Saturday, December 22, 2007

Happy Holidays

Yesterday was the last day of school before Christmas, and Juice had entered yet another phase. I was in the middle of asking her “Juice, why are you dressed like that?” when the short guy in our class who always wears an orange shirt and green sweatpants ran right between us, pushing her back against the wall. “Take that!” he shouted.

“I told him I wasn’t really from Star Trek,” Juice said. “Sheesh!”

“Stupid Trekkiephobe,” I sighed, looking up into my empty locker. “I’ve tried to come up with dogs and cataclysms to attack him in my dreams, but I think I’ve got a better chance of carving a picture in my nose.”

“Who cares if he raids your locker?” Juice asked. “At least he does your homework for you. He made fun of my haircut, and he cut it for me! Male haircutters are all a hundred percent jerks.”

“He’s the one who threatened me to wear this hat or marry him,” I said, holding up a large white puffball I had cast onto the floor of my locker. “And so many people laugh at me when I wear this hat that sometimes I wish I had married him. I just wish I knew his name.”

“But he hung your sock on the office bulletin board!” Juice exclaimed.

“And he knows I’m afraid of bulletin boards,” I whined. “I’ll never get it back, and that was my favorite sock.”

“Mine too.”

“I wish I didn’t have to share socks with you, especially when we have to wear them at the same time.”

“It’s sort of hard to walk that way, klutz,” Juice said, drinking out of the water fountain with the words “Drink me” graffitied on it. “But that’s what happens when friends combine their money to buy clothes that neither of them can afford by themselves.” Suddenly she turned toward me and stuffed quick-drying plaster in my mouth. When I asked her why she did that, I don’t think she understood what I was saying.

“Face it,” she said, “you hate me, not him. Good. The truth is, I’ve hired him as my temporary twin. We must persecute you until you say ‘Merry Christmas.’”

“In a public school? I’ll stick with the plaster in my mouth, thanks,” I said. Unfortunately Juice still couldn’t understand what I was saying.

Mphwy Cwphmph.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Christmas cookies!

This week I went to the doctor’s office for a checkup after that unusual bowel movement, but all my doctor told me was that I would probably go blind if I kept calling her Snigglefritz. Rather than change my ways and thus limit my enjoyment of life, I've decided to learn Braille while I can still see.

“Does that say ‘The fish can flee the country?’” I was asking yesterday with my eyes closed while I was practicing my Braille reading at Juice’s house.

“No,” said Juice’s little sister, who was sitting on my left thigh, sandwiching me between Juice and herself on the couch. I felt and probably looked like a hot orange. “It says ‘See Spot run.’ You gotta try harder, Jolly. You’ve been reading the same sentence for four hours straight. I’ve learned the entire Braille alphabet and I’m only five!”

“Jolly, you have to feel the bumps with your fingers to read it,” said Juice. She held her happy-face mug up to the book. “Look. My mug is reading Braille. Isn’t that adorable?”

“Just great,” I said, reaching forward to grab one of Juice’s mom’s freshly-baked cookies from the Antarctica-shaped platter on the coffee table. No sooner had I taken my first bite than someone suddenly turned out the lights, or so I thought for a few moments.

“Golly, I guess I’m blind now,” I said, not quite grasping the reality of the situation. “Oh well. At least I have this booze-infested cookie.”

“Nothing makes Jolly giggle more than booze cookies,” said Juice. “Don’t tell her the recipe, Mom; it’s all mine! What is it?”

“Well, you’ll never guess what my secret is,” I heard her mom say.

“Booze?”

“Nope. No booze. I grind up these Christmas tree strings of beads and mix them in. The chemicals give people an intoxicated feeling without bad breath. Of course, there are side effects, like diarrhea, temporary blindness, and blackheads.”

“Is that why everyone in your family has a black head, Juice?” I asked, my vision already beginning to clear. “Because you eat too many of these cookies?”

“Yup. But our bodies are black because of Mom’s chocolate salad,” Juice said between bites of cookie.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

what's wrong:

I did end up talking to Dad about my problem, and we agreed to take Mom out to dinner at Gimmiquelesse yesterday before breaking the news to her. That evening I wore another empire-waist dress, and I could tell by the expression on Mom’s face that she had noticed the dress and the enlarged stomach beneath it. The dinner went well for the most part aside from the tomato dessert thing we got, but towards the end Mom suddenly grabbed one of the pink linen napkins to cover over her right wrist stump.

After a few unrepeatable exclamations, she said calmly, with half a smile, “As soon as I realized that Jolly was pregnant, my hand fell off in shock.”

“Stop punching my shoulder, Dad,” I said.

Dad bent down to reach under the table and sat back up again, saying to Mom, “Here’s your hand back.” He and I proceeded to help Mom out of her seat the way Dad had helped me out of my seat the week before.

“But it’s holding someone else’s purse,” Mom said, staring at the hand shyly.

“Never mind that. It might have money in it,” I said, pulling her out of the restaurant to a shop directly across from it in the mall.

“Why are we heading toward the Purple Portrait Studio?” Mom asked.

“I wanted to get a picture of myself in this condition,” I said, my voice shaking and crumbling more with every syllable. I led her away from the Purple Portrait Studio and into Keystone Plumbing, the store with everything and a whole bunch of toilets.

“Look, strangers!” Mom exclaimed, spotting two elderly, unfashionably-dressed women. She was as easily distracted as Dad and I hoped she would be. Mom loves strangers. “Let’s clap our hand and sway with them.”

“Quick! Group hug before I fall over!” I said, delighted at Mom’s pleasant shift of mind. “What’s more, I’m not really pregnant. I just ate most of your Aegean sea sponge collection!”

“So that’s where they went!” Mom said, resting her reattached hand on her cheek and shaking her head. "I could have sworn I had more than that one Calthropella stelligera sample on my dresser."

“Can I join you guys?” asked some thirtyish lady stranger with big hair and big earrings. “I’m lonely.”

Mom, the two old, acceptable strangers and I turned away from her while Dad took care of her. We tried to carry on our conversation but the lady stranger interrupted us again, saying, “Hey, why is he flushing me down the toilet?”

“Because you’re invading our conversation,” I said through my clenched-teeth grin.

“Jolly, I’m so glad I’ve finally found people who wear white bead necklaces like me,” Mom said, resting her reattached hand on my shoulder and her eyes beneath her eyelids.

“It’s a relief,” added one of the acceptable strangers, who wore large glasses made out of red licorice.

“I thought I was the only one,” added the other, shorter, and more decrepit old stranger.

“You’re all a bunch of Wilma Flintstone wannabees,” I told them. “What I don’t understand is where Dad disappeared to, and why you’re getting out a hankie.”

“I’ll show you in a minute,” Mom said. She put her arms around me and added, “I’m so happy and full of red hearts that my hand fell off again!”
She held her hankie-covered stump to her cheek until Dad mysteriously reappeared and fetched her hand for her. Then Mom let go of me, and I had a tremendous urge to let go of some huge bodily waste. Fortunately I had my pick of toilets, and my parents and the strangers waited patiently as I tried them all, successfully releasing what was left of Mom's sponge collection into a bright turquoise model. A salesperson--a guy-girl or a girl-guy, I forget which--ushered me out once he/she/it realized that I was not in labor. Dad followed with the sponge remains. Mom followed with my undies. The strangers followed the salesperson.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Stop asking me!

I'll talk about what's wrong when I'm good and ready. For right now I need all of you to leave me alone and let me deal with this problem my own way.

Man, it took me forever to type that. Today I tried on my cat’s eyes to see how they looked, and they're really funky.

So yesterday, Dad and I went to the Bamboo Panda Restaurant, where the waitresses take bets on Chinese racehorses. Dad bet two hundred on the second horse in the second race. He let me wear onion rings on my ears provided that I promised not to eat the menu, so I just licked it.

When we got our food and started eating amongst the buzz of other gamblers, Dad kept pointing at the way I ate and laughing. Then he ran out of the restaurant, shaved off his mustache, and went to the Kiononia Coffee House to listen in disguise while Mom played hippie gospel tunes in imitation hippie clothes. He later told me that Mom figured out it was him and made him go to the library with her to study with her, just for old times sake. When he finally made his way back to me at our table hours after the restaurant was supposed to close, I was still paused in midthought while picking food out of my dimples. I kept accidentally shoving forkfuls of roast cherries against my neck instead of into my mouth, and then of course the cherries fell into my dress. Dad made a grimace for whatever reason and said, “If you keep shoveling in food that way, you’re going to get fat. You’ve already grown a little potbelly lately, and today you’re even wearing an empire-waist dress, which you swore you would never wear until you were pregnant.”

I shuddered inwardly. He’s noticed the change, but I wonder if he might really suspect.
After he said that, his collar began to extend like an unraveling roll of paper towels, and I asked if I could have just a little piece of it to wipe my hands on.

Dad said, “In your bloated condition, you can wipe your hands on my jacket sleeve if you like, and hold onto it while we walk out of here.” With that, he helped me up, grabbed the tips from several other deserted tables, used the tips to win back the two hundred he lost, and led me outside. I couldn’t stop smiling. Even if Dad does suspect, my secret’s safe with him.

I kind of like using my cat’s eyes, but they make me feel hot and sweaty somehow. My picture of Dad and Mom, the one with the commandment “Love Dad & Mom” written above it, is beginning to blurr.

Please post non-"what's wrong?" comments only. Thanks.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Borel again

Juice and I ran into Borel at the mall again today. She was wearing purple, again.

“They’re selling live turkeys!” Juice exclaimed as we walked by the ice cream parlor. She's currently in her oversized referee uniform phase, and I'm impressed that she can see anything beneath that giant white cap.

“Mmm,” I said, cradling my tummy and licking my freckles. “I love live turkeys. The way those feathers tickle!”

“I’m a turkey,” Borel practically bubbled over. “Eat me! My hair is like feathers and I can gobble.”

“I know. I’ve seen you eat. What makes you think you’re a turkey, though?”

“Yeah,” Juice smirked. “Besides the way you smell, we mean.”

“I use my imagination,” she gushed. “Right now I’m imagining myself under a starry sky, in front of a picket fence made out of giant french fries welded together with ketchup.”

“That’s all very well, but imagining won’t make it so,” said Juice.

“That’s what you think,” Borel scoffed, folding her arms. “I’ve been called a turkey nine times today already.” She thrust her left hip out and stretched her right leg as far away from the left as it could go, as if she were playing compass with her body. She plowed her hands into the back of her laundry pile of lemon-blond hair, flipped open her vertical-venetian-blind grin (minus the pearl buttons), squinted her eyes shut, and twisted her torso to the right, causing her purple-people-eating purse to swing out in the air to catch up with her. “I’ve got the turkey strut, the turkey bill, the turkey wings, and with one twist I can smack you with my purse. Gobble, gobble!” She began to walk away with her head tilted back.

“That boy who just walked past with the heart embroidered on the back pocket of his pants was admiring me,” she added without opening her eyes. “Face it, I rule the turkey roost.”

“As if we wanted to be turkeys,” I said, rolling my eyes after Borel had walked into the men’s restroom. “Talk about living apart from reality! Borel has no life.”

“Sticking out my tongue this much makes me dizzy,” said Juice. “Yeah, she’s one turkey I’ll never eat. Where are we going now, Jolly?”

“Up into the sky,” I said, my energy revived. “Turkeys can’t fly, but we popcorn girls can!”

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Speaking of fashion mistakes....

Today I made the mistake of going shopping with Juice during her cowgirl phase. She can’t actually tell the difference between a cow and a girl, so needless to say she has no idea how to dress like a cowgirl. She just keeps making the ok sign to signify that she's an Oklahoma cowgirl. I've tried to convince her that Oklahoma is just a movie, but she still insists that it exists.

So we went shopping for no reason in particular, as always. Juice played spectator as I performed Barbie poses for her in the dressing room hallway.

“A little bit too much like that one part of Little Orphan Annie’s dance routine,” she said as I posed in a flimsy white piece that managed to cover the most freckly part of my rear.

“You mean in the movie Annie or the play?” I asked, examining my orphanic pose in the dressing room hallway mirror. “Do my lips look black?”

Juice groaned and slouched in her dressing room spectator seat, muttering, “Here comes Borel, professional Barbie.”

Sure enough, our fake friend Borel flounced up in a dress that closely resembled my comforter in its prefaded stage. “Honestly, Jolly, that’s too simple,” she huffed. “You should try a Barbie pose in something challenging, like flowers.” She pulled a big puffy white dress with bigger, puffier pink flowers out of the dressing room reject pile.

“I’m allergic to flowers,” I whispered to Juice.

“You never should have tried to pose like Barbie,” she whispered back, standing up, folding her arms, and attempting a pose of her own, “Oklahoma-style.”

“Hurry up and change!” gushed Borel, shoving me into my little changing chamber with the dress. “Now we’ll see who looks like Barbie, you orange poophead!”

“I’m allergic to pink too!” I cried before she pulled the door shut on me.

“Jolly doesn’t really care that much about Barbie,” I heard Juice saying, “but I bet she can outpose you any day.”

The pressure was making me dizzy as I left my chamber in the dress.

“Here comes Jolly, the next knockout of the doll world.” Juice smirked, still folding her arms and posing “Oklahoma-style.” She and Borel were both sticking out their best hip so far that they seemed to be brandishing the hips towards each other like swords.

“I can’t pose,” I cried, trying to bring their attention away from their apparent hip duel. “I’ve never been so embarrassed since yesterday!” (Yesterday after school I went to the post office to complain about the small amounts of cereal in each box, and all I got for my effort was a lot of laughter and some spitwads the employees made out of stamps.)

“Then I’m still the best Barbie poser in the world!” Borel squealed. “You suck!” She switched hips, folded her hands and pressed them to the cheek opposite her projecting hip. Her pearly-toothed smile reached so high on her face that her upper cheeks covered her eyes. It was the perfect Barbie pose.

“I’m gonna cry,” I whispered to Juice.

“Good. I don’t like you,” she whispered back. Then she added out loud, “You know, the first requirement of Barbie posing is the danger of butt display, since international-level Barbie posers aren’t allowed to wear underwear. That’s what makes it an Olympic-approved sport. But the dress Jolly’s wearing has no threat of butt display.”

“Underwear,” Borel murmured, as if remembering a long-lost love. “Sweet, precious, soothing cotton. Jolly!” Her voice suddenly held a commanding edge. “Get out of that dress and give it to me. I’ve found my calling--well, maybe not my specific calling, but I now know it includes underwear. Thanks for the wake-up call, Juice.”

I ended up buying my flimsy white orphanic-posing costume, for the mere sake of using up the rest of my Monopoly money.

“Funny,” I said, examining my purchase as we left the mall. “This only has two little pearl buttons. I thought it had about six more when I tried it on.” I stopped short of running into a giant carrot made out of icing, which was on display in front of Maze Supermarket. “Hey! So that’s why Borel’s smile was so pearly-toothed! She cheated, and stole my buttons in the process!”

“What does it matter? It’s only a nightgown,” Juice said with a smirk and a shrug.

Snuh.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Mondays suck too!

Not as much as Jiff, but still, I am so annoyed at my revamped-history teacher Mr. Fargone. I'm sick of him joking excessively about his cartoonesque nose and showing off his ability to write on the chalkboard with his eyes closed. He is so irrational and far out from reality, and I hate that in a person. Besides, today I glued my hand to my face, and once you make a fashion decision that big, it’s irreversible. I should rename Monday "Jiffday".

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Heroes jumps the shark?

Or the sky, is more like it.

I'm not sure I like this season all that much. DL is dead, unless that's a ruse. Candice/Michelle's company put her alone with the psychopathic Sylar and of course he kills her right away, unless that's another illusion created by her. Otherwise, that company is idiots. I'm guessing he thinks her powers don't work but they just don't work on him, the illusions are for everyone but him.

And when West and Claire were flying through the air I laughed an extra 50 years onto my life. Oh my. That was priceless. Too funny. West, Superman you aint.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Jiff sucks!

I paid a hefty price for breaking off our date so early two weeks ago. The sky was a golden purple today, and the community improvement volunteers had come to Irch Court and painted the fading leaves pink. I cared for none of that, however. Even the sight of the newly-built bicycle airport, our senator’s pork contribution to our area, could not excite me since I am not a bicycle and can therefore never use that airport.

“I can’t believe Jiff did this to me again,” I was saying through clenched teeth as my best friend Juice, currently in her Native American phase, walked home from school with me. “He said he chopped his hands off.”

“I keep telling you, if you wore a flea collar with a heart tag--”

“I know, I know. ‘This never would have happened.’ Daddy!” We had reached my house and my dad was looking in the mailbox. “Thanks for making us walk home instead of waiting for us and giving us a ride.”

“Don’t you have anything better to say to me?” he asked.

“Yes. My boyfriend cheated on me again. Now he’s writing love letters to Cece. Can you beat him up?”

“Not while I’m reading my mail, Jolly.”

“If I twirl my hair till I pull it off, then will you?”

Dad didn’t respond.

“How about if I play with your collar?” I pleaded, flicking at the pointy ends of said collar. “Kill him, Daddy.”

“No, but I’ll hold the door for you and Juice. Come on inside.”

“Hi, Jolly. Hi, Mr. Rogers,” said the door. “Ow, don’t push me around so much!”

“Shut up, door,” said Dad. “Juice, why are you resting your chin on Jolly’s backpack?”

Juice didn’t respond, nor did she move her chin from its resting place as she followed me inside. When I turned around to see how funny and unrealistic she looked, my backpack mysteriously flew out from under her and she fell face first to the floor. After helping herself to her feet, she began to roll her eyes and they froze looking upward, as if she were suddenly trapped in a comic strip box. Mom came into the hallway to stare silently. I didn’t like the look on her face. She’s been wearing it ever since she went to an Age Bank conference last weekend to learn about the national push to donate age to those who needed it.

“Please stop chewing on your finger,” I said to Dad, trying to laugh off the entire previous conversation. “You know I hate it like Slurpies.”

“I can’t help it,” said Dad between nibbles. “I love eating flesh.”

“Well,” I giggled in panic, dragging Juice up the staircase, “munch away on flesh that doesn’t belong to Juice or me. Hey, look! Juice is kissing the air.”

She actually was kissing the air during her unrealistic post-fall trance, but Dad remained undistracted, holding up his index finger a la E. T. “Look, I bit my fingertip off.” He reached over Juice’s head to write an exclamation mark on the staircase wall above her. Sufficiently intimidated, Juice bowed her head and began to back down the stairs. “You two young ladies are going to be eaten, alive and uncooked, whether you like it or not,” Dad continued. “I will share your luscious flesh with your mother, and we will both become youthfully envigorated.”

Mom folded her arms and looked at me sideways as if to say, “Yeah, so there.”

My parents walked away in satisfaction at having put me in my place--I’m not sure how since they didn’t end up eating us. Left alone with Juice, I slumped down to sit on the steps and she followed suit.

“What does Mom have to do with this?” I asked. “She wasn’t even in our conversation.”
“Maybe if your Dad eats you, Jiff will suddenly realize that he truly loves you.” Juice smirked, patting me on the back.

I hate it when people smirk, but a good point is a good point.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Heroes thoughts

I don't know what to say, except that I'm totally rooting for Wes (or West or whatever Claire's obligatory boyfriend's name is) to die so Claire can be even more messed up and still act as if she hasn't had any life changing experiences and is still a teenage brat.

I was also rooting for her toe to not grow back, just so she'd have a weakness or something.

I wonder if any of those actors playing Irish people in Peter's storyline are actually Irish. The accents sound so fake.

And the cursed Hispanic girl and the Haitian totally have to get together. :)

I :heart Hiro.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Heroes thoughts

So Claire's already met a boyfriend prospect who's apparently love at first run-over-with-a-car. When I found out his name was Wes, I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. I dislike him already. I'm sure a whole generation of guys is now going to use the pickup line "are you a robot or an alien?" And he flies, so they're probably related.

I was all proud of myself for noticing that the symbol on people's shoulders matches the ancient Japanese symbol. But that still doesn't tell me much.

So great, Matt and Nathan both had marriage disasters. That's not cliche and overdone AT ALL.

A new hero has the Midas touch which could fund Mohinder's research. Yeah, cuz that totally won't decrease the value of gold.

And suddenly there's apparently nothing more desirable than winning a car signed by a guy who made a TV show.

So Mohinder's gonna be a spy. Yay!

Amusing episode

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Parents

So my dad's pretty much been leaving me alone (thank God and the inventors of that drug he has to take to keep his eyeballs in their sockets), but yesterday evening Mom kept poking her head into my room to ask if my exercises were helping. I wouldn't have minded so much if she had actually opened the door or used the same hole in the wall rather than creating a new hole with every poke. And then when I complained she'd say "I paid for this house, I can do what I want in it." Moms.

I've been trying to lose all the flab in my arms by the newest Briq method: tossing pink clothes over my head. The purpose of losing arm flab is, of course, to keep my boyfriend’s attention on me and not my flab or girls named Dee.

“Maybe if you tossed purple clothing it would work better,” Mom suggested, picking up a dress my “friend” Borel lent me. “Dark and heavy always go together as concepts.”

“That’s not purple. It’s pale violet, you fashionless fool,” I said. “And I left it on the floor near the doorway for everyone to trample on for a reason.”

“I still think we should try a different color,” Mom said, looking over my shoulder as I rummaged through my closet in panic. I began to purposely jab her with my elbows to get her to move back a little, but she only moved closer to lecture me about being more careful not to hurt other people who might be peering over my shoulder or screaming in my ear to see if there was an echo inside my head. By the time she had begun to shift her lecture to her age-old complaint that I couldn’t sing as well as she could, I had a good excuse to interrupt her.

“All my clothes have turned gray,” I gasped.

“Turn on your closet light, whale-arms.”

I did so and then exclaimed, “My light’s gray too!”

“Golly, Jolly, your whole closet is covered in soot,” Mom pointed out as if I hadn’t been the one to call her attention to that fact.

“I knew we should have left this corner as a chimney,” I said, closing my closet door and turning to her. “I know. Let’s set my closet on fire and toast marshmallows.”

“Ack! The very thought makes me turn cross-eyed,” said Mom, throwing up her hands. “You’ll never lose arm flab that way.”

She left my room and went downstairs to join my dad and my boyfriend Jiff. I heard Dad say to her, “Cheer up. Jolly’s boyfriend gets cross-eyed sometimes too.”

“Golly, Mr. Rogers, I didn’t know you had a twin,” said Jiff.

I could hear Mom seething as she said, “Your hat is on backwards, nerd-boy. And while you’re waiting for Jolly you have plenty of time to get a life.”

I rushed down the stairs before she could bash Jiff anymore.

“Jolly!” Mom nearly screamed, backing away from me and stumbling backwards down the steps. “You know I’m afraid of pink-and-black checkered jackets!”

“That’s why I’m wearing several,” I said, spreading out my arms to display them. “I wanted to watch you cry in terror.”

Jiff took my sweaty hand and pulled me down the steps.

“Don’t ever come back,” Mom called after us.

“Why is your pooping hat on backwards, Jiff?” I asked after we had left the house. I didn’t want to mention such a personal matter in front of my parents. Jiff’s pooping hat is our own private joke.

“I put it on that way so the poop falls in my face when we smooch romantically.”

As usual, neither of us had any ideas about what to do or where to go on our date, especially since neither of us can drive and it's hard for both of us to balance on Jiff's skateboard at once. So our date consisted of sneaking into the bushes at the side of my house and spying on my parents while I was “gone.” The date didn’t last very long, thanks to the following conversation:

“I don’t know how to get my eyes back to normal. Help!” Mom whimpered, still cross-eyed.

“Forget that,” said Dad. “Jolly’s gone. Let’s clap our hands and sway. It’s a beautiful world, and the walls keep changing colors.”

Mom threw a pale violet sofa pillow at Dad’s head, knocking out his good eye and dislocating his shoulder.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “I’ll let you off the hook for that if you help me find my eye.”

“I think you stepped on it, but Jolly has eyeball gum in her room,” said Mom.

Of course I had to intercede to forbid the misuse of my eyeball gum and to help Dad get his eye back in. I was so relieved to get out of those heavy, roasting pink-and-black checkered jackets that I completely forgot about Jiff. Hope he's not too pissed off about that. Tee hee!

Saturday, September 15, 2007

boyfriend troubles

I know, I know, it's bad of me not to post in a while when I just started this blog, but I have a good excuse. I snagged my first boyfriend, Jiff, within the first week of school, having been told it was the thing to do. In order to be adequately in love with Jiff, I've been adopting all his interests and abandonning all his disinterests. I hung up some pictures of female tennis players in my locker, joined the pessimists club, and stopped writing altogether since Jiff told me he didn’t know how. Certain readers of my blog have confessed their jealousy over my neglect, and admitted to secretly feeding me soap in my sleep so bubbles keep coming out of my nose while I snore and my farts have been smelling really good. This wasn’t enough to cheer me up, however. My dad caught me yesterday hanging my head over the side of my bed, reading my latest issue of Briq. I had been crying over a touching story in their “Touch & Feel” column and Dad wanted to know what was so sad.
“This girl’s house burned down and all she had left after the fire was a purple comforter, which mysteriously faded into a drab periwinkle, just like mine! I can identify!” I cried.
“Your comforter didn’t fade mysteriously,” Dad said. “You washed it in hot water.”
I blew my nose in response.
“Nice grade,” said Dad. He was referring to the piece of paper I was using to blow my nose in the absence of unused tissues.
“It’s an initial. This happens to be a note from my boyfriend to a girl named Dee.”
My dad took the snotty note out of my hand and read it. “He wants to marry her and go to Paris?”
“He told me he couldn’t even write,” I grumbled, flopping back on my now-periwinkle pillow and scrunching up my legs. “He even praised her nostrils the same way he praises mine.”
“He obviously hasn’t seen as much of your booger production as I have,” Dad said, flapping the note back and forth in his hand to dry the snot. He was wrinkling his eyebrows and smirking, as he does. “How did you get this, Jolly?” He dropped the note on my bed, snot side down, and folded his arms. “You were snooping in other people’s lockers, weren’t you?”
“It’s the only fun thing I get to do!” I barked. “It’s the only way I can find out how smelly other people are.”
“Even with your praiseworthy nostrils?” Dad smiled. “I think you’re too jealous, Jolly. You stink just fine.” He sat next to me on my bed, grabbed the note, and tapped me on the head with it, again snot side down. “I think you should split your head open and die. Maybe this paper will do the trick. Or maybe--”
“Maybe if I hit you with this featherless pillow a feather will fly out,” I said, whapping him so hard with my pillow Dad’s sensitive eye fell out of its socket, transformed into a tiny feather, and floated out of the room. Dad left to chase after it and didn’t bug me the rest of the evening. If only all my problems could be solved by pillow fights.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

My first day of high school ever!

Intrigued? Well, here’s what happened. I hadn’t had much breakfast, being nervous, so during first period I started chewing on my nails, as is my habit when I’m hungry. I chewed and nibbled and tugged and yanked as hard as my teeth were able, but my nails would not come off! What was more, they tasted strange. That was when I realized I had probably accidentally put on Mom’s nail-strengthening polish instead of my special meat tenderizer solution. I always get those two bottles mixed up.

I wasn’t about to give up on my nails, though. I gripped the bottom of my desk tightly with my right hand while tensing up every muscle in my body, hoping to tear the nails off by group bodily effort. It might have worked if I had thought to work on one nail at a time, but I was really hungry. So there I was, shaking my desk noisily as I tugged, when all of a sudden my stomach blurted out, “I hate nails!” That shook me up. I looked around, hoping no one had noticed, but the guy on my right was looking at me with one squinted eyeball, while his other eyeball was expanding like an embryo. I shuddered to think that he had heard my stomach talk, but when he mouthed to the guy on my left, all he mouthed was, “She’s ugly.” I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

However, that was not my only dilemma for the day. I forgot my lunch, which was okay since it seemed to be a tradition for the students to forego lunch on the first day of school for the sake of dancing, clapping, and swatting stray fireflies to the rhythm of a rented cola jukebox. Eager to establish my popularity, I took my abnormally heavy purse to the jukebox to request a song, but when I opened my purse all I found inside were smooth round gray and white stones. I remembered that I had put them in my purse to give it body after it had been crushed beneath my laptop, but no sooner had I remembered this and turned my purse over to make sure the bottom seams were still intact when all the stones came pouring out at once, on my feet.
I managed to leave the cafeteria before anyone came by to make me clean it up.

Potential band members met up with the director right after lunch. I played my flute off key like crazy, but I had two good excuses--I was starving AND I was sitting next to this blond guy who would have been cute if he hadn’t had such a glary, stary face and such an obsession for playing his trumpet with the mouthpiece tucked under his armpit. An oboist on my other side kept laughing and covering her mouth with her hand, and I first thought she was laughing at him, but then I wondered why she bothered covering her mouth when she just kept laughing more blatantly. Finally I realized that she was using her laughter and hand-covering to obscure her true purpose: middle-finger nose-picking. I told her I could see right through her act, but she just laughed it off. The band director seemed to like me for the mere fact that I'm a redhead like him and my dad (who teaches at the school) told me to compliment him on his goatee.

Oh, and I dare not forget to mention that I developed a crush as quickly as I could manage before the school day began, and after band I contrived to have a head-on collision with the object of my affections. I believe we also knocked knees and his flailing arms at one point wrapped all the way around me. I conveniently dropped all my stuff, which included pages of classroom doodles with such sentiments as, “I love MP,” “I love MP2,” and “I love MP3.” His name was Matthew Pierce, his glossy gray hair hung down in waves so far down his face that I couldn’t see his nose, and he had the most pristine sneakers, khakis and shirt I’d ever seen. He looked like somebody I could get.

Upon recovery, he picked up the book I'm currently reading, Life Pus, and said, “You like this book? It’s my favorite. You must be the girl of my dreams. Let’s get married tomorrow at exactly 12:61 FM.”

Despite my desire to say "EEEEEEEEEEE!" I instead recited my rehearsed response: "I'd love to Matthew darling."

At the end of the day I waved good-bye to Matthew, who paused several times as he walked away to pose with his head tilted and his hair hanging over his pristine grin. Then I waited around the front door of the school for my dad to come along. When he did, he put his arm around me to give me half a hug and half a pat on the shoulder, saying, “Jolly, Matthew Pierce is the new principal. She's also a woman. She thought you were the band director. She told me so.”

I am totally tweezing out all my chin hairs as soon as I finish this entry.

By the time we got home, I was so hungry I started eating my flute, but I had to open my big fat mouth and say it was delicious, and course Dad told me to stop eating it cuz it was expensive, bla bla bla. He was crabby that day, complaining that Whitey’s tail tag infection was causing her to morph into a squirrel. I’ll never figure out how she licked that tail tag off.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my 14th birthday and one of my presents to myself is that I'm starting a blog journal! I used to think my life was too dull for a journal or a blog, but then I started reading other people's blogs. Nuff said.

So my first day of high school is tomorrow, but I've had a decent amount of stuff going on to distract me from obsessing over that, including the start of this blog. A couple days ago I dropped my laptop on the floor of my room. Said laptop was close enough to my bed for me to reach to type all this, but not without stretching every muscle in my upper body, so the time it took me to type the following entry was way longer than it should have been, and I swear my arms have permanently stretched out an extra three inches.

The past few days were hectic for me. Between the hassle of ordering and receiving a licensed tail tag for my cat, and stretching to the point of excruciation to type this blog entry, I've been overstressed. I tried to order online from the National Tail Tag Distribution Center, five times in one day, and each time I got an error message saying my order could not be processed due to lack of payment information. I was so frustrated I chewed my laptop cord clear through, and stretched my neck out in the process since I had to twist practically upside down to get to it from my bed. Then I tried to convince my cat to fetch me my cell phone, but I ended up getting up to get it myself.

When I finally got hold of a customer service representative and tried to request a personalized tail tag, every idea I thought of was already taken: Whitey, Whitey Rogers, Jolly’s cat Whitey, The cat belonging to Jolly, Rotten apple core, Purple bedspread, Plate with two cookies and a thousand cookie crumbs on the floor of my room, etc. After a while I began to feel desperate and started suggesting things I saw around my room, which was rough because my suggestions became kind of random, and I’m not usually a random person. Finally, sensing that the customer service representative was beginning to doze, I asked her to suggest an untaken tail tag for me, or rather for Whitey, since it would be very unrealistic to assume that I would wear a tail tag. The customer service representative suggested the tag: I’m a tail. I was desperate enough to feel excited about that suggestion, but I couldn’t help saying, “How about spelling tail T-A-L-E instead of T-A-I-L?” She said no, that one was already taken. I then suggested T-A-E-L, T-A-Y-L-E, and P-T-A-L-E, but she shot me down every time with “Taken.” Finally I gave in, and that’s when she informed me that there was an extra service charge for accepting the customer service representative’s suggested tail tag. I tried to spit on her through the phone, but I think I missed. Anyway, when the tail tag arrived and I had successfully pinned Whitey down to pierce her tail and attach the tag, she looked really cute. The tail tag was worth all the hassle; it was designed to look like ordinary pen handwriting on an ordinary piece of notebook paper, and I swear if I hadn’t paid so much for it I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. This was my other birthday present for myself.

Old people at church have been asking me if I'm prepared for high school. Then I say "Only crucially" and they walk away going "Heh heh" without asking me what the heck I mean. But I'm a very preemptive person. No matter how much kids make fun of me, I can at least brag that my cat wears a costly tail tag.