Yesterday

You know what I wasn't doing yesterday at ten o'clock? Taking the ACT.

It feels oh-so-good. It's possible that for the rest of my life I will keep track of ACT dates, just to revel in the fact that I am not trapped in a school room with scary posters trying to remember what the distance formula is or, an even harder question, why I care (...Got me). I hope that I don't do that, though. That will mean I lack things to celebrate.

In any case, at the time that many of my more unfortunate classmates were decoding evil science problems I was here, with these people

I know that was too many pictures. But they're so cute! (They're my neighbors--except for the first one, which is Mei. They brought me cookies on my birthday. They have a little sister who's picture refused to be posted, and she was the one who told their mom that I had to have "strawberry" cookies. Adorable.)

We were picking pumpkins. And red onions. And corn. I did not know those things even grew here. The corn is delicious. The red onions yummy. I haven't eaten the pumpkins. Incidentally, pumpkins are hard to pick. They like to stay on their vines and they have unfortunate bristles.

It did get hot and there were no caramel apples (to my lingering disappointment) and I was very tired while we picked because, while I'd known we were going, I hadn't realized that we were required to get up at seven o'clock to get there and I did not go to be at an hour conducive to me responding well to that wake-up call. But I wasn't taking the ACT.

I wrote my first essay for college this week. It had me seriously freaked out. That wasn't helped by Brother Ford's list of things he'd fail us for. However, the essay did make me realize what I love about blogging. I love not citing things. I love not putting on a cover page (or not forgetting a cover page and having to send an apologetic email to my teacher). I love using fragment sentences and not making my parents proof read. Mostly I love not being graded.

I also have to write a short story. I'm half way there. I'll post it Tuesday if I don't hate it by then.

Over.

I Don't Want To Brag, But...

(Marissa)






















I live here.

And here.

And here.

Just thought you should know.

Over.

(Metaphorical) Rainy Days

(Marissa)

I broke my wrists this week. Both of them. They're in splints right now, white and scratchy and I have to dictate all of this to my mom. That's why I haven't written.

I got amnesia.

I went to Disney World and Mickey Mouse stole my computer.

He looked so innocent!

I've been in a coma.

Aliens abducted me, ran tests on my blood, thought process and eye color and then dropped me down in Idaho.

President Obama called and asked me to dedicate all my time to a top secret assignment which I'd tell you about... but then I'd have to kill you. And my licence to kill hasn't come in yet.

I want to tell you why I didn't write to you this week, but I didn't feel like it just didn't seem good enough.

The truth is that I've gotten on several times to write. I started two posts. But I am deep, deep in writers block. You know, I've always thought of writers block as a blockade that writers run into, but this week it's felt more like a box. You're inclosed: top, side and bottom. You can't just run around. You're trapped.

Blah.

It's been a really bad week to have writers block. I've got four essays to write today. That I should be writing right now instead of blogging.

Blegh.

So that's why I haven't written to you. It's not because I don't love you. Promise.

I am now eighteen. I have been a senior citizen (get it?... don't look at me like that, bad puns run in my family) for two days and two and a half hours. I don't feel very different. It was a nice birthday, though, one of those days where you wake up feeling good and that feeling somehow survives school. I unwrapped a Grace Kelly dress at breakfast, and that might have helped keep my spirits high.

(For those of you who are so unfortunate as to not know who Grace Kelly is.... don't worry about it. If you don't know who Audrey Hepburn

 is, though, I don't think we can still be friends. Quick! Run out and rent Roman Holiday. But stop it ten minutes before it ends and just listen to me: They all live happily ever after. Really.)

So my birthday was amazing but most of the rest of the week was... it was... it was one big rainy day.

You guys know I love rainy days. I live for them. But on the metaphorical rainy days (the ones where rain drops are made up of troubles the way lemon drops are in Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the ones where stress crushes my head and I wish that the world would just take five while I remind myself how to breath) I have to employ happy tactics.

Happy Tactic Number One:  Think happy thoughts. Peter Pan

(remember him?) inspired me on this one. On sad days I break out my happy thoughts with full force: Ice cream. Rain. Mushrooms. The beach. Creme brule. Grace Kelly dress. Lit class. Pride and Prejudice. Fluffy pillows. Whisks. Earphones. Claire de Lune. Chinese. Cream Puffs. Electricity. Plumbing. Pony tail holders. Jeans. Bubbles... You get the idea.

Happy Tactic Number Two: Happy songs. King of Anything, I Need A Hero (Shrek version), Accidentally in Love, Waka Waka (thanks Sis. Frampton), and You Make Me Happy. Songs to soothe the heart, my friends. Or just give me something to jump up and down to. I find jumping up and down a very good stress reliever. When I don't sprain my ankle or break something.

Happy Tactic Number Three: Youtube. Have I mentioned how much I love youtube? I love youtube. I love it with all my heart and most of my soul. My list of happy hits is You're the Voice Merlin, Peter Bishop Just Being Generally Awesome and Kim Yu Na. Unless you live with me or live two houses down and are named Katie Orr, then you probably don't understand why I love these videos. That's OK. You can find your own videos. Youtube has something for everyone. My dad watches videos of snow in Central Park and how to cut a chicken. Each to their own.

Happy Tactic Number Four: Go to Flickr. Click on Explore and then Last Seven Days Interesting. And you thought the world was a bad place. Psh. How could you have doubted? Look at that little girl's chubby cheeks! Observe the stars and grass and that kid with a dragon fly on his face! I love Flickr. Even though it still likes Katie better than me.

There you go. These are my umbrella's for a rainy day. It disturbs me a little bit that all of them except number one involve the computer. I read too. I just don't have a specific recipe for those. I grab a book off the shelf and open it. Over Fall Break I opened Gone With the Wind and, just like you said, Grandma, I liked it a lot better the second time I read it. But it still frustrates me. The first time I read it I despised Scarlet and would have walked out way before Rhett Butler did, but the book just kept going. The second time I sympathized with her and when Rhett walked out I was upset (even though I knew she deserved it). Does the third time solve this somehow?

I really have to go write essays now.

Over.

A Not Quite Post

(Marissa)

I just wrote you a whole post. And then I deleted it. My brain isn't working today. This may have something to do with the fact that I took the SAT yesterday. (Have I mentioned I hate math?) In any case, I promise I'll get you a post soon, but in the meantime this is what you get.

Yesterday when I was in a tourist trap getting lunch (bad turkey sandwiches, good muffins, really good smelling coffee) I saw a sign that said:

"All children left unattended will be given a shot of expresso and a free puppy."

I asked my mom to leave me unattended, but no luck. I guess because I'm turning eighteen this week I don't count anymore.... Next week I can vote. And get a licence without taking drivers ed. Next week if I murder someone I'm going to be tried as an adult. Which shouldn't be a problem, but, you know, it's weird. Do we have capital punishment in this state? It never seemed important before.

Over.

Once Upon A Time

(Marissa)

Homecoming was this week. And because I have absolutely no school spirit I went on a walk with Katie and and watched The Pelican Brief with my family rather than sit in the football stands and let a scream of the truly devoted tear at my throat. Despite my lack of school spirit, I do hope we won. And that our field lights didn't go out this time. The excuse this is all leading up to, though, is now I am on fall break and I have no inclination to do anything even remotely productive. And writing a blog post is kind of productive.

So I've been procrastinating. But the biggest reason I haven't written is I don't have very much to say. Which, believe me, is unusual. Usually I can go on and on. I drone with the best of them. If talking was an Olympic sport, I might actually have a chance at meeting Kim Yu Na

and telling her how amazingly awesome she is. The point being, I usually don't struggle with posting.

This weekend, however, all ideas have deserted and left me high and dry with a soggy handful of words.

So...

I'm going to make fun of early Disney fairytales! That seems pretty foolproof. If you are one of those people who holds Disney sacred then now might be a good time to stop reading.

I did not grow up with Disney. In fact, my mom did almost everything in her power to make sure that I did not identify with Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. (She also dressed me in the scratchiest pink overalls in all of history from which I'm still recovering, but that's besides the point.) I couldn't tell you what exactly went against her grain about the Disney Princesses, but I can tell you about mine:


1. Their voices. Think

"Some day my prince will come..." Shivers, people, and not the good kind.

2. General motivation. Let's consider Ariel. She has everything. She's beautiful. Her hair is red. She can sing (much, much better than Snow White), everyone loves her and her best friend is a fish (which might not technically be a good thing, but it seems to work for her). This is not enough, though, and after one fated encounter she has to be with

our prince charming (oh, believe me, we'll talk about him in a minute). And now the only thing in the whole wide world that she wants is to have legs. So she puts at risk not only everything she owns, but also pretty much everything under the sea so that she can go hang out with her buddy on land for a bit.

And apparently karma doesn't apply to princesses, so despite all of this she still gets her happily ever after...

This is obviously the kind of show that we want our young children to find morals in. (Like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. Run that song through your head. You know what the main idea is? If you're popular everything is good.)

3. The prince charmings are generic. For a while I thought they were clones, but then I went to see Into the Woods and I figured it out. In Into the Woods you get two princes who are brothers. In the first act one of them marries Cinderella and one of them marries Rapunzel. In the second act both of them, in the midst of marital problems that they blame on their hormonal wives, they wander away from the castle... and stumble upon Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and begin to occupy themselves with them.

I was extremely angry. The feminist in me was throwing rotton fruit. And then I realized that all the princes from the fairy tales seemed the same because they were all the same. It explains everything. Except

4. Love at first sight. It bothers me. A lot. It's like the storyteller couldn't think of any reason why someone would fall in love with their character so they passed it off to Cupid. Argh.

Sleeping Beauty should have punched the prince. That would have made so much more sense. Plus it would have been much more funny.

5. Lastly, the girl never saves herself. They whither away combing their hair, entombed in a glass casket, sleeping in the highest tower, etc. It is the most obnoxious thing ever. They're not even smart. They don't follow basic sense. Like Snow White. Did she miss the part of Stranger Danger when they said not to take food from people you don't know? Why didn't Repunzel cut off her own hair and climb down it herself? And why, in heaven's name, was Cinderella wearing glass slippers? High heels have enough potential pain without putting glass into the equation.

I like strong female leads. I'll take Elizabeth Bennet, CJ Cregg, or Olivia Dunham any day. They're witty and smart or save the world from alternate universes on a daily basis. And they don't go for love at first sight. And you know what? I bet if Olivia woke up to someone kissing her she would punch him.

Over.

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 health. So 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.

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.