This story is proving to be addictive.

Dear Diary,

I will never ever again let Raph take me out for any reason unless Leo is with us. Or one of the others, but preferably Leo. Having Mike along would most likely be ever worse.

I was sitting in class, wondering about why I have a fear of employment now all because my boss tried to kill me and whether or not I'll die an old woman with a quarter of my loans still outstanding, when my cell went off. I saw that it Raph's number, but quickly hung up on him in embarrassment because we're not supposed to have our phones on the in the classroom. The classic dictatorial power trip of your average adjunct. Well, I could see it vibrating about three more times within ten minutes and I started worrying that it was an emergency so I took the phone out into the hallway.

My head hurts too much to go on. I'll finish this tomorrow, if I can stand to relive it.

Dear Diary,

I won't lie. I won't delude myself any longer. Raphael purposefully took me out and got me so drunk that I had no clue what was going on. It isn't hard to get me drunk at the best of times, but I learned later that I was plied with Raph's super potent 'stilled whiskey and then woke up halfway off my bed holding a traffic pylon. Raph was lying on the kitchen table. I mean really lying on it like a bed with a magazine over his face.

He had a lot of remorse later after I puked my guts dry and said that we didn't do anything too bad. "Too bad" doesn't contain much matter where he's concerned, so I think we could have done anything. Actually, he would have been the offending party, while I stumbled along behind him giggling and egging him on.

The only thing he'll tell me is that we stole a meter maid truck and then we tried to get airplane tickets to fly to Cuba for some reason.

Anyway, I have a test coming up in two days and I'm going to have Don come over and tutor me.

Dear Diary,

Really, really, really hating school right now. If only Stockman hadn't tried to kill me then I would have a job and money. You know, that green stuff that I seem to be running low on now that I have four teenage boys and their elderly father to pay for. Preposition at end of sentence.

I didn't tell the others what Raph and I did, mostly because I can't really remember too clearly and it doesn't really matter now. Unless he killed somebody and I'm blocking it out.

My brain hurts. I don't want to read another syllable. Donatello seems to have no bounds to his brain and I really feel stupid compared to him. He doesn't help when he makes those statements like, "That's an easy mistake to make," or, "Yeah, laymen don't usually understand that." And he's so blasted patient. It makes me want to slap him.

He's just being nice to me and he doesn't have to at all. So I need to buckle down and buck up and go in there and write down something halfway intelligible. It all feels so meaningless in the scheme of my life though. Who cares how you spell the full word for DNA? Is that going to come in as really essential in my career? Spell check doesn't exist in the professional world of science?

Dear Diary,

My boys were here again for another movie weekend. We made it through Friday and into Saturday night with no casualties and few breakages of furniture and no breakages of bones. They decided to tell stories to each other. I love when they tell stories. They must have told stories to amuse each other before they went topside. I have this strong urge to lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them. I think that's leftover from my days with Baxter Stockman and I'm looking to overcome it.

Anyway, they always go in their presumed birth order. They don't really know who is the oldest, so I think Splinter just declared that it went Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and then Michelangelo. I've never asked anyway.

Well, Leo starts out the stories and his usually have a ponderous moral message about something that he happens to be pissed off about at the moment. Usually the hero is studious and well-behaved and obedient and such. And then he meets some mystical being with abilities that mirror the thing he's annoyed about, like that Mike isn't waking up in the morning or Raph has just come back from a week of who-knows-what. Then the villain is something like "the demon of eternal sleep" or "the absent prince." I don't know if the others pick up on these moral messages or not and I suspect they play dumb to avoid lectures.

Raphael's stories are usually hard to follow and involve lots of references to movies he's just seen. After we watched Shrek he told a story about an ugly green guy with bad breath… I just realized the autobiographical component of that story and now feel a little bad. But anyway, he usually degrades into a line of reasoning that goes something like, "And then the witch doctor left the country…" (Wasn't he in outer space a minute ago?) "Yeah, but he got back to earth and landed back in his home country and then he left…" (How'd he get there? Didn't an alien chew off his legs?) "Well, he had a special cart made up for himself. Then he met a beautiful princess. She didn't have powers or anything. She was just really hot. And she fell in love with him…" (Why would she fall in love with a witch doctor with no legs and 50 sons? Talk about baggage.) "Well, she was really maternal see. And she… well… I'm tired of this. You're turn, Don."

Don's stories are starting to scare me. Not because he's a thrilling story teller or anything, but because I honestly don't know what is in that boy's mind. He rambles on in a nonsensical fashion, stopping to recite encyclopedia entries about whatever fact he finds interesting in the course of the story. I took notes on the last one to keep track of the quick pace of his thoughts and they looked like this:

"Once a dragon lived in Prague… Communism until 1990… Velvet Revolution… lots of goulash. The real stuff. Not the American knock off. The dragon was really a komodo dragon… ?... Horseback. Prince ran to Russia. It was middle ages and he was outrunning the black plague. B.P. has a faster horse. Dragon was his sidekick or something. Fought a five headed cat. Cats have retractable claws. Cat could smell through the top of his mouth and so could smell B.P. coming behind… who… Invented mustard gas…" I got myself more chips and asked Mike to take notes for me. His notes were even funnier because they read, "Stupid Prince can't see that Plague is symbolic of his dad. Then he duels and loses. What a pussy. Dragon? Where'd he go? Dragon is now Czar? People don't notice? Sends troops to Prague. Probably for better goulash recipe. To build a better goulash."

Well, Mike's stories are usually pretty good. He's never told the same thing twice. His last story was about a village that worshipped a giant clown. They gave up their god and then in the end a giant ceramic clown came to the village and stomped them all to death. It looks strange written down, but I think he plans them ahead of time and it was really cool in the telling.

Dear Diary,

Probably going to forgive Raph. He's been moping around so much that it isn't funny.

Dear Diary,

I passed that test. Now on to the next insurmountable task. Funny how insurmountable tasks seem to rise up about every week or so.

Dear Diary,

I just got a bill in the mail for $750 plane tickets to Cuba. Reconsidering forgiveness.