Sunday, May 31, 2009

Hello Alyssa!

I figured I should dedicate one of my blog entries to you. Here it is. And the comments thing on your blog still doesn't work!! Ugh!! I'll just e-mail you my comments, I guess. :)
The end of the school year always comes so suddenly. I yearn for summertime all year long, but when it finally comes I start scrambling to preserve the year, wanting to stay in touch with this person and that person, sad to know I might not ever have any more classes with so-and-so. This year, some of my friends aren't even going to the same high school as me next year. I might never see them again. *sob*
Two weeks. Those weeks are going to fly by in a flurry of final exams and special eighth grade/promotion events. In seventh grade, laying in the gym with all the girls from P.E. on the second-to-last day of school, we talked about how fast the past year had gone by. I don't feel the same this year. I think summer has come at just the right time this year. Eighth grade dragged on and on and on. And on. But for some reason, I want the last few carefree days to stretch out a little bit longer. The textbooks are in, there's no more homework, the final testing is over, and there's not much to do but watch videos in class, practice for the promotion ceremony, and spend lunchtime strolling in the early summer sunshine. I can't daydream about those days yet, though: I still have finals in front of me. Rusnak's final is just a simple project, so no worries there. Navarro is bound to be easy. I really don't have to worry about P.E. because I have Morninweg, and since that horrible project was Goldman's final, the only ones left are math and language arts. I don't think language arts will be too tough, though. I'll study that and math, and hope there're no epic failures. (Darn. I just used one of pop culture's gimmicky catchphrases. It was an accident, please forgive me.) Then it's off to Europe. I hope I don't explode from excitement. And theeen I'm gonna take painting or maybe sculpture classes at Cindy's Art Studio, that place by P.W. It'll be either another thing for me to suck at, or a chance to discover a hidden talent. I'm leaning towards the former. Leaning so far that I'm starting to wobble, and then toppling over with a splenderific crash. Yeah. I will probably suck at first. But maybe I'll learn, you know? Hopefully. That's why I'm going in the first place.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Bookshelves can roar?

*(o-o)* Who says white girls can’t make those cutesy-creepy little Asian face thingies?
Okay. Strange way to kick off a new blog entry. I’m just gonna say right now that you probably won’t be seeing as many posts as usual because of the whole having to use my mom’s computer thing, but also because the weather is just so gol-dinged nice. I don’t want to be inside tapping away in front of a computer. I want to be outside walking the dog or riding my bike, soaking up as much sun as possible before next year’s winter. Summer is so close. Two weeks, and I’ll be done with middle school and packing my bags for Europe. But I still have finals to get through. I took my math exit exam this last week and felt pretty good about it, but my mom says she won’t let me go on to the next level of math even if I get one hundred percent of the questions on the test correct. I’ve had an A just about all year, except for about a month when it was a B+. I wasn’t really having any trouble with anything math-wise this year. “Why not?” I asked. “I don’t want to repeat a class that I earned an A in.” She told me that I didn’t belong in advanced classes. I don’t want to be in an advanced class. I just don’t want to take eigth grade math AGAIN while I’m in ninth grade. But if my mom says so, that’s that. Next year, I’ll be repeating this year’s math class. Which really sucks, because that wrecks my college application. I still don’t really know why my mom doesn’t want me to advance to ninth-grade math in the first place.
I am getting an inkling that you people don’t read my blog entries through. I think that maybe you all are victims of SKIMMING. So I’m going to insert a confusing sentence here in the middle of this entry. If you are not a skimmer, then copy/paste the sentence into a comment and I’ll know who really reads my blog and who brushes over the posts quickly just to get it out of the way. Okay, here comes the sentence: The palm trees couldn’t call after that startled jellyfish because the bookshelf’s roar was so loud. There you go. Now I’m just going to go on with my next subject and pretend this paragraph was never here...
Actually, the deal now is that I have to go to school. It’s 8:01, and I still need to put the dog away and lock up the house. Just kidding. We never lock up the house. Only my dad actually has a key, the rest of us just enter through the backdoor or side door, which are always open. Feel free to break in. Relax, have a snack. But get outta there before my parents find out. :D
Okay, it’s the next day now. God, my life has been so screwed up the last few months. Because of the whole mold thing, we had to move all the junk out of my room and cram it into a teensy guest room. Since the dining room was taken by my sister, that was also where I had to live. I should have taken pictures. There were several layers of random objects strewn over the floor. I had boxes stacked three high, textbooks piled on a chesst of drawers which sat on a few plastic storage boxes. The couch in there got covered with more junk, so I resorted to sleeping on the ground. This was my world for the next few months, as mold people sucked out mold, inspection people came over to inspect, and carpet people came over to install carpet. One of the carpet guys was old. I overheard him talking to my dad: “I’m getting to old for this... I’ve been putting in carpet this whole week and my back can’t take much more. Damn, every day I do this I wish I had gone to college.” (Sorry for the profanity, but that’s what he said and I wanted an exact quote.) No lie, people. I felt bad for the dude. Have you ever had a heart-to-heart with your carpet installer? At least my dad can check that off the Life Goals list. Anyway, we had to truck everything downstairs when the carpet people finally came. I slept in the living room, sandwiched between the dresser from my parent’s room and a stack of file boxes. They finished earlier on today. The carpet is great; plushy and without a single little stain anywhere on it. It is so much better to look at than the bleak, splintery floorboards that had stared blankly at me for so long. I printed out a small picture of a Honda CRV, and wrote my initials and the date on the back. Before they laid down the carpet, I placed it on the padding. I don’t really know why I did that. I guess so that people will know what cars looked like fifty thousand years from today, when somebody else’s toilet floods and they have to tear up the carpet. Then they’ll find my little car picture, look at the date, squeal, and try to sell it on eBay under “Antiques.” (Well, that’s what I would do!) I’m taking a break from hauling furniture and boxes up the stairs right now. I’m home alone, so I can’t be generous and share the labor with my parents. I’m about halfway done... just an hour or two more before I finally have my room back.

Don’t ever take your room for granted, kids. It’s a real luxury that you do NOT ever want to lose. Take it from me: it sucks.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Cultural Fair

I’ve decided that “California” really is a very attractive word. So is “America.” I’ve never considered proper nouns when choosing ugly and attractive words.
I’ve already blogged today, so I don’t have much else to say. I’m going to the Cultural Fair tomorrow. I wasn’t planning to go, but one of my friends asked me to go with her, so. There’s not much to say about that. It’s cool, and also free: you watch dancers and stuff that represent culturalness from around the world, plus you get to eat their food for free. I got a crawfish from the Africa booth last year, but never ate it. I carried it around in a napkin the whole time while its beady and STILL INTACT eyes watched my every move. It had the claws in, shell on, antlers or whatever (antennae?) poking out and everything. It did not look edible. It did not smell edible either. But for the eating-cultured-food novelty of it, I accepted it when one of the Africa booth volunteers offered. I mean, why not?
By the time I got home it oozed spoiled-meat odors and was soggy in the backside. That’s why not.
I did get some yummy nibbles, though: there was a squishy rice thing from the Japan booth, and spring rolls at the China booth. Plus I liked the Indian dancers. They get to wear these very cool colorful robe thingies, adorned with pieces of mirror and beads and other shinies. I feel so white when I go to these cultural fair things. All the other countries have such awesome cultures, food and music and all that good stuff, and here I am, American and white, with nothing defining me. Everybody else is painted a million different shades with countries full of rich history while I remain a blank canvas. It makes you feel un-worldly, going to those cultural fairs. Well, for me, at least. In fifth grade, the elementary school had a booth for the United States. The volunteers there dressed in gaudy sparkly red-white-and-blue top hats. They served samples of cotton candy and popcorn in little Dixie cups. I was ashamed. That’s my country. Look at all the other booths: India, where a woman was giving henna tattoos, Islam, where a person was writing people’s names in Islamic, Korea, where a woman taught how to fold origami figures, Greece, where they handed out olives to taste. I am hungry for some sort of ancestry from a different country. I’m sixth-generation white. That means my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother came from Belgium. The rest of them were farmers in Ohio, including my own grammy. One of my friends, her mom was born in Egypt! That is beyond awesome. One of the girls on my former Girl Scout troop is half-Korean and half-Filipino. I’m a sheet of 12x8 white printer paper. A sack of all-purpose flour. A glass of foamy 2% skim milk. Bleh.
BUT they’re always fun anyway. I’m actually going to bring a CAMERA this time, and because I always forget, every single year, I’ve already stowed it away in my backpack. I want to take pictures of all the pretty dancers and stuff.
Guess what? I just jogged to the Safeway complex and back. My sister went to the library to study with her friend, then they both went to Starbucks. And THEN they realized neither of them had money. My sister called me and was all ‘oh please please please bring me my wallet my darling little sister and do it quick ma’am if you’re fond of your front teeth.’ So now she owes me a favor, which is a nice power for me to hold over her. I have to go eat dinner now, but I’m not really that hungry despite accidentally skipping lunch again. I really need to stop forgetting in the mornings. Somehow I manage to FORGET and then starve at school. Well, not really starve. My body has adapted, hee hee. :) My mom didn’t cook anything. She says to pick through the fridge and take what looks good. I guess that means she’d be okay with me skipping out. Augh. Why am I still here typing? I should go to bed. Or maybe go eat, I don’t know.
I wish you could instantly produce a perfect friend with a BFF-o-Matic. You know, just tap in everything you want and then let the cogs and gears make the person. And they’d be disposable, of course, when you’re done with them you could throw them away. Then you could have a friend that you feel so completely comfortable with that you don’t have to care what you say or what you look like around them. I guess that’s what true love is, though. But then, you’re supposed to look all nice for your gal/guy, so never mind. You know what sucks about society? You constantly have to play hard to get, know what I mean? If you’re friendly to a person too much, they think you’re clingy and desperate when you’re just trying to be nice. You never know whether somebody wants you to walk up to them and say hi, or keep your distance. Because what if you’re not good enough for them? It’s hard to tell who accepts you.
<~>

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Civil War Day

I'm so scared. I have school today. I leave in six minutes. You know what that means? I have to go to Mrs. Goldman's class. You know what that means? I'm going to find out what grade I got on the project. You already read about what will happen if I fail. So I better not. Remember that one time when I said I was going to Europe? Ever since I even heard about the trip, it's been a constant little thought in the back of my mind. Now this project has cast a dark shadow over most of my brain, and most of what I think about is what will happen if I fail the project. Will my parents kick me out? Will I pass eighth grade? Will I faint? I haven't thought about much else since I turned the project in. Maybe this is whatOCD is. My uncle has a mild case of it and could've passed it on to me. I actually had a nightmare, which felt very real. Mrs. Goldman just handed me the project inside a big binder as I walked into the classroom. I got to my desk, opened the binder, and found agradesheet inside. Guess what the grade was. An F. I thought it was real when it happened, so now I'm a teensy bit scared. What if it was a omen of some sort?
- - - -
Okay... it's after school now. And the verdict? Still unknown. We didn't even have social studies class, because it was Civil War Day. I didn't know that until second period, when una amiga informed me of the event. It hadn't been mentioned in any of our classes previously. So I'll know tomorrow whether I passed or failed. I guess I could talk about Civil War Day, then. It was kind of fun, which was unexpected. We sat around on the lawn on the far east of the school and listened to people dressed all funny talk about weapons and uniforms and cans of tomatoes. (I had brisket chili [whatever brisket is] with canned tomatoes in it once. It was good chili, but I left the squishy tomatoes at the bottom of the bowl. I was not about to place those squishy gloppy things in my mouth.) It was a sunny, sunny day today. Blinding. Burning. It felt so good after those long, cold months of extra winter when it was supposed to be spring. We've had erratic weather lately: hot for two days, then cold, hot again, rainy one day, cold for a few days, then warm, and so on. I hope the heat is here to stay this time. Warmth is nice. Humidity... not so much. That's the only thing wrong with California summers: too sticky. I actually prefer the silver-slick cool air of winter, even if it means sharp, cold temperatures. Hot and dry is perfect, like Arizona. Except Arizona was maybe just a little bit too hot. Maybe just kind of a way too much burning, scalding hot. Anyway, the big finale was a fake general shooting an unloaded gun. It was cool. Some people screamed. Somebody screamed too early.
Ha-ha.

Talk you Down

I'm so scared. I have school today. I leave in six minutes. You know what that means? I have to go to Mrs. Goldman's class. You know what that means? I'm going to find out what grade I got on the project. You already read about what will happen if I fail. So I better not. Remember that one time when I said I was going to Europe? Ever since I even heard about the trip, it's been a constant little thought in the back of my mind. Now this project has cast a dark shadow over most of my brain, and most of what I think about is what will happen if I fail the project. Will my parents kick me out? Will I pass eighth grade? Will I faint? I haven't thought about much else since I turned the project in. Maybe this is what OCD is. My uncle has a mild case of it and could've passed it on to me. I actually had a nightmare, which felt very real. Mrs. Goldman just handed me the project inside a big binder as I walked into the classroom. I got to my desk, opened the binder, and found a gradesheet inside. Guess what the grade was. An F. I thought it was real when it happened, so now I'm a teensy bit scared. What if it was a omen of some sort?
- - - -
Okay... it's after school now. And the verdict? Still unknown. We didn't even have social studies class, because it was Civil War Day. I didn't know that until second period, when una amiga informed me of the event. It hadn't been mentioned in any of our classes previously. So I'll know tomorrow whether I passed or failed. I guess I could talk about Civil War Day, then. It was kind of fun, which was unexpected. We sat around on the lawn on the far east of the school and listened to people dressed all funny talk about weapons and uniforms and cans of tomatoes. (I had brisket chili [whatever brisket is] with canned tomatoes in it once. It was good chili, but I left the squishy tomatoes at the bottom of the bowl. I was not about to place those squishy gloppy things in my mouth.) It was a sunny, sunny day today. Blinding. Burning. It felt so good after those long, cold months of extra winter when it was supposed to be spring. We've had erratic weather lately: hot for two days, then cold, hot again, rainy one day, cold for a few days, then warm, and so on. I hope the heat is here to stay this time. Warmth is nice. Humidity... not so much. That's the only thing wrong with California summers: too sticky. I actually prefer the silver-slick cool air of winter, even if it means sharp, cold temperatures. Hot and dry is perfect, like Arizona. Except Arizona was maybe just a little bit too hot. Maybe just kind of a way too much burning, scalding hot. Anyway, the big finale was a fake general shooting an unloaded gun. It was cool. Some people screamed. Somebody screamed too early.
Ha-ha.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Overdue Post

This first part is from long, long ago...
Today in sex ed, we learned How Not To Get An STD. And were also instructed to Always Use a Condom. And in “drug ed” we learned why not to smoke, why not to drink, and why not to use marijuana. The teacher said that the commercials are lying: drinking this beer or that vodka isn’t gonna help you hook a hottie. Darn. We also learned that if you drink too much, you get drunk. And if you get drunk, you can’t drive and you feel funny. Plus also drugs and alcohol kill brain cells. I can’t help but think of all the people who have screwed up their lives completely by getting STDS and doing marijuana. They have stinky itchy crotches and pass out all over the place and walk around dizzily, barfing into the bushes when nobody’s looking. That is not a pretty picture to be engraved into my brain. And I just carved it into yours. Sorry.
Okay, it’s a few days later right now. I haven’t blogged for a long, long time. It’s because of that Goldman project... I’ve been using up every square inch of my time on it. I want to turn it in early for the 20% extra credit. I think I’m going to make it, since I only have one more feature and the table of contents to complete. (It’s a magazine, by the way... yeah.) Another reason I’m not blogging is that my dad used his fancy-dancy parental filter to block the Blogspot website. Said I spent too much time blogging. I don’t know if this post will never make it onto the blog, or if it will in a few weeks or months if my dad changes his mind.
Again, it’s a few days later: Thursday. I finally, finally finished that project. But at a cost: it chipped away at my immune system and sanity. I lived off of black coffee and spent many hours at the computer researching and typing furiously long into the night. The ominous taps of the keyboard were the only sound echoing against the silent stretches of darkness surrounding me. Okay, that makes me sound as if I were in a deserted cave. With Wi-Fi. Anyway, I should feel complete relief, but all the stress and pressure of getting the gold-dinged thing done has been converted into unsure, unsteady, nervous worries that I will fail. Which will mean that I Am A Failure Who Has No Friends And No Future and Nothing To Love And Live For. If I fail this project, I am going to seriously consider committing suicide. I will die of shame anyway. If I fail this project, my head will turn into a potato and I’ll shrink until I’m two inches tall and my feet will melt into a thick gooey flesh-juice and my bones will be replaced with sponges, and then I’ll shrivel up into a crinkly, crackly nothing and let the wind blow me into pieces and carry me a thousand miles across the ocean. I’ll float up through the stratosphere and find some other life-sustaining planet, one where I will thrive as its only resident and be a Success. As the years pass I will slowly forget that I am a Failure and maybe, just maybe then I can ride the winds back down to Earth. It’ll take years to get over the failure of such a huge project, though. If I fail, the next time you see me I’ll have wrinkles.
That project made my life hell. It was such a huge amount of work, and I should have known I didn’t have the capacity to finish it all in under two weeks. But I always spring for extra credit no matter what. If I fail, there’s no point in having earned the extra credit, because... I failed.
Now that I think about it, I fail at life too, know what I mean? I mean, I am really a very ordinary person, and I wonder why anybody wants to be my friend. I don’t have anything about me that is special. Some people have these secret talents, like, I don’t know, they can SING! Or, oh man, they can really DRAW! Or they can write these really fantastic POEMS! And some people have outstanding qualities. You know, some people are just outgoing and perky, oh man they’re so FRIENDLY! And others are just so perfect perfect hair face perfect teeth eyes perfect perfect skin perfect they’re just so PRETTY! Or they always have the answer, work’s always done in a flash, god those people are SMART! I’m this dull gray area in a roiling crowd of great personalities and talents. I’m okay in school, mostly A’s but with a B+. I look like a doodle of the general girl. You know, a few sweeps of the pencil equals shoulder-length hair, two dots for eyes, a little dash for the mouth, done. I’m nice to people and people are nice to me, but I’m not so incredibly super fun cool funny cute outgoing helpful caring and so on. I can’t do that pretty lilting thing with my voice (I think they call it ‘singing’) that most girls can do, and I don’t play the acoustic guitar. I’m not the captain of the lacrosse team, and I don’t volunteer at the soup kitchen in my free time. (Actually, that would be fun, but that’s beside the point.) I am this little fuzzy smudge of nothing. If I fail this project, I officially fail at life, and that smudge evaporates and disappears. I really don’t want to fail, because it’s gonna be hard finding another planet that sustains life.
Anyway. I’m glad I could post this, finally. I’m on my mom’s computer again. It feels so weird to have gone so long without blogging. In my pre-blog days, I would write in a “journary.” (Journal+diary= journary, get it, ha ha, not so funny but hey it seemed clever back then. I made it up when I got to the second notebook.) I have five of them now, dating from sixth grade to the present. (I don’t really count my fourth- and fifth-grade ones.) I used to think I was so lame for writing in a notebook and calling it my diary. That is just so fourth grade of you, I’d always think. But now I remember why I journary’d so obsessively. I devoured page after page the last few days. I could write whatever I wanted without having to know any old person could stumble across it online, including my peers who could judge me. Sometimes I edit parts out on my blog, but not so with the good ol’ journary. And in the journary, I could lie. I could say that I got beaten up at school. And I did. I could say I almost drowned in a raging river of rushing aich-two-oh. And I did. I wrote whatever I wanted until the pen ran dry and the pages ran out, then it was on to the next notebook. (Actually, the pen still had ink. But I think the whole ‘pen-running-dry’ thing sounds nice.) I use plain notebooks and nestle them in with old schoolwork so nobody suspects what they might be. Oops. I just broadcast that to the Internet. Oh well, it’s not like any of you are ever going to break into my house at night and steal them. And who knows, you might accidentally pick up an old math notebook instead.
Okay. I’m gonna click the “Publish Post” button now. After two weeks. It’s finally happening. All right, then. Here we go... *click*

Thursday, May 21, 2009

God, I'm so sorry.

I was trying to upload from my phone because my dad banned the Blogger website from our computer. I got on my mom's computer and I see all this gibberish on my blog. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I won't be able to blog for a very long time, not until my dad changes his mind about banning the site.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Sex Ed and the 1900s

We had sex ed today. They've given up on their insistence of calling it "family life" and switched to something more wordy: "Draw the Line, Respect the Line." But sex ed is sex ed, and that is that. I thought it was going to be more intense, but all we did was read a handout about some girl who had HIV, and then draw a strange symbol on a piece of paper that was supposed to mean something. I think maybe it represented my life, or future, or decisions, or something all thought-provoking and important like that. But you know, I'm not really sure.
Mrs. Goldman has heaved one huge floppin’ whopper of a final project on us. We have to pick a decade in the 1900s and produce an entire freakin’ magazine with this kind of article and that kind of article and a timeline and advertisements and a bibliography. (Bibliography-hate waves radiate...) I will admit it, when she told us about it it seemed too incredibly fun to be true. But the bulky massiveness of the project has been crushing down on me since two thirty-four this afternoon till eight fifteen in the night, past my bedtime. I wanted to get a head-start on the project, since there’s a big payoff if you turn it in two weeks early: 20% extra credit. I am so going after those precious additional points. Mrs. Goldman definitely has some favorites, and unfortunately I am not one of them. That means I have to work seven times as hard as the lucky ones who will get A’s No Matter What. But I plan to work that two-thirty-till-eight-o’clock hours at (hopefully) lightning pace for the rest of the week and next week in order to get the extra credit. I meant to churn out pages and be halfway done before the sun rises tomorrow, but even with a continuous working pace I only came up with three pages. The printer didn’t cooperate for a while and I had to sweet-talk it into working again while my mom fiddled with plugs and switches underneath the desk, and the Internet crashed for a few minutes, so those might have screwed up my research marathon. But three pages is good enough for me. I bookmarked every site I used into a special folder and kept every source neatly recorded into a bibliography with correct MLA format. I used color and fancy fonts to make it passably attractive. I browsed Google hits for the best possible sites and kept an eye out for ones that focused on the topic I was after. I took time to note authors’ and artists’ works and cited all the pictures. I did not use Wikipedia. I better get an A on this thing.

Cusp

I did not screw up my Project Citizen speech. Please hold the applause, thank you, thank you. The whole shebang was actually Not That Bad. Most of the FOUR FREAKIN’ HOURS was spent slouched in fold-up chairs and letting other students’ voices create a pleasant white-noise barrier as my mind drifted off into the horizon. When it was my turn to give my scrap of the conjuncturate speech, I spoke and said all the right words at the right time, at the right volume, with the right amount of space between each word and sentence. What a feat!
I had a softball game today, too. We were winning by one run the entire game, but then they got three runs in the last inning and that was that. The same exact thing happened the last time we played this team, too: we were up by one run the whole time, but then in the last inning they punted our behinds to Venezuela. Also, the last time we played them I hit a double, and it happened again today. De-ja-vu?
The drama class is putting on a show of The Sound Of Music. I have never actually seen the movie or read the book (if there even is one) or watched the play, so I am not familiar with the story. Well actually, I know that there are a bunch of nuns and children, and that they all dance and sing. But hey, this way it’ll be more exciting, you know, mysterious twists and turns in the plotline and all. I need to find somebody to go with, though, or maybe I’ll just go with my cousins. I feel kind of bad for the drama people sometimes, though. It’s like, their shows have to compete with the extraordinary performances by those artsy-fartsy Castillero-ians. Dirty Cobras! We must seem so pathetic and lame and artificial and mediocre and flat and boring to them. They are the Artsy School. We are the academic drones, with a good curriculum, but with a student body that isn’t something to be proud of, really. The few dribbles of school spirit that run through my veins is drying up as I type. Maybe I had better stop there and talk about something else.
Like my personal Reawakening. I’m getting back into the swing of poetry-writing. In sixth and seventh grade, I would churn out poems like a... wench... churns butter...? (Attempt at a clever analogy: fail.) But they would always turn out all mournful-ish and “emo.” I tried to write more cheerful rhymes, but it didn’t work out too good. The only thing, though, is that I kind of obssess over having perfect ryhme. Half-rhymes are not my friend. You trip over them and have to climb around them and try to sculpt the imperfect pronunciation into something that works with the rest of the poem so that the thing rhymes. So if a word or line doesn’t have the exact proper rythym and ryhme, I just omit it. My poems never satisfy me, though. I write one and reread it, then start thinking how I can do better than that. I guess it would be appropriate to post one right now. I don’t know what to call it, so feel free to comment with title ideas. I never know what to call my poems. Usually, I just pick a random word from the collection and write it at the top of the page, then bam. That is the title. Sometimes, though, none of the words sound very nice on their own, so I have to spin a whole nother word out of midair. It’s tough work.
No one sees what I hide
In my twisted mind of fears and lies
Memories black with ashen flames
Bear the heart that no soul tames
Chained in a world where hatred dwells
In tears of sadness and nightmarish hells
And in tangled thoughts that none shall see
I reach for someone- for you to help me.
But you won't come, as proven true
So I'm ever alone, waiting for you
Hey, I didn't say they were any good.
As long as we’re talking about words, kind of... poems... words... Have you ever come across a word, and you’re not sure if it’s horrifyingly ugly or attractive? And not just an in-between word, like “telephone” or “cabinet.” You know it’s either ugly or attractive, but you’re just not sure which. Probably not, I guess. But I’m a word-categorizing kind of girl, so I actually have. One of them is the word “cusp.” All right, folks, did you wince reading that, or smile? I can’t tell if it’s a nice word or an icky one. I know it’s one of the two! I’m just... not sure which... I am using lots of ellipses in this entry. I guess I’m kind of unsure what I’m talking about sometimes. Take those to be little awkward pauses in the conversation.
It is eight o’clock in the night, people. (But it’ll probably be seven in the morning tomorrow when I post this.) This little girlie needs to snooze.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Root Canal

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I made my mommy a bouquet of tissue-paper flowers, a very heartfelt card, and a batch of oatmeal cookies, her favorite. Then I vacuummed, scrubbed bathrooms, mopped floors, washed windows, and did other such cleaning and housework while my sister did yard work. I’m more of a scrub-brush/Clorox kinda gal than a weed-trimmers/lawnmower-type person, if you know what I mean. It sounds so dirty when I say that. “If you know what I mean.” Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. It’s not like that, people. Sometimes I just don’t make sense, so I acknowledge it by tacking that phrase at the end of any logic- or sense-missing sentence. The antidote didn’t quite carve out any misunderstanding between the seven giraffes, so the lilac field pretty much had to scoot over, if you know what I mean. See? Just an innocent gang of words. But when I’m actually moving my lips and vibrating the vocal cords, it usually comes out as “know what I’m saying?” Or “know what I’m saying here?” Or “know what I’m talking about?”
My sister and I went to the mall today. I didn’t want to go, because I was planning to go hiking today. But her birthday is tomorrow, so I kind of had to, you know? It’s her birthday, the girl gets what she gosh-darn wants!! Anyway. We took the bus. There was only one other guy in the bis on our way there. He exuded weirdo vibes at the stop, shuffling around a lot and doing weird things with his hands. Like, he would touch his left thumb to his right pinky and then lace his fingers all around each other, then detangling the hand-maze one finger at a time. It was, you know. Weird. The bus was empty when we got on. The sis and I chose a seat two seats down from the driver. Finger-Lacer sat right behind the driver. About as soon as he sat down, he took a bag of Sun-Chips from the backpack thing he was wearing and started munching. He chewed with too much gusto. He coudn’t be pleased with simply biting down on the chip, he had to ferociously clamp his teeth down on each helpless crispy snack. The result was a mighty CRUNCH that seemed almost ear-shattering in the silence of the empty (besides the driver, sista, me, and Finger-Lacer) bus. I could actually hear his teeth clack once they tore through the chip and hit each other. I don’t know if you’re allowed to eat in the bus, but the driver sure didn’t care. It’s not like he could have just not noticed it, with all the gnashing and gnawing going on a few feet away from his ear canals. Canal. Now that is an unattractive word if I ever heard one. Say it aloud. Come on now, don’t be shy. Canal. That, my friends, is an ugly, ugly word. They should never have come up with that word. Actually, it sounds better if you say, I don’t know, Panama Canal. But think of ear canals, people, or root canals. Then “canal” sounds gross. Especially the disgusting phrase “root canal.” That is possibly the most unattractive combination of words ever to meet my poor, poor ears.
On a completely unrelated but woeful and blogworthy subject... Proggy Citizee is tomorrow. I dread the day. I have to stand there. And talk. To a bunch of... people. And I have to answer. Their questions. And I think maybe. I’m using too many. Periods. Anyway... what if I don’t know the answers to their questions? Or I forget my speech? A big fat hulking chunk of my grade depends on this stupid stupid stupid Project Citisen. It’s really unfair, because the only ones who are going to get A’s are the team leaders. They have it made. The rest of us, we’re going to fail this thing. On the “survey” they handed out before this whole stupid stupid stupid thing, I answered “no” to “Are you interested in being a team leader?” I didn’t know that meant “Are you interested in earning a surefire A?” Then it would have been yes all the way. I really hope I don’t screw up. To ensure this, I am going to tie my hair up into a dorky low side ponytail, don my glasses, and wear flat shoes. This is so I will appear smart, sensible, sure, strong... and I ran out of “s” adjectives there. Since the only people who read this blog are involved n Project Citizen... I wish you all luck! Fingers crossed! Four-leaf-clovers plucked! *blows kisses*

Friday, May 8, 2009

Double-Crossed

I’m sorry I didn’t blog yesterday... or the day before... We’ve been having state testing, and I’m devoting most of my time to studying instead of blogging. I have happy news today. We’re celebrating my sister’s birthday tonight (even though it’s really on Monday) by going out to dinner in Los Gatos. We’re going to eat at Aqui, and then pick up a cake at this really awesome place called Satura Cakes. We’ve been there once before, and the cake is. Really good. And I don’t even like cake! Well, not really. Not as much as other things. Like... mint ice cream! Or coffee ice cream! With sliced almonds on top! Yum! We don’t really go out as much as we have in past years (Hey, economy... you suck, did you know that?) so I’m excited.
Also, I have been writing much more a lot more quickly on the ‘book’ I’m working on, Double Crossed. The first chapter is always the worst, but I’m posting it here anyway. I just reread it, actually. It’s... short. And actually, really bad. Hopefully Chapter Two and Three are better. I don’t reread as I write (too lazy) so I have yet to revise those. I might post them here later... if I think of it.
My mother was my hero, the only person in the world I could trust. As a kid you always thought your parents were the ultimate authority of everything, but in my case that was only true for my dad. He was the serious parent who worked full-time and cleaned up the messes my clumsy mother always seemed to make. My mother was my best friend. She had bouncy red curls all piled up in a springy knot at the top of her head. We always fake-wrestled as soon as she got home from work as a college professor, me jumping up as soon as the back door opened and running to meet her. I pulled a coil of her hair, and she tickled my nose with my own auburn waves. We would have sleepovers in my room, telling each other secrets and sneaking downstairs to make snack mix with pretzels, Cheez-its, nuts, and whatever else we could find. Then we would pick out the Cheez-its and leave the rest of the stuff in the bowl for my father to put away come morning. In the morning she always braided my hair for me, up until fourth grade. That’s when I started wearing it loose. “My little beauty,” she’d always say before I left for the bus stop, clucking a kiss on my cheek. I’d always giggle and pretend to wipe it off, but later on in the day I would touch my cheek to make sure it was still there.
And my mother made pies. She would make pies like crazy, sending me to deliver them to neighbors, giving them to homeless shelters, feeding them to my dad and I. She made apple pie a few times, pumpkin pies around Thanksgiving, and once pecan, but mostly what she would make was cherry pie. I loved that cherry pie like nothing else in the world, except my mother herself. Looking back, I’m guessing the pie wasn’t anything too special. It was the whole mother-daughter experience that came with it. When I was really little, we kept a stool in the pantry. She would send me to get ingredients, and I would always grab the stool too. I would climb up onto it to watch my mom crack open the eggs and stir in the sugar, add the vanilla and measure out the flour. Time and time again, she would give me little jobs to do, like measure out baking powder or work the electric egg beater. I never thought about how Hallmark and cliché that was: Mother and daughter in the kitchen together, making pies. Every time my mother pulled out her striped apron and tied it on, I would drop my Legos or stuffed animals or TV remote and dash to the pantry to get my stool. The house would fill with the delicious aroma of pie after she set it in the oven to bake. She’d always wrap me up in a big quilt and set me in her lap to watch TV with her as we waited for it to be finished, but as soon as my nose caught a whiff of that intoxicating scent, I would leap up and out of the room and zip into the kitchen, where I’d peek into the oven. My mom would always follow and glance into the oven as well, then we’d sit in the kitchen and drink up the smell. The beep of the oven sent her to root around for potholders and me to tug open the fridge. She’d slice up the pie, I’d pour glasses of milk, and me and her prepared to feast.
I was nine years old when she died.
It wasn’t so sudden though, actually. She had leukemia, and I was old enough at that age to understand that she was really sick, deathly sick. When she died on March sixteenth at forty-one years old, it wasn’t a surprise, but somehow we were still in shock. From that day until now, my father has been a little more tired than he had ever been before. The bags under his eyes are just about permanent. The hours he works are just about endless. Four years later, the grief stays, but at least the painful shock has worn off. Me and him have been been functioning as best we can, but my life has been so dull without my mother filling it with her bouncy red hair and million-watt smile.
The funeral was short and quiet. People brought flowers and cards to lay on the grave, and casseroles or Bundt cakes for my dad and I. I wanted to bring pie, to be all symbolistic and all, but I was only nine. I couldn’t cook anything other than toast. I stood in my long black little-girl dress, my dad stood in his black suit. Both of us were quiet. Both of us felt the sympathetic stares being shot by the people surrounding us, but I only wanted to be left alone. People would come up to my dad and clap him on the shoulder, murmuring words of empty sorrow. He’d nod in a manly sort of way and wait for them to leave so he could let a few tears slip out. Teary women would huddle together in clusters and make little cooing noises at me from a distance. Eventually one would break off, pat me on the head, and tell me it would be all right. I just stood there numbly and didn’t even try to smile, or nod, or acknowledge that anybody was there. I was through with the funeral before the funeral was through.
My dad and I collapsed in the car when it was finally over. His face was set into a stony frown as he placed his big hands on the steering wheel, but his foot never touched the gas pedal. Then he started crying, big gulping sobs wrenching themselves out from his throat. I watched in sickened awe, feeling my own eyes grow watery and round. I couldn’t believe this person sitting next to me was my dad. My strong hardworking dad had been reduced to this? I couldn’t believe it. I started to cry too. I couldn’t bear to see my father in this state. He cried, and I cried, and finally I crawled into his lap, almost blind from all the tears. He pulled me closer and wrapped his big strong arms around me. I rested my head on his very square shoulder, but it was shaking too much for me to be comfortable. Finally I buried my head in his blunt chest, wetting his jacket and getting snot all over his shirt. I didn’t notice and he didn’t care. I listened to his heart beat, and my own heart slowed its pace to match his. I looked up to see that he was looking back down at me. Neither of us could talk. Neither of us wanted to. He handed me a tissue.
Eventually we must have ended up at home, but how we got there I don’t know.
I am thirteen years old now, in eighth grade. In seventh grade, I did a biography on Robert Frost. One of his poems makes the very true statement of: Nothing gold can stay. I have been living by that quote ever since, because I can relate. My mother was my “gold.” I should have known she couldn't stay.

Yeah, that’s it. Sorry it’s so short! The other chapters are longer, and hopefully don’t suck as bad. I’m really, really trying to write a good story.
I’m really trying.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Wham!

It’s actually never occurred to me that if I don’t have anything to write about, I should simply not blog that day. But then, I’d have to go several days at a time without blogging. You know how I talk about, um, nothing. Maybe I should start making up stories and pretend they really happened. And I won’t tell any of you guys that they’re lies until the next post. Or I could tell two stories: one a true story, the other a made-up one. And I could change the Reactions thing to: Do you think this was True? or False? But I think probably that it would be pretty easy to tell the truthful apart from the fictitious. I’m just sayin’.
School starts in half an hour. I’m all showered, dressed, and fed, and my next step is to blog. It’s become part of my morning routine, actually: take a shower, brush the teeth, wash the face, get dressed, eat breakfast, then go back to my room and start blogging. I have this laptop in my room... it’s really old, doesn’t go on the Internet, and most of the applications don’t work. Pretty much the only thing that works is the Appleworks. (That’s the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Word or Pages... whatever you use.) So, that’s all I use the thing for. Then I jam a USB stick into the side and transport the document to the working computer downstairs, so I can copy/paste it onto the blog. I would just write directly to the blog, but my mom has been yelling at me lately for spending too much time on the computer. I read other people’s blogs, mostly. The parental filters in the computer ban pretty much everything else. Heh.
Okay, now it’s exactly seven o’clock in the afternoon. I never posted this morning because I ran out of things to write and it would have been too short. I went to my sister’s softball game, since I didn’t have anything planned for this afternoon. I had planned to join the Leland softball team, but after watching them, I’m a little scared. They hit the balls WHAM! hard and strong all the way out to the deep stretches of outfield. My hits are usually grounders that get snapped up by the shortstop and tossed to first. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make the team if I’m supposed to hit like that. If I don’t make it, I guess I’ll do track instead. I’m doing cross-country in the fall, so I’ll have the whole year covered.
When we were driving home, we got hit with a really long red light. There was a police car up front in the same lane we were in, with its lights off. After long minutes of waiting, the police car turned on his lights and siren and sped across the intersection. As soon as he got across, he turned them off. That, folks, is what we call serious corruption. Corruption at its peak. The rest of us have to wait, but he fakes an emergency so he can dart across and get where he needs to go, leaving the rest of us coughing on his dust. The gall! Just kidding, I wasn’t mad. Actually, I laughed. Ha! That cocky policeman was a tricky little bugger.
I hope I have time to post this tonight. I’m upstairs again, in mi cuarto. Necesito traer este document abajo la escalera a la computadora grande. I guess I’ll just go do that now, because I’m tired and want to get to bed by seven thirty.
Quizerktan! (Tangklish)

Monday, May 4, 2009

Yawn-worthy

This blog is tough to keep up with. I have to post often, and make the entries cool and funny so nobody gets the boredy-bores while reading it.
I have a reputation now. Well, no. This blog has a reputation now, for being cool and funny. But lately, my entries are not quite cutting it, if that was even the right phrase. That's why I've added the Reactions thing at the bottom of each post. So I know, is this blog really becoming a pathetic, dreary little chunk of cyberspace? Or is it still the cool, fun thing that it used to be?
I think the real problem is lack of things to talk about. I mean, I could say: "We're working on Project Citizen, which is blah blah blah... And we took our science STAR tests last week, and I think I did pretty good, because it was fairly easy and blah blah blah..." But who wants to read that? I actually base my day around events that would be fun to blog about now. Obsessed? Maybe. But sometimes I start to write about things, and then just delete it all because it gets too rambly and yawn-worthy. Is that what writer's block is? I'm not sure. I don't think I have it, because my Great American Novel is going smoothly. I don't know if I mentioned it here, but I'm writing a "book." I wrote a "book" in seventh grade, but it ended up being quite the sucky piece of work. I just plowed through it, not stopping to look back or edit. Kind of like what I do when I blog. Heh.
So now I'm trying again. I hope this one turns out better.
My sister's birthday is in a week. I completely forgot about it until yesterday. My mom was going to the mall anyway, so I went along with her. I didn't know what to get the sis. She likes: her hair, junk food, Paris, television, mascara, softball, the SJ Sharks. I bought her a necklace with an Eiffel tower pendant, a bottle of "smoothing cream" stuff to put in her hair, and a package of strawberry-flavored Oreos. Insanely thoughtful, I know.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Saturday

So-o-o. I opened up a “create post” window, but now I find I have nothing to say. Usually I can come up with something or other to kick off the entry, but I’m seriously drawing a blank. Is my life really so uneventful? Is my mind really so idle?
The most exciting thing that has happened to me so far today is that my grandma gave me a miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. It was even wrapped in pink foil for the National Breast Cancer Organization. She got them for half-off at Rite-Aid because they were several months old and the chocolate had bloomed. But if you don’t look at it and just pop it in your mouth, it tastes fine. And that just goes to show how culinarily refined I am. ‘Close your eyes, hold your nose, and shove it into your maw. Swallow before you taste anything and you’re all good!’ I’m not a glut. I’m NOT! I promise.
Another prominent event is, my softball team FINALLY won a game. Not because we had any good hits or excellent plays, though: the other team’s pitcher walked almost every batter, and they didn’t hit much at all. It was kind of a boring game. But hey, we won! That’s a first! Well, actually, a second. We have only won one game before, and again, that was because that team sucked as well. We suck too, but just a little less than they did.
I’m beginning to learn what an excellent thing television is. I work out on the elliptical in our family room, and I used to read to keep myself entertained. But sometimes I would watch T.V. instead. I haven’t ever really liked watching T.V. I don’t like flopping down on the couch and just sitting there gawking at a screen as the precious minutes of my free time tick away. But, if I’m on the elliptical, I don’t feel so guilty because I’m exercising. I even found some particular shows that bring extra pleasure to my being. I figured out that they aren’t all the same. Did you know? Some of them are funny, and some are dramatic, and some are about gardening, others about motorcycles, and some about cooking. Television had always just been television: pictures, words, and sounds on a screen. But there are all these channels now, most of them three letters. Like NBC, or ABC, and FOX, and TBS. I am very entertained by Food Network. People cook, and you watch them. Crazy, crazy stuff. I think T.V. might be a very awesome thing. And whenever I watch it, I elliptical-nate. (Trying to turn it into a verb... fail.) So if I get addicted, I’ll be toned and strong in my leggy muscles. Sheeyah.

Sorry for the short-ish post. I’m not going to have time to post this today, so you’ll probably see it on Sunday.