Five Shades of White

If there's one thing I hate, it's feeling vulnerable. I don't like giving other people control over my moods or the way I think about myself. I like having the brick wall, y'know? I like being able to say, 'Wow. What they did sucks, but I'll be all right.'

He really hurt me.

And I don't know what to do with that.

One quarter of freshman year down, two to go, and here's where things stand:

I have a job, a handful of As on my transcript, roommates who make me laugh in a ghetto dorm I don't want to leave, and a certain boy who may be driving to visit over the next few days.

College is treating me pretty damn well at the moment.

Funny how that works.

However many months ago, before I graduated and all that jazz, I was a high school student.

Approximately two weeks before that stopped being the case, my English teacher started class with the sentence, "Oh, and by the way: I know I told you at the beginning of the year that you weren't going to be required to write an autobiography because this is AP, but SURPRISE! I LIED. Get started, it's due in nine days."

Naturally, I waited until the day before and then stayed awake all night, winding up with almost sixteen pages and no sleep.

It was quite possibly the lamest thing I've ever done in my entire life, but that's okay because now, I have a very incomplete and badly-written life story to share! :D

And share I will.

Life in 20 Frames or Less

i.

Life when I'm four goes something like this:

I have a mommy, a daddy, a little brother named Daniel, and a gray and white bunny called Gentle Ben, who I picked out at the house with all the cages, even though Dad wanted to get the big, fat, reddish-brown mama rabbit, instead.

I like crackers with peanut butter, tortilla chips and hot chocolate from Zip's restaurant across the street from Lucky's grocery, and the movie Aladdin. I don't like flies, or spiders, or bees. I hate cigarette smoke and people yelling in the next-door half of our duplex, or on TV.

I'm three and a half feet tall, with hair cut up to the bottoms of my earlobes. It used to be halfway down my back and curly until I got it cut one morning with Daddy, when I finally got sick of old ladies in the grocery store touching it and saying they wished it was theirs. The woman at the haircutting place who trimmed my bangs also trimmed one of my eyelashes, and it scared me, so afterward she gave me a lollipop, and Daddy and I walked to get frozen yogurt from Yumygurt down the street, where I picked Butter Pecan because it's my favorite.

I like this new style. The curls disappeared with the length, and Mercedes from across the street tells me short hair makes me look older. Plus, this way, old ladies don't notice it when I'm with Mommy in the cereal aisle, anymore. And that's nice.

*

My birthday's on November 5th, and on the day I turn five, we move from Pinole to Redding. Before we leave, I get presents from the Sunday school teachers at church - a doll wearing an orangey-pink crocheted dress, and a pink plastic cup that says JESUS LOVES ME across the front.

Our new house on Merle Drive is blue and white, just like the duplex in Pinole, only without a red door at the front. It's bigger than the duplex, too - it has three bedrooms instead of two, and two living rooms instead of one (one for the piano and Mom's nice stuff, one for the TV), and a big backyard with a deck for the pool we don't have, a shed for the tools I'm not allowed to use, and big trees that I don't know how to climb. The first time I see the house, I'm wearing my 101 Dalmatians nightgown, because Mommy and Daddy picked us up from Oma and Opa's house in Concord after bringing the moving van up, and we drove all the way from the Bay Area early in the morning while I was still asleep.

Mommy says we can't repaint my new room because the house on Merle's a rental, but I don't mind, because the wallpaper that's already up is pale yellow and has pictures of Precious Moments dolls, and those match the decorations I already have.

For Christmas a month after the move, Santa Claus brings me a purple and green Big Wheels tricycle with Little Mermaid stickers on the wheels, and tassels on the handles. Daniel's is black and blue and has Batman stickers so it looks more like a boys' bike. We leave Santa cookies and milk on the table, and when he sneaks out after he eats them, he accidentally leaves a scrap of red Christmas suit material stuck to the fireplace! I tell Mommy I bet the elves probably laughed at him when he got back to the North Pole. She says I'm probably right, because wouldn't he look silly with a hole in the back of his pants?

*

In the spring and summer we play outside a lot. Sometimes I pretend I've broken my leg, and use the big stick in the backyard as a cane that helps me walk. Most times though, Daniel and I play "Jeremy and Sarah". He's Jeremy, and I'm Sarah, and we're best friends who ride around on a scooter and call each other Jeremy and Sarah. Gentle Ben plays too, when Mom lets him out of his cage, only he doesn't have a pretend name because he's just a bunny. He's sort of boring anyway, since all he does is hop around in the grass and wiggle his little nose.

*

Dad works two jobs for awhile when I'm five - his big job, which is being the pastor at Hope Baptist Church next to the freeway and The Fly Shop, and his little job, which is delivering newspapers every morning and afternoon. Daniel and I get to go on the afternoon routes with him sometimes. We squeeze into the backseat of the blue Honda Accord, chewing on pieces of gum he gives us, and help put rubber bands around the papers before he tosses them with his left hand out the driver's window and over the top of the car. We listen to his Steven Curtis Chapman and Philips, Craig, and Dean cassettes while we drive - the music usually pours out through open windows because the Honda doesn't have air conditioning, and summers in Redding are hot. Most days Dad tells us to take our afternoon naps in the car since it's usually a few hours before we finally get home. If we're good, he says, we might get an ice cream from the Ice Cream Man afterward to cool us down.

I try to keep my wad of gum in my mouth while I'm sleeping, just to see if I can wake up later with it still clenched between my teeth and the inside of my cheek.

I can almost always do it.

*

We move for the second time in August, one month after Daddy buys Mommy a white puppy named Ivy for her birthday, and about two months before Mommy tells Daniel and me that we're going to have a new baby brother or sister soon. Our newer new house is on Leonard Drive, three blocks away from the one on Merle. It's blue and white, just like Merle, but it has a smaller backyard, bigger bedrooms, and a downstairs room that starts as Daddy's office, turns into a red, yellow, green, and blue playroom, and ends as the place where we eat dinner. Plus, Mommy and Daddy bought it all by themselves, so we can do whatever we want to it. My walls are white, and I keep them that way, but I pick out pink curtains that match my bedspread to put on the windows because pink's my favorite color.

I decide that I like it here just fine.

ii.

I start kindergarten at Sycamore Elementary around the corner at the end of August. My teacher's name is Mr. Gilstrap. When Mommy talked about him after sitting in on his class for an hour last year, I pictured him looking like the teachers on TV - with big glasses, and greasy black hair, and lots of vials and chemistry sets on his desk - but when I walk into Room 1 on the first day of school, Mr. Gilstrap introduces himself, and doesn't look anything like Bill Nye the Science Guy. He has dark curly hair, and a big smile, and a nice voice. First he talks to the class about what it's like to be in Big Kids' School, and how recesses and the lunch line work, and then he teaches us a song with his guitar and reads a story before we go home. School's fun, and I guess I like it, but I still don't know anybody except Abby, the girl who sits at the same table as I do, in the chair next to mine. She doesn't talk very much because she's shy, and I don't talk very much either, because I'm shy too.

I think maybe that's why we're friends.

*

We have two Ashleys and one Ashlee in our class - Ashley Jensen, Ashley Mason, and Ashlee Mitchell. I can never remember which of them is which, but at least when we play the Name Game, I have a whole group of girls memorized already.

*

There's another kindergarten teacher at Sycamore. Her name is Mrs. Welch, and not many people like her, on account of the fact that she yells sometimes and scares everyone.

Some kids switch from Mrs. Welch's class to Mr. Gilstrap's class during the first week of school, since Mr. Gilstrap doesn't scare anybody, and instead makes everybody feel pretty okay.

One morning while we're all sitting on the rug listening to Mr. Gilstrap talk about learning to read, the door flies open and a girl with pigtails skips in, dragging a man who's probably her daddy along behind her. Mr. Gilstrap tells us that this is Shauna Kruggel from Mrs. Welch's class, who's going to be Shauna Kruggel from Mr. Gilstrap's class from now on. He tells Shauna that she'll have to teach him how to skip the way she does sometime soon. She agrees, gives her daddy a kiss goodbye, and comes to sit with us on the floor.

*

By October, I have three best friends: Ashlee Mitchell, Shauna Kruggel, and Haley Howland, who says she comes from Mrs. Welch's class too, and seems to appear out of nowhere. We call ourselves The Four Girls because we decide we need a group name, there are four of us, we're all girls, and nobody can come up with anything better.

We play Kitty Cat Corners every day at recess, except for the times when we decide hanging from the bars on the jungle gym sounds like more fun. On weekends, we go to each others' houses for birthday parties, pool parties, and sleepovers. I call Ashlee's mommy Miss Debbie, Shauna's mommy Miss Vauna, and Haley's mommy Miss Carol. They call mine Miss Rebecca.

*

On May 22nd, the school secretary, Mrs. Keeley, pages me over the loud speaker right as we're about to go out for morning recess. I've never been paged before; it makes me feel important and excited and a lot older than six. Daddy's on the other end when I pick up the phone behind Mr. Gilstrap's desk. He says that my new baby brother Benjamin Nathanael was born at 8:02 in the morning, and tells me that Grandma and Grandpa are going to pick me up from school and take me to the hospital so I can meet him and see Mommy.

Everyone congratulates me when I hang up and get my Minnie Mouse backpack from my cubby. I'm not really sure what to do, since I was only two when Daniel was born, and everyone knows that two-year-olds are practically still babies. So I just smile.

I think I've been a good big sister so far for the first time. Maybe I'll be a good big sister the second time, too.

*

We four girls are in Mrs. Deck's second grade when Miss Carol makes us matching dresses. They're pink, with teddy bears, honey pots, and bumblebees on the fabric. I can't believe we've been friends for three whole years, and wonder how all of a sudden I can be eight years old when it seems like yesterday I was learning how to spell things like 'apple' and 'bear' and 'train' in Mr. Gilstrap's class.

Wednesday becomes Pink Dress Day. No-one knows why exactly, but it's an unspoken rule that we follow for at least half of the school year, until suddenly it isn't as fun wearing the same thing once a week as it used to be, and someone, and then everyone, stops.

Later, the dresses are put into boxes in attics and garages and closets for safekeeping.

*

Ashlee moves right before my tenth birthday, when her dad gets a job offer in Roseville that he can't turn down. Jessica Gatzke becomes my main best friend at school; we eat lunch together everyday, and have sleepovers, and make Best Friend ID cards, since that's what everyone does in fourth grade.

Shauna, Haley and I are still three girls, but it isn't exactly the same as before.

I don't know if anything ever is, really.

iii.

Grandpa's told me before how he went swimming one day when he was young and got a small piece of something stuck in his right eye. He's told me how he rubbed and rubbed it as it got sorer and sorer, and that when the particle finally came out it was covered in matter. He's explained how, eventually, he went blind in that eye.

After almost sixty years, he finally schedules a surgery to have it removed when I'm in fourth grade. Something about glaucoma, and pressure behind his eyeball, and other stuff I don't really understand because I'm only ten, and I don't like science, anyway.

Mom wants to be with Grandma while the surgery's going on, so we all drive down in our new white minivan to drop her off. We stay the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house, but as Dad, Daniel, Ben and I are about to leave for home the next day, I decide that I'd rather stay with Mom. I'm allowed, even though I'll miss a few days of school.

I haven't brought a change of clothes with me; all I have is the red jumpsuit with the white apples that I wore on the drive down, and a t-shirt Grandma's given me to wear to bed.

It's cold in San Lorenzo this week, but I don't have a sweater, so Grandma lends me one of hers when we drive to the hospital.

The  surgery goes fine. Grandpa's new glass eye looks exactly like the old real one. I can hardly ever tell that it's fake unless he gets tired and his left eye droops when his right eye doesn't, or if they don't completely match up when he's looking around. He can take it out, but he doesn't usually unless it's nighttime or he's alone - probably because it's sort of impolite to take a glass eyeball out of its socket in public.

I go shopping for a change of clothes with Mom and Grandma before Dad and the boys come back, because I've been wearing the same outfit for the past two days. It really isn't that dirty - we've washed it with another load of laundry - but Grandma always seems to be looking for an excuse to buy me something new, even when I don't need it, so I walk out of Penney's with a pair of khaki cargo pants and a nice pink shirt.

When I get home though, it isn't the new clothes that make me happiest when I unpack. Grandma's white sweater's there with them in the duffle bag - smelling like the house she and Grandpa live in - a combination of her perfume, and something that maybe comes from the kitchen, or might just be in the air.

I use it like a safety blanket - when I go to sleep at night, I can close my eyes and picture myself there again.

It's almost like she's with me; at least until I see her for real next time.

iv.

From first through fifth grades, my favorite book series is the Baby-Sitters Club. I rent them from the library, buy them from bookstores, even trade the ones I've finished a thousand times with Ashlee through the mail for others that she owns and I don't.

They're short, fun to read and, according to what Mom's been repeating since I was seven, "they have way too much talk of divorce."

Mom's always said that she and Dad will never get divorced, but sometimes I think about what I would do if they ever did. If I were a character on TV, for example, I'd either throw something, run to my bedroom sobbing, or say something cutting, like "you lied to me."

As it is, when Dad tells me that he and Mom probably won't stay together one day a few years later, I don't throw anything, or cry much. I do lock myself in the bathroom for a little while, because I'm angry, but I never tell Mom that she lied to me. It seems overdramatic, and rude, and anyway, I don't think she meant to do it in the first place.

*

It's not so different having parents who are divorced. We all still live in the same house for the first few months or so, only Dad moves downstairs into what used to be the playroom, and Mom buys a smaller bed for the master bedroom, and they both go out on dates sometimes with other people.

*

Mom meets Chuck on the internet. He's a firefighter who lives about fifteen minutes away and likes to ski. I meet him at some point, I know, but after awhile it blurs and I'm not sure how, or where, or when. Eventually, I start to have trouble remembering a time when he wasn't a part of the family - when I didn't even know he existed.

He and Mom marry three days before I start seventh grade. I'm the Maid of Honor.

*

Dad meets Linda the same way Mom met Chuck - on AOL. She lives in Idaho, and has three children who are mostly grown. We meet her for the first time when she drives down for Daniel's eleventh birthday party at the bowling alley. She and Dad take us to Viking Skate Country while she's visiting, and we get to know each other - she's fun to be around, has a flair for decorating, and knows a lot of interesting facts about a lot of different things.

I'm happy when she moves to Redding the next March, and even more excited when she and Dad get married by the lake the summer after eighth grade.

*

Mom and Dad have shared custody of the three of us kids, and for almost six years after Mom first moves away from Leonard Drive, we rotate weeks between houses. One week at Dad and Linda's, one week at Mom and Chuck's. Next week at Dad and Linda's, the one after that at Mom and Chuck's. And so on and so forth until January of my Junior year of high school, when Dad and Linda tell us over dinner that they're selling the house and moving to Portland in two weeks. Dad resigned from his position as pastor of Hope back when I was eight; he's been working as a Family Services Counselor at Redding Memorial Park and Lawncrest Chapel ever since, and now he's going back to school in Oregon to get his funeral director's license so he can make himself more marketable in the field.

He and Linda leave at the beginning of February. They call or e-mail every week or so, and drive down every few months to visit - usually for holidays, but also once as a surprise for my eighteenth birthday.

Even though I miss them sometimes, they're really not that far away.

...

Can you tell that that's about the time I looked at the clock and realized it was after 5:00 in the morning? Because it was. And I was sort of like, "OHSHIT" and scribbled a crap 'ending' just for the sake of having five 'solid' vignettes to meet the requirements. I'm not putting the ending because it sucked. Actually, now that I think about it, I didn't want to put that last bit up either, but it would've been a little weird randomly saying that my dad works at a funeral home and then, THE END!, so.

Anyway. For posterity, there's that. A completely useless compilation of mostly insignificant moments in my life.

Got an A- because I may or may not have actually followed directions, but whatever. I personally am of the opinion that it's a pretty kickass paper for having been written on a combination of zero sleep and absolutely no inspiration.

Pretty cool.

In other news, I've ignored this journal for practically my entire life, so PS: I chose Davis, classes start in a month and a half, and Ashlee and I are (maybehopefully) rooming together, at which point there will most definitely be a garden gnome involved.

If I'm honest, I don't quite know what to do with myself. The past four nights I've sat in the dark, waiting to fall asleep, and all of a sudden something clicks and I remember that I've just wasted one more day doing something completely pointless, when I should've spent it doing whatever will make these last few weeks at home count.

On the one hand, I am so excited to move to an entirely new and different town, and meet entirely new and different people, and do entirely new and different things. On the other, I am so tragically attached to people here. Not friends, really, like it seems to be for everyone else, but my family. Just my family. Just my mom and step-dad, and my brothers and my dog, and my two stupid, stupid cats.

I want to go, I don't. I want to go, I don't. Excitementdread, excitementdread, blah blah blah blah blah.

Why can't everything be one or the other?

I'm asking.

It's been twenty-thousand years since my last update, so I'm going to celebrate!

By copying an entry I posted as a note on Facebook a few weeks ago, regarding my ridiculous, RIDICULOUS life.

Enjoy it.

--

Cory and I were supposed to meet at Jamba Juice Wednesday afternoon before going to see Evan Almighty. She wasn't there yet when I pulled into the parking lot, so I went in and ordered my Razz & Red Tea all alone, then sat and waited at a table. Just as she walked in the door, the girl behind the counter put a drink up and called a name. It was loud, so all I heard was "FJKDL;AJFLDAIM. RAZZFJKDLAJFDLA;?"

I waited for a few seconds to see if anyone else would claim it as theirs, because I wasn't totally sure if by "FJKDL;AJFLDAIM. RAZZFJKDLAJFDLA;?" she meant "KIM. RAZZ & RED TEA?" When no-one stood up, I went over and was like, "I think this is mine," to which she replied, "ARE YOU FJKDLA;JFKD;LAIM?" I looked for a receipt on the side of the cup with my name, I really did, but there wasn't one, and it looked like mine - I mean, it was red and everything - so I said, "Uh. Yeah," and took it.

Four sips later, I'm standing in line with Cory as she figures out what she wants when the girl comes back up to the counter with another drink, and says (clearly, this time), "KIM. RAZZ & RED TEA."

And I'm kind of like, "..."

Apparently, what I had in my hand was a Razzmatazz for Tim.

Go friggin figure.

When I told the girl what happened and apologized, she gave me such a look of loathing and disgust I was positive my face was going to melt off. I actually was tempted to ask if I could just keep Tim's Razzmatazz, since he was in the corner, not paying attention, and they were going to throw it away anyway, and it sort of tasted better than the Razz & Red Tea they gave me, but I seriously thought she might punch me.

So instead, I went outside and hid. :D

...THE END.

If my life were a movie, I'm pretty sure this Tim guy would've been my soulmate or something. And like. When the rude Girl Behind the Counter called him up to tell him how much she hated me, and how sorry she was that he'd have to wait a few extra minutes while they made him a new smoothie, he'd look over, see me, and say something like, 'HOW CAN YOU BE SO HORRIBLY UNREASONABLE? IT MUST BE FATE.' And then we'd get married, and one day tell our grandchildren how we met because of a silly mix-up over Razzmatazz, Razz & Red Tea, and rhyming names, ha ha. And I wouldn't feel stupid, and there'd be a really amazing soundtrack.

As it was, Tim was much too old and pretty unattractive, and the reason he wasn't listening for his name in the first place was because he was hitting on some girl on the other side of the room.

It sort of sucks being me sometimes, I think. :D

What are you going to do with your tax return?
Submitted by KB.

Can we please stop with the reminders that I don't have a job or any money to tax?

Kthnx.

Forty-five minutes since minimizing this empty composition window and counting.

I really don't have anything monumental to say. All I know is that it's been forever since I've made an entry here and I feel like I should remedy that, particularly because the last few posts I've written up have been overly 'woe is me', and I eventually get sick of reading melodramatic crap, so I hide them all away.

Break ends officially on Wednesday, and as of 9:10 tonight, I've got almost three hundred pages of a book to read for English, and an entire practice AP Calculus test to fail. Also, studying that I need to get done for Econ. and Government before next month's exams.

I've been having a little trouble with money lately; primarily the fact that I DON'T HAVE ANY. And I'm not exaggerating here - I have approximately $8.00 in one bank account, $11.00 in another, and $5.00 on my desk from an Easter card my grandma sent yesterday. I have $280 due for AP exams by Friday, and around $800 that I need to have saved for that LIFE conference I naively signed up for back in January. Plus the $3,500 that the government says I should be contributing for tuition and things my first year of college.

It's gotten to the point that I've started having dreams about money. One from a few weeks ago stands out most; I was on vacation somewhere and visited a candy shop that sold specialty chocolates. I spotted what I thought was a sample cupboard, and only after taking a bite out of some amazing truffle did I notice that the box had a $4.00 price sticker on it. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that I had no cash whatsoever. And none of the store employees had seen what I'd done, and I probably could've walked out the door without a problem, but I didn't want to steal, so I hung out for the duration of the dream, trying to figure out what to do.

Four dollars. I couldn't afford four dollars.

It has come to my attention that this could possibly be a problem.

Also, that I need a job.

But shit - I am so socially crippled that I hyperventilate at the thought of going back in to check on any of the applications that I've submitted.

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to suck it up. Because borrowing money is just not working anymore.

IN OTHER NEWS, this is bordering on whiny. (Is there supposed to be an 'e' in whiny? No?) So I'm going to go for a slight change in topic.

COLLEGE.

And not the 'paying for' aspect, either. The 'picking one' aspect. It is April 9th. I've been accepted to UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, CSU Long Beach and CSU Chico, waitlisted at Reed, and rejected by USC and UCLA. I need to make a decision and submit my intent to register (and - dammit - deposit, but we won't go there) by May 1st.

AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Well, no, okay, that's not entirely true. I visited Reed a couple weekends back, and have more or less decided that I won't be submitting that 'Yes, please put me on your waiting list' card they sent. The campus is gorgeous, I won't even bother trying to deny that, but seriously. $47,000 a year (don't talk about money, don't talk about money) to attend an institution with a Student Union that has profanity spray-painted all over its side hallway, mutilated chairs, and an entryway that smells like piss? No thank you.

I don't know. I tend to see myself as fairly liberal in some aspects, but now that I look back on it, I should probably have paid attention to the fact that the school's located on Woodstock Blvd. I should've looked closer at the pictures of the professors wearing flannel t-shirts with crazy hair, and listened to all the talk about free-spirits and unconventional qualities and how Reed is 'definitely not for everyone' in the brochures. It's a throw-back to the 60s, and while I'm definitely not a conservative freak, I don't think I'm up for all the pot-smoking and barefootedness that goes along with that either.

Which leaves me with Long Beach, Davis, and Santa Cruz. I'm not exactly fond of Long Beach's system - setting housing deadlines before acceptance letters even go out seems a little ridiculous. And Santa Cruz's method of separating students completely based on the college they attend doesn't appeal to me.

I'm really loving Davis. I love the location (30 minutes from Sacramento, a little over an hour from SF, two and a half from home), I love the campus, I love the dorms and facilities and the fact that they actually have Division I sports teams. The only thing holding me back (aside from the whole 'air occasionally takes on a barnyard-y aroma' bit) is their lack of humanities and liberal arts majors. They have a fairly strong English program, but it's nowhere near as focused as Santa Cruz's is, and outside of the department, most of the other courses of study have something to do with science. And honestly, I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I do know that whenever anyone's asked me a question along those lines for the past year or so, my automatic answer has been 'I'm not sure, but it won't be anything science-related, I can tell you that much.'

So that's a bit of a HUGE reservation, and I really just am completely confused.

I'm also sick of writing. Go figure.

THE END.

It is almost 11:30 at night. I am so incredibly tired.

Which begs the question: why am I not in bed?

Reader's Digest Condensed Version: Hell if I know.

As Long As Some Very Long Book (the Bible?) Version: ...No, okay, that first one about covered it.

I think I'm something of an insomniac. I go through the day, and do things and stay awake, and then suddenly it's 10:00, and I'm ready to go to sleep. Only I can't, because I have something else very important to do (y'know, watch television or skim a chapter or two for an exam), so I sit around until midnight or so, when I eventually give up.

At which point, I climb into bed, and lay very still (or toss and turn, depending; keeps things fresh) for a good hour, thinking of stupid things like what I should wear the next day (whatever's clean and hasn't gotten lost on the floor) or how much of my lunch hour will have to be sacrificed because I'm such a horrible student, or what's going to happen if I'm rejected from all the schools I applied to, or if I can't get any scholarships and have to work as a professional beggar for the rest of my life because I had to forego education, or what if I crashed the car on my way to school in the morning, would I be happy with the way my life played out? (The answer is generally no; I'll need a good 142 years more.) Things like that.

And then I wake up in five hours, feeling groggy because I need at least nine hours of sleep to actually feel awake, and do it all over again.

I sort of feel like right now, I'm existing just for existing's sake. I'm not getting anything significant accomplished, I'm not moving forward. I still haven't gotten a job, I still haven't received decisions from six of the seven schools I applied to, I still haven't won or even truly gone after the kinds of scholarships that will help me pay for tuition.

I'm coasting. I'm spending my weeks living for Friday, and my weekends hoping Monday forgets to show up.

I wish I could go back a few years to when I was twelve; when my dad lived in town, and I spent English periods passing notes with my best friend down the row, and it felt like forever before I had to grow up.

I went into ColdStone the night before last, and ordered Cake Batter with Gummi Bears from a girl who used to come to my house every morning sixth and seventh grade so we could walk to the bus stop together. It struck me how completely I'd forgotten that that ever existed, how much a part of someone else's life it seems, and at the same time, how I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Funny.

Video: Show us your favorite on-screen kiss.
Submitted by sami711.

 

FNL 1x03 - Tim and Lyla argue again

So the show can be horribly cliched, and the acting can be horribly horrible, but when I think of favorite on-screen kisses, Tim and Lyla and Friday Night Lights come to mind (also, that Jack/Rachel bit from Boy Meets World when I was twelve, but the only clip I found was about a thousand years long, and the kiss was buried somewhere in the middle, and I am very lazy, so).

I feel sort of like I'm in seventh grade again, being this much in love with a show that really isn't amazingly well-executed, but.

THERE'S A KISS. And it's my favorite. Or one of them, at least. I think I mentioned the other before; it involves breakfast foods and very corny smiles? Along with an extra five minutes of Scenes of No Consequence?

Tim/Lyla 1x05 scenes

Yeah.

Anyway. I was semi-productive today; went to Ben's basketball game, then on to Chuck 'E' Cheese, then home, where I watched the State of the Union address and filled out an enormous Econ. packet. And then I did Calc., and wasted an hour online. And now I'm here, and it's midnight.

 

I should probably go to bed at some point, since, y'know, I have to get up in a few hours and whatnot.

And by 'some point', I think I mean 'now'.

 

This has been a very meaningful entry.

(P.S.: This is not a Big Screen Smooch. It's a Small Screen Smooch. WHATEVER.)

What's the most obsessive-compulsive thing you do in a normal day?
Submitted by Nikki. 

I looked at this question earlier, and was going to say something, and then decided I wasn't going to say anything after all, because I couldn't think of anything good. And I closed out of the window.

Three hours later, I was in the car on the way home, and the radio was on and I adjusted the volume, and I realized something very interesting.

I always unconsciously set the volume level to either an even number or a multiple of five. If I twist the dial and it's odd, I fiddle around until it changes.

If that's not obsessive-compulsive, I don't know what is.