The ocean hates me.

I can't think of any other reasons why it would attempt to kill me. I know this isn't a normal, or a polite way to start a post, but I don't think detailing the car ride to NC is preferable over this. So, I'll tell the world about my little near brush with death on the beach, last Tuesday!

I was out in the ocean with my mother, and, simply put, we got way too far. So far, in fact, that I couldn't reach and neither could she, once she stepped off the sandbar she was on. We failed to notice this until it was almost too late. There was apparently a really strong riptide or something that day, so the waves pushed us sideways, instead of in towards the shore. When my mother started screaming 'help' at the top of her lungs, I figured there was probably an issue of some sort. I didn't figure out exactly what it was until a gigantic wave crashed over my head, knocking me under the water and rendering me powerless for a few seconds 'til it had passed. I started panicking too, but was too out of breath to scream very loud. It happened again, and again, and after the fourth or so wave, I was completely certain I was going to die. I sound dramatic, but you'd probably say the same if you were in such a situation. I was being pulled out, not in, and that only meant the waves would be worse. I could see my mother losing strength and staying under longer and longer near me, but I was not close enough to do anything. It was actually fairly miraculous that some guys on the beach overheard our scattered screams, and came in after us, because I don't know what would have happened otherwise. According to the more conscious people who were around at the time, namely my father, I got myself most of the way out (no idea how, certainly didn't feel like it) but one of the guys assisted me the rest of the way out of the water, along with my father himself. My mother, on the other hand, was drug out of the ocean, having swallowed copious amounts of water and passed out.

I wasn't in too bad a state. I was more angry than anything else, because my throat burned and they wouldn't let me see my mother or even stand up, and there were strangers standing around watching us like we were on some television drama, but they clamped an oxygen mask over my face - in all likelyhood, to shut me up because I wouldn't stop yelling at them, I tend to do that when panicked - and took my pulse and such anyway. They were complaining it was fast, which they proceded to do all night before they let me go home, but it seems obvious my pulse would be fast. I was scared out of my mind, and had just been acting totally on instinct, fight or flight syndrome and all that, which I'm pretty sure generally raises one's pulse. And I felt all panicky the rest of the night. They took us to the hospital in an ambulance, which I guess would have been sort of cool if I weren't almost sure that my mother was dying on a stretcher beside me. She had, as we later discovered, swallowed so much water that it was building in her lungs and might later cause secondary drowning. I'll interrupt the chronological listing of events at this point to let you know that she's still alive, and almost totally back to normal again.

The story gets far more boring from that point on, because after finding that I was totally fine with the exception of a mild fever and a fast heartrate, they made me stay for 'observation' until about eleven that night, and I spent that time sitting there with an IV injected in my arm, watching television and playing hangman with my grandfather. My mother wasn't so lucky. She had to be carried in a helicoptor to Norfolk, VA, where they had more advanced lung doctor sorts of people. She wasn't exactly euphoric about this, and it really hurt me to see her start crying. It scared me, too. I won't go in to detail anymore regarding this incident, 'cept for I'll tell you that I am not going to go back into the ocean for a very, very long time, and when I do? I shall be insanely careful. I hate pain, and even though all I've got left from this incident is a long black bruise from some tie they wrapped 'round my arm at the hospital and a couple of scrapes and a little scar from where they put the IV into my elbow, that's just about all of the pain I can handle for the month. Or year. Or lifetime, really. Getting tossed around by the ocean is really not terribly painless, while it's happening either.

Enough of the whining. Vacation was pretty good, besides that. I bought some clothes, 'cause when my mother and I go anywhere for a prolonged amount of time, clothes get bought, much to my father's dismay. I got this metallic silver blazer - with shoulderpads! - that looked like it was from the eighties, and probably was from the eighties, since it was being sold for three dollars in a thrift store. I also had my mother buy me this little black dress type thing which I'll probably never wear the way it's meant to be worn, as I never go to anything formal. I intend to put a belt atop the waist line and wear it with jeans. And then I got a pair of large red sunglasses, which are pretty much exactly like the white ones I own, only... red. I don't know how else to describe them, other than that they're the same style Kurt Cobain wore, in fact, my white pair is supposed to be exactly like his, according to the seller. I don't know if it's unusual to try to dress like a dead man, but that's quite alright. Aside from the whole clothes thing, I went and saw wild horses on the beach with my grandparents and I also spent a great deal of time just hanging out and reading with the family. The thing I love most about my father's side of the family is that they're all introverted, bookish people who are content to spend several hours a day reading novels or watching science fiction movies. Which I prefer over my mother's side of the family, to be quite honest. They pass the time by gossiping and lifting weights.

The car ride home today was uneventful and even kind of enjoyable. I've read over twenty books in the past week, the owners of the rented house where we were staying had a shelf of books which I could only assume were open for use, so I was able to get my hands on some stuff that my mother definitely wouldn't have approved of... that sounds a lot worse than it is, but it actually just means Stephen King novels and other things like that. Horror, not sex. My mother is actually kind of oblivious to sex in books. She is even convinced that I put down a book if there's any swearing in it. Little does she know, I'd have literally nothing left to read if I actually did this. The best books I read this week had to be those that I got from the library myself though. I re-read The Diary Of A Young Girl, which I sort of skimmed the last time I read it, over a year ago, and didn't quite process. This time, I went slower and absorbed more of the book. Her writing is surprisingly good for a girl who's only thirteen or fourteen for most of the duration of the novel. It's almost unbelievable that it's not the creation of some adult, a fictionous Holocaust story. Maybe the fact that it's completely candid and real is what makes it so compelling. I'm currently reading Gone With The Wind, which is probably the longest book I've ever taken on, besides David Copperfield, and it's really good so far. I'm normally too lazy to put much time into finishing a book, but the characters and the whole premise of the story fascinate me. The society around the time of the Civil War, in the South, was horribly sexist, but everybody took it for granted. Well, most of the people in the story, anyway.

I think that's all I really have to say, for now. I've got to catch up on piano practice because I've got a lesson on Tuesday, and I'm so darn unprepared. Psycho isn't too bad, because it's really repetitive, mostly just varities on the same chord pattern, but Sonatina Movement II is killing me. I cannot get it nailed into my head, and I hate disappointing my teacher. I haven't done it once yet, I can't bear to let it happen now. No clue why I'm such a people pleaser, some of the time.

Oh! Grades. My report card came in the mail today (along with my Donnas tee shirt, but I figure the world is tired of hearing about my impulsive spending) It wasn't awful, wasn't extraordinary. I don't have exact percentages, but I do have letters.

English - A
French - B
Science - B+
Algebra - B
Civics - A
Gym - A
Creative Writing - A
Teen Living - A

My B+ in science was painfully close to an A. That irks me...

Music lately has been a lot of Love Battery, some Dinosaur Jr, and a scattering of other things I can hardly remember. Dead Moon, Lily Allen, Letters to Cleo. Oh, and then quite a bit of Blind Melon. I love Shannon Hoon more and more every time I listen to them. Something about his voice is so tragic, yet understatedly pretty. 'Letters From A Porcupine' is still my favorite, but 'The Pusher' is gaining on it. Their new singer - who, yes, isn't really new anymore, and has since quit the band, but he's newer than Shannon - is pretty good too. I wish he hadn't quit, though I tend towards thinking replacing an iconic singer with someone else after death is sort of disrespectful. I've been listening to Katy Perry pretty often too, for some reason. Oh, and I've been listening to Led Zeppelin pretty often too, though I couldn't tell you the song titles if I were held at gunpoint, because the fifteen song CD of their's I have on my iPod was labeled with nonsense words, or completely incorrect titles, and I can't be bothered to go looking through their stuff online. I missed my Bikini Kill and L7 quite a bit, but I haven't gotten around to listening to them yet. It's a pity their songs tend towards being so explicit, I can only download the most pure of tracks as long as I live under my parents' roof.

That's all, for now. Expect a whiny post later about writing camp and how much I don't want to go. Oh, I don't think I ever mentioned that I got in. Yeah. I did. The letter came a while ago.