Sep 25, 2010

Rain, Rain Go Away... No, Wait, Come Back!

(Marissa)

It is Saturday and I owe you all a post. Whoever "you all" are. I just got on Blogger Stats and saw that we've had fifty-one hits from Denmark. Is this normal? Do they (you) speak English in Denmark? Why is everyone there googling Peter Pan? Excuse the questions, my most up to date knowledge from Denmark comes from Hamlet.

Moving on.

I am a rain glutton. If this seems random that's because it is, but that doesn't make it any less true. I love the rain. When there is no rain I dance for it.























I love the smells, the feel of it and the excuse it gives me to unearth my pajama bottoms, pour myself a cup of herbal tea and watch Pride and Prejudice with the knowledge that there is ice cream in the fridge. Seriously. Take a minute and think. Is there a more peaceful scene?

If you just said no then we are soul siblings. Hi!

Anyway, my island has been in a drought for a while now. I find it depressing. It's been weeks since I've seen the Pride and Prejudice Pemberley lake part



and if you know me then you know that bodes extremely ill for my mental healthSo this week when I woke up to a grey sky I was ecstatic. I hummed Singing in the Rain while I walked between classes I listened to the sound and smelled the air. Rain makes me happy inside.

That happiness did dry up somewhat when I had to catch the bus. Because, at least around here, catching the bus entails being at the bus stop for a good forty minutes. I mean "good" in the sense of lengthy or substantial, not pleasant, though the waiting period is not necessarily unpleasant. I've had some very interesting conversations in that rickety structure. One conversation with an older lady started with the book in my hand in led on to different ways of being moral, cultural differences and the path to joy.

I'm not kidding. I felt deep. And then I went home and watched and Asian drama and that feeling evaporated fairly quickly, but we'll go into dramas another day.

Going back to the subject at hand, the bus stop is not a place where you want to spend a lot of time when it is raining. It leaks. Where I live, it floods. It didn't Wednesday, but I didn't find that particularly comforting. I know there are people who would stand in the rain and think, "I'm so glad it's not flooding right now," but I am not at that optimistic. The silver lining doesn't shine that bright for me.

I tried to sit, but water on the back of my thighs is not a feeling that I enjoy a great deal. And I was getting rained on. So I stood up. And I was still getting rained on. I did not lay down, but I suspect that the result would have been similar. So I slung my backpack off with the hope that it was water-proof (it's not) and stood there in the rain, leaning down the left side of the street, waiting for the bus's headlights.

I was cold and wet and wishing that I'd just learned how to drive over the summer like parents kept telling me to. (I hate that feeling, by the way. Why do parents have to be so smart? Don't they get tired of it?... Hi, Mom.)

It's funny because I had been wanting rain forever. I'd been craving it the way I crave ice cream. The bad thing about craving weather is that you can't pick it up at the grocery store's frozen section. But it had finally made it's appearance and here I was moaning, wishing that the sun would shine.

I felt like my cat, who, in the middle of the night, will yowl at my window to be let in and then, twenty minutes later, wants to be let out again and makes this wish known by kneading my pillows with her claws.

Today is hot. I just cleaned. Couldn't it rain again?

Make it rain. No, stop! Bring the sun back... Alright, now the rain.

I love the rain.

Except for when I don't. I'm just fickle that way.

Over.

Sep 17, 2010

My Corner of the Universe

(Marissa)

Today I exercised, had sweet potato fries, did my homework, registered for all my college classes and paid for them. My corner of the universe is tidy, how about yours?

I'm just going to give you the list of things I know I should tell you but don't want to spend a blog post on:

1. I took the ACT. I don't want to talk about it.

2. Alright, fine. It was bad. I was sick. I'm taking it again next month. We should send science and math to a never to be found desert island where it can rot until the end of time. Forever and ever, amen.

3. I get nine hours of sleep and I'm still exhausted. Does anyone know why this is? If you're going to tell me it's because I get too much sleep, I have mono or I eat too much ice cream, then don't. I have already explored the first two possibilities, and if it's the last one I have no intention of it exploring it. There is a reason I eat the amount of ice cream I do.












Sometimes sugar and sanity are synonyms.

4. We are still not cooking in culinary. And I found out that there are two culinary classes and I'm not in Jackson's. Cue the tragic music. (Hi Jackson! You found us! Yes, Mark Bittman rocks and I did know that you were married. When are you coming back to school? Can you adopt my culinary class?)

5. Today in West Wing Danny still wasn't back and they killed my favorite secret service guy. Keep the tragic music rolling, fellas.

6. You can thank Teenager Number One for the beautiful Flickr highlight. She is currently drowning in AP classes (including calculus), so I'm not sure when (if?) we'll be hearing from her. Because calculus is a time, energy and happiness eating monster that only engineers ever use. We can send it to a desert island too.

7. People keep bringing me sugar. I've had three cookies today. And ice cream. And doughnut holes. I'm not complaining, I just don't know what's going on. Either heaven is being particularly attentive or someone is trying to ensure that I won't be running any marathons soon. If you're reading this, person-who-is-trying-to-prevent-me-from-running-marathons, you don't have anything to worry about. But keep the cookies coming.

Alright, my list is complete. I'll get on with my post.

I am now officially signed up for Creative Writing and International(cultural?) Peace Building. My professors did their best to scare me away with multiple textbooks, foreboding syllabuses that start out with quotes from MK Ghandi ("We must be the change we wish to see in the world") and big words I don't know, but I am nothing if not persistent. I am going to soldier through these classes, darn it, even if I have to get eight hours of sleep a night instead of nine.

Actually, everyone was very nice. My professors signed me in with good grace and did not announce to the class that I am still in high school. In fact, Brother Ford was extremely slick about it and (very deliberately) did not look at me when he mentioned my mom. Last week he offered to give me a fake last name too, just so that no one would know who's daughter I was. At the time I just stuttered no, but I went to bed wishing I told him to put me on the roll as "Bond, Marissa Bond," though it doesn't have quite the ring to it that James does.

I am extremely excited about both my classes, though slightly nervous about IPB (peace building) in which Brother Ford took rather too much delight in explaining how he was going to force us out of our comfort zones and 40% of my grade depends on one group project (in... out... in....... out).

My Creative Writing class messes with my breathing too, but in a different way. A class all about creative writing? I can go? Really? Is it Christmas? I've been doing creative writing on my own since fourth grade. I've written poems, essasys, short stories, one full-length story. I've spent hours on the computer or in a notebook and I obsess over nice pens. Please let me write! Please don't completely crush my self-respect. I might be practiced in being humiliated, but it isn't something I excel at. Please...

OK. Whining done. Basically I'm excited about college. No, wait! I have one more complaint. And a teenage girl moment: Why are there no cute guys in my classes? I know, your respect for me has fallen flat on it's face but, really, I'm a hormonally healthy teenage girl, and I would appreciate one or two cute guys. There are plenty up on campus, couldn't just one of them have signed up for creative writing?

No? OK, then. Never mind. I'm going to go eat my cookies now.

Over.

Sep 9, 2010

And You Thought Jiminy Cricket Was Making It Up

(Marissa)

A while back we were all lining up in heaven, getting our paperwork straightened out.

"No, I'm being born on the fourteenth. No, the fourteenth. Not in Bolivia! The United States! I'm supposed to live in the United States!" I picture the scene looking a bit like my first day of tenth grade.

Anyway, at some point we bounded over clouds up to a desk with several baskets on it labeled things like, "knowledge," "beauty," and "car fixing abilities (only for those living from the late 1800s up)." Behind the desk was a council of stars.




















They said, "We will grant you certain gifts for your time on earth. What is your wish?"

Mei got there early, stepped right up and said, "Give me all the faith you've got." The stars liked her so much, they threw a nice handful of intelligence, kindness, curiosity and a bunch of other stuff into the bargain.

My dad stepped up and surveyed the table, looking over each one. "Hmmm..." he said. "Hmmmm..." He stood there for a while, but finally he picked out analytical thinking, courage, gratitude and mad juggling skills, among others.

My mom chose wisdom, humility, and empathy in great measures and added that to the skills she already gained in pre-earth life.

I'm not sure what I got, but I'll tell you what wasn't in my shopping basket when I walked away: Math skills.

Numbers just don't stick in my head. I quote all of Pride and Prejudice, The Importance of Being Earnest and all three Lord of the Rings, but sine? Cosine? Um... are there x's involved? No? Oh.

Graphs?

Probability?

Third grade addition?

Please! No! Don't make me suffer this way. I'm really a pretty good person. I do my chores. And yes, I'm putting off writing an essay right now. And practicing the piano. And applying for college. And memorizing what cosine and sine are. But I'm fairly responsible. And I made my little sister a tart for her birthday. Surely this counts for something.















....


I can read Shakespeare, the scriptures and Chinese. I really feel like this should be enough.

Over.

Sep 1, 2010

Bury Me Next to the Daisies

(Marissa)

I've been dreading this week since May when I signed up to take the ACT on September 4th. The soft footsteps of doom have been heard down my corridor all week until, suddenly, when  I got on to write this post, they stopped. It is in fact next Saturday that I'm signed up to take the ACT. While I am grateful for this extension, it does rather throw a kink into my funeral plans.

I was expecting to die sometime between eight and twelve this Saturday morning.

Now I'm expecting to die sometime between eight and twelve next Saturday morning.

Someone call the church and reschedule, will you?

My funeral service will be held the following Monday at seven o'clock. Please bring flowers and don't wear black.

















(lace and likes photo credit) 

Bury me next to the daisies.

(More than usually) Over.