%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  A continuation of my criminal blogging behavior. |
|
IN THE WRITING.COM DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN Criminal Action No. 96-938-2 WRITING.COM Plaintiff, vs. Melissa is fashionably late!  Defendant. ************************************************************************ REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT (Trial to Jury - Volume 222) ************************************************************************ Proceedings before the HONORABLE The StoryMaster  , Judge, Writing.Com District Court for the District of Michigan, commencing at 8:49 a.m., on the 5th day of April, 2007, in Chambers C-234, Writing.Com Courthouse.PROCEEDINGS (In open court at 8:49 a.m.) THE COURT: Please be seated. The jury has informed that they have arrived at their findings and recommendation. I caution all present to avoid any reaction to these findings and the recommendation, either audibly or visibly. And if anyone violates that, we'll have to remove them. Obviously, it will take some time to read these findings, as the recommendation is the last thing read; so please be careful and comply with this request. We'll return the jury. (Jury in at 8:53 a.m.) THE COURT: Members of the jury, have you arrived at your special findings and recommendation? JURORS: Yes. THE COURT: If the foreman will please hand that to Diane , who will hand it to me.Members of the jury, you will please listen to the reading of your Special Findings Form A. These findings apply to all 1184 counts. Under Section I, Obsessive Ranting: The defendant intentionally ranted without ceasing for multiple blog entries. Answer: Yes. Section II, Repeatedly Beating A Dead Horse The deaths or injuries resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 18 Writing.Com Code Section 844(d), flogging a horse until death. Answer: Yes. Section III, Unnecessary Use of Curse words The defendant used language to be found offensive during multiple occurences and showed no regard for taste or appropriate expression of emotion. Answer: Yes. Section IV, Boring Daily Recounts Death or injury resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 22 Writing.Com Code Section 413(c), recounting daily activity to a point of extreme boredom. Answer: Yes. Section V, Pointless Entries The defendant shared needless details of her life via multiple entries, often multiple times in a row. Answer: Yes. Section VI, Contradictory Statements The defendant often confused her readers through contradictory statements. Answer: Yes. Section VII, Recounting Toilet Actions The defendant needlessly reflected on bathroom activities. Answer: Yes. Section VIII, Overdramatization Of Insignificant Things The defendant made several mountains out of single molehills. Answer: Yes. Section IX, Overreacting To Meaningless Gestures The defendant showed a propensity to fly off the handle for actions deemed appropriate and helpful. Answer: Yes. Section X, Unnecessary Temper Tantrums Death or injury resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 18 Writing.Com Code Section 312(a), throwing a temper tantrum in a public forum. Answer: Yes. Section XI, Cruelty Towards Animals, Superiors, Peers, And Inferiors The defendant showed no regard for life in general. Answer: Yes. Section XII, Repeated Bad Grammar, Spelling, And Opinionations The defendant shows no respect for her college education. Answer: Yes. Section XIII, Mitigating Factors (1) Melissa is fashionably late! believed herself to be in the right each time she commited one of the 1184 counts. Number of jurors who so find: 0.(2) Melissa is fashionably late! received encouragement and support from others to commit each of the 1184 counts. Number of jurors who so find: 4.(3) Melissa is fashionably late! is a reliable person in work and in her personal affairs and relations with others. Number of jurors who so find: 7.(4) Melissa is fashionably late! is a patient and effective teacher when she is working in a supervisory role. Number of jurors who so find: 5.(5) Melissa is fashionably late! is a good and loyal friend. Number of jurors who so find: 12.(6) Melissa is fashionably late! is a good mother and wife. Number of jurors who so find: 10.Recommendation, XIV: The jury has considered whether the aggravating factors found to exist sufficiently outweigh any mitigating factor or factors found to exist, or in the absense of any mitigating factors, whether the aggravating factors are themselves sufficient to justify a sentence of life in prison. Based upon this consideration, the jury recommends by unanimous vote that the following sentence be imposed: The defendant, Melissa is fashionably late! , shall be sentenced to a period in prison not shorter than 18 years and not longer than life.The Special Findings appear to be signed by all jurors and dated April 5, 2007. XV. Certification: By signing below, each juror certifies that consideration of race, color, religious beliefs, national origin, or sex of the defendant or the victims was not involved in reaching his or her individual decision and that the individual juror would have made the same recommendation regarding a sentence for crimes in question no matter what the race, color, religious beliefs, national origin, or sex of the defendant or the victims. Apparently signed by all jurors and also dated April 5, 2007. Mr. Foreman, was these and are these the jury's special findings and recommendation: JURY FOREMAN: Yes, they are. THE COURT: And so say you all? JURORS: Yes. THE COURT: Section XVI. Sentencing Melissa is fashionably late! , the court finds you guilty on all 1184 counts of blog criminal activity. You are hereby sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for a minimum of 18 years. Court is in recess. (Recess at 9:37 a.m.) ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
|
I'm off to the Chicago area for the night!  |
| The waters are gone. I found myself having to author a newsletter article for this month at work. It's so cheesy I could vomit. lol |
| So I dug deep for one more month. I need to put off cleaning out my port so that I can get a regular upgrade and call it good. I want to download my blogs and everything so that I can make space if I need to. I don't know why it's so hard. I love my Premium. I just can't afford it right now. Hope everyone is safe where ever they are. We had flooding here from Ike. Yes, flooding in Michigan from a hurricane that also devastated Texas! I researched and the last time this area flooded was 1947. Crazy, huh? |
| I can't afford the premium upgrade this time around, and so don't be surprised when you see my case turn a plane blue instead of having the lovely costumicon that I've come to love over the past six years. Please don't mistake this as an attempt to beg for someone to upgrade me. I really have no use for anything more than a regular upgrade because I haven't done anything with the upgrade that I have. It just means I will be scaling back my portfolio before the 15th of the month. I wanted to warn people before it happened. |
| Six years and three days ago I found Writing.Com. I have been to three conventions and watched many people come and go. And yet, I still remain. Hopefully life will slow down soon and I'll be able to get back to writing again. |
| I will officially never gift wedding photos again. I always end up doing twice as much work and taking ten times more photos than a normal job. Plus it's such an expensive gift to give unless it's like... my sister or something. I normally charge $200 for 4 hours, take around 200 photos, and present around 100. Yesterday, I stayed for 8 hours and took about 700 photos as a gift. Everything hurts. I had to take pain killers last night to be able to get to sleep. Now it's going to take me countless hours to go through all of those photos, delete the bad ones, and get the good ones onto DVD, etc., etc., etc. Yep. That was my last free wedding. |
| My sixth account birthday is in just a couple weeks. I can't believe I've been here six years already. Time goes by so fast! Cameron turned 1. His birthday party photos can be found here: http://missmelissaw.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-stuff-part-2-of-3-photo-heavy.html I made it onto a creative team for a digital designer and started focusing more on my scrapbooking than my writing. Well, I write in my scrapbook pages, but it's a whole different world and focus. Work starts back August 18. School starts back September 2. Jason's going on his business trip on August 17 and won't be back until the following Saturday, late. Both Ethan and Cameron have a summer cold from being around all those kids at the birthday party. It's been a long week for me because of that. My upgrade runs out in September. I think I may scale back my portfolio and just keep a regular upgrade. I haven't written anything other than blogs in ages and I have no interest to write anything new. It seems like a bit excessive to spend more than $100 a year on a hobby I'm not even really keeping up with anymore. |
| Uncle Corodon's funeral is today. The visitation was last night. I did fine until we went outside and were leaving, and Carrie says to me, "We really need to get together more often because you never know how long we have to do this." It's very true. But at the same time, you can control things to a certain point. I can make sure that I don't die of a massive heart attack by taking care of myself and doing my best to make sure I'm healthy. I can lower my risk of getting hit by a car as I cross the street by looking both ways before I cross and making sure I don't step into traffic. I can prevent getting struck by lightning if I don't stand under a tree during a storm. And then you have people who live only for the moment and don't make healthy decisions because its their body, godamnit, and they should be able to enjoy life by gorging themselves on cookies/ice cream/beer and bratwurst. There's nothing wrong with eating a few cookies, or a bowl of ice cream, or drinking an occasional beer, or eating a bratwurst a week, even. It's that people think that they should do it all the time because they love it. Well, I love swimming in my pool in the backyard but that doesn't mean I should do it in the middle of winter because that would be really, really cold and stupid to boot. I love scrapbooking but that doesn't mean I should do it all the time and neglect the rest of my life because what good is scrapbooking if I don't have a life to live and scrapbook about? My thing is this: I'm tired of people dying because they didn't take care of themselves. I'm tired of being sad and death and funerals. I'm tired of being mad because, even though death is eventual, people take for granted that life is for enjoying and use that to the wrong degree. Life is for enjoying, sure. But you can enjoy life by living instead of eating yourself or drinking yourself into oblivion. Life is only worth living if you can actively take part in it, not just sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else. It sucks when people give up on living because it's too hard. It sucks for the people who love those who give up. It sucks a lot. |
| Jason's uncle Corodon passed away last night. It was kind of expected, but at the same time very sad. His cousin Jill is supposed to be getting married in a few weeks and now she doesn't have her father to walk her down the aisle. He has 2 grandchildren. A granddaughter who is about 20 months old and a grandson that is about 8. He has 3 daughters. His wife found him about 1:30 in the morning. He had collapsed in the hallway while coming back from the bathroom. We don't know when the funeral is, yet. It was sad news to receive this morning. I'm going to be keeping Jason's cousins in my thoughts. This can't be easy to deal with for them, especially with Jill's upcoming wedding. |
| My head hurts. I can't find my Allegra. Today was an utter waste of time. If I could, I would go to bed and not come out until tomorrow. But I can't because the living room looks like the toy fairy had a truck accident and left her gifts all over the floor. There's three times the mess between the two of them and having Ethan pick up his mess is almost fruitless right now. We pick it up, Cameron turns around and gets it right back out. It multiplies, I tell you. Either that, or the Matchbox cars are having sex and babies while we sleep at night. I need to figure out a better way to organize my chipboard letters. They're currently all over my dining room floor right now. As are my shapes. I had a bit of a spill last night. And when I went to look for certain letters, I never had enough of any one color and I didn't want several colors because of the style I was scrapping. Whatever. You all don't care about my scrapbook style. LOL. |
| I wrote my last comedy and contests & activities newsletters this week as an official editor. Almost two years of editorials was starting to take its toll and I didn't have the time to commit to creating the newsletters at a caliber that I deem acceptable. Thanks to Joy  for this:![Merit Badge in Comedy
[Click For More Info]
Thank you for being a fantastic comedy editor, Melissa. *^*Smile*^* Enjoy your family, and we'll see you around the site.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Comedy-200.gif) It was a difficult decision for me to make. I've been teetering on the fence for the past couple of months and this month, being that I went almost a week without logging in, it finally pushed me in the direction of resigning. The older that CJ gets, the more difficult it gets to be the Mom I want to be, the writer I wish to be, the wife I strive to be, and the friend I try to be. Something has to take a backseat, and I don't push family, friendship, and my kids to the back burner. So, the newsletters had to take a back seat, even though I usually enjoy sharing with a large group of Writing.Com members. I think, at first, it was like, "no big deal, I'm not attached to being an editor or anything." Today, I'm near tears. I don't know why. It just feels like I'm saying goodbye to a friend or something. When I told Jason, he said, "Well you haven't had time to do everything, I guess you had to choose something to let go." I hate priorities, sometimes. But there're only so many hours in the day to fit everything in. My kids take up a good 7/8 of that time. It only leaves me a little bit of time to fit in the rest. |
| potty trained! Yay! It's been a long summer with working on this. I finally decided that I didn't care how many poopy underwears I had to clean up, there were going to be NO MORE pullups. And it's finally worked! I think part of it was the embarassment of me gagging as I cleaned up after him a couple of times. The other part was that I started to "get" when he was going to go and would get him to the toilet in time. It's hard to know the signs when you're not with them all of the time! Just this afternoon, he said, "Mommy! I have to go to the potty! I have to go poop in the potty!" I dropped everything and took him. And guess what? He did have to go poop in the potty! I'm so impressed. It's been about a week and a half since I stopped using pullups, except at night. And in that week and a half, not only has he stopped peeing in his pants completely, he has also figured out how to go poop on the pot! I can't believe that it took so long, but last summer I had Cameron and it just wasn't possible to potty train AND have a new baby. Then I had to work. Then I had surgery. Now that I'm home, once I finally got tired of the pullup thing, it took no time at all! Hopefully, Cameron won't be this hard, since Ethan can help me teach him. That will be a few months, yet. lol |
| I'd love to sleep in just one day. I'd love to sleep through the night every night for a whole week. I'd love to be able to dump my priorities and do whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like it. It's almost 9 and Ethan is still asleep. Of course, Cameron had me up at 7, so no chance of getting any extra rest here. He was up at 3:30, thinking it was time to be awake. I hate it when he's teething. I know I haven't been around much. I don't have any good excuses. Just lots of little ones and I don't feel like typing them all out here. I have two kids and they are both keeping me busy with things like art projects and pooping in the potty on a regular basis. I want to go back to bed. No chance of that, though. Cameron is getting into everything so I guess I best go police him. |
| So, remember when I talked about the little tiff my sister and I got into a few weeks back? I haven't spoken to her since. I haven't seen her since. This also means I haven't seen my nephew and that is what's really killing me. I could care less if I saw her for years, to be honest. But I don't want to miss out on my nephew's life. Part of me wants to suck up my pride and apologize to her for my part of the wrong, but I'm hesitant to for several reasons. Firstly, I'm not sorry for jumping on her case about the way she was talking to my Mom. Secondly, I know she won't apologize in return for the things she said to me. She is convinced that I'm "selfish" and only care about "myself" and nobody else. And, yet, when I first had Cameron, I paid her to come help me out with Ethan, in which she didn't even bother to show up all of the days we agreed on. I still gave her the total amount of money, even though she didn't come the total days I asked her to. And it wasn't like I had the extra money. I'd just had a baby and wasn't getting paid maternity leave. Then you add on all of the times that she "cleaned" my bathroom while I was pregnant with Cameron, where she got paid $15 for 15 minutes worth of "cleaning" using all of my supplies, ditched me several times without letting me know for another cleaning job, and blew me off several times before I told her to forget about it because I'd wait around the house all afternoon for her when I had other things I needed to do, only for her to not show up. And then there's the baby shower I still helped with when I had just had surgery the week before and couldn't even lift my own children. Yet, I still managed to not only attend, but also help with the shower (yes, I gave over control of the event, although I made all of the invitations and still set up and cleaned up at the shower). Not to mention the fact that I left work on the second day of my new job to help her deliver my nephew. Nevermind that it was a new job with a new boss and it was a risky move for me to ask for any time off, especially during one of the busiest weeks of work in my life. And then there's the whole thing with her husband, where I offered to give her the money to file for separation. Not borrow. No strings. Not that I'm trying to insinuate that she may be the selfish one, although I do have to say that she could really care less about having an interest in my kids' lives unless there's a birthday or holiday involved. She probably won't even bother to come to Cameron's first birthday party because of this whole tiff and if I try to make amends with her, she'll almost certainly say it's because I wanted more gifts for Cameron, even though I've told people that Cameron doesn't need birthday gifts, just birthday memories. It bothers me that in order to be able to see my nephew, I'm going to have to be the one to break down and apologize. I'm going to end up doing it because, apparently unlike her, I actually have an interest in seeing my nephew and having him know who I am. I don't know if I can do it. On one hand, I want to because it's tearing me up to not see Joshua. On the other hand, I feel like I'm the one giving in, again, because I am grown up enough to know that this is affecting more than just her and me. I am grown up enough to realize that there's more that I'm missing out on than just her wonderful personality and immense charm. (God, I wish there was a sarcasm emoticon. lol.) I know that if I say anything to her, all she's going to do is attack me, unless I reply and say, "I'm sorry for [blah, blah, blah]." Nothing more. She'll still come back and bitch about the entire thing and how selfish I am and blah, blah, blah. I just don't want to argue about it anymore. But I don't want to talk to her. I just want to see my nephew. |
| You know what sucks? My work blocks YouTube, so I can't see anything that gets linked unless I go home and track down the link again. Lately, I don't get on the computer at home as much. I don't have time. I'm a Mom and my kids don't let me take a break to check my email, let alone keep up on blogs and YouTube. Not that I'm complaining. We've been doing fun things like making sand paintings and playing outside and swimming and going on walks and taking trips to Hobby Lobby and, starting next week, we're going to start playground hopping with one of my Mom friends from work who also has a three-year-old. It is funny how the world has evolved into a videographic world. It all started with America's Funniest Home Videos, I'm sure. I catch myself trying to catch things on video where I didn't used to care as much. The second or third week that Cameron started walking, I posted a video of it in my blogspot blog. Now he's saying catsup and it's hilarious but he won't say it when the camera is on and it's pissing me off. I never recorded much of Ethan's life. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I was too busy working second shift most of the time and the rest of the time trying to keep up on my sleep and what little time I had left was spent playing and doing fun stuff. I never thought about grabbing the video camera. That's alright, though. I didn't lose the photos from the first half of his life like I have with Cameron, so it's all evened out in the end. At least that's what I say to make myself feel better about the fact that my husband won't let me pay $2000 to recover them. |
| More people die in the US due to automobile accidents than to plain crashes, train crashes, and boating accidents, so it's amazing to me how many people choose to drive rather than take the alternatives. Jason was supposed to go to Parsippany, New Jersey on Sunday and didn't. Their flight got delayed so much that they missed their connection in Chicago to Newark and another wasn't available until mid-afternoon the next day. Since this would cause them to miss the first day of class, they chose to reschedule and go to the next class at the end of August. He had called me, at one point, during their five-hour wait at the airport, to tell me that they might try to make the 10-hour drive to Parsippany. I discouraged that notion because, besides the fact that I wasn't incredibly enthusiastic about him going in the first place, the thought of him and Hod driving 10 hours straight, through the middle of the night, was not one that left a very settled feeling in my bones. All I could think about was both of them falling asleep in the car and crashing it into a tree or a deer or another car. Thankfully, Jason didn't really want to drive it, either, so they came home. I really think I have weird issues with picturing things in my head. On Monday, at work, I had to climb up and put bags on the projectors in the rooms where the windows are being replaced or the room is being redone. As I'm standing at the top of the ladder in the band room, all I could think about was falling off the ladder and breaking one bone or another. By the end of the third room, my heart was beating like I'd run a marathon. I told Atiba that I wasn't going to take the damned bags down at the beginning of next school year. One of them could do it because I wasn't risking my life again. lol. Yep. It's ridiculous, but these images in my head were so vivid that at one point I was convinced it was a premonition and that if I kept going it was really going to happen. It really served to make me more careful, but by the time I was done I was a shaking mess and I don't plan on doing it again anytime soon. Everything we do is a chance, though. You roll the dice when you get out of bed in the morning. You can live everyday like you're still going to be here tomorrow, or you can try to remember that today is a gift and live it to its utmost. I remember to live most days. Others, I cast life aside without a second thought that it's only temporary. |
| I'm a supersitious person in the obsessive compulsive way. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. I will walk strange down the sidewalk, looking down, so as not to step in any blatant cracks in the pavement. I will tiptoe through bricks so that I don't step on the cracks. I jump through the square tiles in the hall at school so I don't touch the grout cracks. Don't walk under ladders. If a ladder blocks an entire hallway, I won't go down that hallway. If it blocks a door, I won't go in that room. I try to stay five feet from any ladder if I can help it. The last thing I need is for something to fall and give me a concussion. Breaking a mirror results in seven years bad luck. Maybe not seven years, but I swear that I broke a mirror one time and it was the worst day of my life. It could've been caused by something other than the mirror, but I'm sure the mirror had something to do with it. Don't open an umbrella indoors. I yelled at Ethan about this just yesterday. He's infatuated with umbrellas right now because of all the rain we've had. I need to get the boy some rain boots and let him splash in puddles. He's scared of rain right now, and I'm scared of umbrellas. Killing a spider makes it rain. I seriously think this one is true, since we just put a ton of them to death. Our crawl space was infested in the basement. I couldn't go downstairs without seeing three or four. Now they're all gone and we had tornado warnings for a whole weekend. Coincidence? I think not. |
| Do with this what you will. Do with your heart what you will. It's OK to take chances, whether the person you choose to trust be an alligator, a polar bear, a snake in the grass, or something less likely to strike a blow and kill you. It is true, though, that an alligator will always be an alligator and a polar bear will always be a polar bear. You can't hope that a polar bear will one day turn into a pony or an alligator will one day become a goldfish. I tried to explain this to my sister once. She was convinced that she could make her husband change and not be an alcoholic anymore. He was an alcoholic when you married him, Cassandra. If you didn't want him to be an alcoholic, you shouldn't have married him. I learned it the hard way myself and so, too, must she. It really never works for someone else to tell you what you can't see, no matter how blatantly obvious it is. Love is blind. It's cliche, but it's true. But no matter, as long as the polar bear doesn't kill you, you can always heal. The heart has many lives more than a cat and will survive. One hundred polar bears later, it will still heal. Hopefully the cat will have learned its lesson by then, though. |
| I'm convinced I'm being punished for something because my kids are crack-of-dawners and I am not. If I could sleep until 9 every morning, life would be grand. But, alas, I cannot because I have a 3-year-old who wakes every morning no later than 7:30 and an 11-month old who wakes every morning no later than 8:00. Jason's gone for the next week on business. I'm going to have to play Mommy and Daddy until Saturday when he's back. I'm trying really hard not to cry. I'm depressed that my husband has gone and will be gone for my first week of summer break. I wanted to spend extra time with him. That, of course, will have to wait. I function better between the hours of 6 and 9 pm, although by 9 pm I'm feeling a bit worn. I usually won't do much more than sit and watch tv because I've become a lazy cow. By the time I get home from work, I don't want to look at a computer, let alone come get online. And at work, I rarely have the time to sit at my desk and finish my coffee, let alone check my personal email. I'll finish this entry out by posting that which has been requested by a few people; photos of the boys.    |
| I'm not sure what I believe anymore. Me, either. For a while, I was really into getting back to church, but with all of the other things I do, it's sort of a hassle to take the time out of my life to go. I found a church that I liked OK, but Jason won't go and I won't make him. I'm along the same lines with OGG. I consider myself to be a pretty open-minded person. When someone starts preaching about the rights and wrongs of sexuality, it makes me very uncomfortable. Every person has a right to do as they choose, whether I believe it to be right or wrong. The same goes with abortion. I may never choose to partake in terminating a pregnancy myself, but I'm not going to judge another woman because she decided to make that choice. She has her own reasons and I'm not inside her head so I can't judge how it affects her to make that choice. On the outside, she might act like its no big deal, but often times that's not really the case. Another thing that will turn me off of a church or preacher is if they seem to have a political alignment. You shouldn't have to back one candidate or another just because you're all members of the same church. It's happened to me before. I guess I'm a person who doesn't get wrapped up in her religion or church. I feel like I live my life as best as I can and if God can forgive me when I repent now, He will forgive me when I repent as I await entrance into Heaven. I thank Him, think of Him, and pray to Him often, so I'm doing just as well as the person who dedicates a few hours every Sunday morning to Him. My few hours is just spread out across several days. Does it mean I will go to Hell if I don't go to church every Sunday? Probably not. If you look at it from a cynical point of view, we're all going to Hell, anyway. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
PassKey Override Available
!!!!! 