This diary entry is part 21 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

I saw a TORNADO today!!!

We were supposed to get some severe storms, and around 6, a storm came through.  Not much rain or lightning, but suddenly, a TORNADO.  It went roaring by!! It was scary!!! Whirling and roaring and scaring people!!!

Well, some people.  Some were in their driveway with their phone.  Smh.

Anyway, it caused a lot of damage.  Flipped trucks and cars, destroyed buildings, trees and power lines down… But I’m okay!!! I’m okay!!!

But I’m a little sad.

It seems this is just a bad week.

I don’t want to talk about much else today.

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 22 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!!!

That tornado yesterday was all over the national news – it was a big deal.  It started at an intersection of two major highways and then shot northeastward.  There’s a lot of damage.  Some houses were flattened.  Aww.

Dave took everyone he could spare and went around seeing if anyone needed help cutting up trees or with light construction work.  Some things were just too big and he told the homeowners to let insurance pay for it, but things like flattened fences or things like that he helped set as right as he could.  That was nice of him.  Sabby told us we’re going to be volunteering as well, as soon as we know where to volunteer and what’s needed.  I guess everyone needs to pitch in, right?

But today we learned about tornadoes.  They’re actually really interesting.  It’s amazing what forms out of just air, water, and heat.  And they’re pretty powerful, too!!!  Next time I see a thunderstorm I’m going to try to see some of the stuff I learned about!

This Friday is Beth’s birthday.  I love Beth.  I really do.  Even though she was mean to me for a year, she got over it, and now she’s such a good little sister, even if she gets jealous sometimes and acts like a…  well, a jerk, if we’re going to be honest about it.  But she knows it too, it’s not like I’m talking behind her back.  She’s got a mean and a jealous streak, and she’s really, really terrible about it.  But she’s not a bad person.  Just knows what she wants and never apologizes for it.  But I have to get her a present.  I don’t know what to get her!!! She’s not easy to shop for.  But I do have an idea.  Maybe it’s time I make use of my shiny new Amazon account.

I’m going to be reworking this diary soon.  My tech friend slapped it together to help me get something out – and I’m sooo glad he did!  But I think it’s time to take it to the next level, now that I know how to do some of the tech stuff I didn’t before.  So look for amazing wonderfulness!!!  Or something.

Allison’s mother isn’t feeling well.  Awww.  I hope she feels better!

Love you all!!! ❤

And watch out for tornadoes!!!

This diary entry is part 23 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

So today there was no school.  The city told us what they needed and where to drop it off, so we trundled over to the local hardware store (it actually was hit by the tornado, but the worst that happened was a bunch of grills got thrown around) and picked up stuff like tarps, work gloves, etc.  Then we went over to the baseball field where they were taking donations and dropped it all off.  After that, we went around to see if anyone needed help with tree branches and stuff.

Most houses just had a little damage, but some were… in very bad shape.  Not just knocked over fences, but some houses were pretty much goners.  Sad.  But we did what we could.  The city put dumpsters out and we helped put some of the debris in.  It wasn’t much, but we did what we could.  Around lunchtime we went to the grocery store and got lots of water and ready made sandwiches, and handed them out to the first responders and city crews, who seemed to appreciate the gesture, anyway.

We got home in the evening and Dave ordered pizza.  I think he wanted to do grilling but we were all tired, and Dave said we deserved pizza.  Beth didn’t even complain at all.  I guess she figured that it was better than school, and like I said, she’s not a bad girl, just doesn’t take anything off people.

Anyway, Dave got a call from the pastor later in the evening, and turns out that a family was looking for a temporary place to stay, having been displaced by the storm.  We didn’t have room for a lot of people, but it was a single mother and her daughter, so after discussing it, they said we’d take them in for a few days while they talked to insurance and figured out what to do.

Anyway, they came over with a few things.  The mother was a youngish middle aged hispanic woman named Maria, and her daughter was a girl about Beth’s age named Diana.  Of course neither of them were happy about the situation, but we made them as comfortable as we could.  Their house was repairable, but there were holes in it and it couldn’t be lived in until contractors could come and fix it.  Aww.  We fed them leftover pizza and settled them in with the couch.  The couch isn’t awful at all.  Like I said when Crystal stayed over that first time, heck, I’d sleep on it, it’s mega comfy.  They still have their car, it only sustained minor damage, so there’s that.

I guess they’ll move into a hotel when one becomes available, but things are a bit booked up right now, as you can imagine.

Tomorrow night when the girls come over, we’ll include Diana too.  After all, while she’s here, she’s family.

My first impressions of Diana is, she’s sweet, but a bit fiery.  She’s short, a little shorter than Beth, with curly, black hair and a brownish complexion.  Kind of like Beth, actually, they look somewhat similar in that way.  But Diana’s features are more hispanic where Beth’s are a bit more like Sabby.  She’s not mean by any means, but she’s not too happy with the situation (obviously) and isn’t shy about saying how she feels.  But it’s more matter of fact than anything, she’s not lashing out like Beth probably would.  I think we’ll get along, but she needs to get to get to know us first.  And the other way around.

Okay well we’re going to introduce Diana to the joys of hair brushing now, and get to know her a little.  Maybe we’re not best friends yet, but if she’s going to be living with us for a while, we might as well get along, right?

Oh!  My present for Beth arrived while we were gone!! I love Amazon!!!

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 24 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

So this morning I went off for a run, and when I got back, Maria had gone to work and Diana had gone to school.  Sabby decided that everything was well in hand, as far as debris cleanup went, so we headed off to the temporary shelter to see if we could be of any help there.  They had that well in hand too, so we went off and at least got some snacks for everyone.  They seemed appreciated.

After we got home, we studied some more, and then Diana came back home.  After we did our schooling, we spent a little time getting to know her.  She seems like a nice kid.  I don’t think she’s as smart as Beth or Crystal or Liz, but she’s pretty good at cooking!!!  Much better than me and Beth!  Sabby let her make a Mexican dinner, and she knocked it out of the park!!!  So yummy!!!  Maria came home and we all ate.  Diana explained that sometimes she’d come home and her mother was still at work, so she made dinner.  Seems like they have a bit of a tough life.

Well, a tornado doesn’t make it any better.

The NWS just released their assessment of the tornado – it was almost an EF-3!!  Peak winds of 135mph!  Wow!!!

So we’re going to watch a movie.  We asked Maria what her favorite movie is.  She liked Spanglish.  I just checked back and we watched it on October 22 (this diary is handy sometimes!) and that’s when Liz confronted her parents, and that led directly to my meeting Jack and… well… Spanglish changed my life!!!  I should tell Maria that!!!

Beth’s birthday is tomorrow!!!  We’re having a party after Diana gets home from school!  Crystal and Liz and Diana and even Mika and Aika will be there!!!  It’ll be fun!!!  And we’ll all sleep over too!!! It’ll be a HUGE girl-pile!!!  Sorry jack!!!

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 25 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

And it’s Beth’s15th  birthday!!!

So after Diana got back from school, Liz, Crystal and her parents, Emiko and Aika and Mika, Allison too… everyone showed up!!!  Sabby gave us the day off because she wanted to spend all day baking.  We made her promise not to go overboard.  She just looked innocent.  And went overboard.

OMG the cakes!!!

I don’t know how she makes so many cakes with just one oven!!!

Anyway, after everyone showed up, we had pizza for dinner, and then cake for dessert (CHOCOLATE!!!) and then we gave Beth her presents!!!

She got soooo many presents!!!!

But I think the best thing is how meaningful they were.

Liz got Beth a music player.  But it was loaded with lots of different world music!  Chinese, Japanese, Korean…  OMG.  I’ll have to, er, “borrow” some of those myself!!!

Crystal still doesn’t have a lot of money, but she got Beth a little locket that said “BFFs”, with little pieces that fit together.  I think Beth almost cried.

Aika and Mika don’t know Beth very well, but they gave her a chopstick set.  I… don’t know?  But it’s the thought that counts, and Beth accepted it happily.

Allison gave her a book.  Of course, if you want to give Beth something she likes, give her a book!!!

And I got her one of those plexiglass blocks that contain every element in the periodic table.  It wasn’t anything really special, but she seemed to like it.

Of course Diana didn’t get her anything, but no one expected her to.

After the presents were given, we played games!!!  Girl games!!!  David was invited, but he… had other things to do.  Don’t blame the poor kid.  OMG Me, Beth, Liz, Aika, Mika, Diana, Crystal, Allison… SO MANY GIRLS!!!!  It’s soo much fun!!!  Poor Sabby having to put up with all the squealing!!!  I think Allison got a bit confused, and then at some point we split into two groups…  The younger girls, Allison, Aika, and Mika, and the rest of us older girls.  That seems to have worked out.

Now we’re going to brush each other’s hair, tell stories (Allison’s good at that!) and make a girl-pile!!! OMG I LOVE GIRL PILES!!!!  I think Diana’s a little hesitant but she’s got her jammies on just like the rest of us.

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 26 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!!!

And I can’t decide whether to be angry with Jack or not!!!

But it was an honest mistake, and he is a boy.

So it turns out he’s got a very, very wrong idea of what girl slumber parties are like.  I guess I can’t blame him too much – all he’s ever seen was on television, and this awful J-Pop video called “Heavy Rotation” where a bunch of teenage girls sit around in lingerie eating sweets and taking baths together and kissing mirrors.  Well… we do eat sweets.

But NO!!! That’s not what it’s like!!!

We don’t wear lingerie!  We don’t HAVE lingerie!! I’m the oldest of us and I’m sixteen!!!  Well, there’s that purple thing Liz gave me last year, but we don’t talk about that!!!  We have jammies!!!  Soft, comfortable fleece jammies!!! That cover everything!!! Sorry if that’s disappointing to you silly billy boys like Jack, but it’s the truth.

AND ONE OF US FARTS!!!!

Not telling who, but every now and then someone stinks up the room!!!

THAT’S what a slumber party is like!!!

We girls just like to stick together and be friends and… well… we’re warm!!!  That’s it!!!  No mirror-kissing or… well, yeah.  There is cake eating.  I’ll give you that.  We pigged out last night.  I think that’s why the room went stinky.

But there are sweet moments too.  Diana seemed a bit hesitant, but we all settled down and she fell asleep.  This morning I felt someone cuddled up to me, snoring softly.  It was Diana!  How sweet!!!  When she woke up, she yawned and told me she’d never slept that good.  She’s an only child, and while she has lots of cousins and extended family (she says that’s common for people like her!) she doesn’t really have anyone she’s that close to other than her mother.

I asked her why she needed to stay with us if she had so much extended family.  She just sighed and said it was a long story.   And wouldn’t say anything more.

So…  now I have another sister.  But she’s a temporary sister.  We just met and who knows if we’ll keep in touch after she leaves.   But hey, it’s like I said.  You can never have too many little sisters.

I just with Grace could have come for Beth’s party.  She would have loved it!!!

I left for work in the morning and everyone went home while I was gone.  When I came home, Beth gave me a big hug and thanked me for making it the best birthday ever.

I told her I didn’t do much.

And then she said the nicest thing ever.  “You made things better just by being here, Lily.  You always make things better just by being there.  It’s who you are.  It’s why I love you.”

I cried.  I legit cried.

Love you all!!! ❤️

This diary entry is part 27 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

I REDID THE PAGE!!!!!!

It’s got a new picture of me!!!  The diary is now scrollable!!! And the most obvious change – it’s my handwriting!!!  YAAAYYY!!!!

I’m a little concerned it might be hard to read, though.  If you think it is, please tell me – I’ll leave comments open on this page only for a while – and I’ll tweak it as needed (I turn comments off not because I don’t want to chat with you, but because I prefer to do it on Facebook, where it’s easier to deal with spam!).  Dave was telling me about a concept called “friction”, and he said my diary has a lot of friction.  I think I know what he means.  So I tried to reduce it!!!  I don’t know if I did completely, but we’ll keep trying.  I might do some color tweaking.

I’m wearing the same dress now that I do sometimes on YouTube!!!  And… and I added a header image!!! So fun!!!

I’m going to have to go through my old posts and make a few tweaks, turn a few knobs, push a few buttons, spit on some stuff… but I’m trying!!!

Well, I have to go now, I’ve got things to do.  It’s warm and Dave wants to grill!!! YUMMMMMM!!!!!!

Love you all!!!! ❤️

This diary entry is part 28 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!!!

DAVE GRILLED!!!

I think I’ve told you in the past that I love it when Dave grills.  He’s so good at it!  Maria and Diana joined us for our grilling and they loved it too!!! Everyone loves Dave’s grilling!!!

But Diana made us some chips and homemade guacamole too, so we had a different set of fixins.  They also took the chicken he grilled, pulled it apart, seasoned it, and turned it into tacos!!! OMG!!! Soooo good!!!  I had no idea you could turn Dave’s grilling into something even better!!!

But otherwise it’s been a pretty quiet day.  We all pigged out on leftover cake too, and otherwise I just worked and did lazy Sunday stuff.  Well, except for me – after I got home from work, you saw what I did!!!  Giving this site some love has been long overdue!  I’m not entirely happy with it, the colors could use a bit of tweaking, but it’s good enough for now.

I don’t have too much out of the ordinary planned for this week.   You know, school, lessons, that kinda stuff.  I hope that’s not…  umm, what do they call it?  foreshadowing…

Anyway, I’m going to go now!!!  Liz is over and we’re playing games!!!

Oh oh oh!!!  I know what I’m going to do for April Fools!!!  I found a guy who lives locally who has a YouTube channel too, and we’re going to collaborate!!!  He’s a friend of Dave’s so he’s alright.  I don’t understand any of his videos but he can be funny!!!  Dave showed him my videos too and he thinks I have a cute snicker!!! Hahaha!!! It’ll be fun!!!

And don’t be jealous, Jack!!! He’s older than Dave!!!  He just wants to do something funny for April Fools!!!

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 29 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

And tornadoes do suck!!!

So today Maria went back with the insurance adjuster while Diana was at school to start getting approval for repairs on their house – I guess insurance was slammed and this is when they could get the appointment.  It’s going to be a few months before it’s back to normal, but the good news is that the insurance has found them some long term housing until their house is livable again.  Aww.  But at least there’s that.  They don’t have to stay with us anymore.  I’ll miss Diana.  I told her she has to teach me or Sabby how to make those delicious tacos.  And she said that we’re going to have to have some chocolate together someday.

That settles it.  She’s my sister.

Anyone who wants to share chocolate is a sister.

Jack couldn’t apologize enough for having such a bad idea of what a slumber party is, but I told him it’s alright.  He didn’t know.  And it’s not like boys are told much about the inner lives of girls, especially boys that don’t have teenage sisters.  But I told him he knows now, so he’d better get those ideas out of his head.  MISTER.  He said that I probably have ideas about how boys are too.  I said, yeah right, you just think about girls, eating, cars, and sleep.

He got quiet.  Then said I wasn’t wrong.

It’s not that boys aren’t complicated, but they’re complicated in a different way.  Not that way.  That way they’re dead simple.  Keep them fed and… well… fed…  and they’re pretty happy campers.

Oh and I video called with Grace tonight!  She wants choc’late!  And she’ll get some!!!

Love you all!!! ❤

This diary entry is part 30 of 31 in Lily's diary dated 09 - March 2022

Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

So I didn’t post yesterday.  Frankly, I was busy.  I went over to see the guy who I’m going to do the April Fools crossover with, and we recorded some stuff.  He gave me this script to read – and it was insane!!!  It had some words that he had to teach me how to pronounce!  But it’s funny.  He explained that it’s an engineering in-joke, and I guess I understood it once he explained it to me.  The way he explained it is, the way it sounds to engineers is the way real engineering talk sounds to ordinary people.  We’re still working on what he’s going to do for my channel though, that’s a bit harder to figure out.  I wish I know what a marzlevane or a dingle arm is.  Haha!  Dingle arm!!!  I still giggle at that.

He showed me his lab too.  OMG it’s like the lab that Dave built for us, but with so much more stuff!  He showed me some gadgets that I still don’t know what they do, but they look really impressive!!  He told me about some projects he wants to do, and…  maybe I’ll help him!!!  Or maybe not.  I do have a lot to do.  But he seems nice.  Many guys like to, well, stare at things they have no business staring at.  I could tell he noticed, but he didn’t make a big deal about it.  I appreciated that.  It’s okay if they notice!! I mean, I’ve got things they’re programmed to like!  But, just move on.  He did that.  That’s all I ask!!!

He gave me some ideas for stuff to do on my channel, though.  I guess I’ll have to think about it.

Oh!  I forgot to tell you!  My piano teacher wants me to do a recital!!!  Apparently I’m good enough to do a full concert!!!  So I’ve got a few pieces to learn!!  But I’ll have to do a bit more practicing than I have been!!!  It’s in a couple of months, so I have lots of time!!!

No time to waste, though!!!

I wonder if there are Japanese recitals.  Hah!  Probably not.

Ever get that feeling that something big is going to happen soon, but you don’t know what??

Love you all!!! ❤