In the words of William Wallace....

FREEEEDOM!!!!!

I passed my license test. I am unbelievably happy right now. The whole process was rather hilarious, actually - I made some silly blunders at first, namely when I tried to reverse the car before the engine was on. (sigh.) I thought I was a goner for sure, but after the initial silliness I did pretty darn well. The lady I got was pretty chill and super nice. In fact when we pulled back into the lot after 20 minutes of driving around, and after she had gone over the 3 errors I made (how many are you allowed to make? Like 15?), she said, "One last comment - I love your haircut. I've been thinking about getting my hair cut short, yadayadayada...." :)

Dad and I went promptly to McDonalds and got me a fudge sundae, and now I plan on being completely lazy all day. This week pretty much fried my brain... but I guess it all turned out alright. I can drive. I CAN DRIVE.

Children! Beware the baobabs!

This is a mean, mean week. And today it got even meaner. All week long I've been going back and forth between feeling genuinely swamped in self-pity and being purposely over-dramatic about it so as to make fun of myself. But this has simply resulted in my being confused, moody, and generally unimpressed with the occurrences of the week. The other day I found myself sitting between piles of math books, notebooks, calculators and tabs of my online homework, holding a bag of potato chips and telling my mother: "I'm going to hide in a hole this week. That hole - that goes through to the rafters. I'll stay there until Friday morning and not come out before. And I will only take this bag of potato chips with me. That's all."

Today was our second math test and I feel like I just may have flunked that one, too. Correction: I didn't flunk the other test, but nearly. Besides, today I came to the stunning realization that my standards have been seriously compromised this semester. I actually found myself telling Caleb as we walked into class, "A B would be really nice." Months ago, I was sent into depression at the idea of a B. sigh. I think what's really gotten me about this test is that I studied. HARD. I was so ignorant about math for the first test that I couldn't really feel stressed about it. This one, though - man. I've been working so hard to get it, and the second the paper was handed to me today, it all went out of my head. Perseverance is supposed to pay off! That's what they tell us, anyway. But I guess, as with most rules, there are always those darned exceptions.

Yesterday in speech we had our debate lecture - the next three weeks will be dedicated to debate, and our resolution is that the US should ban all oil drilling. Our class picked the negative side, which is good. The bad news is that my job is to research BP and other oil companies, which is not terribly exciting. Anyway - I was sitting in class yesterday as we had a mock debate and all the memories from debate camp came back, and suddenly I was my scared little 12 year old self again. It's strange how nervous I get about that. I obviously don't mind performing in front of people, but debate is just... agh. There's no script there. Anyway, so that was speech (terrifying), and from there we picked up Amelia and went home. Caleb came over and the three of us studied until 4 or 5, and after they went home I studied again until 9 or 10. I also had to take a psychology test online. (Thankfully that went well... an A, and I didn't even read the whole chapter. That's irony for you.)

Then there was today. Gag. Math test (fail), art appreciation (zzzzz), and then I couldn't get a hold of Dad when I got out of class... I called him like 15 times and he didn't answer, so I (being my mother's daughter) assumed that he was lying dead somewhere, and sat on the grass by the LRC after a half hour search. Turns out he'd left his phone in the car. I finally found him on my second round of the campus at 2:30. After that I drove us home, and didn't get us killed, which was nice.

Finally, there's tomorrow. I can't actually describe how nervous I am about tomorrow. I'm taking my license test at 11:40. I know people say it's no big deal if you don't pass the first time, but I actually do HAVE to. My permit expires that week, so it's either now or I wait until I'm 18 to try again. It's only 6 months but that's 6 months of my dad driving me to school every day on the time he can't afford to lose. So if you happen to read this before September 30th at 11:40, would you mind praying for me?

A drivers license would pretty much make this whole week worth it. I'm tired of feeling beat up by weekdays.

Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near.

Your slightest look easily will unclose me,
though I have closed myself as fingers.
You open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose.

Or if you wish to be close to me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing.

(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; Only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

-E.E. Cummings

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.

I'm listening to "My Favorite Things" right now and thinking of our last night in Prague. Shortly after dinner the sky started flashing with lightning, and then came the rain, and hail the size of golf balls. The six of us girls were up in our room on the third floor, sitting on our beds (or my bed mostly, as it always happened) talking about your typical girl topic: Our Ideal Guy. There were two windows in our room and we could see (and hear) the crazy storm outside. After a half hour or so there was a knock on the door, and we told whoever it was that they could come in. The guys then opened the door and burst in, with David saying, "Alright, alright - my turn! 6'2", ALL MUSCLE."

They sat on our floor and we changed topics to our favorite moments of the trip. It was then that one of the guys noticed a leak in the roof, just next to my bed. We got a bucket and set it on the floor to catch the water. Within fifteen minutes, there were two more leaks in the roof, so we got two more buckets. We sat together in the room with blankets and chocolate, watching the lightning and hail and listening to thunder and the sound the water made as it fell from the ceiling into our plastic buckets. And soon, our favorite moments of our voyage with Team Praha had turned into a round of "My Favorite Things". Out of all the favorite moments we'd talked about, that night may have taken the cake.

We've been home for over a month, I realized today. It doesn't feel strange anymore, though home is different. I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" a few weeks ago (and I did like it - I'm sorry if that breaks some rule of good taste) and it rather reminded me of the feeling. "It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. ["Did I ever tell you I was struck by lightning 7 times?"] You'll realize what's changed is you."

I just can't wait to go traveling again.

Human kindness is overflowing...

And I think it's going to rain today.

What a sad, sad song. But I didn't actually realize how sad it was until I looked up the lyrics. It's just so lovely to listen to. I just read my sister's blog and discovered that it's the first day of fall. Happy fall! Now I can wear scarves and not have to bother with people asking why I'm wearing them. I'm also looking forward to that extra hour of sleep we get one of these Saturdays... whenever that is. Fall-time just reminds me of the opening sequence in You've Got Mail, which pretty much makes me ridiculously cheery. ("Don't you just love New York in the fall?" And the bit about the butterfly on the subway. Gah.) I wish that I could be Meg Ryan in that movie. Actually, ideally, I would be Julie Andrews. They both have their adorably quirky moments and ways of saying things that make every girl want to imitate them. Of course there ARE those weird girls who don't like Meg Ryan, which I don't get. I've not met anyone who doesn't like Julie Andrews, but if I did, I wouldn't be responsible for my actions.

I've got to be tottering off to school soon. First I need breakfast. Today's math and art appreciation, and tomorrow I have an oral interp in speech. We're supposed to read a passage from any book and talk about it. I'm reading The Little Prince. :)

Also, this made me happy.

Me (to Kate):
Vieww hallooooo, my hideous primate. ("Oh yes, definitely, ah, view-halloo!") I miss you and I never called you back. This is a shame on my part. I really should call you back. I will soon and we will have talks. Perhaps I will get a coffee at the harbor and walk about while on the phone with you, and pretend you're walking with me, just like old times. Except to make it fully like old times, I'll also have to throw my coffee on the ground and pretend that you dropped it. It sounds promising already.
How is school, heinous? Things here are hideous. But we survive. Tis what we do.

Kate:
Heinous, your note makes me outrageous. I miss you a ton. I am sorry you are teething but these things happen. Fear not, I will be there soon to drop your coffee for you. I love you so much. Sneer at Suki for me.
Ps. We conquer. It's more humble to say we survive, but to people who know how much strength it sometimes takes to do so with grace--it can be viewed as a victory.
I hope to see you this weekend, precious

I was following the pack all swallowed in their coats.

I know it's not fall yet, and I also know that it doesn't ever really become fall in Southern California. But by golly, I'm listening to Fleet Foxes. I wish we had more ash trees around here, because they're the only sign we have of autumn around here. On the way to school this morning I drove down a street that was lined with them, and they've already turned red and brown and gold. It was beautiful - but of course, an odd contrast with the palm trees that stood right next behind them.

I've been wanting to write a lot more recently, but somehow all that I can think of are short stories that end up depressing me. I can't think of a good storyline that will go more than two or three pages. I suppose real writers have that problem too... but real writers either know a way to get over it, or else are good enough at bs-ing so that no one can tell the difference. I suppose that a good writer shouldn't settle for bs-ing at all, but that secret is between a writer and his craft. We shall never know. Unless I one day become an accomplished writer. Then I'll find out and let you know. Maybe.

Monday's are so horribly long. This morning I was pretty much dead when my alarm went off, even though it went off at 8, which is much later than usual. I really do have a condition - I go through the day yawning and knowing that, if I sit somewhere long enough, I could fall asleep inside of five minutes. But then, come 9:00 PM, I'm full of energy and decide that since I'm so awake, sleep would be a silly thing. The next morning the process starts all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Siiigh. In any case, the point is that Mondays are long. I have college algebra, and after about an hour in that class my brain shuts off, so I murder my hand taking ridiculous notes so that I can study what he said at home because there's no way I'm getting it all right now. From there I hop across town to my art appreciation class, which is pretty much the most boring way possible to study what should be a very interesting thing. I like art. In fact I love art. But this class is doing nothing for my appreciation of it. And from there, I hop across yet another part of town and enter mime 20 minutes late, and stay until 5:00... at which time I go home and change into my baggy, cut-up Beatles shirt and drink coffee until dinner, trying to nurse my aching brain.

Speaking of mime, today was our second day. I realize that I made it sound exhausting just now, but it's not - in fact, it's probably the part of the day (aside from late at night) when I feel the most energized. It's really quite fun. Today I got to be a juror (in the Courtroom of 'Forever'), and THEN in another song, I was a schizophrenic (meaning I had multiple parts, not a medically prescribed schizophrenic): I was a creepy witchcraft crystal-ball girl/cutter, and from there became one of the two guards who crucifies Jesus. It seems that in plays I'm always cast as the ditzy/funny/sweet person, so it was nice to do something more 'serious'. Mom told me afterward that I would make a good demon. I try not to think that much into that...

I'm bored out of my mind, incidentally. I feel like I need to do something right now, but doing something would mean (if I were a good person) doing homework. And I'm not really alert enough to do that. Last night, for example, I took out my psychology book and started reading. Soon I heard the telephone ringing and realized that after reading 4 pages, I'd dozed off and been asleep for a full half hour.

I want to redecorate my room. The only trouble is that I love my room. I just have this itch to do something creative on a big scale, and my room is the most accessible. This is a frustration. Maybe I should just paint my closet, or the cat, or something...

Alright. Either a nap or more coffee is in order. Maybe I'll give Amelia a call. I've no excuse to feel bored or be lazy. But gosh darnit I'm going to.

Aaaaah.

I don't want to go to school. Ever.
Somebody take me to Russia.

But you are such a pleasant fiction to me.

I've realized recently that I think I'm more prone to depression than the average person. This isn't because I'm feeling moody or depressed at the moment - in fact I feel fine - but for a while now I've been noticing how increasingly moody I get, sometimes for no reason at all. Then when I DO have reason, it's much worse. Lately I've had to make a lot of decisions (and still have yet to make some) that have been stressing me out. Not to mention the thought of potentially failing math class is a bit terrifying. When I have too many things to do, however, I have a tendency to simply shut down and do nothing at all. This week has been nothing but that feeling, and it gets worse every day. Yesterday I woke up and felt like I could have cried at any given time, just because I had never felt so unmotivated in my life. Then after school, I went to my first day with the mime team, which is mostly full of people I know, including some very good friends. And when I walked in, I was suddenly conscious that my mood had completely changed - and it wasn't because being with people makes me happy, though sometimes it does. It was like I had consciously thrown a switch in my brain, turning "on" the part of me whose goal is to entertain people at any cost, and turning "off" the normal part of me: the part that feels angst and depression and cynicism and all that fun stuff. It was very strange to realize that that's what I do. I suppose everyone does it to an extent, to adapt to various situations... but I'd never realized what exactly it is before. Thinking about it, I also don't know how healthy it is, allowing yourself to be two people and forcing one at a time to just disappear to make room for the other. But I don't know how else to handle it. I was very much an Eeyore-child until the age of 10 or so, but that was grown out of, as it had to be. One can't walk around being gloomy all the time. The thing that disturbs me about my sudden brain-switches is thinking about people like Owen Wilson - the man is hilarious and everyone thinks of him as a comedian, but not all that long ago he attempted suicide. Now, I'm not suicidal, but the point still stands. There's something about that kind of "switch" that's a little unhealthy, I'm sure of it.

It's been tough being the only one of the Mueller-four left here, and it seems like I'm now heading into the era when other people will be leaving, too. I'm due for college in a few semesters (possibly even 1 1/2), and my friends will be leaving soon as well. Probably not as soon... but still, the idea is strange. People have gone and are going off to their own parts of the world, meeting new people and doing new things... I know my turn is coming, and that makes me impatient, but also nervous. It's not the idea of leaving that scares me, it's not knowing exactly where I'll be leaving to. Or worse, not being able to leave at all. I'm sort of slowly going crazy here. I feel like I've got to leave before everyone else leaves - not so I can say I did it first, but because I don't think I can stand being left one more time. Being left behind has always been my biggest insecurity - every major thing that has affected me has stemmed from my fear of being deserted. My siblings going to college, or getting married, a parent getting a second job, even my grandfather dying. It's a strange thing, but I could honestly leave 100 times and be fine. But if I were left 100 times...

It's times like this when I realize why people have boyfriends or girlfriends or fiances or spouses. People need people. Even the stubborn people like me need people. I'm not going to say I'm all alone because I'm not - I've got my family, to whatever extent I get to communicate with them, and I've got a few really good genuine friends. But still. The idea of having someone to take you for coffee and donuts in the middle of the night, or calling you after a test, or just going for a long drive with you for no particular reason, is a very nice idea.

Studying and Seattle and Sickness, oh my.

I want to WRITE, darnit. I came back from Europe thinking that I'd be able to fill books with all the experiences I had. But thinking back on it, it's hard to isolate events enough to put them into individual stories. I tried the other day, and it was terrible. So now I'm depressed with myself as a writer, of course, and I haven't been able to write one decent thing in months. This includes songs - I haven't written a song in goodness knows how long. It's times like this when I start feeling antsy about my future as a writer.

I can't say that I'm depressed these days - I don't think that's it, anyway. I just feel like I'm sort of mindlessly going through the motions of college life at home: I wake up at 7 AM, go to school with my $9 backpack and its' broken zippers, sit in a classroom where nobody (including the teachers, for the most part) cares about what's being said, come home, and then try to force myself to do homework that I don't care about. More often than not, this last part goes for an hour (perhaps a bit more) before it turns into facebooking/reading/writing/anything-that-isn't-school-related. Every day is the same. But I guess that's what your first year or two of college is for: doing the grunt work. Incidentally, I got a pretty bad grade on my math test from last week - actually, the worst grade I've ever gotten. I kind of feel like I got my first bee sting. All the care and caution you put into avoiding it, and then it happens, and even though it hurts like the devil, you're just glad it's come and gone. I've always had A's, and only sometimes B's. Never lower than that before. At this point, I'm just so tired of stressing out over keeping my grades up... aaannnd it's only a month into school. This is a bad sign.

A few days ago while I was doing math, Mom came to me with the financial facts of Seattle Pacific - namely, that it's is ridiculously expensive and doesn't really offer large scholarships. I don't even know much about the school itself, but the thought of going to Seattle has been my happy driving thought for almost a year. When I'm sick of community college, I think of wandering about Seattle in a long coat and my red scarf, coffee in hand; perhaps ducking into the bookshop I would haunt and reading Frost or Eliot on a corduroy couch. When Mom told me that there isn't really a way we could afford it, I felt like my whole future just crumpled up. I had already had such a long and frustrating day that I actually started crying. Which never happens. Like I said, it's not even that I had my heart set on the school itself... I just need to have something nice to look forward to. I need to be somewhere that I like. I just need to go.

Bahhhh. I'm going to make tea. Curse you, sickness.

Hmm.

So my assignment this week in Art Appreciation is to write a 2-4 page paper, comparing and contrasting 2 works of art. This is all fine and dandy. But then she says to "objectively discuss what attracted [me] to the works" and in general to say what I like about them. How do you objectively talk about your opinions??

I am way into The Eels right now.

"Daisies of the Galaxy"

Take heart, my little friend,
And push back your seat.
Soon we'll be far away,
Far from the street
Where you learned how to be
Not what you are.

Up on the shoulder,
There is a town
With a little motel
And an old movie house.
We'll go to a movie,
Whatever it is.

Watching the movie,
The world's gonna end.
And there ain't a place for
A boy and his friend
To go.

I'll pick some daisies
From the flower bed
Of the galaxy theater
While you clear your head.
I thought some daisies
Might cheer you up.

Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice.

By the way, that IS a creepy song - meaning Hotel California, obviously. My goals today don't include writing analyses of songs, but it happens to be playing on Pandora (which is a wonderful place - did you know, by the way, that they DON'T HAVE PANDORA in Europe?? This is a disgrace.). Aaaanyway. I do think it's odd how uppity people get over music of the classic rock era. I mean when they aren't taking extreme-extremist views, they do often have good points - my father, for example, is a very intelligent man and (though he often does read too much into things) he is almost always right. This is a common topic in our household, regarding my Beatles-obsession. Though, I think there's a fine line between enjoying listening to good music and allowing it to sway your thoughts and (in some cases...) sanity.

Juuust sayin.

Labor Day Weekend always seems to come out of nowhere, and then it disappears in the same fashion. It always struck me as a little odd that we have a holiday so near to the beginning of the semester - but now that I have harder classes, I appreciate it more than words can say. Good old Labor Day. What is it even for, anyway? I mean we get an extra day to lounge around, so that's nice... but actually, I can't remember doing anything over the 3-day weekend, except yesterday. Yesterday was lovely, by the way. The whole family gathered at Papa and Ami's, which is always a fantastically good time. Then before everyone (meaning Beth, Jesse, Kate, Jon and Megan) headed back to wherever they are these days, we came home and watched Casino Royale.

Aside from that, though, I really didn't do much. I spent the days following Wednesday trying to get my mind to accept the fact that it's alright not to get an A on a math test. I find out what grade I DID get on the test tomorrow, and I have to admit I'm pretty nervous about that. Not getting A's has always been a source of trouble for me... never could learn to accept it when it happened. I've always been far too stubborn when it came to school - if I'm not interested in it, I don't try. This is why math and I never got along very well. I know I've got to step it up this semester (if I want to get a passing grade, anyway), but I have such a hard time making myself do things that I hate. Blah.

On the note of boring school, though, I took my psychology test today and got 46/50. So that was nice.

I've also been sick this weekend. I don't even know what it is - it's not a cold because I'm not all stuffed up, but my throat does hurt terribly and I've had a migraine since I woke up yesterday morning. I just hope I can get over it soon, because I can't have another fall like LAST fall - I was sick literally ALL semester long. Colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, you name it, I had it. Except mono. That one I was tested for.

I really need to figure out what I want to do with myself, school-wise, AND life-wise. I want to write, and I want to travel. That's all I know. I just need to: a) figure out how to make those things possible and b) figure out how I'd pay for that. Rotten old money. I wish I could just be like Bert in Mary Poppins, and have a different profession every day, and just travel around that way. "What did I tell ya? There's the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it but the birds, the stars, and the chimney sweeps."

Well. I should probably get my head out of the clouds and start doing the boring things that boring adults think are important. We'll humor them for now. S'long.

Two of us wearing raincoats, standing solo in the sun.

Well, we're heading into the long weekend. It's Thursday and I am SO HAPPY - happy to see the past three days behind me, happy that I got to spend so much time with my best friend today, and happy because I know that even though things are tough, God is sufficient. It's nice to stop and remember that once in a while.

The math test yesterday really went badly. I'm hoping I got enough partial-credit to pass, but I am expecting a C or a D. Caleb says he felt the same way about it. I mean, I studied really really hard for that test, but I kind of feel like I studied the wrong things. In any case, there wasn't anything else I could do about it, so I did my best. At least I can feel satisfied in that. And hopefully, I'll magically improve in math in the next few weeks, and do better on the tests to come.

Today has been a full day. I had speech class early this morning, and afterward I went to the library and read for a while. Then I walked to Snappers and met Amelia there, and had my long-awaited grilled steak taco, chips, and special 'shack sauce' (with a child's soda, of course). We then walked the distance to Starbucks, and sat for an hour talking about pretty much everything. At this point, Mrs. Gutierrez picked us up and dropped me off again at school - Hanna had asked if she could use my face for her stage-makeup class. So I got all made-up, talked with the girls for a while, wiped said makeup OFF, and walked back to Amelia's house (where I stayed until 7:00). I love being at the Gutierrez's because - well, it's pretty much been my second home since I started at VC - but mostly because my house gets so quiet, that it's nice to go and be in a louder family environment. Seems more homey, at any rate.

Mom and I are the only ones home at the present, and she's feeling a little down because of situations with Ami. It's been really hard for her, being away from home so much to be over there, and now it's especially hard since we're trying to find someone to live with Ami. Right now it's kind of at a stand-still - either we find Ami someone that she'll actually accept, or she moves in with us. The latter idea would solve everything, but the actual act of moving her would be reeeaallly difficult. I forget how much Ami still grieves over Papa, because I don't see her every day - but when I do see her, it always makes me feel sad all over again.

On that subject, random things remind me of Papa every few days... you'd think that, after thinking of something so much, that it would stop being painful after a while. But it doesn't, really. In Prague, I spent a Saturday wandering around with four of my friends in the rain - it was the most perfect day ever. But at one point we stepped into a toy-store, just to get warm. I'd been buying souvenirs for my family members over the course of the week, and as I was wandering around the shop I saw a shelf full of wooden biplanes and motorcycles, and I picked a plane up and thought, "I should buy this for Papa." Eight months and I still forget. It's like I've got this part of me that got injured and exposed, and every time I think about it, it's like a needle pricks the skin, right where it was starting to heal. Last night I had a dream (that was really more of a memory) about the day he died. Things like that really disturb me and I don't know how to get rid of them.

Wow - I didn't really mean to go into all of that... and this started out so painfully cheerful. Hmph. Oh well - I think I'll go brew myself a pot of coffee, eat some ice cream, and make another collage. I've been making a lot of collages lately - I cut up all of our Better Homes magazines. I've also noticed that I must really like lamps and clocks, because I'll cut out pictures and then go through them, only to find that half of them are all lamps and clocks! I guess it lends a certain sense of familiarity to my collages, anyway. So bye for now.