I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat

I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat

I'm not sure I could handle it if that baby turns out to be Justin Bieber's.  It's like that line from "27 Dresses," about feeling like you just found out that your favorite love song was written about a sandwich. Sometimes life sucks and everyone is cynical and is it really so bad that I want to believe that someone is really what they claim to be?

I have a lot of work this week, a lot of reading and noveling and paper-writing to do, but I like weeks like this, because they make me tired, and I can sleep at night when I'm tired.  When I'm here, I get up in the morning and have real breakfast and sometimes I have to go to bio but I can deal with it because I know that I'll probably be able to sleep at night.

My nano novel is going well, as in it's day 7 and I'm keeping up with the word count, but I don't want to jinx anything.  I have a paper due this weekend, and Thanksgiving's coming up, and a zillion other things are happening, but I really hope I finish.  Mostly just so I can say that I did.

I like that we are kinda strange so won't you stay near

I like that we are kinda strange so won't you stay near

Oh right, okay.  So today I ate French toast for breakfast and went to Target with my mom and bought a bunch of stuff I need for school.  Then I came home and read my daily chapter of The Odyssey and worked on a collage and now I'm listening to Joshua Radin and thinking that I should go to bed soon because I'm meeting Briana for breakfast tomorrow, which means I have to wake up at a decent hour.  I piled up some of my books to take to school and I can already tell that there are too many.  But I don't want to worry about that now.

I've been trying to fix up my 2009 nano even though it's crappy, because I have this thing where I keep telling myself that it's all a learning experience and the only way to get better is to suck for a really, really long time.  I think John Green said something like that once.  I have glue under my fingernails and it feels really bizarre.

That's it for today.  I want to be writing right now.

A bit of November for the new year

A bit of November for the new year

I was just rereading, and this made me smile. Completely out of context, but here you go:


A few hours later, Rachel and I sit in detention stifling our giggles as the supervisor, Mrs. Corpulent-and-Unaware, does rhythmic dance motions to the beat of whatever is playing in her ear buds. Her stumpy ponytail swings back and forth as she moves her head from side to side, tapping her feet and swaying. She’s still in her seat, but just barely, and I’m just waiting for her to burst over the desk that’s holding her back and explode in a frantic show of 70s disco and 80s aerobicize.

But before she can do that, the classroom door opens, and there’s Charlie. He looks at me and Rachel and winks before turning to Mrs. Corpulent.

“Excuse me,” he says, clearing his throat. When Mrs. Corpulent doesn’t respond – she’s too engrossed in her Cyndi Lauper alter-ego – he speaks a little louder. “Mrs. Carter? Mrs. Carter!”

Mrs. Corpulent flinches and pulls the ear buds from her ears, looking startled. “Oh! Charlie, of course! What can I do for you?”

“That’s my sister you’ve got over there, and see, we’re having a bit of a family emergency, so if you don’t mind-“

“Oh, of course! You’ll need to take her right now, I presume?”

“That’d be great, Mrs. Carter. And Carly too, if you don’t mind. She’s a close family friend.” Charlie gestures toward me.

“Of course, of course! Not a problem, dear.” Mrs. Corpulent smiles, and Rachel and I both stand and gather our things. We walk to the front of the room, extremely careful about containing our giggles now. “Oh! Just let me sign those slips really quick, and you all can be on your way!” She signs them, drawing purple scribbles through the dotted lines, and then waves us forward. “Have a good day!”

Charlie puts a hand on Rachel’s shoulder and a hand on mine, and he propels us toward the doorway. We do not even let the door click shut behind us before we’re consumed by laughter.

“Oh-my-god!” Rachel gasps for air. “Did you see her? DID YOU SEE HER?” She stumbles a few feet forward before doubling over snorting. The textbook she had in her arms clatters to the ground, landing open, and the papers that were jammed inside the front cover are swept up by a sudden gust of wind.

“Oh, shoot!” Rachel cries. Charlie and I rush off in the direction of the papers, which include Rachel’s history homework for the night as well as a cheesy love letter from her last boyfriend and at least five games of MASH we just played while watching Mrs. Corpulent groove to the beat.

Charlie is a foot away from one of the papers, and he leans forward, grazing it with his fingertips. But then he trips on the edge of a concrete planter, launching himself into the air. He does not fall, gracefully catching himself before he touches back down on the ground, but his notebook drops from his arms. It gets caught in midair by the wind and several sheets of paper are swept loose, tumbling over themselves as they fly up above our heads. Rachel’s laughing harder now; she’s actually sitting on the ground, legs splayed out wildly as she grips the developing stitch in her side.

“Holy crap!” Charlie exclaims as he collapses on the ground, resigning himself to his defeat. I do the same, dropping my bag and sitting down on the ground ten feet away from him.

“Oh my god, you guys!” Rachel’s face is red and she’s shaking all over. I know she can’t get the image of her brother flying over the planter and into the air out of her head because I can’t either. My mind has become an instant replay, rewinding and fast-forwarding, zooming in on the surprised expression on Charlie’s face as he realized he was airborne, if only for a moment.

“Rachel!” Charlie stands up and bends down to retrieve his notebook. “Get up!” Rachel’s still laughing, but I pull myself off the ground and start to pick up the pieces of paper that have landed around us.

Five minutes later, Charlie and I have gathered all the sheets up into a pile. We walk over to Rachel, who has been leaning back on her hands for the past few minutes, lazily watching us labor away.

“Your majesty,” I say in my best British accent, bowing. Charlie, beside me, bends as well. “Is this to your liking? What would you have us do now, your highness?” Rachel reaches forward and grabs my hand. She bends her head to kiss it, doing her best Queen Elizabeth impression, but before she can Charlie grabs her other hand and we combine our efforts to pull her up off of the ground. Before she realizes what is happening, Charlie and I have piled our textbooks into her arms and given her all the loose sheets of paper we just collected as well.

“Your queen disapproves,” Rachel says contritely, in an accent that sounds more than a confused Australian cowboy than it does a regal British queen. Then she turns abruptly, still laden with all of our stuff, and walks toward the parking lot. Charlie turns to me, brushing his hair out of his face, and rolls his eyes before the two of us set off slowly behind Rachel.

Possibly bad at BAD

Possibly bad at BAD

Kate the Awesome has taken on the weight of BAD this month, Blog All December. I'm going to attempt to do this with her because, as noted, she is Awesome, but I may have to resign myself to BAAD, or Blog Almost All December. We shall see, my dears.

I'm not going to attempt to write extremely coherent posts, as by the end of 6th period everyday I'm usually totally drained of any coherent thoughts I may have possessed. So December is going to be a sort of journal entry month, with some lists thrown in there, possibly.

To start us off, some thoughts on my pants.

The left knee of my jeans has a giant rip. (And yes, I bought them like this. I know, "how much did you pay to have someone else rip your pants for you?" and all that.) This giant whole, which is not totally open as denim fiber spans its open space, seems to be growing. One possible reason for this is that I like to sit cross-legged/Indian style in my desk chair since it has no arms and isn't particularly comfortable otherwise. But besides that, these are on of my favorite pairs of jeans, so they get washed at least once a week, usually. That can't be helping either. I guess if the knee completely rips open then I buy a new pair? Or possibly a patch.

I noticed a minute ago that my one-year anniversary on Blogger was two months ago. I figured I should point it out, although actually it makes no sense, as my blog has posts on it from January of 2008. Hmm. Oh, I see now. My October post says I just transferred my blog from elsewhere. Okay.

In other news, I have failed NaNoWriMo most efficiently. I wrote about 600 words the first day, a horrible start, and then on November 2, I decided that what I'd already written was crap and so I started again. I got about 10,000 words into that before I took about a 3 week break. Then on the day before Thanksgiving, I looked at my calendar and decided I could totally write 40,000 words in 5 days. I wrote 5,000 words that night, and now my novel sits at 15,000 words. I never realized how many words 50,000 is until I tried to write that many.

Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is calling to me, or rather my English grade is, so see you tomorrow, I should hope.

Getting back on the horse or the bike or something like that.

Getting back on the horse or the bike or something like that.

So... This feels a bit strange. I haven't exactly blogged much lately. How are you? Who are you? Are you still out there?

I'm still here. Chugging along and such... that made me think of the Little Engine that Could. I wish I were the Little Engine that Could. Anyhow.

I'm taking pain-in-the-butt classes. I only really like one of them, my English class, which is really small and cozy and the teacher's a kick and it's not too hard or too easy. I have it 6th period so it's a really great way to end the day. But the rest of my classes are boring or difficult or just plain a waste of time. I really look forward to the weekends, and then they go by really fast and suddenly it's the week again. On top of all that, I'm supposed to be prepping for the SATs and looking at colleges and doing driver's ed. I have made zero progress on all three of those fronts.

Besides school, I'm basically really great. I know I never really talked about my whole summer-at-Yale thing beyond saying that I met some really amazing people, but I think the entire experience really helped me grow as a person. I don't want to be cheesy and sappy, but - okay. Let me put it this way. In the past few months I've gone to a concert, a Nerdfighter event, and antique shopping, without my parents, in places that I'd never been before, and I had absolutely no fear of that. That used to be my first instinct - like, don't talk to strangers, hold your wallet really close the entire time. So, this is a good thing, I suppose.

In other news, I discovered that I really like acoustic guitar players named Matt. These include Matt Nathanson and Matt Duke, among others. Also, I am epically behind on NaNoWriMo. I keep telling myself I'll catch up this weekend, and then I have so much to do and I just don't. I honestly don't think I'm going to finish, but as I don't like my novel or where it was going anyway, I'm not that broken up about it.

I've also decided that I really want to learn how to play the guitar. But I really don't have time to take lessons and I don't know if I have enough patience to teach myself, like my friend is doing, or actually the musical talent required to do so. It's sort of irrelevant at the moment, anyhow, as my mom said she won't take me to look at guitars until after I get my learner's permit. And I honestly don't see that happening anytime soon.

And now it's almost midnight, so I should be heading to bed so I can get up tomorrow and somehow miraculously finish all my homework before I have to meet with a group for APUSH so we can color. Have I mentioned how much I cannot wait for the year to be over?

- Natasha

November is kind of far away.

November is kind of far away.

It's amazing to have this much free time, to be able to do whatever I want and not have to feel guilty about pushing off homework. I can't wait until summer.

I've been writing lately, something that I hope might last until NaNoWriMo so I can finish it up then. Unfortunately NaNoWriMo's a long way off.

Anyhow, it's a bunch of short narrative things, each between a third- and a half- page long. They're supposed to be memories from three periods of the narrator's life (right now called before, after, and now) and will hopefully pull together to tell some sort of story. I've been writing in present tense because I want it to come off sort of conversational, but I also think it might make the narrator sound a bit stupid, which she definitely isn't, so I need to work on that. The pieces don't really go in any sort of order because I'm not sectioning off the three parts; the first part is sort of introductory but the rest might be able to be switched around. I'm not sure.

Here are two bits. Any opinion on whether it would sound better in past tense? Or if it's crap and I should throw it away right now?


Alone in a Crowded Room – Then
Arielle giggles, pulling me across the room. “Loosen up,” she says, “this’ll be fun.” This isn’t going to be fun, though; this is not how I want to be spending my Saturday night. I bet I’m the only person in the room who’d rather be at home with her mother. Hell, I’d rather be studying, yet here I am.
Arielle downs her drink and dashes off, leaving the empty cup in my hand. I set hers on a table and clutch my own. I refuse to drink it, since it didn’t come to me in an unopened can. I wonder about leaving, just going home right now, when I see Danny come out of the kitchen. I can’t recall whose house this is – Bobby, I think. I wonder if they’re friends.
Danny sees me staring and walks toward me. “Hey,” he asks softly. “I was just thinking about leaving. Do you need a ride home?” I don’t know what to day, so I just nod. When we pull into his driveway, I mumble my thanks and get out of the car.
We get to our front doors at the same time. He nods at me and waits for me to go inside before he does. That’s Danny. I silently hope that he knows that he means more to me than a ride home.

Daisy Chains – Before
Lucky died yesterday, but Mom makes me go to school anyway. She thinks it’ll be good for me to be around people, but I don’t talk to anyone during recess, not even Danny. I just sit by myself on the grass and make chains out of dandelions. In my mind they are big, beautiful daisies.
Then we have to take a big math test, one that will help the teachers decide what math class to put us in for 6th grade. I can’t concentrate, though. All I can think of is Lucky and how she would bark at the mailman, and how her tail would wag whenever I’d feed her. Soon, my paper begins to blur. Across the desk, Danny sees me rubbing my eyes and angles his paper toward me.
I’m halfway done with the test and I know how to do the rest; Danny knows that. He never usually lets me copy his work. When we’re walking home and I ask him why he did today, he says that he doesn’t like seeing me cry.



Has it occurred to anyone that 50,000 is a lot of words? That's kind of a scary number.