Yes, I know I have 2 Books Left To Read

But is there a point to it? Will I go to class for like, a day or a week and then turn around and go somewhere else?

As far as I can tell, Lucie has not even applied for a job around here, despite her insistence that we’ll be able to stay in this apartment - in RC - so I can finish high school. A long, long time ago, when she was young and nicer to me, she told me that was her goal: to stay in one place long enough for me to get my high school degree. Well, hate to tell ya, Luce, but I still have 3 more years to go.

I want to be supportive. I really do. But I have friends here! And we just painted the place! And I know where all the cool places to hang out are and what the classes and teachers are like and I’ve already spent two years here, finally getting to know people.

And they got to know me. And I think they like me. Liked me. I mean, there was that one girl in algebra who would point at me and whisper to her friends when she saw me, as if I couldn’t tell she was doing that, and then she would call me Mary or Muffy or Mitzy and laugh and laugh like she was making some great joke, but eventually she got tired of it all and gave up and now she sits right next to me in class and sometimes even asks me questions using my real name. I don’t remember who she is but anyway.

It’s just completely unfair that we have to do this again.

Moving...

…again.

I should have known - no, I did know. I knew something was up back when we were painting the apartment and Lucie didn’t seem bothered about taking time off to do it. I knew before I went to Santa Barbara with Reggie but I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to have some fun this summer and thinking about Lucie and her problems, which I knew would become our problems, was not any fun at all.

Lucie lost her job.

Again.

She never was any good at computers and I guess her boss wanted her to do Excel and she told him she knew it but all this time she’s been faking it and getting her friend to help her. And then her friend went on vacation and Lucie had to do it by herself and she screwed it up.

So here we are.

Again.

She says we won’t have to move, that she will find a job in RC so we can stay in this apartment (which we just painted, remember?) and I can still go to school with Reg and T and everything but I’m not counting on it. I count on nothing anymore. You just can’t, you know?

You can hope for things but don’t hope too hard.

2 More Read!

Whew…these 2 books were tough going. Why is the summer reading list so much harder than the regular school year reading list? Just because I have more free time doesn’t mean I’ll understand it any better. This past week my speed-reading demon left me and I was only able to finish 2 non-fiction books, “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt and “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser.

Could these books be any more different? I don’t think so.

Frank McCourt’s book is a memoir about his life growing up in Ireland. It defines the word “bleak.” It’s filled with death and poverty and starvation and sickness. It’s really sad but ends on a positive note when he comes to the United States to start a new life.

I thought “Fast Food Nation” would be funnier than it was because it has a funny title and cover but it was really pretty bleak too and it will make you never want to eat a hamburger again. (Remember that awesome episode of The Simpsons when Lisa becomes a vegetarian after they show a filmstrip in class about how they kill cows? It was kind of like that in book form but there was no Paul McCartney singing at the end.)

So I only have2 more books to read in the next week. I was doing so well with the first batch. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I got distracted by…stuff. And…people.

We’ll know soon enough, won’t we? Well, I will. And then I will tell you.

Random List #1

3.5 Things I Really Want To Do But Probably Won’t Get To

1. See Strawberry Fields
2. Pet a Penguin
3. Eat Escargot
3.5. Watch “Wizard of Oz” (Japanese anime version)

Living where I am, the way I do, I probably won’t ever get to do these things during my life. But I sure would like to.

What's Up With Guys?

I never wanted to be one of those girls you read about, the ones who obsess about their boyfriends and wonder all the time if they still like them, if they did something wrong to make them not want to talk to them or whatever. I mean, guys are guys and my friend once told me guys are not like the rest of us. Especially high school guys. She said they have all sorts of stuff going on about looking cool in front of their friends and it has nothing to do with us. She told me the best thing to do is to ignore them and then they come running to your door.

Well, maybe to my friend’s door because she’s amazingly beautiful and talented but not to mine. I have basically ignored T since I got back from Santa Barbara and I haven’t heard a peep from him. I sent him a couple of postcards but I didn’t call him or text him or email him or IM him or anything. Just a couple of lame cards with the SB beach on it and some lifeguards doing funny things. (They were these joke cards, making fun of Baywatch, should have kept them for myself.) That wasn’t too “girlfriendy” and we’re not gf/bf anyway so what does it matter?

I put it to you, JA, if you’re out there and if you read my blog (and I’m pretty sure you do), what do I do about T? School starts soon and I don’t know what classes I’ll have with him and I don’t want things to be weird. Do I ignore him? Call him? Drop by his house and say hey? Or just wait until classes begin and see what he does then?

Boys are such boys.

3 Books Down…

4 more to go.

Somehow I managed to read 3 books in three days. I think a speed-reading demon mind-melded with my brain while I was sleeping one night. I probably won’t remember what I read for very long which is why I need to quickly write down whatever I have to say about these books before I get to the next batch.

I read:

“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway

“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein

“A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving

Of those 3, I LOVED the John Irving book. Loved it. I felt so sad for Owen, who thinks he’s a martyr because he accidentally killed his friend’s mom with a baseball and is cursed with talking in capital letters. It was hard for me to read that, because I kept trying to hear his voice in my head. What do capital letters sound like? It’s not shouting because that’s not what he does. It was really, really long but time flew by when I was reading it (helped by the speed-reading demon, no doubt).

The Robert Heinlein book was pretty good too but I didn’t know it was science fiction when I picked it for my list. I am not a fan of fantasy kinds of things. But this one was good. It was more like true-life science fiction, rather than outer space stuff. In it, this guy comes to earth from Mars and he doesn’t know anything about life here. He eventually starts his own church and learns about love.

I hated the Hemingway book. It had the saddest ending. The best part about it was that it was short.

End of Summer!

Top 3.5 Things I Have to Finish in Less Than Two Weeks

1. Summer reading list
2. My tan
3. See “Hairspray” for the fourth time
3.5 Empty my closet of gross clothes

OMG! Classes start in less than 2 weeks! I know I said I was going to not think about that for a while and here it is only 2 days later but --

OMG! Classes start in less than 2 weeks!

So that means I have to START my reading. There are five books on it that I have never even seen before. I thought I would get a lot more reading done in Santa Barbara but duh, there were wayyyy better things to do instead.

Then there’s my tan…I have to say, I was never one who was big into tanning (when you’re a blonde, it’s hard to tan anyway, I usually get burned without even trying) but it’s totally different when you’re at the beach. You can’t help but get tan and then once you start, well, you just want to keep going. I got past the red skin in a couple of days and now it looks pretty damn good with a pair of white shorts, okay?

Have you seen the movie “Hairspray” yet? It’s amazing and I LOVE the soundtrack! Reg burned it onto her iPod and that’s all I have been listening to. I have to get her to dump it onto a cassette so I can listen on Lucie’s Walkman. I have to somehow convince Lucie to see the movie with me. She said she saw the original movie and hated it but this one is totally different.

As for clothes…I am desperate for new outfits but Lucie has already hinted that I have to make do with what I have. I might try to go through my closet when she’s around so she can see that I need at least two new pairs of jeans and some tops. We don’t wear the same size pants but we can share tops so I might be able to start there. (Boy, I sound really manipulative, don’t I? Seriously, it’s not like that. Lucie just takes a lot of convincing, ya know?)

I’d like to put T on this list for #4 but I haven’t heard from him since I got back. I sent him a couple of postcards (nothing sweet, they were total jokes) and I thought I’d see him or get a call this week but nothing so far. I know it’s only been a couple of days. I know that. I just thought, well…you know.

Did I mention school starts in less than 2 weeks? Okay, leave me alone. I have work to do.

She's Baaaaack!

And tan and blond(er) and exhausted and wishing she was still in Santa Barbara, especially now that it's sooooooo hot! My god, did global warming suddenly hit RC? I don't know how Lucie was able to stand it while I was gone. We have two puny air conditioners - one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen - but it's nothing like central A/C.

Anyway - ANYWAY - who CARES about RC and central A/C and Washington, DC and any other C stuff?? I'm back from vacation and ready for anything! Reggie and I had a blast. We were at the beach everyday and she taught me to play volleyball which is way harder on sand than it looks. I soooo wish we had beach volleyball in gym class. I would be a total pro instead of the major klutz that I am now.

The best part was that we kinda met some guys when we were hanging out at this one place where everyone went. It wasn't like a bar, really, but you could get beer if you wanted it. It was like a smoothie place with karaoke at night only that makes it sound totally lame which it wasn't at all. It was like a health food sort of thing (Aaron totally would have loved it) and people sat on the patio and watched other people but it wasn't skeevy or anything. We all just...hung out, ya know?

Hard to explain.

Reg's two older brothers go there every summer so they introduced us to all their summer buddies and we met these guys who are going to UCSB this fall. One tried to tell me he was studying anatomy and would I like to help him and I'm sorry, but do I look like I'm THAT naive? I mean, okay, I'm not exactly experienced but come on...I'm sure I heard that line in some "American Pie" movie when I was like ten or something.

Still it was way more fun than just hanging around in an un-air-conditioned apartment with my sister or trying to escape the heat in a Wal-Mart, pretending to buy a 99 cent t-shirt.

I am NOT gonna think about school starting. Not yet. Right now, I'm just gonna enjoy my tan and shake out my blond(er) hair...

...and call up T. :)