My memories start to wander off

My memories start to wander off

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Italy with my mom and my dad and my little sister and this big ball of stress floating around in my stomach that shouldn't be here because this is supposed to be a vacation.  Airports stress me out, and packing stresses me out (I actually managed to forget to pack my pajamas last time), and my parents stress me out.  I remember being miserable the entire time we were in Hawaii a few years back.  Now, whether that was due to the high sand-to-Natasha ratio, or the amount of time spent in the vicinity of my parents, or the week spent in the same room as my sister, I don't know.  But family vacations have never been my favorite things.

But in the meantime, until I get on that plane and pray that it lands where and when it's supposed to, I'm going to watch Shaytards and eventually maybe go to sleep, and then wake up too early and take a shower and get into a car that will deliver me to the airport.

The most exciting part of this for me, I have to say, is the new stamp that I'm going to get on my passport.  Also, the Florence Cathedral.  And the Sistine Chapel.  And all the pasta.  I practically live on pasta. 



He reminds me of my daddy.

Give it up for short-term memory

Give it up for short-term memory

Sometimes I wonder about the kind of people who talk just to talk, who speak just to hear their own voices.  Sometimes I think about changing the world, about saving my words for when they can make the most impact, about misusing commas and colons and conjunctions.  Sometimes I want to fade away like Alaska or JD Salinger or a one-hit wonder, unnoticed but never forgotten, eventually left to rest, undisturbed but still never forgotten.  

I will consider you gone

I will consider you gone

I have:
the hiccups
a fascination with the word "gone"
a desire to go to the movies every single day
too many clothes
a rotten tube of mascara
ba ba, ba ba, this is the sound of settling.
 

Tell me things like

Tell me things like

I wish I were as resilient as my plant.  Her name is Ginny and she lives in a pot on my dresser, except for lately; this summer she's been residing in the kitchen next to my sister's plant (the nameless), where I hoped my father would remember to water them when the rest of us were out of town.  Ginny never dies, even during the busiest days where I forgot to water her and the winter days during which she got very little sun.  Her leaves, dashed with pink, just pop back up, unharmed, like I never forgot about her.  She never gives up hope. 

I, on the other hand, am hopeless.  I look up to my plant. 

Sometimes bombs fall quietly

Sometimes bombs fall quietly

Sometimes I get itchy, antsy, in this internal way, in this what-am-I-doing way, in this way that makes me want to jump up and down on the trampoline in the backyard until in breaks, in this way that makes me wonder if you know me at all, if any of you know me at all. This itch bubbles up in my stomach, tickling me from the inside out, leaving me unsatisfied with every single television channel and unsatisfied, dissatisfied, with every single song in my collection. This itch inspires bad dye jobs and excessive eyebrow plucking and closet cleaning.

And then the itch leaves and it leaves me unsatisfied, dissatisfied still, with this life and this world and this generation, with what is and what can’t be changed and what can never be undone or redone or done at all.

I made so many plans after what you said last night

I made so many plans after what you said last night

I'm feeling sentimental and squirmy and orange-haired and itchy and wide-awake and hugely out of the loop and thinking that the absolute worst part about being a teenage girl is looking in the mirror and feeling like you're fat or your eyebrows are too something or your hair is the wrong color or there's no way you'll ever look like famous-gorgeous-celebrity-person. Let's just all drown in self-loathing, shall we?

My not-as-good-as-the-first-that-got-deleted summer playlist can't drown out the sound of my dog whimpering in the hallway or all the thoughts jumbling around in my head, including the one telling me that "jumbling" isn't a word. I feel like everything I'm thinking could fill up the entire blank journal that's sitting in front of me right now, but I feel like I can't fill up that journal without feeling guilty for wasting so much usable space. I can't use the space because I want to save it for a time when it'll be better used. I'm such a huge contradiction and hypocrite and possibly a sufferer of multiple personality disorder.

Lather, rinse, repeat. I swear this sounds like a blog post I wrote last week. Am I wasting good internet space? Wasting space in this vast vortex of endlessness?

So many special people change

So many special people change

So about thirty seconds ago I was just sitting here at my computer staring at a picture of Adam Brody, and suddenly I thought, "I hope he doesn't get old and end up disgusting and look like he had plastic surgery like Kevin Bacon does." What is wrong with me?

I attempted to explain my thinking about all of it, this year and all of it, to my mom today in the car - while I was driving - and I'm pretty sure I only made her think I'm crazier than she originally thought. I'll accept crazy, though. Crazy can live alone with her dogs and watch "The OC" as much as she wants and never, ever, ever clean her room or throw her old magazines away. Crazy can dye her hair without a second thought and Crazy can refer to herself in the third person and Crazy can avoid her friends as much as she wants and hope that that'll make everything better.

God, even during the summer do I manage to make a mess out of things.

Won't you come take my hand

Won't you come take my hand

So remember that time that you and your mom went to Newport, Rhode Island and explored a few huge mansions from a hundred years ago? Remember how hot it was that day, and remember how you wore your cute blue romper with your little white sweater? Remember how you have to wear your strapless bra when you wear that romper, the stupid little strapless bra with the rubber strips along the bottom? Well, remember how when you took the bra off later that night you had big red lines all along your back where the rubber was? Lucky you - those lines, they've now turned to scabs.

On nights like this all I want to do is curl up with a book and not wear contacts and pretend that Seth Cohen is real and that he's mine. During the summer I always fantasize about becoming a published author and being able to make a living writing and watching "The OC" and forcibly removing Nickelback from the face of the planet. I want an everlasting summer - but don't we all? It's so full of potential and hope and that new-book smell.

I don't have any lyrics to put here today

I don't have any lyrics to put here today

These are things that make my night:  watching livelavalive's video "paper" even though I've already seen it several times, a shower in my own shower, a new weezywaiter video, a cute new bathing suit that I might possibly only wear once or less, talking to a friend I haven't talked to for a while, sleep.

Or, you know, no sleep.  Maybe this instead.



I miss my little sister.  And my daddy.  We're going to Vegas next month to pick up my car and sign the Oprah no cell phone pledge that my grandma wants me to sign.  Oh, families.

Why haven't I been on the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland?

And all the songs you played this morning were about people like me

And all the songs you played this morning were about people like me

Here's what you should know (you, yes, you).

I am flawed.  I am horribly, horribly flawed.  And I can't always deal with the flaws of others.  I am easily frustrated, easily silenced, easily persuaded, easily hurt, easily confused.  I strive for this paradise, this perfect world where my heart isn't getting constantly broken by people who are honest or fictional or cruel or boundlessly kind or judgmental or too too nice to me.  Sometimes I disagree with you for no reason besides a gut feeling, this gut feeling that's a mix of butterflies and too much chocolate milk before nine a.m.    

I am the van Gogh done in shaky hand.  I aim my camera into the sunlight and press the shutter and hope it all turns out okay.  I always feel pretentious and meek and hate myself for both.  I don't take teasing well and I don't take lying well either.  I'm afraid of permanence and transience and loss and gone-ness.

I don't want you here (here, yes, here) if you're judging or overthinking or or lying or rolling your eyes at me.  Some nights are good and on those I'm witty and wordy, and on bad nights I ramble and try on different roles and think about the noise a tree makes when it hits the ground of an empty forest.  But I'm me and I'm honest, and that's all I want and need, because I don't do this for you.  You, yes, you.  I don't do this for you.      

The storm has broken

The storm has broken

I'm home now.  Isn't it funny how you can be away for so long, so long that your dad eats all the Pop-tarts and kills your mother's plant and nearly loses your dog, but still come home and get in bed and feel like you've never left?  I love that.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from my trip.   We went from Pennsylvania to New York to Connecticut to Massachusetts, with a side trip to Rhode Island.  These are totally out of order, though.  And they don't capture the excessive heat and humidity or the frequent GPS-related frustration or the constant future-triggered self-doubt that was the essence of the ten days. 

Five hundred pictures.  Darn it, why do I take so many?  I ask myself that all the time - why do I have to capture this moment, this sight, this landscape, this right now over all the other right nows?  That sounds like the Four Questions - why is this night different from all other nights?  That question makes more sense to me now than it did when I was eight.  I wish the answers made more sense too.   

You told me I was the neatest thing

You told me I was the neatest thing

I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Boston and the people in the room next door have their tv on way too loud and my mom and I just watched "The Last Song" so if I were at home right now I would be browsing through pictures of Miley Cyrus and mourning the fact that I don't have an adorable boyfriend from either Australia, New Zealand, or Southern California.  But if I were at home right now I wouldn't be able to tell you that I've spent a few too many hours with my mom and I wouldn't be able to tell you that she told me not to write about her in my blog.  So here we are.

We're taking a duck tour of Boston tomorrow and neither my mom nor I are particularly excited about it but it was a gift from my dad's business partners here in Boston so we're taking it anyway, arriving a half hour early just like we're supposed to even though it means getting up before seven a.m. when it's the summer and we're on vacation.   Today we went to the over-cluttered Isabella Staurt Gardener Museum as well as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where I walked by too many Renaissance altarpieces before finally finding the Van Goghs and the Monets and the Degas(s?) and the Renoirs.

Our last college tour is Brandeis on Tuesday and then we're finally, finally heading home.  I think I've seen enough schools to have established my top two at least, but I'm not going to tell you, or you, or anyone, which schools they are, because I hate competition and disappointment and pity and jealousy and bragging rights.  I'll expand on that further, I suppose, when I'm home in my own room at my own desk with my own computer and am not in some hotel room in Boston using my dad's old laptop with my mom sitting up in bed behind me, not complaining but probably silently annoyed that it's ten o'clock and I have yet to brush my teeth.  She's not a fan of the "I'm a teenager" excuse.