

Alright. I got up at eight this morning because I thought the builders were back. No offence to most builders but the ones who have been working on the walls here are complete jerks. When they turn up, it’s always before eight and they make a point to be as noisy as possible, throwing bits of scaffolding about and swearing bloody murder. It isn’t pleasant to wake up to. Especially on what’s meant to be a lie in day. Luckily, it wasn’t the builders, it was another, now nocturnal, housemate making her tea before going off to bed. The only time we see her now is early morning or late night. I do not envy her when she has to get her sleeping pattern worked out.

That’s not enough apparently. She says I should tell you my dream.

Dreams are always weird, as far as I’m concerned. Last night, I was nearly sacrificed to something or other by Jennifer Saunders. Who had a cat and a platypus. I think I got away. Other than that, I walked down some steps to the bottom of the grand canyon and got attacked by spiders. Not that odd of a night, really. (P.s. I have actually met Jennifer Saunders and I don’t think she’s the type to sacrifice anyone so I have no idea where I got that from.)

A.B. seems to be curling up to go back to sleep at the bottom of my bed right now. I guess that means I’ve done enough. I think I might have to start apologising for these posts, they can’t be good reading. I’ll try to make her stop this soon. Maybe bribe her with chocolate. That usually works.

Good morning.

Sandra.

A.B. here, and I’m not sleeping. I was pretending to be a cat for a moment.

Bye from me too. A.B. X

Apparently, I have to do this…

My friend just walked right back into my room and is currently glaring at me. She says she won’t leave until I do another post, because, apparently, the first few days I have to do it more often for more view. I assume that means that more people will look at this and, though it doesn’t matter much to me, she seems to think it does.

I don’t know why, but sometimes it feels like I’m in some kind of weird abusive relationship with her. Not in a bad way, most of the time, I know she’s trying to help me and all, but this is getting a little odd now. I wish I’d never agreed to this. It didn’t seem like it would be too much extra writing work until about five minutes ago.

A.B. say hello. She told me to type this since I don’t know what else to put right now.

I think I might end this here now and start writing something else. She never needs to know. And, if you’re reading this now A.B. I still hate this. So much.

Ok, so she caught me and my plan was stupid anyway. She says to tell you about my day. Boy, that’s interesting for all concerned. (There needs to be a sarcasm font.)

Alright then, I was up for seven as I somehow got the job of an unpaid alarm clock for everyone else in my house. I have to go round knocking on doors and only function as a snooze button once. A.B says it’s weird to wake up to someone at the door whispering ‘Do you want me to wake you up or go away.’ And then they get mad at me when I do as they say and leave them alone.

Tip: Never trust sleepy people.

Right. I guess the next thing was to walk to University.

A.B. says that was too boring. Fine. We have to walk across a hospital car park and, when winter starts to set in, that place could be part of Silent Hill. Luckily, I wasn’t alone this morning and A.B. was walking with me. Even if this was all she talked about this morning.

Apparently I’m not allowed to end it here. So, university. Teachers were picketing at the gate. They’ve raised the student fees so of course the teachers want more money. We sort of found it funny since there were only two teachers there all day. (But only because one of those teachers is completely awful. We had to sit with her on the train and make awkward conversation once.)

Fiction. That was fun. Only five students and our teacher there. We read out stories and, by the time we got to mine, I was rather nervous about my work.

A.B. just said to stop being stupid. But she wasn’t there. She didn’t here the story before mine. Sigh.

My stomach hurts and I don’t want to do this post anymore.

Bye. Again, I guess.

Sandra.

A.B. can do the stupid tags.

A.B. here. Sorry about Sandra being so gloomy today. She’s overtired and trying to write two novels at once which, as far as I can see, is a bad idea. I think I might have interrupted her while she was on a roll. My bad.

Anyway, thank you for reading if you made it this far. I’ll convince her yet.

Until next time. A.B.

Wish I wasn’t here…

Let me get this straight. I hate blogging. I don’t read blogs. Don’t care about blog. And I most certainly do not write blogs. But, my friend who loves all things blog (that somehow doesn’t sound right) said that if I can keep up a blog for a month, and haven’t changed my mind about how awful blogs are, then we’re going to the cinema with her footing the bill.
So. Here you go. My first post. Well done me.
I hate this so much.
Bye.

Sandra.

Ps. My dear friend, who seems to be calling herself A.B. for some reason, says that a writer should explore every aspect of the life of text, which I agree with totally, but, as you’ll find out if you stick around past this post, there is a damn good reason I hate blogs. I can’t write them for the life of me. A.B. has just told me that this is the exact reason I should be writing them. I guess she has a point. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Bye again.

She says I need to do tags now. I don’t know what they are. This is going to be longer than NaNoWriMo.