The Square Root of R

R hasn’t asked me about tutoring for Geometry in over a week. Does that mean he’s avoiding me (good) or ignoring me (bad)? And let me tell you, the distinction between those two is so subtle I’m not sure I have it at all.

I’m pretty sure my friend has gotten my letter by now so maybe she’ll write me back soon. I’d love it if she read my blog but I doubt she has time for that. When I say she’s a busy woman, I mean she’s really busy, way busier than you or I could ever be. She’s so busy she has people read blogs for her, you know?

So if you’re reading for my friend, and you know who you are, do you think R is still a possibility? Do you think I should remind him about the tutoring? Like, maybe ask him if he’s still interested?

But what if he says yes and only wants to tutor?

Okay, okay, then I will know. And bonus! I’ll get some free help and maybe get a better grade on the next exam. So, win-win.

Okay, it’s decided. I’ll ask R about tutoring.

Okay, so when do I ask him? And how? Do I call him on the phone? Email him? Text his cell? Or just come right out and say something in class?

Yes, in class. That’s the safest.

Okay, that’s decided too.

But if anyone reading for JA has a better idea, please please please let me know soon.

And the Oscar Goes To...

Top 3.5 Oscar Nominated Movies

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. Pursuit of Happyness
3. The Prestige
3.5 United 93

I’m taking some time out from my near-obsession with ARRG (Anonymous Red Rose Guy) because I want to comment on tonight’s Oscars. Now, I haven’t seen many of the Best Picture movies, so I can’t comment on those but of all the movies nominated for something - like Cinematography or Sound or Music or whatever - these are my 3.5 faves.

Little Miss Sunshine - SO funny and SO cute and SO sweet and I loved the little girl who played Olive. I know she won’t win for Best Supporting Actress but she was so great! I loved her passion. Lucie thinks it was the best movie of last year. We saw it in the theater AND we rented it. I think I’m gonna buy it for her for her birthday.

Pursuit of Happyness - I am a total sucker for Will Smith. Total! I usually hate the movies he’s in but I love him. (Hated “I Robot,” loved Will…hated “Miami Vice,” loved Will…hated “Men in Black 2,” loved Will…you get the idea.) He’s handsome and charming and I love that he and Jada are like the best Hollywood couple and that they give each other permission to have set crushes when they’re working on movies. Go Will!

The Prestige - I love magic tricks, which goes back when I was about six and Lucie was dating an amateur magician who did sleight-of-hand: card tricks, coin stuff, disappearing scarves - I was really young so I thought my sister’s boyfriend was awesome. I also have to confess to watching those “Magician Reveals” specials on Fox. What can I say? I believe in magic and I want to think those tricks are real. But I also want to know how they’re done. (I am a very complex girl…) Plus Christian Bale AND Hugh Jackman in the same movie? Sweet! Now, if they had just added Will Smith, it would have been perfect.

United 93 - This only gets honorable mention because it was SO sad plus you know how it ends but it was SO GOOD. Lucie cried and cried and couldn’t watch the very end but I thought it was great because it showed how heroic those people were. And it made me wonder what I would have done if I had been there.

Okay, have fun watching the Oscars. I’ll be at Reggie’s for the red carpet stuff and the specials but then I’m hanging with Lucie for the show. We usually make a whole dinner of appetizers and big fat sundaes for dessert. It’s a pretty fun time. But I won’t be betting or anything because I’m sure I’d lose.

I’ll be back to wonder about ARRG next week.

Eliminating the Options #1

B from French class is off the list. He seemed to be avoiding me since V-Day which, according to Lucie, is a positive sign but then I found out the reason: he already has a girlfriend! She’s not in our grade. She’s a sophomore and her name is S and she’s okay looking, I guess. Sort of nerdy. She has little rectangular glasses from DKNY and she wears lots of skirts and UGG boots but she hangs around with freshmen a lot. Isn’t that kind of weird? I mean, girls usually date older guys, not younger ones.

A Thorny Issue

I wrote a letter to one of my really good friends about this whole anonymous red rose stuff. She’s older than me and knows a ton about guys. She has had some amazing boyfriends in her life plus she just knows so much. She also recently went through a divorce that was pretty public because her ex was cheating on her with someone else. And even though he claims the divorce didn’t have anything to do with this other woman, I think that’s crap. You don’t leave someone as amazing as my friend - and she’s gorgeous too - unless you’ve found someone else. Seriously, if you met her, which you most likely won’t because she doesn’t live around here plus she’s a really private person, you’d think she was amazing too.

She’s also wicked busy these days so I might not hear from her in a really long time. I wrote her a letter last month and she still hasn’t written back. But I know for sure she’s reading mine. I know it and when she does write back, I’m sure it will have some awesome advice in it and I’ll share whatever I can.

In the meantime, I will have to make do with Lucie. Possibly the only good thing about having an older sister who is, shall we say, popular with guys, is that she has had a lot of experience trying to figure them out. She’s already done the high school thing and she has a pretty good idea of what boys mean when they say and do things that might not make sense to us girls.

I asked her to weigh in on my dilemma but she’s also kind of busy (although not the kind of busy my friend is). Ironically, I think she’s busy trying to figure out Aaron, her boyfriend. He gave her flowers for Valentine’s but they weren’t all roses. They were lots of wildflowers and daisies and I think there was one pink rose in there. I thought they were beautiful but Lucie was depressed because they weren’t roses.

Aaron took her out to dinner to this French restaurant in LA which is supposed to be pretty famous, which to me shows how he really feels. Anyone can buy flowers that are gonna die in a few days but a good meal at a fancy restaurant that you have to make a reservation for weeks in advance? That takes planning. That’s love.

So she said she’d have to think about it and get back to me but in the meantime, she told me to keep my eye out for someone who deliberately avoids me. That was the clue, she said, that would give my anonymous sweetheart away.

Geez, don’t most guys do that?

Who Could It Be Now?

Top 3.5 Anonymous Rose Possibilities

1. B from French
2. R from Geometry
3. G from French
3.5 T from Earth Science

B is the top choice because he’s always picking me as his conversation partner in French. Although he isn’t very good and we rarely get past the “Vous avez une chemise blanche” stage, B seems most promising. He’s cute (I like the brown hair/brown eyes combo), not too tall (about three inches taller than me), and shaves every day. Thankfully he doesn’t douse himself in Polo cologne like some of our nasal-impaired classmates do. Plus he’s originally from Canada, which - while not exactly exotic - gives him an interesting accent.

R is second choice, although a close second. He’s very very smart and has plans to go to Cal Poly and be a mechanical engineer. I suppose it’s giving a lot away to say this sort of career path is culturally popular. He also has the brown/brown combo (another hint). And like me, people often call him by the wrong name. Okay, now you’ve got to know who it is. He has offered to tutor me at least three times this semester but I haven’t yet taken him up on it. I mean, I would definitely do it because I think he’s totally hot and I love smart guys but what if the offer is just to raise my GPA, not to raise my dating IQ?

It could be G, another Frenchie, because he has a habit of using the “tu” form with me when we practice together. Also, he’s always playing with his Blackberry and searching for wi-fi with his laptop. He would definitely be a blogger kind of guy and has no doubt Googled me - and every other girl in class.

I still hold out hope for T. In Science class on Thursday, I really thought he was going to ask me about the rose. He said, “Hey, Meg” (a good sign) and then “Did you have a good Valentine’s Day?” And I was like, “Um, my sister and I watched Idol.” And he said, “Yeah, that was a good one.” And I was like, “Didn’t you go out with Donna?” And he blushed and looked down at the ground and said, “Oh no, no. I don’t…I mean, I think I…” And then the bell rang and he went to his seat and I went to mine. But I swear the next words out of mouth were gonna be, “I really like you instead.”

I swear. I swear.

Red and White and Blue All Over

I know you’ve been holding your breath, wondering what happened on V-Day D-Day.

Well, things didn’t exactly go as I planned. First of all, T got more than one red rose. Yes, it turns out that Donna, the one with the braces and the cast on her arm from when she fell playing volleyball, also had a crush on T. And she sent him a red rose with a note - that she signed! I gotta hand it to her, that takes some huevos. As much as I agonized over this for a week, I wasn’t even sending a note with my name on it. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like for Donna. Did she think about it minute by minute like me?

So anyway, it seems that T liked Donna too. Yes, he had a crush on her so it didn’t bother him that she sent him a red rose with a stupid note on it. It said something like, “Admiring you from afar,” or something lame like that. I didn’t see the note but I heard some people talking about it.

And I also heard some people talking about my note to T. They all wanted to know who the “Earthy” admirer was and what that meant. Okay, it meant Earth Science. T and I are in Earth Science together and now I guess you can figure out who T is. It doesn’t matter much anyway because he and Donna are tight now and all it took for true love to blossom was one little rose.

How it happened was this: there was major tension in homeroom before the roses came out. I had never seen so many kids in my homeroom before. I mean, where did they all come from? So we’re all waiting and then the student council members came in with buckets of roses, just tons and tons and tons of them! They distributed them alphabetically and most of the girls in my homeroom sort of squealed when they got theirs. This one girl, Kathy, got at least a dozen. No joke. But they all came from her boyfriend who’s this rich kid from Texas. I don’t know how he found out about this thing and why he could arrange to send her the flowers through homeroom instead of just ordering them through 1800 Flowers or something. I guess to show off.

So everyone got their flowers and most of the guys were really embarrassed and I imagined at that moment that T, in his homeroom, was getting embarrassed by my rose. And then we all went off to class. Out in the halls, no one was actually going to class. They were all congregating outside their lockers and showing off their notes, especially if they were anonymous. Some girls were pissed and some were crying. I saw one girl who had three white roses throw them in some guy’s face. Duh, dude! Red! The color of love is red, unless you are trying to tell her something.

By the time I got to Earth Science, which was in the afternoon, most of the hoopla had died down. And I had already heard about Donna and T. She’s in T’s homeroom and got to see his reaction firsthand. So it was kind of a letdown to go to Science and see him with a big smile on his face, holding his roses. I don’t think he even noticed there was a note on the one I gave him. Maybe he assumed they were both from his new girlfriend.

Obviously I didn’t say anything to T about his second rose, although I was really tempted.

And now, you’re probably wondering why I seem to have such a positive attitude about this. Why am I not upset about Donna getting there before me or even that T never considered his second rose could be from someone like me?

Because in addition to the white roses I got from Reggie and Dena and Renea, I got my own red rose.

Anonymously.

“For my Mega Girl…loving you across the Internet.”

I have no idea what that means. But I love a good mystery.

One More Day...

Tomorrow the roses will be delivered to everyone’s homeroom and I have no idea what will happen!

Reggie told me that the flowers come to the student council president’s house tonight and all the student council members sit there and drink beer and put together the flowers and the messages. It’s a tradition, she said. And I started to freak out, imagining someone writing my name on the note instead of leaving it anonymous or putting someone else’s name on my note.

But then she laughed and said, Except for the beer drinking part. Ha ha.

So funny, Reggie, like a frickin heart attack. Here I am thinking these guys are getting drunk and who knows what kind of mistakes they’ll make with the notes.

I just have to hold it together for one more day and then we’ll find out if T is as smart as I think he is or if he even is thinking about me as a possible admirer.

Maybe I will watch Idol to get my mind off things.

The Week's Strange News

Top 3.5 Weirdest, Saddest News Stories This Week

1. Astronaut Stalker Arrested
2. Anna Nicole Smith Dies
3. 100 Inches of Snow in Upstate New York
3.5 NYC Bans IPods While Crossing the Street

Astronauts in Love - With Valentine’s Day fast-approaching, I have to ask…is this what people do when they are in love? Seriously, do they drive 900 miles wearing diapers to shoot pepper spray at their boyfriend’s girlfriend and try to kidnap her? If this is what love makes people do, I don’t think I want to be in love.

I read a really cool article about how astronauts return from outer space with a renewed perspective on life, the universe and everything. Their real-life problems seem petty in comparison to the vastness of the Galaxy. But maybe it made this woman crazy instead. Maybe Lisa Nowak went into space and decided she couldn’t hack infinity.

Either way, I think it just goes to show you that insanity cuts across all levels of people: rich, poor, men, women, regular schmoes, and astronauts.

Anna Nicole Smith is Dead - So many people made comparisons to Marilyn Monroe, which I guess she sort of looked like. They both certainly led tragic lives and had a hard time finding true love and possibly they both died of drug overdoses. Possibly. I’m not a coroner so I can’t judge.

But ANS had an element of pathos in her life that MM didn’t. She did that stupid reality show and she married a guy so old he had one foot in the grave and then there was the Trimspa gig she had. If MM had been alive, I doubt she would have endorsed diet pills.

It’s not that I don’t feel bad for ANS - she lost her son a few days after her baby girl was born, how horrible is that? I just can’t say that I’m terribly surprised by this. Nor was I particularly shocked that she died in a hotel room. Know what I mean?

100 Inches of Snow in New York - A hundred inches is over eight feet of snow! (The calculator on this computer comes in very handy sometimes…) Eight feet! That’s three feet more than me - all snow.

NYC Wants to Ban iPods While People Walk - and cell phones and Blackberrys and anything else that’s distracting. I don’t live in NYC and I don’t have a cell phone or a Blackberry although Lucie and I do share an iPod. She got one as some giveaway at one of her jobs a couple years ago. It doesn’t have video or anything and frankly, I don’t know how cool it is to watch TV on a tiny screen. I mean, it’s cool to carry it in your pocket and all but it’s like, an inch and a half square!

So this ban in NYC hasn’t been passed yet, which is why it’s 3.5 on my list and not a 3, but there are people all fired up about it because two people died while they were listening to their iPods and they walked into buses or something. Now, not for nothing but headphones have been around for a long, long time. No one wanted to ban Walkmen did they? Or boomboxes or transistor radios? And I’m sorry, but people get hit by buses all the time. They get distracted by someone talking to them. They stop in the middle of the street for no reason. They run into traffic without looking. You can’t blame everything bad that happens on technology.

I think that’s it. My roundup of the world’s weirdest, saddest news stories. So many odd things happened that I couldn’t not comment.

Next week is Valentine’s Day. You know what I have on my mind.

Now We Wait

I did it! I sent T a red rose for Valentine’s Day!

WITH a note! Okay, it’s unsigned but still…I wrote “To T, Happy Valentine’s Day, Love, Your Earthiest Admirer.”

Now, I just gave you (and him) a BIG clue. See if you get it…

Okay you got it but do you think he will? He’s smart, of course, and cute and funny and everything, but I’m not sure he thinks like that. Girls think like that. You know, they’re always looking for signs that someone likes them or doesn’t like them. Well, I can’t speak for all girls but I certainly do. You watch the way guys talk to you or don’t talk to you, the way they try to get close to you when you walk down the hall at the same time, how they try to time their entrance to the classroom the same as yours.

Of course you do that too! You have to or else you’d never know if a guy liked you or not. I mean what are they gonna do - ask you out? Not freshmen in my high school.

One whole week I have to wait. I can’t believe they make us order these things so far in advance. I’m just gonna debate my decision every single day until then. Ergh…

V-Day D-Day

I think, in my heart, I should do it. I should just send one to T - a red one - with a simple note: “Your Secret Admirer.” But no name. And let him see if he can figure it out. If he likes me back, maybe he will hope it’s me. Maybe he will try to go through the student council to see if they will tell him who sent it. Maybe he will beg and plead with them because he just has to know who his secret admirer is. And they won’t tell, of course, because of the confidentiality rule.

And then T will look at every girl in every one of his classes and wonder, who is it? Is it Shelly with the big boobs? Is it Nancy with the red hair? Is it Donna with the braces and the cast on her arm from when she fell playing volleyball?

But it won’t be any of them. Finally he will get to me in our --- class.

“Could it be you, Meg?” He will ask because he will remember my real name and I will blush and say, “Yes, it is.”

And he will throw his arms around me and hug me and say, “I’m so glad. I’ve been in love with you since I met you.”

And we will become boyfriend and girlfriend just like that. So then the anonymous thing would totally work out.

But what if he gets a girlfriend in the week between the order being placed and Valentine’s Day? I would be mortified!! Oh man, this decision really sucks.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Top 3.5 Thoughts About Sending Anonymous V-Day Roses

1. No Name = No Shame
2. No Declaration = No Misinterpretation
3. No Order Email = No Paper Trail
3.5 No Rose = No One Knows

Okay, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Obviously. I am really debating whether to send an anonymous rose to…let’s call him T. Now, that could be T for a first name or for a last name so don’t read into anything. And I’m not going to mention what class he’s in but he is in one of my classes, which only tells you he’s in my grade.

As far as I know, T doesn’t have a girlfriend. I think he was dating someone last summer but they broke up or it wasn’t a serious thing because he only hangs out with his friends these days. He does play a sport and I have seen him with the guys he plays this sport with - but I’m not saying if the sport is a current one or one he played in the fall - or one he will play in the spring. Whew…this anonymous stuff is not easy. One false move and you can figure everything out.

I said before, I think T thinks I am someone else. He called me Melanie once when we were about to take an exam. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Pay attention, Melanie.” Because I was staring out the window or something like that. And yes, now you know he sits near me in one of my classes. Big deal.

Anyway, he thinks my name is Melanie! So do I send him a rose and sign it “Melanie”? Or “Meg”? Or do I not sign it at all? Do I just send a rose with no note? Do I send one with a message like, “Love from your secret admirer”? Do I say, “Love”? So many questions! Which is why I made my list above.

No Name = No Shame. This is an obvious one. If I don’t sign my name, he won’t know who sent it and he and his friends can’t make fun of me. I don’t think he would, because he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy but he might be embarrassed and feel weird around me and since we still have many months of classes together (not to mention years of high school!), that would kind of suck.

So it’s decided: no name.

No Declaration = No Misinterpretation. If I don’t include a note at all, there can’t be any way to misinterpret a message. If I don’t write, “love,” he won’t think love. If I don’t write, “Will you be my valentine,” he won’t think I want that either.

So it’s decided: no note.

No Order Email = No Paper Trail. If I don’t place an order at all, there won’t be any way to trace it to me. Because if I do order a rose, even if it’s anonymous and I pay in cash, there will be some way to figure out who sent it! Anonymous doesn’t really mean anonymous then, does it?

So…no rose at all.

But then…

No Rose = No One Knows. Including T. And I kind of want him to know. I mean, don’t I? Isn’t it a waste to pine for someone in secret? You can’t ever get what you want if you don’t go for it.

Geez, I don’t know. There are so many pros and cons to this. Just two days left until we have to place our orders.

Mega Girl Effects Change!

Good news: someone has taken notice of my opinion! I can hardly believe it! Our principal, Mrs. Lopez, read or heard or someone told her about how I think it’s discriminating against less fortunate students to require them to keep a blog because that assumes they have computers and not everyone can afford one.

Now, it’s not like I’m Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus. This is a minor thing in the big picture of Life but it means something to me, if nobody else. I just think it’s really important for people and teachers to realize that there are all sorts of, well, I hate to use the word “classes” because that makes it sound like we’re, you know, British or something. But America definitely has its own class system, even if you don’t want to admit it, which is totally based on income.

First, there are the Bill Gateses of the world and they have access to pretty much everything they want. People like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and all the stars who make a ton of money. They’re all over the web and in magazines and you’d think they represent the majority of the country but they don’t. Hardly!

Then there's the group of people who want access to all those same things but they can’t afford them but they buy them anyway. And they take on huge debt in order to do it. Their kids get what they need but they probably don’t know what their families have to give up for them.

Then there’s my group, the ones who don’t have anything and can’t take out loans or otherwise borrow money to get things. We don’t have any delusions. These are the people I feel the need to stand up for, at least when it comes to computer stuff.

So I’m sorry if Evelyn has to modify her class syllabus and can’t require students to keep blogs or communicate only by email, but unless the school can provide equal access to computers for all of them, her students have to have alternatives.

Whew…so I guess I’m getting extra credit for this, right, Evelyn?