School is beatin' up on me.

It isn't making me sink into a deep depression or start completely losing it, but it's making me physically dead. I sense a sick day coming around the corner. Oh wait. I have tests just about every day for the next three or four weeks. Guess that won't be happening. So anyway, now I can complain about my physical ailments. For the sake of most accurately recording my life, of course. It all started on Sunday, when I woke to find that my stomach was not going to cooperate with the rest of my body. Namely, it was not going to allow much room for movement. Or breathing. Or thinking functionally. I don't think God really likes it when you curse while begging for pain relief, but it hurt, darn it. I just love 'that' time of the month. Fortunately, my mother went to get me up for church around eight and found me paralyzed in my bed, trying to figure out how to breathe when my stomach was not allowing for any below neck movement and got me some Advil. Which relieved the pain in about ten minutes, as a nice dose of Advil is apt to do. But I was still tired so I opted out of church. Turns out that this is fortunate because I was laying there, thinking about how much I love Advil for a while. And then I decided to get up. When I did? Oh my God, my neck snapped in two or something, right then, and I fell back onto the bed, due to not being able to keep my head up. At this point, figuring my body was at war against me or something, I dragged myself across the room to the ever faithful Google and typed in my ailment, begging the internet for cures. I couldn't finishing reading them before needing to put my head down again, but I figured out that you're supposed to take some meds and heat it. Because I was alone in the house, I could not get into the meds. Well, mostly, it was because I couldn't walk. But also because I'm a rule follower and would never take medication with consulting my parents first, I guess. Heating it was also not an option because of the lack of mobility. So I lay on my bed, staring at my walls for a while until I figured it was maybe a good idea to at least try to do something about this situation. I shifted around until my neck stopped screaming with pain, and then I got up and held it that way. I then spent about forty minutes trying to do french homework, giving up and going back to bed, ripping the tags off of old tee shirts so I can wear them inside out, and listening to Heatmiser. To make a long, extremely boring story somewhat shorter, my parents got home, gave me medication, and then made me do the rest of my homework. My neck hurt a little for the rest of the day - and still does now - but it was much, much better. And then, when I woke up this morning, I found that I didn't have much of a voice. In fact, I had none. So I got to school, trying to convince myself that the voice would come eventually, and found that it did not. Still. Which meant I got to hoarsely whisper so that I could finish an english project with my friend until the voice made an appearance halfway through first block. And now I can't breathe through my nose and the voice comes and goes. What fun. After a short, mostly unscarring visit to the dentist today, I also have some gums that feel as though daggers have been plunged through them. Oh, and a lingering scar from gym class last week. Apparently, I do not 'bear crawl' properly. Oh, and also? Today when I was putting in my contact, it shattered in two. I yanked the bigger piece out before my eye died due to having plastic forced into it at five am, but the smaller one is quite possibly still lost somewhere in my eye. Which isn't good. My eye hurts, my parents made me take out my contacts this evening because it hurt, but I'm sort of worried it's just lost inside my head forever or something. So, tomorrow, I shall be more careful, I guess.

That was so much whining, I don't even know what to say about it. Oh well.

I went to the library on Sunday to finish an english project with my friends. On the way there, I kind of noticed that it's the first thing outside of school I've done with school friends since the sixth grade and wondered if this means that I'm a total loser or just way more reserved than I used to be. And even though it was a project and therefore they technically had to be there, I still count it as something outside of school. Mostly because we spent half of the time stalking some cashier at the McDonalds across the street. I don't have all that much trouble finding people to hang out with during school hours, but I don't understand how anyone can meet their best friend in school. I mean, I met mine on a video game forum, so maybe I shouldn't talk, but it seems sort of random. And I'm bad at getting attached to people: I'd have no reservations whatsoever about leaving my current school for a better situation, should one arise. Makes me feel like there's something abnormal about my level of teenagegirlness. But perhaps it's a dellusional projection on my part and I shouldn't worry.

Piano is so, so fun right now. I haven't gotten a new song assignment in about three weeks, but the Chopin prelude I'm playing right now is the best thing ever, so I don't mind. Plus, I'm still playing the Bach Prelude I've had for months now, and I can honestly say it's my favorite piano song, bar none. Even out of the Smashing Pumpkins and such that I've figured out. I've improved it a lot, so that my sixteenth notes are no longer completely random and my dynamics are... there. And I can go extremely fast, even if it usually ends up screwing up at the end. It feels odd to play really fast, you don't think about what you're doing, your fingers just kind of know what to do and you can listen. Worth two and a half months or work or whatever I've put into this thing. My lessons have been moved to Thursdays, to fit my sister's gymnastics schedule. But that's fine with me because I'm not totally ready anyway.

Can't think of anything else I feel like informing the world of at this time.

Oh wait, yes I can. My mother's friend's mother - I know that's hard to follow - is an author, which is always striking to me because I've never even been close to knowing one before, and somehow, my mother set things up so she's reading my novel and giving me feedback, and I sent her the prologue and first three chapters on Sunday, even though I'm not totally done editing them. She hasn't replied yet, as far as I know. But I really, really hope that she doesn't tell me the idea has no potential, or I can't write at all, or give me some meaningless compliment because I vaguely know her, so she has to. That'd make the whole endeavour worthless.

Music this week has been Heatmiser, who is the coolest band ever, a little bit of Jawbreaker, Karmafish and Fragile New Virus, who are both unsigned yet amazing bands I found off of this new website called Jamendo or something, Veruca Salt (excessively loud, on the bus, of course), Smashing Pumpkins, Toadies, Babes in Toyland, The Wipers, Hazel, who are insanely cool, Heavens To Betsey, which continues my hero worship for Carrie Brownstein, Frente!, and a few songs by this band called Hot Water Music. Not very much stuff, actually. I've mostly been exploring a few new bands, feeding addictions to old ones. Don't know what to comment on, besides that my father is now a Smashing Pumpkins fan. Like, enough that he deleted his trance strip club stuff to put Machina on his little MP3 player. I don't know whether to be impressed with my own brainwashing abilities or saddened by the amount of music my father and I are starting to have in common. This kid I know's asssessment of the stuff on my iPod after he looked at it, today? "Wow, you have a lot of weird stuff on here". I didn't really know what to say to that, and since I have about four versions of 'Coconut Mall', I said nothing.

So much nothingness.

I'm insanely busy, but not with interesting things. Mostly, I'm just going to school. Coming home. Doing ten pounds of homework. Going to sleep. That's it. My life... gone. Not that I had much of one before, but what I did have got lost somewhere in the piles of geometry notes and french worksheets. I have a lot of homework this weekend. And when I say 'a lot', I mean a lot. I have to read a chapter from my biology textbook, answer the assessment questions, and make notecards to help me remember the vocabulary, and finish up the lab paperwork that I didn't have time to finish on Friday. Then I have to do three (yes, three) math assignments, make notecards to help me remember postulates and theorums and such, and study for the upcoming quiz. And then I have to get started on studying for my english test next week. And I have to make french notecards for chapter one, part two and study for the upcoming quiz on that. Basically, I'll be using a fair percentage of the world's stock of notecards this weekend. The only class I do not have homework in would be, surprisingly enough, history. History doesn't actually give much homework, but I end up doing a lot of homework for that class because I take ten pages of notes when everyone else takes about one and that takes some time. I learn by writing things down. Oh, and I have no journalism homework. I totally aced the test we had in there on Friday, fortunately for me, because my oh so intelligent project partners got us a B due to their inability to write a complete sentence and their overall giggliness. I hate working with people like that.

It's the weekend now, thank God. School isn't terrible, but it's very wearing. The only thing I'm doing after school right now is piano, on Tuesdays. Youth group is on Sundays this year. I'm still not 'getting involved', which I'm sure is going to maul my chances of getting into college, but that's okay. I'll figure something out later. Something that's not social or athletic or time consuming. The sad thing is, I love riding the bus. It's my favorite part of the school day. I've been using my father's old Walkman, bringing two or three discs a day, and it's working out swimmingly. 'Cept for when I have to change the CD in the middle of a bus ride. Mostly, I've been listening to L7's 'Hungry For Stink', which I bought along with Veruca Salt's 'Resolver' and Elastica's 'The Menace'. I think the L7 album is my favorite of the three. At first, I didn't love it, but it grew on me. 'Can I Run' is just about the best song in the world.

My thoughts aren't very cohesive today. It's raining outside and it's so, so pretty. Cloudy days are the best things ever.

I was going to go to some CD release show with a bunch of bands who's names I didn't know at all tonight, but then my friend got in trouble with her parents so now I'm not going, because my parents think I'll be murdered if I go anyplace alone. I'm, admittedly, not as sad as I would be because I knew who none of the bands were. The only reason I knew about the show was because this senior on my bus handed me a flier thingy, due to my tendancy to wear shirts with bands nobody knows on them. Well, she knew them. It surprised me that someone in my school knew who the Donnas were, but I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised. They're not underground or anything, and they're pretty poppy.

This is extremely short, but I don't know what else to say, and I sort of want to edit my novel, a little bit, today. It's already well past four, so I'd better get started. My mother's friend's mother is an author and my mother said she wants to see some of what I wrote because she read my little complaint letter... (which, by the way, the radio station has completely ignored. I'll be writing again soon.) So I think I should probably get some of the novel up to a level of decency.

Music lately has been a lot of Green River and some Mudhoney too, because I love Mark Arm and everything he does. A lot of Love Battery and Veruca Salt. During the school day, mostly L7. Some Smashing Pumpkins, I'm teaching myself 'Crestfallen' on piano so I'm listening to it again and again, Devo, The Distillers, a fair amount of Sleater Kinney, some Toadies. I totally forgot about them and was happy to remember. Nirvana, Babes In Toyland, The Go! Team, (I saw their first album at the record place last week and seriously thought about buying it, just because it was so cool that it was there). Chopin, I love all of the songs of his from Opus 28 that I've heard so far, The Birthday Massacre, a little bit of Lady Gaga, Moist, other scattered things.

That's it...

Oh dear.

Everything is ending. Summer, therefore freedom, therefore, my life. I'm leaving for New York and when I return, I have nothing but therapy, orientation, and a hair cut to greet me. Don't get me wrong -- I'm looking forward to the hair cut because then my bleach will be fixed so I don't have two inches of dark hair growing it over it. And my blue will be renewed by a person who knows what they're doing, which is always nice. I'm also going to a music festival with my best friend the weekend before school, which is amazing but I'll post more about that later. Not the rest, though, and I'm dreading school. Most of my (online) friends have already started school, and they all seem to be doing alright, but I really really really don't want to go back. High school sounds so scary, and even my mother admits my first week will suck. Oh well. Nothing I can do about it, may as well save the utter panic for the last week. I have this entire weekend to... deal with my family. Hoorah. At least my grandparents have a piano so I can entertain myself that way. I packed a couple of books too. My school mandated reading and my copy of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, becuase I love it and I want to read it again. It takes thought and paying attention, but I'm in the car for eight hours so I've got the time for it and nothing else to occupy my mind. Nothing better to do.

Oh, I had my piano lesson today. It was wonderful. One of the best I've had, even though I felt I wasn't doing all that great. I was so nervous, I spent at least two hours practicing this morning and probably an hour pacing around, worrying that I wasn't going to do well. Which, yes, is unreasonable when talking about a piano lesson, but oh well. I did pretty well, according to my piano teacher. She said she thought I was doing a good job of Bach's Prelude, which I also love playing, so that's good, and assigned me two and a half more lines. For some reason, her expectations for me are lower on this song than the others we've played. She seems to overlook the faults I have in playing, when she normally wouldn't. She's also giving me smaller assignments. Makes it easier to play it over and over, which is my favorite part of practicing so I don't mind at all. As for Bitter Sweet Symphony, I failed at it so we both agreed I need to give up pop music and play something else. I'm doing a song called, 'Jester' from this jazz book we found in the piano bench. It seems more reasonable. Less repeated chords, which I hate. By myself, I learned 'The Devil' by Tears for Fears. It's played almost solely in piano, so when I play along with the recording, it sounds like it should. It's an easy song, but so fun, and the melody is beautiful.

I ramble about piano too much, I noticed. Sorry for anyone who has to read through this stuff on a regular basis.

My guitar is due to get here... tomorrow. Great timing. Oh well. There's someone coming over to take care of the dogs and I suppose they can make sure the package gets inside alright.

I can't find any shoes. My mother said that my shoes (which are my favorite shoes ever) are dying and I guess I agree so now I'm hunting 'em down. There simply are not any shoes out there to my liking. And when I do find a shoe I like, its sold out of my size because size seven is the most popular size ever, apparently. I've already ranted to multiple people about this though, so I should not rant again. Of course, this is my blog, so technically, I can write whatever I want but like... yeah.

I missed the Love Battery show. Inevitably. So darn tragic. I need to write that letter to Love Battery, begging them to scrape up the money and get over here.

Music has been Frente. Due to some much needed help, I found the song 'Same' on MySpace. Full length track, unlimited plays, everything. The EP is still not mine, but at least that song is. Music has also been Love Battery, (a lot of) L7, Bikini Kill, Foo Fighters -- I bought their album, 'The Color And The Shape' last weekend -- 10 Minute Warning, Nirvana, my father's music, which is under the name 'Waveformation', Elastica (apparently finding their self titled album is hard and it's worth a lot of cash. I feel lucky now.), Green River, Beyonce, Soundgarden, Team Dresch, Veruca Salt, Smashing Pumpkins, and Moist. In short, some decent variety. Not too much garbage. Besides maybe Beyonce, but I swear I only like Halo. And Single Ladies, a little bit. Only a little. Sort of.

That's 'bout it. This was moderately short, but I don't have all that much to say...

Haven't blogged in a lot of days.

Yeah, so I went to New Hampshire. It was totally fun until my grandparents started snapping at everyone they could see and I was forced into more boring activities than I ever thought I'd have to do and I had to sleep on a cement floor with an oxygen tank sighing loudly at me all through the night and my brother snoring. Thank you for that, my darling brother. The rest of vacation was alright. I was thrown out of bed around eight every day. Which was unfortunate, since it screwed up my head, but the rest of the days were decent. The trip was devoid of hipsters, besides a couple at Hershey Park. Hershey Park was pretty, and it was probably pretty darn awesome if you didn't have a chronic fear of head trama that made you stay away from rides at all costs. Which I do, for the time being, anyway. I should get on a ride at some time in my life, but what if that happens to be a head trama inducing one?! I hate near death experiences. Two is enough for one life. First the bolting horse, then the drowning. Too much risk taking. If I cut that out, I can (maybe) count on a gentle death in my sleep when I'm old. That sounds better than being taken down by something that's scary, or something that hurts. For some reason, when I tell my father about this philosophy, he tells me not to committ suicide. Which is stupid, because suicide is the last thing I'd do, right now. Or ever. I'm sort of anti - causing myself any pain at all. I won't even rip off a bandaid.

But I'm rambling. I could say it's 'cause I'm tired, but I've had so much caffiene today, I don't even think tiredness is possible. I've had two Pepsis, one very large, and a mocha frappichino that made me unable to sit still for the better part of a day. Coffee is my favorite thing in the world. Today was boring. Eleven, almost twelve hours in the car with two and a half books does that. Suddenly, having seven hundred songs on my iPod feels like nothing. I don't even have Machina on there yet. I need Dayglo so darn bad. Oh, that reminds me of something I need to rant about after I finish talking about this. The first book I read was 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' but Oscar Wilde. Best. Book. Ever. Not only did the author's personal life hook me from the start, the novel was so entertaining and thought provoking. I read a lot of classics, but I have to confess that some of them are things I read because I know they're meant to be good, even if I don't adore them. Like 'Pride And Prejudice', which I recently re - read. This book was different. Wilde writes in a way that is easier to understand, since the book was more recent than the average classic, but something about the way he writes is so artistic and fascinating. That's the first novel, bar none, I've read in a long time where I found myself re - reading parts because they were so darn good. Nobody writes things like that anymore. I wish I hadn't already finished 'Tunnel', because then I could try writing more like the way he writes. Maybe it's just as well though, because I don't want to start ripping him off... Anywho. The second book I read was 'The Dave Grohl Story' which was okay. The first part about his upbringing and his first experiences with the DC hardcore scene were good reading, particularly for someone who lives where I do. The part about Nirvana was interesting, but it ended up leaving me more annoyed than anything else, because the author had it out for Kurt & Courtney, from the very start, it was all about Kurt trying to decimate the band and Courtney treating him as a puppet and alienating the whole world through her sheer Courtneyness. Don't get me wrong, I don't object to Courtney bashing in the least, I, like about ninety five percent of the world, doesn't like her at all, but Kurt? By most accounts, he was a sweet, sort of misunderstood person who tended towards being very quiet. Not a band decimater, at least, not on purpose. So that was frustrating to read. The Foo Fighters part was alright. Mostly, it idolized Dave and took shots at everyone else in the music industry. Which is always nice to read about. If one was a manic Foo Fighers fan, they might appreciate it a little more. I can't call myself that, not even owning one of their albums, so I had only passing interest in parts of it. The last half of a book was this Christian woman genericish novel my mother had. I read it because I had two hours left and my other books were done. I could have attempted 'Paradise Lost', but I was sick of weeding through annotations after 'The Taming Of The Shrew' and 'Pride and Prejudice'. Nothing better for light reading than a book intended for thirty somethings who like romance without any physical contact. Those books are generally full of cliches and impossiblities that would be profoundly annoying anywhere else, but are kind of funny there. This particular one was about some woman who works at a cancer clinic and then gets breast cancer and falls in love with the doctor who she works for. Dunno if the irony's meant to get it pegged as witty or smart, but it had a rather fourth grade reading level, so I mostly just read it to pass time. Never finished it, don't know if I will. My mother doesn't like me reading her books, which is understandable, because I wouldn't let her go near mine.

Oh. Yes. Love Battery is playing their first show in years for seven dollars at an all ages club. Guess what city it's in. Freemont, in, y'know, Seattle. I can't really complain that they're sticking to their roots, and with the economy or whatever, it's probably hard to fly out to DC, but... I need you to play here, Love Battery!! My devotion for this band has reached a manic obsessive level over the past few weeks induced by repeated plays of Straight Freak Ticket and a crush on Ron Nine. I want to write them a fan letter, preferably begging them to come to DC or Northern Virginia. My parents rejected my offer to be in debt for several years so I could fly myself and one of them there. I actually cried over it. Twice. I might be a stupid suburban kid who knows nothing of real suffering, but I want to see Love Battery. So bad. Ron Nine normally plays more with his new band anyway. I should check them out. Down With People, they're called. Oh well. I'll have to content myself with finding out how to burn my Between The Eyes cassette to iTunes and hunting down copies of Confusion Au Go Go and Dayglo. I'm actually drained of cash, for the time being, because I sold my darling old guitar and bought myself a new one.

It is a white Epiphone G - 310 SG, which is a long way of saying it's a pretty normal looking electric guitar that can do a lot and isn't too complicated or expensive. Well, actually, it does cost more than I'd like, but I had enough, so I figured I may as well live within my means. Oh, speaking of musical instruments, I can ramble about piano for a little while, right? I practiced on my grandparents piano, which was old and out of tune and felt all wrong to me. It screwed up my Prelude so darn much. Prelude is turning out to be one of my favorite songs. Not just to play, but to hear. Although, playing it is really exhilerating, in a way. The progression of notes that are part of the D minor (I think) chords in both hands is so fun. I don't even think about what my fingers are doing very much anymore, which is my favorite part of learning any song. I like playing classical ten times better than playing pop or rock. That said, I've cultivated an odd little aspiration to play piano in a riot girl or grunge band (that sounds more like one of the heavier, earlier ones). Something like Green River, only maybe even heavier. And with a piano. Mostly, this is because I'm incapable on the guitar and enjoy playing the same five power chords way too much to make something of myself, but also because the idea just appeals to me quite a lot. Can't imagine how I'll find multiple people willing to work with that, but that doesn't mean it'll never happen.

Oh, goodness, this entry was long and rambling and had almost no content worth actually reading. Music lately has been Love Battery. I swear, the only thing besides a couple of L7 songs I listened to the entire duration of my trip to New Hampshire was the two albums currently on my iPod. Drowning Sun is the best song in the world. What other artist can pull off the groovy thing?! Might have already mentioned that, but still... I've been listening to Nirvana and Mudhoney too. Also some Pavement, which makes me worry that I might turn into a hipster some day. Then there's Veruca Salt and Bratmobile and Lady Gaga. I really like 'Love Game'. No idea why. In fact, I don't think I want to know. I listened to more Devo, and then some Le Tigre. More of the same thing I always listen to, really. And always Love Battery. They catch me by surprise in the best ways. Thus why they're beating out Smashing Pumpkins for my second favorite band, at least, right now.

Life is... monochromatic.

My mother told me I use too many big words in my writing so I'm prone to hyperbole. I intend to never use small words when I could easily use bigger ones again, partly to spite her, but mostly because I think hyperbole makes everything better. If I spelled that word wrong in the title, you can pretend it's irony, but it's really just me being too lazy to use spell check. I showed her my submission for the anthology at writing camp today - a submission that's already been edited by several people and handed in - and mocked me for my use of words like 'relentless' and 'bleak'. Words that are not exactly SATish in nature. She's in a funny mood due to jet lag and God knows what else, but it was sort of degrading to be told that such words sound funny or awkward in my writing. I'd like to think it flows smoothly enough and tells the story. Maybe I'm just an egomaniac...

Enough rambling. I have some stressful things coming up, and that means I shall be writing panicky, ranty posts and staying up way too late and bothering everyone to death. Just a warning, if you happen to talk to me on a regular basis, like pretty much everyone who's liable to reading this does. Tomorrow, we're meeting an old friend of mine (we used to be best friends but that kind of changed) at the Metro station and she's hanging out here for a couple of hours. Under normal conditions, I'd think of it as a blessing, seeing someone who I used to be very close to that lives on the other side of the country, but things got complicated with her around sixth grade, and we never quite patched it up. So, as it is now, it just means I have to clean my room, clear my internet history so as to keep her from being exposed to the number of 'Blind Date' episodes I've watched and gossip blogs I've read. And Wikipedia pages. And then I have to change my background so that it doesn't reflect my new found love for the way Axl Rose looked in the 1980s. Not the man himself, you must understand, I think he's an idiot and is completely full of himself, but he was gorgeous in the eighties. And I have to make sure my hair looks fine and I'm not wearing anything particularly unusual tomorrow too, which just feels like undue stress.

Next week, I have a total of ten hours of my life dedicated to getting used to my high school. Not a single one of my friends will be attending the orientation, which I can deal with, but getting up at nine to be barked at and led around school corridors? I am not such a fan of that part of it. I'm extremely directionally challenged, so I hope and pray that they will not make us find our way around.

On a more optimistic note, writing camp has been moderately enjoyable. Almost everyone there is nice enough, and I'm not as uncomfortable as I used to be. The college campus is quite pretty, but college students are a self centered, over confident bunch who I hope I never become anything like. They're always rushing around in their artsy clothes with cell phones attached to their ears, giving little sideways glares to anyone who happens to consider being in their way. I've noticed a lack of students in classes, which must be a pleasent change from middle and high school, but kind of bothers me. Why are they there if they're not learning? I don't get it. Still, the camp itself doesn't give me much stress any longer. The only part I fret about is sharing - I fear that my group leader will force me to go up and read something, which I would not enjoy at all. The twelth graders intimidate me with their fancy metaphors and wise sounding comparisons, I'll freely admit that. It's not just that though, it's an almost instinctive fear of standing before a large group of people. Which reminds me. I accidently worked that line from 'Polly' in to something I wrote today, and didn't even notice until I was reading it.

My mother's return from her Seattle high school reunion was accompanied by a Love Battery tape - 'Between The Eyes'! I was going to go for the CD, but now I haven't any need and a Kurt Cobain shirt (my seventh Nirvana shirt. I know I'm too obsessed, but it's kind of fun) and this disc of various grunge songs. I took advantage of her high school's locale and made her buy me lotsa music stuff. Oh, how I miss that town. I was never old enough to appreciate while I had it. And now I live with lawyers and ex marines and other people who are not especially fun. My mother's friend's husband knew Stone Gossard in high school! Isn't that unbelieveable?!

I wanted to bake, but there is nothing in the house. Sadly.

My mother thinks that 'pwn' is a suggestive term.

Music as of late has been Love Battery, Nirvana, Elastica, Screaming Trees, Britney Spears and The Birthday Massacre. Nothing of interest. I only write this part for myself, though, so I can remember what I listened to. Steve Burns has a new album coming soon! I'm going to scrounge up a few dollars out of my meager new guitar fund and buy it. I love Steve, I need to support him in his music career. There might even be a concert at some point, if the opportunity comes up.

I think that's all I have to ramble about, for the time being.

Edit~ Oh, yeah, my Blogger icon is me now. From the front. I'm very brave; compromising my safety this way. I don't particularly like the picture, but my blazer's in it, so that makes it good. Note the weird aqua tinge of the front of my hair.

I'm too writing out'd to make up a title.

Writing camp is... different than I expected, I suppose. But it's not any fun. Yesterday was my first day, but the drama really started the night before. I was more panicked than I've ever been, to the point of tears. Apparently, stress makes me cry pretty frequently. First the algebra state testing. Now this. I stayed up until four thirty in the morning, talking to my friends online and then reading some more of 'Gone With The Wind' until I couldn't keep my eyes open and I gave up. Which meant I got three hours of sleep that night, which meant I was exhausted by the time I'd made it through the impossibly long car ride to George Mason University where the camp was being held. The first day is sort of a blur to me, thanks to the sleep deprivation, but I know that we wrote. A lot. I wrote a character sketch of David Bowie without using his name and then my group's leader made me read it out loud. I don't think anybody else in the room even knew who Bowie was enough to recognize him. But the leader told me it was nice anyway in a similar fashion to the way doctors talk to mental patients.

Today was a little better, 'cept for that we got rear ended this morning. The damage was minimal and neither my father nor I were hurt, as the other car had been going very slowly. It did make me twenty minutes late to camp, though. Today, we were assigned to wander around the campus in small groups and describe some of the people and objects we saw. I went with three or four other girls in the ninth / tenth grade split group I was put in and described a janitor who was sitting dejectedly on a bench a ways away. I think he noticed us staring about midway through our writing, because he started staring too, and it wasn't really a friendly stare. We're meant to write something by Friday that we can publish in the camp's anthology, so we worked on that for a while today too. I have no idea what I'm going to submit; I wrote about a homeless man fishing a book in a foreign language out of a dumpster today, making it totally clear to myself that I had no inspiration. I'm sure I'll find something. There are a great many subjects in this world.

So far, camp hasn't been devastatingly awful. Even if it's not great and it's very emotionally and physically draining. Most of the people there are moderately civil, though there are some that are remarkably crazy and sort of frighten me. It's sort of nice to hear large quantities of other people tossing around odd words and making comparisons to really irrelevent things in the middle of conversations, which is happening a lot there. I don't know if its because we're all kind of insane from writing too much or if it's merely a coincidence. Anywho. Tomorrow will be another stressful day, but I doubt the details of it will be anything of even slight interest.

Fortunately, I still have a little time to myself after returning home each day and eating. I spent most of this afternoon and evening trying to detangle 'Thru The Eyes of Ruby' - my all time favorite Smashing Pumpkins song - on piano by learning from guitar tabs. This had all sorts of lovely complications. For example, the first tabs website I went to neglected to tell me it was in half step down tuning, which is fine and good on guitar, just turn some pegs (I tried it and it sounded nice enough, the riffs for the verse and bridge are pretty easy) and you're done. On piano, I don't know if there's a better way, but I was playing nearly everything in flats, which means lots of annoying black keys instead of the flatter, easier white ones. Yes, I am aware this sounded racist but I didn't know how else to say it. I also faced trouble with the small matter of the riff, coupled with some chords I sorted out for myself sounding nothing like the song at all. Not sure why. Kind of irritated by this. But I can always try tomorrow. Thanks to some music off the internet, I can play the introduction, the only part with real piano, with ease, and it sounds awesome, even if its a pain to read the music.

My best friend convinced me that I need a bass by having a grand time with her's and telling me about it. Well, really, it's not her fault, I've sort of wanted to try playing for a while, but not enough that I actually thought to save up money for it. I'm waiting 'til I have enough to buy an amplifier, and then I'll get myself one and learn to play it! Well, try, at any rate. It's become increasingly clear that I actually have no musical talent, I just have to work really hard and practice a lot and get engaged enough with the music I play to keep going, and then I do all right. Which is sort of annoying, but oh well.

Music as of late has been the CD's I bought the last time my father took me to that lovely place. I got about ten of them, the most notable of which probably being Love Battery's 'Straight Freak Ticket' and Elastica's 'Elastica', which I liked better than I thought I would. I got a Tears For Fears album too, but not my favorite one, Moist's 'Silver', 10 Minute Warning's '10 Minute Warning' and some others. Sadly, there was no Frente. Not even one of their full length discs. Thus, my quest for Frente CDs continues. I've also been listening to some of my favorite artists, ones that I sort of started phasing out of, more - Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, namely. I've been listening to quite a bit of L7, some Babes In Toyland, and... Britney Spears. 'Blackout' is awesome, I don't care how cracked up she sounds through the whole thing.

That's about all I have to say. I know I'm really boring lately, but this blog was never intended to be entertaining, only a public diary of sorts.

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.

Yawnage.

Not 'cause I'm bored. I wish. I'm wiped. Exhusted. Dying of tiredness. I need to go take a three month nap, which I suppose technically counts as summer. If this is how intense studying for two finals is, how impossible will it be next year?! Agh, enough griping. It'll be hard not to rant, I'm afraid, because my life over the past few days has been nothing but finals. Oh, and piano. My dear piano is causing me rather a lot of undue stress, as I take it far too seriously and have spent more than an hour the past two days playing. I figured out how to play the chorus to Love Battery's 'Half Past You' last night, and worked out some chords to make the melody sound more full. It's sort of fun, even if it's only playing the same thing over and over again, basically. I need to practice singing while I play piano, and I know all of the words to that song, so I've been doing that. I also picked up Bush's 'Glycerine' and The Birthday Massacre's 'Horror Show'. Yeah, I get distracted far too much, I know. I worked on Sonatina today, motiviated by the slightly pathetic sight of a five year old playing it perfectly on Youtube. My father insists that I can't hope to measure up to the child geniuses so I should stop worrying(thanks, dad. Love you too) but it makes me want to get better at any rate. I have made little to no progress on Psycho, and the idea of singing it next week is quite daunting to me.

School today was a bunch of boring, end of year nonsense. Besides - for once - english. We're watching 'The Devil's Arithmetic', which is only remotely related to anything in the curriculum, but is really good so far. It has the girl from Spiderman, who's name escapes me at this moment, in it. Some of the people in my class think it's too depressing, or insipid - my word, not their's, you'll note - or a wide range of other things, but I personally like it. In french, we got our final exam scores back. I only earned an 87 percent, which is lower than I hoped but nothing devastating, or worth tossing out my year grade for. I'm pretty satisfied with it. Science was more of my teacher being whiny, and moody, and looking quite pregnant, I do hope she takes next year off, and algebra was more of that dreaded final. It's the most intense test I've ever taken, and I'm really worried about my score on it. It matters a lot: if I get a B or higher (ha!) then I can easily go on to geometry. If it's a C+ or lower, then it's a different story. I wouldn't really mind retaking algebra, but I'd be frustrated with losing a year of progress and having to keep taking math through senior year.

Civics was not worth speaking of. I put my shorts on backwards in gym again and got a thirteen out of twenty on my softball test. The worst person possible just happened to be grading it, of course. I have horrid luck in gym, I really do. Teen living was sort of fun, though. We didn't have to sew today, we got to go and eat cookies that the seventh grade class baked outside for the entirity of the period. Which meant quite a lot of messing around and throwing things and getting yelled at for being, it would appear, 'umanageable'. My class hears that a lot, it's sort of sad. I normally do not mention this, but my bus rides were wonderful today. I got a little bit of much needed sleep, listened to 'Officially Dead' about a million times, and even remembered to get off at the right time without a panicked fumble for my things.

Oh! Yesterday, the awards ceremony took place after school. It was one of the more boring things I've had to sit through in my life. The egotistical part of me is irritated at the five seconds I was up on the stage versus the two hours I was sitting there watching, and the psychopathical part of me wants to murder each and every teacher in my school for dragging the thing out so long to begin with. Fortunately, neither part is particularly dominant, so I sat in the very back with my friend and tried to get some studying done. The award turned out to be given by my creative writing teacher from last semester, who somewhat loved me, and gave me a really high grade in there even though I weaseled my way out of sharing any writing every single time we were meant to. I suppose I made up for this by writing things that were ten pages long when they only had to be five, and so forth. I really do love writing, but I think the award should have been given to someone who worked hard and was willing to meet the requirements and all that. The ceremony lasted 'til about four, and then my father dropped off my friend at her house, and we headed home. By that time, it was five or so. Needless to say, I was not very pleased about having so much of my free time severed by such an occasion. It was nice to hang out and relax for a couple of hours, but I felt the pressure to do something more efficient nagging at me all of the time.

I studied so dang much today, it's not even physically possible. My mother's friend is here and she won't stop going on and on about her little adventures in Adoption Wonder Land. Tomorrow is my brother and sister's birthday party at one of those bouncy places; I have to come and supervise. My phone's battery is dead for no good reason, which really bothers me. My hair only curls the way I tell it to when it's ten thirty at night and nobody can see me.

There was all of the whiny little things I felt I had to tell the world, compacted in to one tiny paragraph. I guess we all know what this entry will be categorized as.

I listened to mostly grunge today. Green River, Mudhoney, and Love Battery. I cannot get over how wonderful Love Battery is. There's something about their songs that is not only addictive, it's almost emotionally indulgent, and it's very calming. Mudhoney is, of course, an ongoing addiction that is largely led by my adoration for Mark Arm and his hair. I don't mean to sound like one of those fangirls who only listens to music sung by cute guys, who only buy tickets for concerts so they can see the object of their affections, but I hardly listened to Mudhoney before I figured out how gorgeous Mark was. So, like I said before, he's mine and nobody can steal him. I also listened to Veruca Salt today, mostly, as stated before, 'Officially Dead' but I have a half addiction of sorts to 'Walking With Strangers' by the Birthday Massacre. It doesn't, as some commenter who wanted to continue my Tears For Fears stalking incident thought, resemble Tears For Fears' 'Head Over Heels' at all, they're crazy. Both songs are great, though.

That was sort of short. And whiny. Oh well, it's rare that I post twice during the school week.

Ah, so it's one of 'those' days.

Seems to be. You know, those days when the world is rather insufferable, and everyone in it is wishing for your demise? Goodness, I hate these days. I've been having one. Well, actually, one of those weekends. I may as well jump into my rant before I'm pulled away to clean some other obscure portion of the house that my mother doesn't feel like looking after.

Saturday began with my mother pounding down my door, which I had neglected to unlock, the night before. I was insanely tired, but I don't know why, because I think I went to bed around eleven the night before. She wanted to see Thomas Jefferson's house. That's fine, but it's a three hour drive from where I live, and I feel obligated to tell you that it is not worth it at all. It took me about an hour to get dressed, put my contacts in, and find my shoes, which is about average, and then we were off. Not without the minor complications of my clothing being, as it would seem, unfit for the occasion. What exactly about an old nightgown over jeans is so wrong?! My mother gave it to me, she shouldn't have expected that I wouldn't have worn it. After a little verbal sparring, I went up and changed again. Then we left. We arrived around one, spent some time walking around the grounds in the ninety degree weather. I was really kicking myself for wearing two layers, long sleeves, and black jeans at that point. With all respect to Jefferson, the guy was a serious hypocrite. He thought slavery was wrong, but he had over two hundred slaves working at his farm. He freed less than ten of them in his will. My parents, of course, got sort of angry when I criticized him, because people in wigs who write important documents can do no wrong in their eyes.

When we got home, around nine at night, I fought with my online instant messenging client for a while - I shall not be revealing its name to the world, lest anyone get the crazy idea to use it - gave up and used AIM Express. I'm still using it. It doesn't work at all, it goes down every five seconds, and it doesn't let the user customize fonts or anything. Plus, navigating through the buddy list and such is near impossible once one's got a message open. I don't recommend it, at all. I went to bed around one, since I had a pretty nasty stomach ache. I couldn't sit up, couldn't even breathe, for a while. I got over it by three or so and fell asleep. The night wasn't bad after I got upstairs and sorted things out with the internet. There was a three hour window that I rather enjoyed. I messed around on google, ate stale chips, and listened to my parents' discs from twenty years ago.

This morning, I made the mistake of opening my eyes when my mother came into my room, instead of pretending that I was still comatose. I somewhat dread church, for no particular reason. Once I get there, I'm fine. But it feels like such a sacrifice. I know, that's sort of the idea of religion in general. I'm horrid for thinking this way. But I really do wish it was later in the day, or on another day. Church on Thursday would be grand, for example. The sermon today was about not just taking joy from petty, temporary things, which felt like a personalized guilt trip. That's pretty much my strategy for life. After church, I dragged my parents to a beauty supply store so I could get myself some new dye. Despite numerous warnings on the packaging, I purchased it without getting a degree in... hair doing first. Two bottles were only thirteen dollars! I had enough money to pay, for once. This improved my day a little. I've spent most of the afternoon, so far, fighting with my mother over nothing at all, playing piano, wondering why I have this stomach ache of mine, and messing around on the internet. My favorite pastime, in case you haven't noticed. I have to babysit for my parents' small group tonight. I am not looking forward to it at all, namely because I only get six dollars for the whole mess, since some of the kids stopped attending, and it is the most boring thing in the world. Seriously, I cannot imagine a worse way to spend my Sunday evening. Well, actually, I can, but none of them are particularly reasonable.

Oh, before I forget to mention this, I've stumbled upon a life goal. So far, I don't really have any goals, not concrete ones. But it's never too late to start coming up with these things, right? Before you're dead, at any rate. But, sometime in my life, I feel I simply must see the movie, 'Poison Ivy'. I found the synopsis and some reviews, a couple of days ago. I don't know if it's because I'm suffering from ACC withdrawl or what, but I've found myself in some of the darkest corners of the internet, lately. This morning, I was reading The National Enquirer's website, of all things. I know I cannot believe anything they publish, but, darn it, it's interesting. If Adam really does have a twenty four year old boyfriend, well, I congratulate him, but couldn't he have at least picked someone marginally cute? ...I digress though, of course. It sounds like one of the most unusual movies ever made, people have described it as a 'psychological thriller' and it was made in the nineties, so that pretty much qualifies it as a must - see movie. I'd go and rent it right now, but it's rated R and my parents would flip out if they knew I'd even read the summary. Tragically. Perhaps it's leaked on the internet somewhere, or something. That'll be one life goal completed and out of the way.

Music has been nothing remarkable, lately. I had my iPod on shuffle all day yesterday, which meant quite a lot of Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. As well as some Pearl Jam. I think I forgot what a tremendous song 'Porch' is. I love Pearl Jam, so please understand that I don't mean to be disrespectful when I say that I think Eddie Vedder's voice used to be better. If you compare 'Alive' or 'Garden' to 'Severed Hand', for example. Eddie does a lot more forced yelling now, and a lot less actual singing. Especially during upbeat songs. It hasn't always been that way, he used to have a more soulful, steady sound. But maybe I'm over analyzing. Obviously, he's still good enough to sell records. Anywho, I was listening to my parents' Marty Casey disc last night and this morning. I've been listening to some Veruca Salt, a little bit of Mindless Self Indulgence, and Screaming Trees too. Sadly, I think my song addiction is over, almost before it started. Few can hope to rival the Bullet With Butterfly Wings obsession of last summer.

I think that's about all. School is going to be terribly boring tomorrow. Stressful, too. Finals and state testing, plus random assessments given to make our quarter totals look better, are working together to kill me. There is only two more weeks of graded work. I have to keep telling myself that.

I am quite exhusted.

It seems that the world at large has decided to use me as a temporary punching bag. Time for a melodramatic sigh. Tuesday morning didn't exactly start out easy, since the weather was about ninety degrees, but it was pouring rain. The air was so humid, I could barely breathe, and it made my hair do this most unusual curling thing. This post is going to be full of whine, just so you know in advance. When I got to school, I was already exhusted and in a less than wonderful mood, as I had gotten all of four hours of sleep the night before. Sleeping simply isn't appealing when it's ten thousand degrees inside, and thunder keeps jolting one awake, hour after hour. Isn't early summer grand? Anywho, the school's air conditioner had chosen the best day to break, the one where we actually needed it, and nobody felt like doing anything about this, so we all suffocated through the day. My school day wasn't terrible, other than that. The rain prevented us from going out of doors in gym, so I sat through forty five minutes of 'Patriot Ball' and listened to my friends ramble on about anime and such. It was rather entertaining, even though I never have any idea what they're talking about. And then I went to teen living, where I was met with the usual sprinkling of snubs, thinly veiled insults, and sarcastic comments. That particular set of friends is going to make me lose it, by the end of the school year. I can only be grateful that none of them are going to high school with me next year.

The earlier portion of the day was pretty boring, routine, that sort of thing. French class was a drag because I got paired up with the sorts of people who go, 'you're smart, you can look up words, right?' and then go off among themselves and leave one to do all of the work for a project alone. I didn't feel like failing anything in that class, at this point, as I need my A to bring up my french grade for the year, so I did what they wanted and tried to conceal my irritation at being tagged as the 'smart kid' again, despite my difficulties with the class. Do I really look like that much of a geek or whatever qualifies me to be the smart one? Or is it merely my incredible work ethic? No idea. English and science were pointless, algebra gave me a chance to have my daily panic attack, and civics was delightful - we got to watch a movie called Twelve Angry Men. Most everyone was mocking it, but I thought it was rather interesting. That seems to be the case with me and civics quite a lot.

Upon arriving home, I had my piano lesson. It wasn't nearly so catastrophic as I feared it'd be, but I was really out of it, and my piano teacher could tell. She was sympathetic about my trouble with Karma Police, and agreed that playing the chords along with the bassline sounded far better. However, Sonatina was a moderately easy song that I was simply too lazy to get anywhere with, so I think she's punishing me by giving me thirty measures to have perfected by next week. I wanted to protest, but I figured I'd gotten myself into this mess, I'd have to go ahead and get myself out by doing it. I'm going to have to make an honest effort in practicing for a while, every single day, since I have a lot to work on now. I cannot believe I thought jumping back into piano would be so seamless and easy. It was, at first, I suppose, but not anymore. My teacher figured out how much I'd retained, I guess, and decided to push me a little harder than she was initially going to. I am only thankful that she's not making me bother with that theory nonsense that accompanied my piano lessons, last time. I already know about chords, and time signatures, and - mostly - how to read notes, so I suppose it's not really necessary.

Today, I stayed home sick from school. It wasn't that I was sick, exactly, I was just so tired and worn out. Life has been going far too fast for my liking, as of late, and it feels that it only continues to accellerate, people demanding more and more. I can hardly relax. I have free time, but I'm always stressed, and I feel as though I'm doing something wrong if I'm not doing something productive. I'm always awake when I should be tired; extremely drowsy when I should be awake. I'm hungry when I've just eaten, and don't want to eat when I'm supposed to. But I sound awfully dramatic. It'll all be over soon, in less than a month now. June eighteen is my last day of school. I am really, really looking forward to it.

I've listened to quite a few things, in the past days. Mostly Garbage, The Dollyrots, The Donnas, Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Letters to Cleo, that sort of thing. But, yesterday, I was listening to some of Nirvana's earlier stuff, and then there's the odd little Spice Girls phase I've been going through. I also am still loving Mudhoney, Screaming Trees and Love Battery. Oh, and Pearl Jam. It's odd, I had quite the obsession with them, earlier this year, then I went several months without listening to them, at all. I feel I'm forgetting something, I know I've been listening to more than I remember. Oh, I was listening to my father's keyboard music, some stuff he recorded when I was little. I envy his ability to play the piano, even if he cannot read notes at all. I was also listening to Britney Spears, yesterday. Gimme More is such an addicting song.

Oh, just so you know, my new blogger icon is me. As opposed to someone or something else. It's taken from the back, so I'm not quite as stalker friendly as I could be. But I just proved myself wrong, from some comment I made about not being stupid a couple of posts ago. Oh, well.

That's all, I know, this was pathetically short. I'm too sleepy and hungry to care.

This week has just been one long, 'oh goodness'.

It really has. Everything, and I do mean everything, is making me want to either bang my head repeatedly against a wall or go into a temporary coma in some soma generated little world inside my head. Or maybe both at once. It hasn't been particularly bad in any way, I haven't any major complaints that are in, any way, justified. But I'm tired of the monotony that comes with going to school every day, and I'm sick of having no time to myself, and I want the warm weather to give me some benefits, instead of merely making gym class feel impossibly long. Why is summer such a curse, at first?! Certainly, it's wonderful once one makes it into August and July, but now? It's uncomfortable and irritating.

Don't get me wrong though, my life hasn't been in complete wreckage or anything. Monday was boring; Tuesday was... boring too. Wednesday, my shirts arrived from Amazon, who delivered far more swiftly than I expected. The Mudhoney one is ginormous, it goes down to my knees and the sleeves are so baggy, it's almost comical. Still, I intend to wear it to school tomorrow regardless. The others fit me better, I think they're actually a proper size. Buying things I do not actually need off the internet and then seeing them come in their humble little brown packaging never fails to delight me, so that made my day. That's probably been the high point of my week, so far. There've been several recurring annoyances that refuse to let me be in a consistently good mood.

First of all, my piano songs this week are proving to be virtually impossible for me. I keep getting distracted, bored, or fed up with it, and working out my own arrangements, or playing something else entirely. My lesson is next Tuesday, and I barely have the first two measures of both songs down. I need eight of both. I intend to put in more work on them over the weekend, but I don't know how possible that will be. This is due to the fact that my grandparents are showing up, apparently. Tomorrow. I was only informed of this yesterday, as communication at its finest is always exhibited in my family. I love my grandparents and all, but they're extremist left wing enviromentalist nutjobs who's idea of a good conversation is to interrogate me on what college I'm going to attend, who rape our kitchen of all health food, and then complain that we only have junk left to eat, demand that I demonstrate my knowledge on the guitar for them, which is more minimal than they'd like, and, last but not least, make racist remarks about how fortunate my brother and sister are that my parents 'took them in.' If there's one thing that makes me angry, it's that. Well, that and some other things. Okay, a lot of things. But that's on the list. On top of those things, social drama is escalating everywhere I look at school. I had my first fight with a school friend, since I moved, this past week. It's not a fight in that we slapped each other and ran off crying, but there's tension, and I broke down and yelled at her yesterday. For some reason unbeknowst to me, she's acting all jealous and trying to make me look stupid in front of her boyfriend, who happens to be one of my closest school friends, because, due to some rumor another friend keeps spreading around, I'm trying to steal him and it's working. None of this is true, of course. And now I'm telling the internet too much again. Plus, if that weren't enough, my english project is trying to kill me. Or make me a Nazi. Or something along those lines. Josef Mengele appears to have laid some sort of curse on me that has impaired my ability to come up with abnormally big words for a thirteen year old kid to use on my report. I have a... thing about showing up my english teacher. I know, it's not terribly nice, but if you had to listen to her scream on about us getting off the escalator every day, you'd feel the same way. I don't stand up in front of the class and scream out hateful slander against her or anything, but if she makes an error, I do try to raise my hand and correct it in front of everyone. It gives me such joy. Especially since, most of the time, she shows the world how narcissistic she is by coming over to my seat, arguing with me, and then realizing, belatedly, she was wrong and correcting herself in such a way that suggests she knew it all along. So, that class has been torment. As has science. And algebra. And teen living. And, even gym, because I cannot stop angsting over some of the stupidest things in the world when it comes to that class, so I hate it.

School needs to end. Now. Oh. I almost forgot: I've one last grievance to share before I go. Animal Crossing Community (every downside of a command economy enclosed in one little gaming forum) banned me. Again. Most of you probably know this already, but I'm not exactly a first timer when it comes to accounts there. The place is a pain to stay alive in, and the moderation is so extreme, it's pathetic, but it's sort of... my life. Oh, not the forum, exactly. But everything that comes with it. The internet. Fanfiction. The best friends ever. It all spawned from there, for me. But, after creating my eleventh or so account, due to a ban for cursing my head off, which was probably one of my stupider decisions, they banned me the following day for multiple accounts. They're certainly not very creative around there. I want something interesting: sharing personal information! Posing as a staff member! Distributing copyrighted material! I could, would, and have done all of these things before. If only they'd call me on that instead of the same tired old complaints. But I digress. I've decided not to make any more accounts. I'm sort of sick of letting a video game forum waste three or four hours of my life every day. I don't even play Animal Crossing anymore. Most of the people on there are shallow, annoying, and about as intelligent as pillbugs, and, quite honestly, about ninety percent of them have outgrown it and just go on because they can get away with acting superior to little kids there. I've done the same, which is really awfully horrid of me. Plus, there are far better ways to waste time on the internet. Hopefully, this'll clear some time up for a while. Perhaps I'll log on again in the summer, when I've more patience and time. Perhaps not. You never know. I know that if you're reading this, you most likely arrived here from that site, and you're probably wondering where I've gone. You can send me an IM or something, if you'd like. Just get in contact with me by way of the comments.

Now that I've covered all of my many whiny bases, it's time to ramble about music. I shall begin this by saying that I've got a Garbage phase. It started out with a 'Sex Is Not The Enemy' addiction that lasted for a while, but their other stuff struck me as sort of boring. Shirley Manson has, in the last few days, become one of my favorite female vocalists. Their songs are really easy to sing along to, and they've somewhat suited my mood. Whatever my mood happens to be. With that said, I'm sort of in a girly pop / punk / whatever phase in general. Dollyrots, Veruca Salt, Go Betty Go, The Donnas, that sort of thing. I am also still phasing over Nirvana, mostly on the bus. Nothing beats sprawling out across the whole seat - yes, I'm antisocial. But it's the bus and I'm sleepy - and listening to Scentless Apprentice or Swap Meet with the volume all the way up. Other than that, it's been a moderately randomized collection of music, for me. I was listening to Creed for a while today. I started listening to some of the songs off of Marty Casey's pre - reality show album, last weekend. That's... about it, I believe.

I've got to put my brother and sister to bed now. Night, world.

Edit~ Oh, I almost forgot. The icon on my Blogger account isn't a picture of me. It's one of my many heroes, Steve Burns. If you think I'd show the internet a picture of myself, well... okay, you're not that far from the truth. But, I'm not posting it on Blogger. I do have some sense of reason. That's all.

I'm a bad blogger.

I say this because it has been at least four days, and all sorts of things have been going on in my life, and I haven't said anything about any of them. But that's okay. I'll make up for it by rambling a while. Wednesday was my last day of youth group. It was sort of boring, rather low key. I hung out with my friends and wandered the church aimlessly. I cannot remember anything else in particular happening that day, with the exception of my english teacher visibly losing her mind in front of my class. She was all giggly and giddy at the beginning of class, laughing over nothing and making these jokes that seemed inspired by something decidedly chemical, then randomly gave us our largest project of the year, to date. It was meant to teach us something about research before we went off into the wide world of highschool, but I don't know that it'll be very educational, if it is anything like the other projects we've had. It will also not interest me at all. She started off by calling it a 'basic research project', so I had no objections to this. I thought I might learn a little something about the life of David Bowie, if that was possible. But then she killed the project by assigning me some World War II general who's name I cannot even pronounce, and probably is not even on the more interesting side. The Nazis, that is. I am quite fascinated with the Nazi belief system and Hitler, which makes no sense, since I am, apparently, Jewish and would have been imprisoned and killed during that time. Something about them is quite interesting to me. But, alas, I did not get assigned Hitler. So I have to learn some facts about Josef whatever his name is, now. As I was saying, before I went off on my little rant about ...the war, I guess? My english teacher suddenly became quite angry for no particular reason, and started ranting and marching around the classroom in her usual manner. At least she'd returned to normal at this point. She then told us, despite the fact that no one had moved a muscle during the entire class period, that we were doing our note cards all wrong. They were, she insisted, called note cards because they were intended for taking notes, not copying down information. Can't argue that logic.

Thursday, I did nothing of substance. My sister and mother had to go to gymnastics, so my father took me, and my brothers out for dinner. Which was nice. Made nicer by the fact that he told us that he'll be taking me and my brother somewhere this summer. Anywhere we want, as long as it is an easy drive away from here. I, personally, would really like to go to New Jersey. My brother wants to go to New York or something.

Friday, which was yesterday, wasn't a terribly good day. School was boring. My friend broke his wrist, I failed a french test, which normally would have really stressed me out, but I've done quite well on the other tests we've had, as of late, so I didn't mind. I got screamed at by a school administrator for throwing something away in what proved to be the wrong garbage can. Silly me. People continued to state that I had blue hair, in gym and teen living, as though it were a new idea, and certainly not something I was aware of. I couldn't wait for the week to be over, which is sort of unusual for me, as of late. Upon arriving home, I found my parents to be gone, which meant I had to go and get my brother from the bus stop, a walk that takes about twenty minutes, and involves passing by all sorts of very noisy dogs. Oh well. I needed the exercise, I probably do not get enough. I spent the afternoon playing piano, wasting time on the internet, and wondering if I ought to be cleaning my room. I need to do so today, it's probably what I shall do as soon as I finish this. I went to bed extremely early for me, around eleven. Fridays are normally my latest nights.

Today's been boring, so far. But it's only four in the afternoon. I woke around ten, went to my neighbor's home so they could introduce me to their children and prepare me for my babysitting job on Monday, and hung out around the house, played some piano. Much to my disappointment, my new song book hasn't anything worth playing, certainly not anything that I listen to in my free time. But I am teaching myself how to play Lithium, using a guitar book that I had from the days when I consistently played guitar... something I really ought to keep doing. The notes are a little more challenging than anything else I've been playing, and some of them must be altered so they sound better on piano, but that's nothing I can't work with. I also ordered a new cell phone, since my old one is three years old, has a habit of losing charge for no reason whatsoever (it and my laptop should start a club) and is quite a bother to use. I'm babysitting for my parents tonight. That kills the best hours of the evening, but at least it'll make up for all of the money I've lost, recently. I don't think saving up cash is physically possible for me.

I've listened to a wide variety of things this week. I seem to be floating in between phases, sort of. There's the folk / classical / new age / God knows what that Pandora Radio got me hooked on, and then there's the Vitamin String Quartet, who is one of my most infuriating obsessions, since you cannot find their full length songs free, anywhere online. I might have to go and buy them all off of iTunes. I am also in a little bit of a Nirvana phase, still. I have moved on from Nevermind songs to Bleach songs, for the most part. I never really liked Bleach quite as much as the newer stuff. I suppose they were still sorting things out, changing band members, developing a specific sound, then, but the music from that album is still astonishingly great. It's very underrated. If those phases were not enough, I still frequently, almost addictively, listen to the same two industrial bands that have been my obsession for months, now. But, I think the most dominant phase at the moment would have to be VSQ. I cannot get over how unique, and interesting they are. Who else would have thought to cover the Toadies with violins and violas?! The only thing I want that I have not heard them do would be Mudhoney. If they can do a decent Mudhoney rendition, I'll be a fan for life.

That's it, I suppose. I'd better quit putting off the inevitable and get off my computer.

The world revolves around my sister.

Or, at least, today happened to. For some reason, everything mentionable pertained to her. Rachel is such a little brat when she wants to be, and she cannot live without being the center of attention. But enough whining about her. Today, I got up around eight expecting to attend church. However, they had some sort of 'bring your parents into the youth room so they can awkwardly mingle with the parents of people who you never actually converse with' day, so the service was two hours later. Which was nice, because I got to sleep a little longer, and take my time getting ready. But the drawbacks were, as I stated above, that they were, well, there. My friend was showing me her new bellybutton piercing and my mother practically had an aneurysm. Sometimes I feel as though my life is a cheaply made television show on ABC Family or something.

But church was fine, aside from that. And that had nothing to do with my sister at all, so I suppose my post title is a little melodramatic, in retrospect. Oh well. After church, we went to this Thai place in honor of, oddly enough, Cambodian New Year. Turns out they haven't any Cambodian places near us. The food there was very good, but my sister turned it into some sort of excuse to demand a wide range of things with no nutritional value whatsoever, since it's apparently 'her holiday'. These are the times when, despite the part of me that knows it's stupid and immature, I wish I were adopted from South East Asia too. Aah. I can't stop complaining tonight. I guess I'll give up on seeming at least passably optimistic.

Upon arriving home, I did some french and algebra homework, wasted more of my life on the computer, and practiced the piano. A rather boring afternoon. Around six, I had to babysit my sister and brothers while my parents chatted about God and such with their friends. Which is generally one of the worst parts of my week, since there are typically about three other kids to supervise. This turns out to be a pain, but at least it pays. Ten dollars, to be exact. I really ought to call the Board of Child Labor and see about this, some day. Babysitting should have been easy tonight, since there were significiantly less people, and I had significantly more freedom to scream at them. But, no. My sister couldn't handle the concept of me having an easy job, apparently. She spoke in an incomprehensible British accent half of the time, despite the fact that she's neither British, nor can pass for it. She also threw an hour long fit about getting a glass of milk and attempted to kill me in two ways. All in all, a very eventful two and a half hours.

That was my day. It wasn't astonishingly great, but it wasn't terrible either. So, yeah.

I don't think I have any little rambles about music to put here, besides that I'm in love with Adam Lambert's studio version of Ring of Fire more than I thought I was, and Letters to Cleo is a band that I don't think I spent enough time phasing over. Also, that Atreyu does not actually exceed my limits for loudness, as proven by almost an hour of listening to them tonight. I haven't listenened to Smashing Pumpkins in days now, which is something I haven't managed since midsummer, which is sort of sad, but oh well. None of their songs are appealing to me when I put on my iPod, and I have over fifty of their songs on there, so I guess I'm done phasing for a while.

...Okay, maybe I had a few things to say. But still. That's all.