These past few months...have been pretty bad...I almost upload back in October. But then my cousin died, so I had to travel out of the country for her funeral and that pretty much threw off the schedule I had made for writing ten chapters in a week. It actually threw off my entire groove. Also I guess I should confess that I have been seriously depressed for most of my life, but you wouldn't know it unless I told you. Near the end of July, I began sorting out my priorities and basically straightening my life out altogether. I also didn't know what else to do with The Isadora Diaries, so I just took a little break. I started writing for it again in October with more excitement than I have ever had for it. If I never got thrown off, I really would've uploaded by the end of that month. Please understand that I missed almost ten days of school. With the difficulty of my Anatomy class that probably wasn't a good idea. So since then I feel like my entire life has been thrown off. Let's not forget I have extra stuff going on at home that I'm actually not supposed to talk about...anywho...I'm still struggling to get back on track and my grades are kind of suffering. I know I won't really get back into the swing of things until after final exams in January, so don't expect another update then You should, however, expect a multiple chapter update. At least three chapters.

If you love me and you're a Christian, please pray for me. I could really use all the help I can get.

If you're not a Christian...then put good thoughts out into the universe for me.

Help my chakras. (You'll understand the reference later. You'll laugh when you do. Hopefully.)

Please enjoy the next thirteen chapters, even if they are filled to the max with awful errors.

I'm so lazy.

But I hated every day that I made you wait, so here! Take these chapters!

Oh, and expect lame chapter titles. That's one of the last things I did.

The Isadora Diaries:

Lavenders:

Tuesday, April 3rd

I am scared for my life.

Like, seriously.

SCARED.

Why, you ask? (I know you didn't actually ask because you're a laptop, but let me talk about my problems, kay?)

MY MOM ISN'T PUNISHING ME.

Isn't that just weird?

Last night (or REALLY early this morning), I was on my laptop (which I'm actually grounded from) in my room surfing the internet.

I know, I know…

Why was I breaking a rule when half of my summer and my entire freshman year could be spent at a military school if I did?

Don't you remember? I don't have any common sense.

Anywho…

So Mother got up in the middle of the night to do something (I don't know, go to the bathroom I guess?) and I guess she saw my light on from under the door, so she thought I was awake (which I was) and came into my room to see what I was doing. When she saw me on my laptop, she didn't say a word. She just raised her eyebrows and left the room. What's worse is that she actually bothered to close the door behind her.

She never does that.

That pretty much made me feel like I should be counting the days to my death. It was also why I was too afraid to eat breakfast this morning. I convinced myself that there was a poison in my blueberry waffle and just sat there staring at it. Apparently, Quigley and Duncan felt the same way because they weren't eating either. But after Mother snapped at us for not eating, that quickly changed.

Conversation at the table was pretty low. The only one trying to make small talk was Dad. But his small talk sucks, so his topics never carried on. He kept wanting to talk about things that he thinks teenagers are interested in, like bicycles and volleyball, but he needs to be reminded that anything having to do with either of those happened months ago.

After breakfast, my parents went upstairs to get ready for work. Our parents had gotten us up at six in the morning because they didn't "want us wasting precious sunshine".

Oh, please.

Once they left, I was returning to the warm haven underneath my bed sheets.

Actually, that's what I was about to do when they went upstairs. Quigley was too, but then Duncan held us back.

"Guys I'm scared," he whimpered. "Mom hasn't given us any punishments."

That was true. With the amount of trouble we were in, I was expecting an ocean full of punishments.

"She probably wants to see how we'll act on our own before she decides to send us to military school," Quigley said.

"So what are we supposed to do?" I asked. "Are we going to act normal, or are we going to be overly well-behaved?"

"Mmm," Quigley crossed his arms. "Somewhere in between."

"What does that mean?" Duncan asked.

"Well," Quigley began, "we act normal, but not too normal. We do what Mom wants us to do."

"She wants us to pay her money back," I mumbled.

"And that's just what we're going to do!" Quigley said a little too enthusiastically.

I cocked my head to the side. "How?"

Quigley's face fell. "I don't really know yet…"

"Oh, I know!" Duncan exclaimed, jumping up and down. "First, we get Dad's lawn mower, and—"

"That's a great idea Duncan!" Quigley smiled. "We can go around the neighborhood with Dad's lawn mower, offering to mow people's lawns!"

Duncan scrunched his face up in disgust. "Ew, no. That's boring. My idea was to throw a party!"

"A party?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah!" Duncan jumped up and down again. "We'll need Dad's lawn mower, fifty bags of marshmallows, water guns—"

"Stop right there," Quigley jumped in. "We need an idea that has a less chance of getting us in trouble."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Mowing the lawn sounds a lot safer."

"Fine." Duncan rolled his eyes. "If you want to do it the boring way…" He stuck his tongue out at us.

After a three hour nap, the three of us put the idea of mowing lawns into action. We got Dad's lawn mower ad started heading down the street. The first place we went to was the house of this old lady named Gertrude. She'll help anyone who asks for it to the best of her ability. The best of it. No exaggeration. That pretty much makes her kind of awesome.

Since she always liked to help out young people, we knew that she help us out.

We walked past the four houses on our side of the street to get her red brick and lavender-flowered home. There was so much lavender that that was pretty much all you were inhaling once you got within twenty feet of her yard. I like the smell of lavender and all, but after breathing in pure lavender, I felt dizzy and seriously thought I was going to pass out. I needed to get away from that lavender. So, naturally, I ran to house that was covered in it.

I'm not stupid; I ran to front door because I was praying that Gertrude would let us inside her house—fast.

I was kind of desperate, so I may or may not have banged rapidly on her door. I felt kind of bad after that, so I knocked really softly to make up for it.

It probably didn't, but oh well. I had good intentions.

Gertrude answered her door pretty quickly, and when she saw that my brothers and I were about to pass out from holding our breaths to keep out the strong lavender odor, she hurriedly gestured us inside.

Looking a bit baffled, she asked, "What a pleasant surprise! How are you children? What brings you here today?"

"We wanted to—" Duncan attempted to answer with gasping breaths. "We were-*gasp*-" He draped himself over the arm of the nearest couch, "hoping to cut your *cough* grass."

Gertrude looked kind of disturbed as Duncan continued with his exaggerated session of gasping. Seriously, he can be such a drama queen.

Gertrude raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" She looked as suspiciously. "You all look kind of sick. I've heard my lavenders can overwhelm some people. What makes you want to work around them?"

"Well," Quigley started, "we kind of got ourselves into trouble, and—"

"Say no more! I don't want to hear what you've done this time!" she laughed. Gertrude knew all about the trouble we accidentally got ourselves in. "I am having company later today, and my grass is getting out of hand. If you really want to, you can work on it."

"Really?" the three of us chimed in happily, forgetting that we were almost asphyxiated just moments before.

"Of course! Anything for a Rockefeller! Especially after your father helped me with my case last summer."

It helps having a good lawyer for a dad. People can feel seriously indebted.

Not that we'd ever take advantage of that, but it helps when you're trying to raise one thousand dollars to pay your mother back.

"Now," she said, rummaging through her purse, "how about I pay you twenty dollars for the front yard and twenty-five dollars for the back since it's a bit bigger?"

That was forty-five dollars in one job!

We were kind of speechless. Luckily, Quigley was able regain feeling in his body and nod.

"Perfect!" Gertrude chimed cheerily. "You boys get to work outside then! Isadora I have a special job for you in here."

I stuck my tongue out at my brothers while they glared at me.

I got a special job. *evil grin*

God, I sound like a kindergartener.

But I never think much different than one, so I guess that's okay.

"Go on, boys! Get to work! I'm not paying you to do nothing!" Gertrude shooed the boys out the front door.

"So, what's this 'special job'?" I asked when my brothers finally left us alone to go work outside.

"Well, I'm preparing dinner for the C.C.C.C. tonight and I could really use some help."

I smiled. "That's sounds like fun. What's the C.C.C.C.?"

"Community Center Central Club," she answered.

Try saying that five times fast.

"It's quite a big dinner—for forty five people. We best get started now!" she said.

It seriously WAS a big dinner! There was a Caesar grilled chicken salad, lentil soup, lasagna with stir fried vegetables, cornbread, and dirt cake.

TRY MAKING THAT ENTIRE THING FOR FORTY-FIVE PEOPLE. DO IT. YOU CAN'T. Because you're a laptop, and laptops can't cook.

But in all seriousness, it is seriously difficult. We started at ten and we weren't done until five o' clock. Even after Quigley and Duncan came to help a couple of hours later after cutting the grass and running home for a bit to make themselves clean enough to step into the kitchen, it still took a long time. Gertrude called our parents and had to tell them we were with her because they got home before us for a change.

The entire process wasn't all stress though. We heard some pretty good stories—like the story of how Gertrude met her late husband Samuel. She had been working at a coffee shop when one of the customers got all upset and started being really rude to her because she messed up the order. Samuel was nearby and got involved. The whole thing pretty much consisted of two guys and a spatula, oven mitt, and a nice groupie of cops.

The story made us laugh a lot, and it made me hope to someday have stories to tell the neighborhood kids like hers when I'm her age. But I don't really think I have any cute stories. If I did, I probably wouldn't remember them anyway because my memory is span is about the size of a peanut.

But maybe that's something that this laptop diary can help me with. I've pretty much type down any significant event in my life that's happened so far this year. So maybe if I look over the entries I'll remember things that happened then better.

I think I'm starting to understand this whole 'learning life lessons as I go through life' lecture Mr. Snicket gave me when he assigned me this diary project. I can type down what I'm going through, learn from it, and remember if I forget. There's a pretty good chance of that happening, too, so it's a good thing I've started this thing.

However (look at me getting all fancy), I'm not exactly sure how much I've learned since I've started this diary. I guess that's what all the other entries are for then.

Reference.

Well I can tell you right off the bat the first thing that I learned was: don't procrastinate. You'll find yourself stressing to finish a diary project you didn't want to do in the first place but now you kind of like it and it might be a habit…?

Translated into comprehensible English: Don't put off something that you've haven't tried before. You might enjoy it.

I'm not sure what to make about my second entry, since it was about me trying not to like Klaus. (And look where I am now.)

Well…I guess I could say that looks can change a lot more than people can. Better or worse, your friend is still the same person (unless they turned into a jerk or something like Quigley was for a while), so you really don't need to act differently around them. I wish I'd applied that to my life earlier, then maybe sometimes I wouldn't feel like an awkward idiot every time I open my mouth when I'm in Klaus's presence.

I like that. I'm going to post that in my room somewhere.

Not the awkward idiot part. I meant the lesson part.

Hey! I could make some sort of poster on my door, and on it I can write all the lessons I've learned for every entry (I hope there's a lesson in every entry. I'm kind of excited about this now).

AND I COULD PUT STICKERS ON IT.

AND GLITTER.

And maybe a picture of Zac Efron, but that's optional.

Okay this is going to get out of hand soon. I'll just put words.

Speaking of words, mine veered off to a completely different subject.

My bad.

Back to Gertrude…

There's really not that much left to say. We ate some extra food over at Gertrude's house and went home after thanking her for helping us out with our money problem. Apparently, Gertrude has a Facebook (seniors can get those?) and is friends with my mom on there. I haven't been on Facebook in a long while, so I completely missed the status Mother posted about all the money we owed her.

And that right there explained why Gertrude was helping us so much.

She actually paid us thirty-five dollars each for helping with dinner. So we made 150 dollars in one day!

I swear the lady is loaded. There is no way she would have freely done that if she wasn't.

And lavenders aren't cheap.

Neither is the property tax.

Gertrude is kind of my new favorite person.

Oh, and one more thing!

My brothers and I were eating at the table eating before the guests arrived when Gertrude got to talking about her grandson.

"He's turning seven this weekend, and his parents were going to throw him this huge party!" she said with a smile that faded as she continued talking. "But then my daughter got called out of town because of her job and won't be back until Saturday morning, so she won't have time to plan. And her husband Jerry is already up to his neck planning an event for the major business men of his corporation at some hotel, so he can't do it either. Poor little Grayson will have to wait if he wants a party. He was really looking forward to it. He said since five was a lucky number, it would be his best birthday ever."

Quigley and I gave sympathetic comments for Grayson while Duncan stayed quiet. All of a sudden, his eyes lit up and adopted a wild appearance. Jumping a little in his seat Duncan asked excitedly, "Gertrude, would Grayson's parents be willing to pay someone to plan his party for them? Maybe set for Sunday?"

"Duncan, are you sure it's a good idea to ask them for money, I mean-"Quigley began but was interrupted by Gertrude answering perkily, "I'm sure they would! Oh, if you could pull off something like that, you'd be closer to you goal then you would be in a month!"

"I don't know," Quigley shook his head. "Plan a big birthday party by this weekend? That's kind of difficult."

I shrugged. "Hey, that means more pay."

Gertrude nodded. "I know Jerry and my daughter won't hesitate to accept the any opportunity that'll keep them from letting their only child down on his birthday."

"I guess it's a worth a shot then," Quigley said, but he still sounded pessimistic about it.

"Oh, great! I'll call my daughter tonight!" Gertrude clapped. Do you see what I mean when I said she helped people to the best of her ability? It's almost unbelievable sometimes. I still can't believe she agreed to help us with such an expensive problem! It's really comforting to know that there are still some genuinely good people in the world that will help you if just ask for it. It can get hard to find people to like that.

I really hope I'm not like that.

I hope I become like Gertrude someday; I want to be as sweet and helpful as she is.

I think that's something else I can add to my lesson door poster…thing.

I'll ask my dad to take me to the store to get the stuff I need to do it. And we should probably get some party supplies, too. We probably shouldn't get too much though because Duncan told Quigley and me not to worry too much about it because he wants to do most of the planning. He said we should look for more odd jobs to do around the neighborhood for more money, since one party won't give us the 850 dollars we need. That's fine by me. Duncan acts more like a five-year-old than the rest of us do anyway, so it should be easier for him to plan it. I just hope he knows what he's doing. Planning a party costs money, and we're already negative 850. That cannot be in our favor at all. If Duncan can come up with a way to make this party a success, he'll forever be the biggest genius that I have ever known of.

I am a little scared, though. I mean, he is Duncan The one who set our roof on fire during our miniature New Year's Eve party. I hope he doesn't set any kids on fire at Grayson's party. We definitely wouldn't be getting paid if that happened. I'll make sure to have fire extinguishers at the ready. I'll probably follow Duncan around with one too. Just to be safe.

The more I think about, the more worried I get. Right when we got home, Duncan went straight to his room because he wanted to be alone as he came up with more ideas for Grayson's party, and he wanted to get them out on paper before he forgot them. He also wanted the party to kind of be a surprise for us.

But there are some details that Duncan let us know about before he stopped talking about it. From what he said, I think I have a pretty good reason to be scared.

"I'm going to need a lawn mower, a bag of marshmallows a bunch of empty water guns some balloons, a set of darts, and eggs! Lots and lots of eggs!"

I really hope whatever he's planning isn't destructive…or worse, explosive.

3,024

"I'm off on my rope here
I'm off on my own here
And I find my hope here
I find my own here
I'm off on my rope here
Where the fence is low..."

~Where The Fence Is Low by Lights

She. Is. Brilliant.

I almost forgot the winky face.

;)