And if you hate these feelings, you can hold onto me until it dies.

Every once in a while, when I wear my glasses, I am reminded of how frequently I move my ears. Kind of like a dog. I'm not even kidding; when I think of something unexpected, my ears go back a bit. Normally it's almost imperceptible, but when I wear my glasses, the arms push into my ears when they move and then my ears hurt for a while. I suppose the answer to this would be to wear contacts... or else train my ears to stay still. Buuuut who really wants to make that much of an effort?

I have been sitting here at my desk for over five hours, researching and writing a paper for my History of Motion Pictures class. As much as I like the class, and as much as I like my teacher personally, I must say that the man is frustratingly vague in his assignments. He demands specific answers, but the assignments are nowhere near specific enough to allow for such. In any case, I spent five hours writing a five page paper.... and it had better get a good grade. I don't know why I take so long to write papers these days - I remember last semester I spent like 8 hours writing a ten minute speech, or something like that. That was ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculous, the day after I stopped throwing up because of vicodin, I began to develop a cough. That quickly turned into a cold, which then turned into an evil fever. So now my mouth is alright (still a little tender, but I can't quite say it hurts, which is nice), but the rest of me is sore and achy all over. Not to mention freezing cold at any point in the day. It was the saddest thing in the world... yesterday was a ridiculously hard, bad day - not to be grumpy-sounding or pessimistic or anything. It just really was a rotten day. I mean, Tuesdays are long and terrible anyway (I wake up around 6:45 and am gone at school until about 3), but it's especially terrible when you're sick. My fever spiked during my third class, and by the time I got in the car to drive home, I was having trouble standing up. All I remember from the hours ensuing was that, upon entering the house, I saw my mom at the computer and I managed to say, "Take care of me?" before I started crying. It's so pitiful it's hilarious. (Now, of course... not then.) Anyyyyyway. I'm still feeling sick, but the fever's gone, I think. So enough griping.

Let's see... well, I was able to go to the mime presentation on Saturday, which I was super glad about. In addition to a two hour performance, we also had a workshop for the youth group kids, and taught them two songs. There were way fewer kids there than we'd expected, but actually, it probably worked better that way - all of our leaders were sick, so those of us who knew in the least what to do had to really step it up. I don't know that we could have handled a group of 30. As it happened, it ended up being really fun - when energy strikes, I'm surprisingly good with kids. Hopefully B will post the pictures she was taking of us sometime. hint hint :]

On a completely different note, it just occurred to me that I haven't mentioned anything about Team Praha 2011. I haven't put in my application yet, but that's something I need to be working on over the next few days. The main news, however, is that Dad and Mom were asked to be the team leaders. I'm really excited for them - Dad loves this kind of thing, and Mom is ridiculously excited about the fact that she finally gets to get off this continent. I can't help feeling a little odd about it, though... when I was there last summer, I felt incredibly challenged and stretched by the fact that I was in a totally unfamiliar circumstance. I had nobody to depend on (okay, no physical human that I could depend on), so I had to do a lot of learning on my own. I learned a lot about people, God, and a lot about myself. What my strengths are, weaknesses, what I tend to do when I'm afraid or lonely... more importantly, how to deal appropriately with these things. I can't help feeling like if I go, and Mom and Dad are the team leaders, I'll let myself just depend on them for things. Now that I write it all out, though, this argument in itself seems odd. Not so much odd as lazy, perhaps. I know it's possible for self-discovery to occur even in familiar circumstances... it just takes a little more work, I guess. But it's doable. It certainly isn't going to stop me from wanting to go, anyway.

Shoot. Mom just came home and checked my forehead... apparently I still have a fever. Ohhhh well. I'm going to go eat dinner.

Inside your head there's a record that's playing a song called "Hold On".

I wonder what kind of drug it is that dentists give you before you go into surgery. I never went full unconscious - I mean, it seemed to go really quickly, but I was never "out" at any point. It just didn't hurt. At least, not much. The weird thing was that I was aware of how much it should be hurting, but I suppose that I wasn't aware of who was hurting me. I distinctly remember feeling the metal pliers poke around my gum, and thinking, "Oh no, they're going to hurt me!" And then I was trying to lean my head toward the dentist's chest, as if he would protect me. Horrible man, taking advantage of a girl that way... Actually, aside from some mild confusion, the surgery was surprisingly easy. I think I was in there for about a half hour in all. No hallucinations, no weird dreams... the only effect of the IV they hooked me up to was that the ceiling began swirling crazily. The past two days I've been sleeping on and off... I'm a bit swollen, but not nearly as bad as Beth was (hehe, I don't think it's possible for anyone to be as swollen as she was....). The vicodin did make me pretty sick, though... I've thrown up a few times and felt nauseous the rest of them. Now I'm trying to wean myself off the vicodin, so my mouth is hurting a bit more than it has been... also, it hurts like the devil to talk. Which is terrible. My parents (lovely people that they are) keep coming by and checking on me, when all I really want is to be left alone so I can sleep. Ah well... better to be smothered when you're sick, than to be deserted. Right now I'd say the worst thing I'm going through is caffeine-withdrawals. The sedatives and other drugs were distracting me from missing coffee for the first day, but this morning I woke up at 3 with the worst migraine I've ever had, and I just lay there with it for an hour and a half. Mom finally came out to check on me and made me some black tea, and I think that helped. My head still hurts, but then, they yanked out five things that were attached to my jaw. What did I expect?

I just hope that I feel better for tomorrow. I thought looking puffy would be the worst thing for a mime performance... but I have to say, throwing up on stage would be a little bit worse.

A murder of silhouette crows I saw.

Well friends, this is it - this is what it comes down to. My wisdom teeth and I are parting ways. I'd hoped that things would work out between us, but apparently I was delusional in that respect. Ain't that the way. So unfortunately, I'll be out for a few days. The nice thing is that I don't have to go to school on Thursday, or Friday... though I do like going to Groups on Fridays (our homeschool co-op that I complained of for years but will really end up missing next year...). Hopefully I'll be off of drugs by Saturday, and not at all puffy... because we're doing a long mime presentation at my sister and her husband's church, and I would hate to look like a chipmunk for that. Especially with short hair... that would just look awful. I have to say, aside from my fear of needles or of swallowing cotton or of tasting blood for three days... I am terrified of looking like a chipmunk. I have lovely friends, however. Hanna and Amelia are both coming over at different times on Friday to check up on me, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Hopefully I won't be saying strange things or hallucinating because of the vicodin. I get weird dreams from cold medicine.

I have to admit. I'm super nervous about this. I don't handle physical pain well. So as a matter of fact, if you should happen to think of it, I'd really appreciate some prayers for tomorrow. (Surgery starts at 10:15, I think. It's the ensuing two days I'm mostly worried about, though.)

Anyway. Enough of this. Tuesdays are my super long days, and usually I dread them... (all two that I've had this semester, anyway). In fact this morning I had to give myself a pep-talk up until the moment I walked in to class; I hate them that much. But today was a pretty good one. Amelia studied at school all day while I was in class, so I got to see her during my break... and then after all my classes finished, we met up with some of the other girls and sat and talked for a little bit. Amelia and I then went off to Jack-in-the-Box, picked up Laura, and went to the harbor for hot chocolate. I love driving so, SO much. I love having the freedom to go see my friends when and however how long I want... being able to come home when I want is nice, too. Last night I went to Amelia's after mime (which ends at 5), and I didn't come home until I noticed that it was 11. This evening when I was driving back from the harbor, one of my favorite songs was playing and I didn't want to interrupt it... so I just kept driving around until it finished. We all need some activity that is strictly ours - that makes us feel independent, satisfied, comforted. I suppose that driving is mine.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but a few nights ago we took down all of our Christmas things. I don't know why it depressed me especially this year. Usually when January comes around it's like, alright, enough with the tree and decorations... or at least, I suppose that's the normal reaction. Over the past years, though, Christmas lights have become strangely important to me. During the past month, whenever I sat here at my computer, I always plugged the tree in. If I was in my room any time after sun-down, I would plug in the strand of multi-colored lights that go around my window. Now they're all gone, and I feel oddly deserted. I think part of the reason is that I've had terrible nightmares a lot this year, and for some reason Christmas lights around my window make it all alright when I wake up in the middle of the night. Now it's just dark.

I've been feeling oddly frustrated with some things lately... the odd thing isn't that I'm frustrated, so much as what I'm frustrated at. The stupid thing is that I don't even know what's bothering me. If I did, I could probably figure out how to start taking care of it. I guess I just feel restless, is all. For a long time I was genuinely content with the way things have been around here socially. Now, for some reason, I get these sudden bouts of intolerance. You notice how much I'm saying "for some reason" these days? I just realized that. Hmph... silly. Anyway, this isn't to say that I'm ungrateful for the friends I've got, no no. I've been incredibly blessed by them, especially lately. I'm realizing more and more how thankful I am to have a good solid group of Christian friends. It's just that.... hm. That's the problem. I don't know what it is. Square one, jack.

I think I'll go do some homework for a bit. Or cut up magazines. That sounds a little more appealing. Hope you're all doing well... nobody's blogging much these days, which is strange. But I hope everything's going well for you, and that this blasted hot weather isn't affecting you as negatively as it affects the people in line at Arco.

And in this world of strangers, I belong to someone.

I seriously have a problem: I have been listening to pretty much nothing but the Scarlet Pimpernel soundtrack for the past three weeks. Somebody help me.

haha

I found this on a Word document on my computer... it was meant to have been the start to a short story, but I never finished it. You may remember the incident I wrote about some time ago, when I locked myself out on the roof while I was home alone once. Well....

She had always liked late-summer evenings; the way the trees were tipped with golden rays, the way you could smell the sand from the beach, the way the clouds scattered across the sky in a tortoise-shell pattern. The sun was sitting like a hard-boiled egg about a foot above the horizon and it was just cool enough to feel comfortable in a light jacket. Just a few minutes ago, she had climbed out of the guest-room window and was sitting atop the roof, looking out over the neighborhood and facing the furthest horizon she could find. She thought about smoking a cigarette, or maybe one of those long feminine cigars with the wooden filters, but she realized upon further inspection that she didn’t have any. She had never actually had one, and wasn’t even old enough to – but for some reason it surprised her. Some moments call for cigars.
If she were older, Lois could have bought a pack and put it in her pocket, so that it could always be handy. If she were older. She could probably have put them in her purse, too, next to her car keys, if she had a car. In this purse – which would invariably have everything in it, like a Mary Poppins bag – she would also have a cell phone, and a taser, and some handy tool that could open windows that had locked. Of course, if she were older, this last tool wouldn’t be necessary – adults are far too smart to lock themselves out of windows. So there she sat, watching the clouds as the egg sank lower and lower into the horizon.

Dead.

Ceased to be. No-more. An ex-Laura.

6:30 really is far too early to wake up for this poor ol' heart of mine. Pretty much the only way I've been able to force myself to school in the morning is to blast the soundtrack for The Scarlet Pimpernel in my car and sing along at the top of my lungs. I suppose it's a two-part benefit: my morning suddenly becomes much more dramatic and exciting and pumped, AND I provide entertainment for the people next to me in the rotten traffic jams. I don't mean to gripe so early in the semester, but VC really does take it out of me. I got home after a day packed with classes, and had to immediately sit down and catch-up on the online orientation (for another class) that I was missing. And there wasn't even any coffee. (I've since changed this last fact, which means that the world has gotten a little brighter. But still. It's a bit like putting on a mitten AFTER you've already lost your fingers to frost-bite.) sigh. In any case - tomorrow I don't have to go anywhere, so that's nice. A whole day to get my things in order before facing the cold dark wintery world again on Thursday.

I've been having weird dreams lately. Very vivid, weird dreams. Last night I must have dreamt about drugs or something, because I woke up with the words "pepsi and cocaine" stuck in my head, over and over, like I'd been singing them. ahaha, and then there was this brief dream where a boy I know came up and told me that his "spiritual gift" was speaking Czechoslovakian. Which I don't even think exists. (At least not since 1993.)

Eeeeeeeeee. Why do teachers give so much homework for the first week? It seems like they used to expect that students wouldn't have the books and materials and things yet, and so on the first day you'd walk in, receive a syllabus, and walk out. But nooo, not so. All of my classes were full-time today, and I have tests or quizzes in all of them next week. AND I don't even have the books yet. But instead of doing something useful, like organizing my notes into their respective notebooks, or doing homework, or ordering books from amazon.... I'm here. I'm here because I honestly can't force myself to do any more work today.

Laura, this does not bode well for you.

Where we together weathered many a storm,

Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn.

I suppose one day I'll get better about writing on here; I used to be pretty good at it. Ah well - my excuse is that it was Christmas break, and break means getting a break from everything. Now that spring semester is beginning, however, I suppose I'll need a place to ramble every once in a while - so here I am. Hope your new year has been swell so far, by the way. Mine's been pretty grand - if not a little strange. But mostly it's been good. Aside from the fact that I'm sick with some wretched thing that is killing my throat and my ear. Oh well... I made it all autumn without getting sick while everyone was getting the cold and flu.. I suppose it's my turn after all. The trouble with being sick is that it makes one totally uncreative. And that makes trouble for blog attempts. It also means that coffee tastes weird, which means that I don't drink as much, which means I get a bad headache. Bahh.

This is going to be an interesting semester. Lots of classes... lots of hours at school... weird schedule. Irregular schedule. Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? I suppose not, but it should be... schedules should be very regular. Especially for OCD-plagued, neat-freaky people like me. I wonder if my well-ordered brain will withstand this semester. Actually, I'm still wondering if my well-ordered brain withstood LAST semester. I've been feeling oddly disorganized lately. Not only disorganized, but sometimes completely contradictory to my normal self. I've started missing opportunities for good lines or comebacks, for example. Not to say that I've always been amazing at those things... but I'm usually much better than I am these days. Which is annoying.

The thought just struck me that a few weeks ago, I was in math class at this time. HAH.

I had one of those dreams last night where you show up someplace without clothes on. I've never had one of those before. At least it wasn't somewhere like school or church.... I think it was the beach. Which would be perfectly appropriate if it was a nudist beach... but it wasn't. I just remember thinking, "Well shoot. This is awkward." The night before last, I had this really weird dream that was very stylistically like The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, and I can't remember exactly what happened... other than that it started out at some classy Hollywood soiree party at a huge beach house. I think someone was chasing me, or else chasing someone else and I wanted to protect them... so I found this gate that led to a secret tunnel under the house. The tunnel kept getting smaller and smaller until I had to crawl through it (which was gross because there were crabs) and just when I could barely fit, I found a door to the other side. I don't remember exactly what happened from here, other than that I ended up in this strange house where the sky was red, and there were the bodies of several missing people hidden in the lawn, which was a sea of thumbtacks.

I blame night-time cold medicine.

Well, I think I'm going to go wash my car. Either that or drink more coffee. Hm. Ten guesses which I'll do.