As said by Mr. Purdy...

I love the rain the most.

Well, he goes on to say "when it stops", but I shall leave this part out. I do love rain. For a long time (the last few months, anyway) it made me feel depressed, but oddly enough I find it cheering this evening. I'm sitting here in the big, window-filled room, watching the sky turn into a grayish purple; drinking orange-spice tea that smells like Starbucks; watching my cat, who is sitting in front of the back door and freaking out over every drop that falls.

I'm still sick and half deaf (can't hear out of my left ear at all), but I think I may be starting to get better. I went to school today, and everyone in math was coughing, and everyone in french was sleeping. Their eyes were open, but they were sleeping. Our teacher let us out ten minutes early because of it, poor woman. I wish people wouldn't get sick so often. I wish I wouldn't get sick so often. I talked to Amelia last night - or was it the night before? I think it was - and she's sick, too. We always get sick at the same time, it's odd. I've given up being surprised by it and have just accepted the fact that we really are the same person. The only difference is that her eyes are brown and mine are blue. Anyway, we talked for a while about how sick we were (which made me feel like I was fifty - have you ever noticed how, if you have a group of adults over the age of 40, the conversation will inEVITABLY turn into the best medication for back-pain?). Then we talked about the last time we got sick at the same time, last semester. Pneumonia, or some kind of viral infection in the lungs. It was horrible. I could literally hear swishing in my lungs when I took a breath.

I don't really know what all that was for.

In other news, I've been wearing a white sweater of my mom's (it's my comfort sweater - I wear it when I'm sick and need to feel snug). I keep a tissue in the front pocket. I thought it was a rather ingenious idea, until I realized that my grandmother does the same thing. Then I just felt old.

I really do like rain. I'd forgotten how much. Everything that seems gloomy, on its' surface, has been getting me down recently. Oh, I know I'll be back to being gloomy one of these days, but that just means that after that, I'll be happy and at peace again, like I am right now. My mood-swings are sort of like a rainbow, cliché as it might be. Some people see life as a sunny day with occasional showers. Others tend to look at it as a drizzly, gray existence; but when the sun shines, or a rainbow shows up, it shines that much brighter. These people, I think, see the joy more clearly, because they feel the sadness more deeply.

Yesterday I was alone after school until dinner, and I sat and wrote out everything that I could remember about the day my grandfather died. It was exhausting, but I'm glad I did it. It's written down, somewhere, and I don't plan on ever looking at it again. It made me feel sad the rest of the night, but today I feel better - I've gotten out all that I need to, for now.

Seabear is wonderful rainy day music. Not the real sad ones, unless you're in that particular mood, because generally the two combined (rain and Seabear) are too depressing. Songs like Libraries and Cat Piano, for example, are good ones to listen to. I Sing I Swim. That's one that I always like to hear...

Throw me a dream please, it's been a dreamless sleep
For such a long time, such a long time.
Sing myself awake,
Watch the branches break.
No one could ever take your place.

Love is simple.

I didn't go to school today, and I felt horribly guilty until 3:45 in the afternoon, when I knew that (had I gone to school) I wouldn't be in class anymore anyway. In fact, throughout the hours I found myself tracing exactly what would be going on in the classrooms in my mind. This isn't out of nostalgia or any kind of love for the school, teachers, or fellow-classmates. Quite the opposite, I think. It was almost out of some kind of fear; guilt, perhaps. I wish my conscience wasn't so loud when the wrong it's complaining of wasn't my fault anyway. Damned thing.

All I keep thinking about is my French teacher calling the role and looking to where I usually sit (she does this instead of ever actually saying my name). She wouldn't see me, so she would look around briefly and call, "Laura?" No answer. "Laura n'est pas là?" And then she'd put on a sad face and put the first 'absent' mark of the semester on my namecard. How I hate those name cards.

I love my mother, though. I think mothers are wonderful. This sick-business has given me a lot of time for thinking - most of it's been nonsense, but still - and I've come to realize that I really do love her. Not that I thought I didn't. It's just that I've always thought of myself as a rather independent person, until something happens to prove otherwise, but then once THAT'S over and donewith, I'm back on top of the world again. I have a good memory, but I'm also very good at blocking out weak points in myself. I come from a long line of very intelligent, very strong people; the trouble with being intelligent and strong, though, is that you happen to become more of an elitist than anything. I suppose I've always felt that if I weren't independent, I'd be out of place. Hm. What an odd sentence.

In any case, there are always those moments when, no matter how tough you think you are, you really just want your mother to sit on the foot of your bed, put her hand on your back, and sit there with you. Maybe even sing you a song. I don't know when I got old enough for Dad and Mom to stop coming up and singing a goodnight song every night. I also don't know that I should complain, seeing as how most children never got that. I did, though, and I miss it. Being sick sort of makes me become a seven year old again. Mom, who for the last six or seven months has been at Ami's every day from noon to dinner, came home early today just to be with me because I'm sick. I don't know why, but I feel incredibly safe and satisfied knowing that she's in the next room.

As I've GOT to go to the college tomorrow, though, I'm going to enjoy these last few hours of being seven... got to grow up in the morning.

An ER experience.

I hate hospitals, always have. I hate doctors, too - no matter what you say, they'll try and pin every sickness on an STD. Actually that was just one doctor... but still. Miserable people, all of them. Anyway, after five days of this wretched sickness Mom finally forced me (literally, forced me) into the car and took me away to the ER. A bit drastic, I'd say, but all the urgent care's were closed. Hospitals just give me the creeps. They're so closed in and tense. I was literally shaking the last time I was in one, when Jon and I went to see Papa. I guess I just associate all the unpleasant experiences with hospitals now. All the way down to my six year old self, sitting in the ER with a broken arm.

Mom and I went in through two pairs of shiny doors and up to a desk, where Mom told the lady through a microphone in the glass that I "might have strep throat." After signing a few things we went and sat in the waiting room, behind an older man with a bloody lump the size of a golfball on his forehead. There were a few kids running around the vending machines behind me; don't know what they were there for. I didn't bother to look. A tv was on and I watched a few minutes of the Olympics, while Mom called Uncle David about Ami's medicines. Shortly after a skier took a nasty fall, a woman opened the door and called my name (with the familiar mispronunciation, of course.). We passed through a hall where nurses sat around talking, and some beds were sectioned off by what seemed to be overly perky shower curtains. I was seated on a chair in the hall and interviewed about my sickness. The nurse, a pretty little woman, then taped a bracelet with my name and a bunch of numbers around my wrist. I don't know what the bracelet was for - were they expecting me to run away? Anyway, then I was taken back to the hall with the nurses and beds and told to sit on one and wait. It's just my humble opinion, but I think things would move along quite a bit faster if the doctors didn't sit around talking about fishing trips while we poor suckers are waiting.

The rest of it passed with the regular routine, or what I suppose was the regular routine - I don't really know, so on my part there was much confusion. My ears and throat were checked, and just when the pretty nurse assured me that all was finished and went away to get my prescription, a man walked in and shoved a metal stick under my tongue. He went away. A minute later he came back, and strapped the armband that tells your heart rate onto my arm. He turned on the machine and went out, and for a brief minute I actually believed that I had been mistaken for an amputee and they were going to take away my arm. After the pressure died off, he came back in, took a look at the numbers on the machine, and asked if I was nervous because my heartrate was really high. Now, he's a doctor, so I know he's not an idiot. But really, what kind of a question was that?

A third doctor came in, when the others were gone, and gave me a piece of paper with some unintelligibly scribbled words. A minute and some wrong turns in the hallway later, Mom and I were out.

She's at the pharmacy now, picking up my medicine. I'm sitting here, strongly hoping that all of this will go away before I am doomed to sit in class for 6 hours tomorrow...

Limitations and mango tea.

It's funny how when you're sick, everything sounds like it's miles away. Your own breathing feels very loud. That, and when you walk, things jump back and forth in their place and the walls have a tendency to sidle up right next to you. I hate drinking tea and having cough medicine for breakfast. The worst part is that I can't taste anything. All I need is coffee, but when I'm sick the thought of coffee is detestable. Last time I got really sick, last semester, even AFTER I got well I didn't want to drink coffee for a few weeks. It was horrible.

Also, when one is sick, there's a tendency to throw up one's hands with everything that needs to be done. I have classes tomorrow that I've yet to prepare for, and I'm supposed to lead worship at my sister's church tomorrow night. I'm still planning on it, somehow. I'm going to call her in a moment and tell her where things stand - that if I get well, great; if not... I don't know. The horrible thing is that I told her I'd do it a month ago so she's had no time to find a replacement. I either need to get well or sick enough to where I have absolutely no control. Right now I'm in the horrible middle. Middles are a terrible place to be. Mom told me this morning that I "know my limitations", so it's my choice whether I go or not. I told her that I didn't really. I've got this dumb habit of pushing myself and thinking that I can until the last possible minute when I realize that I can't. It's inconvenient, to say the least.

I technically finished Crime and Punishment last night, though I still need to read the epilogue. I love this book incredibly. Books like this are the reason that I want to go to some incredibly smart place for college. I want to be in some place where people sit around discussing their opinions on literature as a hobby. Most of my friends have other interests, and all I want to do when I read brilliant things is discuss them. It's frustrating. I'm looking forward to reading the end, but I don't really want to, in a way. After being in someone's head for over 500 pages, it's a shame to say goodbye and close the cover on them.

I've never read a book quite like this one before. Main characters are usually flawed, of course, but in the end you always want the best for them and you're usually okay with the end because, whether it's happy or sad, it's justified. This one, though, is difficult. The whole time I'm torn, wanting to think that Raskolnikov is actually human and capable of loving the people who would do anything for him - and then, he goes and intentionally does things to injure them. It's interesting that I can understand most of his motives for things. In fact, it's scary how well I can follow his thought process. Still, in my head I want to make him a stronger person than I think he might be. I guess I should read the last few pages, though.

"Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!"
Raskolnikov smiled bitterly. "I haven't any faith, but I have just been weeping in our mother's arms; I haven't any faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don't know how it is, Dunia, I don't understand it."

Wouldn't it be lovely

I watched "My Fair Lady" last night, with my mom and brother. It provides quite an experience - my brother and I laughing at every rude thing Higgins says, and my mom, who keeps repeating, "Why does she go back to HIM?" It also makes me think of what Katrina said, about Higgins knowing Eliza's headaches. A brilliant thought, in fact, Katrina. Now I want to say it to someone, or have someone say it to me. Especially the latter, I think.

My mother, who is a writing teacher, let me read some of the "day in the life" papers written by junior high homeschoolers. I helped her google/facebook pictures of interesting looking people that the kids wouldn't know, she handed them out, and had the kids write characterizations of them. They gave me a good laugh. Except for one kid, who wrote his in what would like to be a noir style, about a card-shark playboy. At first I laughed, but I mean, how much can a 12 year old homeschooler know much about the noir-nightclub-scene? I've tried noir a few times and have gotten maybe 1 or 2 lines out of 20 to sound legit. Why is that? Noir is so... so unflowery. It's funny that the hardest thing to write well is the thing that one reads most easily.

Then of course, there are the actual essays, and these give me headaches to read. This is why I can't be a teacher, ever. Teachers need to look at papers that clearly suck, and point out a few things that can be changed for the better. When I look at things like that, I have a tendency to want to trash it, whether it's mine or not. The type that drives me absolutely crazy is the paper written by the "smart kid", who talks and talks for pages and doesn't actually say ANYTHING. (This is not hypocritical. I ramble as a hobby, not to impress. There is a clear difference.) Whereas, the quiet kid who doesn't write much can say more in a paragraph than the smart kid who writes novels. It's odd, and I'm not sure where (in essay writing, that is) I fall. I'm told that I write good essays, but the people who tell me this are mostly mothers who want me to marry their sons. Heavens, how big my head has gotten.

I'm curios as to how far a smart person can go before everyone hates them. I'm thinking about Professor Higgins. Some people would positively hate him, I imagine, while I happen to love the man. ("Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf." How can you NOT respect lines like that?) Granted, the man is a pompous windbag. I wonder if people only put up with him because he's a movie character. (Technically, a book character.) If I knew someone like that, he might drive me crazy. But I'm not sure. I know several people who THINK of themselves as Higgins', but that's not quite the same thing.

Anyway. I had a French test today, and didn't really study for it until yesterday. I'm usually good about studying, or at least I cram very well. I scheduled out all the tests though, and must have skipped one, because I thought our next test was in March. This stuff is impossibly hard - all grammar. I hate grammar. I always knew it by intuition, though I never had an actual class or curriculum on it. Now that I'm taking another language, though, it's increasingly difficult. I'm learning more about the English language in French Class than ever before. There's a statement there somewhere but I don't know what it is.

I'm also getting sick. Blast those people who get sick and go out anyway, and get other people sick. They ought to be sent away to Canada.

Speaking of Canada, I almost always say Canadia. Why is that?

There are two guys in my French class who are actually from France. I think it's entirely unfair. I would love to go to a foreign country and take English, though - I wonder what English phrases they teach of ours. Probably silly ones that no one here even says. Anyway, these guys sit in the back of the class room and crack french jokes to each other the whole time. Every once in a while I can catch one and I get an sense of immense satisfaction.

Tonight I'm going to finish Crime and Punishment. I've got about 70 or 80 pages left, though I should have actually finished it last Friday. But that's only because I have an essay due for it THIS Friday. I can write an essay in an hour easily, though, so it's alright. The reason I'm pushing myself is that it's my mom's class, and she's the teacher that expects the most from me. She pointed out today, though, when I was going crazy thinking about how much I've got to do before this weekend, that she's not nearly as hard on me as I am. I hadn't thought about it before - I'm always blaming my workload on what other people want - but it's true. I don't know why I stress myself out so much. I'm most likely to end up in the same place with the rest of my friends who actually are enjoying their highschool years, but some horrible part of me won't allow that to happen. You always hear about the perfectionists while they're tearing their hair out, but you never hear about them afterward. I wonder what becomes of them all. Maybe if I knew I wouldn't have to freak myself out so much. Maybe, maybe... one of the most frustrating words ever.

I'm going to go drink herbal tea (blah) and read for the rest of the night. It sounds increasingly pleasant. So long. ("Goodbye", "See you soon"... I wonder if they'd teach "Later alligator"?)

ps. "She's an owl, sickened by a few days of MY sunshine."
I don't know whether that's the best line I've ever heard or the worst.

We dream of a million kites

The nails on my right hand are surviving better than the ones on my left hand. Which is odd, but it works well enough because I play the guitar. I think my left-hand pointer-finger is permanently damaged. I forget what I did to it, but it won't grow straight and it looks like I slammed it in a door. Which is gross.

I'm addicted to Patty Griffin now. Her songs, really, not her...

Little sister just remember,
As you wander through the blue,
The little kite that you sent flying
On a sunny afternoon;
Made of something light as nothing,
Made of joy, that matters too,
How the little dreams we dream
Are all we can really do.

Isn't that lovely? I want to write a song about a kite-flyer now. Or paint a picture of one, or something. I was supposed to fly kites with Uncle David and Luke yesterday, only it rained. I miss Luke. I think if I'd had younger siblings, little kids wouldn't be a big deal to me, but as it is I find myself getting exceedingly attached to them. It's not a surprise, anyway, since Luke lived with us for half a year a few years back. But that's another story altogether. Kites. Last month when Uncle David brought Luke over, we went to the beach and flew kites for four hours. It was so lovely. I think I was Luke's favorite, when he lived with us - aside from Dad, of course - and on the kite day I felt like it again. It was a nice feeling.

I sat in the window of Jon's room, upstairs, to watch the sunset tonight. I do that sometimes; I used to go completely out onto the roof, but Dad got mad because he said it was bad for the roof-shingles. I really shouldn't let that stop me, but I'm afraid that sometime I'll be out and all the shingles will just FALL OFF, and then I'll slide down to my death, and prove myself wrong in the process. That mustn't happen. Anyway, sunsets are so lovely. Every time I see one I think of "Rebel Without a Cause", which sounds odd, but it really does make sense. The sky is so beautiful - it's something that's always there, but we don't usually take notice of it. And then sometimes it just pulls the string on the lightbulb and makes us look up, and then we feel a kind of pride in the fact that we discovered something beautiful. People are so pompous. I don't exclude myself from this, of course. Anyway, there's that line in Rebel where James Dean looks up at the 'sky' and says, "I was just thinking - once you been up there, you know you've been someplace." He says it so dismissively but it's my favorite line in the whole movie. I mean, we all have a desire to do something noteworthy and to find someplace worth being. We spend all day with our heads down, putting all our concentration into work or school, when really all we have to do is look up and see that we ARE in a place worth being.

Then of course, there's my other favorite line... he's walking Judy to school and she says dramatically, "Life is crushing down on me!" He responds, "Life can be beautiful." A friend and I say that line to each other when one of us is down and somehow it makes things seem better.

I started filling in the application to go to Prague yesterday. I have no idea where the money will come from for that, so I've been real cautious about making the decision. I talked to Amelia for about two hours though last night (I do so love that girl) and she told me the generic "pray about it". I told her I've never really known what that means when people say that - how do you tell if God's telling you to do something, or if it's pure conjecture on the person's part? I guess there's no straight answer for that... but she did bring up a good point which led me to remember my trip to Mile High Pines. I'd gone there for my own reasons (namely, because I didn't want to be HERE), and even though it wasn't what I expected, I really grew up during that trip. I know NOW that it was the right thing to do. Even though I thought I was the one making the decision to go, it wasn't me. God had the whole thing in control the whole time, all while I was trying to figure things out myself. So, I suppose that I should pray that it'll be the same thing for Prague - plain and simple.

Mom brought Chinese home for dinner, and I haven't eaten an actual meal all day. So until tomorrow...

Geraniums

I don't know how I found her, but I've been listening to Patty Griffin for about an hour. Maybe a half hour. Which is odd, because country music is hardly my style. Ah well, there's a first for everything. I once thought about deciding to like country, just because the rest of my family doesn't... I like being a minority, probably more than I should, and it hits me sometimes that it might make me a wanna-be. Rather, a wanna-be-not-wanna-be, if that makes sense. It drives me crazy, because I mock people like me all the time. In any case, I came to my senses about five minutes after I'd thought about country music, and decided that sometimes, there's nothing wrong with being a conformist.

The fellow next to me in math lab today was on youtube and facebook the whole time. It was distracting, not to mention tempting. Not that anything worthwhile ever happens on facebook... somehow it has a strange power over people though, me included. I don't know why. And youtube, youtube is just incredibly overwhelming. I never go there unless I'm going with a specific purpose. Otherwise I'd find myself on some incredibly obscure video of some band that I don't even like, or maybe a clip from an old tv show that no one can remember the name of. There are some worthwhile things, of course. Like the clip from "Modern Times", the last part where Charlie Chaplin sits with the girl and tells her, "Buck up! Never say die! We'll get along!" They then walk off into the sunset, arm in arm, smiling. I watch that clip when I'm depressed and I get a little hope in humanity again.

And then, there's the clip from a movie that I forget the name of... originally I think it had Rex Harrison in it, but this version is with Peter O'Toole, and it's a montage of garden strolls and bicycle rides with him singing in the background. It begins as he walks down stairs, sees a bouquet on the table, and says, "What a lot of flowers!" in a way that only Peter O'Toole can. It makes me happy every time.

I sometimes think that I know too much about movies, mostly old movies. This can limit conversation (actually, people with whom I can converse) considerably. Things like this make me think that I'm a snob. Somehow I don't really mind enough about that to fix it. I guess there's never been a way for a person to have something in common with EVERYONE, anyway. That would be silly, and terribly cluttered.

I just remembered something. A few months back, before everything happened with my grandfather, I was sitting with him in his living room and he told me that he wanted geraniums for Christmas. He said the front porch was bare because their other plants (I forget what he called them) were dying. I promised him that we'd remember that. I just now realized that I didn't. Guess it doesn't really matter now anyways. That was a good day, though. It was probably the last time I had an actual conversation with him - aside from when I came to see him in the hospital, and he told me that he liked my haircut. That day, the geranium day, Kate talked to Ami mostly and I sat next to Papa, writing what was being said on the laptop so he could be part of it too. We got bored with what they were talking about though, so I told him all about school, and Kate's school, and Alfie, and what a wimp he is. Papa said they had seen a squirrel in their backyard. I told him that if Alfie saw a squirrel, he'd probably wet himself. It's probably true, too... I've never seen such a dumb dog. He's cute though, so we forgive him. Anyway, Papa had laughed at that a lot.

I don't know how long it's normal to 'grieve' after someone dies. The only person I've lost before was my other grandfather, my mom's dad, but I was six and had only seen him once or twice anyways. This is different. I'm so afraid that it'll happen again, now that I know what it really feels like. I don't know when things will get back to normal. For a planner like me, that makes it all the worse. I don't like to talk about this sort of thing; I guess that's why I write it. It's nice to say it to a computer screen, something that won't keep asking if you're okay. I guess all this is just part of the intricate strand that weaves us into whoever we'll be. But though I'm a planner, I don't like to think that far ahead. Explain that one.

Patty Griffin sings "Moon River" pretty darn well. I've never really known what that song was about. Some songs create more of a feeling than an idea, and I like it that way. If you over-think something, sometimes, it gets ruined. Sometimes it's better to just float away.

When you travel far.

Starting writing matters when I have things to do is a very bad idea, because no matter what I need to do, I'll almost always write instead. I need to read 80 more pages of Crime and Punishment, but all I can do is drink coffee (this is my seventh cup, no joke) and think of things to write about. I don't know why, because I haven't seen "Cool Hand Luke" in over a year, but I was sitting and reading, when suddenly I got "Plastic Jesus" stuck in my head. Then of course I had to look it up and hear it, and then this incredibly sad feeling settled in on top of me. I don't know why that song is so sad. I think it's because of the way Paul Newman sounds like he's about to cry; and the way he says, "assuring me... that I won't go to hell."

Everything seems heavier on days leading up to a rain. The thought of rain makes me happy, but then when it actually IS gray and cold and wet, I inevitably get depressed. And of course, strange one that I am, I enjoy the feeling. I enjoy it, that is, until I can't anymore, at which time I realize that no - I was really just depressed all the while. I wonder if this problem is limited to writers, or if everyone feels that way once in a while. I was thinking about it while reading, because there's this one part where Raskolnikov is talking about how a great man's conscience is punishment enough for him. He says, "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."

It seems like a fact to the elitist. The more I thought about it, though, the more it hit me that it doesn't have to be that way. I'm guilty of often trying to pin my mood-swings (depression, for example) on the idea of "no pain, no gain". I like to think that my problems are more sophisticated than the problems of my peers. I don't know that that's the case, though, and I guess I need to remind myself of that. I've often found myself thinking, "I can't be a writer - all the great writers have been suicidal alcoholics..."

There have got to be some great people who lived truly happy lives. Jimmy Stewart, for example. He's the only one I can think of, but after all he IS Jimmy Stewart, and that alone is proof enough. I guess being depressed helps you to be an artist, but maybe it's not necessary. It's just that being a good artist AND a happy one takes more determination than most people have got.

Bridges

Ojai is a nice place. It’s more or less the “countryside” of the county. Whenever I see green hills, anywhere, I always think of Ireland. There’s not much green around here at all. I’ve never really been anywhere, so if I see something that’s even slightly reminiscent of a picture or movie I saw of another country, I imagine that that’s what it must look like. For example, coming from Ventura into Oxnard, you drive over a bridge and begin to traverse down a slow-curving road. From the bridge afore mentioned, a green hilltop (just above a golf-course, but not actually part of it) is visible. As you pass, you see a neighborhood and golf-course, and a lot of other junk. But in that brief moment when you begin the curve, and you see the distant gleam of green and yellow, it is easy (for me, anyway) to pretend that Oxnard has melted away entirely.

There is also a bridge, just by Los Angeles, that looks rather London-esque. It’s the bridge that the desolate mother in “The Kid” cries on, towards the beginning of the movie. I've tried to find an excuse to drive across that bridge, but I'm never sure how to get on it, and when we pass it we're usually in a time-crunch anyway.

In Santa Barbara, there is a cluster of white-washed buildings along the coast that looks – to one who has never been there – just like what a small Greek community might look like. Those pictures of the Greek Islands are so beautiful they're hardly real. I can't imagine living in a place like that – where you never know if you're looking at a real scene, or a picture of one. It's sad what technology has done to me and my generation. The feeling strikes when I'm feeling sentimental at night, and I look out my window and try to wish on a star – only to find out that it's an airplane.

Someday, I'll go to these places. That was decided long ago. Until then, however, I'll try to keep technology at bay so that I can see Ireland when I drive to Oxnard.

Nails

I've bitten my nails since I can remember, and I've never really cared enough to try and fix it. My mom once gave me this yellowish-clear goo that you put on your nails and it cures thumb-sucking and nail-biting. That is, unless you hide it behind your nightstand so your mom can't make you wear it. Now, about ten years after, I'm using a brand new bottle of the same stuff. Ten years, and they didn't even bother to change the label. There it is, staring me in the face with its' smelling yellow defiance while I have no other choice but to obey. I guess the thing that changed my mind was my grandmother. She tried to pawn a fifty-year old nail filer off on me, and when I told her that it wouldn't do me much good, she looked at my nails, said "OH!", wrapped her hands around mine and leaned her head back with her eyes closed, as if in pain.

It's been three days since I bit my nails.

Tomorrow is Thursday, and Thursdays are holy because I don't have to go to the college. I'm at the community college now, and every time I drive there I can literally feel what's left of my optimism being sucked out of me. Thursdays are wonderful and sacred. I sleep a whole half hour longer, actually eat a breakfast, and can do school in whatever order I like while drinking as much COFFEE as I like. Being technically homeschooled has its perks.

On that subject, I've begun noticing that people look remarkably surprised when they hear I'm homeschooled. To avoid giving the person I talk to a heart-attack, I try to get away with saying that I am in "independent study". Most people don't know exactly what that means so they let it slide. The other day, the boy next to me in class asked how the community college fit with my being "homeschooled - I mean, independent study." I smiled, as though letting him in on a secret, and said, "They're basically the same thing." He nodded and said, "I know." Somehow my dignity was bruised at this.

I wish I didn't have to be at the college. I wish I could suddenly come into a great deal of money - or, if not that, that maybe I could just travel around doing nothing in particular, but having a great time about it. I wouldn't need money at all. I hate money. Money is the source of all problems. (Actually, according to John Quincy Adams, the problem is all due to ignorance of money. I agree with this, if by 'ignorance' he means that no one is giving any to me.) I'm thinking about going with a church group to Prague for 3 weeks this summer. Selfishly, I'd rather travel alone so that maybe I could fall into one of the adventure or romance stories I daydream about so often... but, when it came to it, I'd probably feel more comfortable with a group of people who aren't going to abduct me. Life is so dull.

I told my sister Beth that I'd show her pictures of my room. I think you can tell a great deal about someone by their room - and, just in case anyone else in the world places as much importance on the fact as I do, my room is as incredibly 'me' as possible. For pack-rats like myself, the personality of ones room comes quite easily. I recently painted it, you see, and therein lies the main difference. Every few days I'll shift my photo frames around, and pretend that someone will notice the change and say how much better it looks. Perfection is a fault of people like me - rather, the want of perfection is a fault. We are constantly trying to perfect ourselves and everything around us, and in the process we get frustrated, and because we are frustrated we can be nowhere near perfect. It's a viscious cycle that can't be stopped; it's like trying to stop a bicycle by poking a stick in the tire-spokes, when the spokes are made of saws.

A wall. A flower calender, my guitar corner, James Dean, the Beatles, a painting by my Amelia, my bed, and my cat, who is the devil.

A door with no doorknob (slammed it once, didn't open, mom kicked it down, haven't replaced it out of respect.), a keyboard, lucky bamboo, and a birthday sign made by my sister Kate with many shirtless pictures of James and Marlon, and one of Audrey Hepburn (though she DOES have a shirt.)

Another wall. A window, my fifties diner clock, desks and books, jewelry on a corkboard.

Pictures, chair, greek-orthodox-looking candle hanging, sconces from sister, James shrine, and there on the chair we see Edgar Allan Poe.

I don't know how long I can keep up this non-nail-biting business. Look at them - so impertinant. They know what they're doing to me. It's late - must go to sleep so I can finish reading a hundred or two pages of Crime and Punishment before Friday. I want to make french press coffee. I want to be in Ireland. I want to have tea with Julie Andrews and have her sing "stay awake" to me. I want to go mock my cat. Where is she...