Jolly's Journal

My Christmas

2008-12-26T14:43:00.004-05:00

For a while my new friends and their exciting conversations have been distracting Juice and me from pursuing boys, but Juice has developed a crush on a guy she knows nothing about. She keeps insisting that she doesn't need to get to know him because they're soulmates. For that reason she was convinced that he would come to our church’s Christmas Eve service, so she dressed up in blue net tights with a fluffy blue sweater. She is currently having a fanny-free phase, which means she searches for alternatives to the conformative skirts and pants that so many oppressed teen girls wear.

Needless to say, Juice was freezing in church, and her crush never came. Fortunately, a little girl in the pew in front of us had been crawling under every pew in church during the sermon, picking off the old dried gum stuck to the bottom of the pews. The sight made me feel nostaligic for the good old days when Juice and I used to do that. We never made anything with the gum though; we just collected it and molded it into a ball. This little girl remoistened each piece of gum and molded the pieces into a hat, which Juice promptly stole in order to plug up the chilling holes in her net tights. She used the remaining gum to mold mittens for herself while the children’s chorus line was performing the final song of the evening, “Silent Night” to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock,” complete with high kicks.

As we left church. I avoided commenting on Juice’s fashion choices by saying, “Golly, my hands are cold. Aren’t yours, Supergirl?”

“Yes,” Supergirl said as we walked outside into the biting cold, “but what’s worse is that my eyes froze shut as soon as I stepped outside.”

I ripped Supergirl’s eyelids open so that she could see my latest accomplishment. With my new water-resistant brown coat I have learned to mold and throw snowballs with my elbows. I threw a snowball at Juice just as she was fashioning herself a gumband for her hair.

After a few more snowballs, I said, “ I hope you learned your lesson, Juice.”

“Sure I did,” Juice smirked. “Hey Supergirl, what’s wrong? Your look like your lips fell off.”

“They did,” Supergirl said, using her index and middle fingers as makeshift lips. “I told you I was cold. Oh, here they are.”

She picked up her lips by our church’s outside nativity set, which was chained to the pavement. Juice and I walked over to her because she still seemed pretty upset.

“Why aren’t those people in the stable moving?” she asked, her eyebrows nearly vertical with worry. “Are they frozen? And they’re so small. The cold must have shrunk them!”

“They’re plastic, stupid,” I said.

“Plastic?” she echoed. “I thought we were supposed to recycle plastic. This manger scene just stays here.”

Juice’s eyes lit up at that comment and I’m sure mine did too. An excuse to go to our favorite place on earth, Sink World! (For those of you who live in caves or are Roachel, they have a plastic-melting department and are open on Christmas Eve.)

“You’re right,” I said, patting Supergirl on the shoulder. “Let’s break it up into pieces to recycle.”
“We can have it melted down at Sink World,” Juice said, jutting her thumb over her shoulder.

So we went to Sink World and practiced football huddles over melted plastic. The great thing about Sink World isn’t the sinks, in my opinion, but the store’s pet pigeon, except that on this particular occasion it pooped on both me and Juice. We stayed there until Supergirl complained that the warmth of the melted plastic was making Juice’s gum-mittens darker and stickier, and her hand was stuck to one of them.

When I got home, I let Whitey unwrap my presents. I no longer cared about them. In memory of that great evening I wanted to keep the pigeon poop on my cheek, but it got in my eye. That upset me because I never have problems with my eyes, nor does anyone else I’ve ever known, hence it's a problem inconsistent with real life.

I'm friends with Supergirl!

2008-11-24T18:38:00.002-05:00

One new friendship deserves another. This morning I was running up to Juice and Roachel outside on the street, shouting, “Watch me as I sing, fa la.” I had the most incredible gossip to spout.

“We’re too busy hitchhiking,” Roachel called back to me.

“That’s the only way guys will notice us,” Juice smirked.

“Omigosh!” I squealed, forgetting what I had run to tell them. “Juice, one of your eyes has a smaller iris than the other. What happened?”

“My puppy swallowed one of my eyes and I put one of his in as a substitute.”

“Well anyway, what did I run to tell you? Oh yes--on Friday I found this blond girl all alone out by the stadium right after we lost the game against Monument High, and she was crying. She was like, ‘People think I’m Supergirl because of my ears,’ cuz they were shaped like Ss and stuff. And I was like, ‘There, there,’ all soothing-like and ‘At least I can talk about you to Juice.’ Then she was like, ‘When I’m confused, my ears turn to question marks,’ and I was like, ‘All the more reason to be called Supergirl.’ And she was like protesting, ‘But I don’t want to be Supergirl! I have a sore throat and my mouth is all white and scaly inside!’ So I said, ‘Big deal, I get that way every time I watch a summer camp movie. Maybe you are Supergirl, though. If so, you’ll glow when you really have to go to the bathroom.’ So we sat right there on the steps of the stadium until we both really had to pee.”

I paused to catch my breath.

“So, is she Supergirl, Jolly?” Juice asked.

“Would my nose keep disappearing like this if she wasn’t, Juice?” I asked with a beaming smile. “I’ve discovered her secret, so she’s obviously put a curse on me.”

“Your nose is always disappearing,” said Roachel.

Suddenly my face froze up in that beaming-smile position. I couldn’t lower my eyebrows. I couldn’t stop smiling and my eyelids wouldn’t shut. My face wouldn’t budge even when I put my hand to it. “Omigosh, what’s happening to me?” I said behind my frozen face. “What’s going on?”
“Supergirl must have put a curse on you,” Juice smirked, slapping me on the back to keep my face from staying that way forever.

“I’m growing my bangs out,” said Roachel.

OMG, I cannot even describe the bittersweetness of this day. Oh wait....

2008-11-17T17:32:00.002-05:00

If you thought my last blog post was tragic, HA! That was rumpunch compared to the latest disaster of my sophomore year. I was gradually awaking to the peace of my room this morning, minus my comforter, which my cat had peed on one too many times. I was beneath a fluffy pink blanket, smiling into my drool-bedewed pillow until Mom whispered, “Jolly, I’m sick of massaging your back. Wake up and do mine. I’m going to try to be a teenager today.”

“That’s nice,” I mumbled amidst the comfort of my warm drool. Then my drool was suddenly chilled and I sat up in bed. “What did you say?” I shrieked. “I thought you were just kidding about that! You can’t go back to school with me, Mom. You’ll embarrass me!”

“But I can be a cool babe,” Mom smirked a la Juice. “How many moms do you know that have bathed in a kiddie pool full of banana pudding?”

“I told you, that was a combination of commercial pus and bird poop,” I called after her as she waltzed away reciting the latest quotable punchlines from my favorite show, Comedy Something. I dressed hastily, thinking that if I was ready to leave before Mom was, Dad would just leave her behind. No such luck. The two were in cahoots against me.

Mom ran ahead of me once we reached school grounds. I had hoped she would hang around Dad, but since he was a teacher Mom insisted that would threaten her potential popularity. She ran around outside before school like that bratty puppy I tried to save from my caninivorous neighbor, except that Mom was introducing herself to everyone.

“Hi, Jolly’s mom,” Juice said with a wave. “Hi, Jolly.”

“Out of my way, Mom,” I said, shoving her to one side when she stopped to greet Juice, thus blocking my direct view of my best friend. Mom then ran off and caught her leg on the leg of some Asian girl exactly the same height as Juice and me. Mom’s leg seemed to be stuck. In fact, Mom’s leg, the Asian girl, the top half of Juice’s body, and my head all seemed to be frozen in time, just like in one of those coloring book versions of the cartoon movies where some cute little airplane with a heart of gold saves the world.

I forget how Mom freed herself. What matters is that she dropped out at the end of the day because student-teacher relationships were illegal and she would have cost Dad his prestigious, high-paying job. What matters even more is that Mom, of all people, led Juice and me into friendship with Roachel Sute, the aforementioned Asian girl.

“Mind if I stroke your sleeve?” Roachel asked Juice by way of introduction after being freed from Mom’s leg. “I love yellow polyester.”

“That’s just because she’s your mom.” said Juice. “No one else can stand her. She’s a tolerance teacher; what can you expect?”

I became entranced by Roachel’s long, delicate, carefully-manicured index finger as she stroked Juice’s sleeve. I hadn’t been so fascinated by anything since watching that documentary on the invention of concert tickets. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “Look at that finger. I must have it.”

“But this is the finger I pick my teeth with,” said Roachel, flipping her eyebrows as she gave us a free demonstration. “How can I bear to part with it?”

“You don’t have a choice,” I said. “Juice is in her tough girl phase.”

“That’s right, missies,” Juice grumbled in a low, Rockyesque voice. “If y’all don’t gimme no fingas, I’ll give you my fist.”

“Eek!” Roachel and I shrieked in harmony. “What would we do with an ugly fist like that?”

The bell rang for homeroom, so I grabbed the first opportunity for stalling that I could think of. I grabbed Juice’s ugly left fist with my right hand and we each put our remaining hand on one of Roachel’s shoulders.

“Let’s teach Roachel how to flip over frontwards so she can star in a martial arts movie,” I squealed.

“What’s martial arts?” Roachel asked with a smile.

“Don’t you ever stop asking questions?” I snapped.

She did stop asking questions, by the way, and I've learned so much from her already! namely the following:

Turtle power!

Go Joe!

Raise your hand if you’re sure

I’m half-human and half-pink-cow

Always keep Juice in a plastic container

Eyes suck!

2008-11-10T17:28:00.001-05:00

I think my last blog post well illustrates how crappy my life had become. Not convinced? Here’s another example guaranteed to suck the pity out of anyone.

This weekend I sat at home alone with only a two-story house shielding me from raindrops of various sizes that were skiing healthily down our window panes. At first I had tried whiling away the time with exercise videos but got sick of the parts where the lady told me to try each one. Those moves were way to gymnasticky. So then once I finally found an alternative time-waster my mom came up to me and said, “Jolly, I wish you would stop reading wallpaper sample catalogs.”

“But they’re so easy,” I cried.

“The doctor says if you don’t give it up soon, you may choke because your allergy to dogs may be triggered by the smell of the samples.”

“Oh no! I’d better tell Juice to stop too.”

I dashed out of the house, thinking as I ran to Juice’s, “Maybe if I run fast enough the trees will stop throwing wet leaves at me. I hope it’s not too late!”

Juice met me at her front door in a purple sweatsuit. By that time the rain had stopped.

“Juice, we’ve got to stop reading wallpaper samples!” I panted.

“Just let me change clothes,” she said. “Meet me in the backyard. I want to swing while it’s still muddy outside.”

By the time I reached the backyard, Juice was already waiting for me on the tree swing. She was wearing red pants, a gray turtleneck, and a white leopard-print jacket.

“Why did you have to change your clothes, Juice?” I asked. “Sudden phase change?”

“No. My eyes leaked on the others.”

“Oh no!” I cried, kneeling beside her as she swung back and forth, nearly hitting me in the face with her right hip every swing. “The wallpaper samples have already struck! Is there anything I can do, my dear friend? Need a tissue?”

“It’s no use,” she sniffled as her eyes leaked black goo. “My doctor sent me a generic informational e-mail telling me I’ll have to have eye implants. My only comfort is sitting on this wet swing and pretending I’m being kissed.”

I watched as Juice’s leaking eye goo became clear. “If I were a boy, I’d kiss you, but I have a better idea,” I said. “I could give you my eyes. I’m sick of seeing my ugly face.”

“So am I.” Juice wept. “Plus I’ve always hated your eyes. They look like frogs. Still, I’d rather you be blind then me.”

“Thanks, Juice,” I said, stopping her swing and hugging her. “You can be my special seeing-eye dog, and I’ll give you a biscuit every time you roll over. Whoops!”

I had just realized that my eyes were leaking too.

Butt-stinky day

2008-11-07T21:23:00.001-05:00

Today I’m writing this while my cat looks on and scoffs at me like everyone else always does. My new electric chalk, which I’ve been praising so much in previous entries, electrified everyone in geometry class, even me. That was especially strange since I hadn’t even brought the chalk to school; it simply appeared and began writing on the chalkboard by itself: “It’s brave to be nice, expensive to be warm, and cold to be free.” My chalk earned me a detention even though I had no control over what it wrote, because my geometry teacher said its statements were too much like truth, which is banned in Jiltin High because it’s considered to be a form of religion. Fortunately detention is also banned at my school because it hurt some kid’s feelings once.

To cheer myself up I put glue on my band leader’s right hand during practice since he’s always covering his eyes with that hand when he looks in my direction. That went well, but my new fashionable skirt was so tight my butt ripped all the way up to my ribs in self-esteem class. It felt like a zipper unzipping and only hurt a little, but Mrs. Renkin, who is still wearing that frowny-face pin on her shirt every day, was offended by my huge wedgie and blamed the whole class for conforming to such dangerous fashions. She made everyone pay me so I could buy a new butt and she gave me permission to leave school early for butt shopping, but as I was in the hallway getting all my stuff out of my locker two teachers caught up in the winds of socialization saw a red pebble pop out of my head and started calling me Pebbles. I was mortified and jogged unevenly out the door as fast as I could. Then, on my way out, I saw the boy I loved trying to steal another girl’s books. So much for Mort Mervin.

I settled for the cheapest butt I could find since Ope’s Ice Cream Shop had just come out with a new flavor, Snowball Supreme, and I had to try it. Tastes just like snow. Definitely worth every dollar.

Now I think I’ll lick my redyed purple comforter. I hope my cat won’t watch. Mm. Luscious starch.

My cat just told me it peed where I was licking.

Electric Chalk

2008-10-31T17:17:00.001-04:00

I am so serious about electric chalk being the best thing ever invented. No other writing utensil even comes close. I should be the national spokeschick. I want to have electric chalk babies. End of story.

Congrats Juice!

2008-10-26T14:15:00.001-04:00

On your speed-ranting prowess!

I'm only cool with your victory because I love the second-place prize.

Electric chalk is the new black.

Witty Day

2008-10-24T22:04:00.001-04:00

Today Juice came to school with cheese molded in the shape of hearts stuck all over her dress. I almost didn’t walk home with her, but her mom was baking cookies.

“Cooking the hearts on my dress?” Juice joked as we entered her house.

“Yum yum, fiber,” I said.

These two comments are by far the wittiest things Juice and I have ever said.

“Oh no, it’s Jolly,” Juice’s mom moaned, pulling a sheet of freshly-baked cookies out of the oven. “She always eats all my chocolate chip cookies, the pig.”

“Hey, we cookies are alive! Don’t eat us!” the cookies screamed.

“I love eating alive cookies while watching my sister,” Juice said as her sister wailed, holding a Lick-N-Stick sticker book to her mouth.

“My tongue thtuck!” she cried.

“Too bad she’s still noisy,” I commented, successfully pulling off the second wittiest thing I’ve ever said. After I yanked the kid’s tongue off the book, I asked her if she loved me better than Juice.

“She can’t hear you,” Juice said. “I plugged her ears with cheese hearts from my dress.”

This wit competition was getting tight. Fortunately, Juice’s ex-boyfriend Smarty barged into the house saying, “Juice, I still love you. I brought you this.” He held out a spider in a jar.

“Ugh. I thought I dumped you,” Juice said, sticking out her tongue as we made our way upstairs to practice for our school’s upcoming recital race. Juice and I are going to compete directly against each other in the Academy Award acceptance speech category.

“I wish you hadn’t dumped that nice boy,” Juice’s mom said, stopping us mid-staircase. “That’s a rare species of spider he brought you.”

The answer Juice’s mom got was “Try to guess which one of us is speaking, Jolly or Juice. We’re both taking ventriloquism to improve our speed-ranting techniques.” The truth was that we were speaking in unison, but Juice’s mom didn’t care enough to guess.

“My mouth turned into a triangle during our attempt at ventriloquism,” Juice said as we entered her room and she tried to shut the door on Smarty.

“That’s what you get for dating a geometry wizard,” I scolded her. “You should have dumped him for Joely sooner. Then you would be sick of Joely by now and I could have him.”

“You’re just jealous because I got an A on our first geometry test and you thought it was a snack,” Juice smirked.

“I got to retake the test.”

“At least I dumped him,” Juice said, still smirking and holding Smarty off as he struggled to keep his head and one arm in Juice’s room.

“What a dork!” I laughed.

“It’s a great spider,” he said, responding to my compliment with an optimistic smile. “It even talks!”

“Yo,” said the spider.

most heartwarming day EVER

2008-10-10T22:57:00.001-04:00

For those of you who were asking, the library nerds never paid enough attention, so eventually we and our emotions took a hike elsewhere and Juice went on to another fashion phase.

This phase is called the watermelon phase, given her preference of colors. She even joked that her skin represented the seeds. She tolerates my teasing, but today another subject made her blow up at me completely, though she retained her bodily form. As we were walking home from school she told me to read the word on her shirt and I flatly refused, saying, “I can’t. I can’t read anything at all.”

“You can’t even read the word on my shirt?” she shouted.

“Of course not.” I smiled and turned away from her. “I’ve forsworn reading. I can’t read.”

“Yes, you can!” she screamed as she ran away from me. “Just because you’ve forgotten what words look like doesn’t mean you can’t read, Jolly!”

“Get a new outfit!” I called after her.

I stormed home from school thinking things like, “Reading is for idiots. Pulling up my skirt is so much more fun.” This would be a good time to point out that I am in a short-skirt phase.

Once at home, I marveled that my skirt didn’t slide down on the couch even when I propped my knees up. I figured that had something to do with my cat sleeping on my feet. After getting through several rounds of my new handheld video game, “Poet Elimination,” and giving up because Wordsworth just wouldn’t die, I opened a book to reassure myself of my immunity to reading, and realized that, shock of all shocks, there were words all over the pages of the book! They were really small. I decided to kiss the book just to see what would happen, and immediately my lips swelled up. “Maybe the book warned about that!” I thought. “Maybe I should read again. I keep thinking about Watermelon Juice.”

“Don’t knock me over, Jolly,” Mom said as I ran out the door at the same time she was entering the house. “I just won a day as prime minister of Canada. You should treat me with more respect and less running.”

“I have to run in this skirt so everyone can see my undies!” I cried.

Of course my best of friends was running toward me as well, consistent with what television commercials lead us to expect from everyday encounters.

“Juice!” I cried. “You really do look like a watermelon! That is so sad!”

“Jolly!” she cried back. “I kissed a book and my lips swelled up!”

We had a long, heartfelt talk about the entire situation up in my room, and Juice agreed to join me in forswearing reading. She added that she would end her watermelon phase if I would get rid of “that hideously ugly outfit.”

“Not till I look good naked, Juice,” I snorted. Then I turned to finish reading a magazine article about how to see your boyfriend in others you love.

“I can see myself in my parents,” I said after explaining the gimmicky premise to Juice. “I guess that means that I’m my own boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend does look like you,” Juice said, patting me on the hand. “But his idiot father wants him to break up with me. I heard them yelling back and forth yesterday as I was working on Joely’s tasting project in his room--you know, the one where he has to go around tasting everything. His father was saying, ‘Your idiot girlfriend made pee come out of the side of my head when she performed brain surgery on me! Plus she put my tie in a waffle iron!’”
I pretended to care, and then said, “There must be a boyfriend out there for me who looks like me.” I remembered a few days back to when my caninivorous neighbor told me I looked like Joely, the gorgeous young whippersnapper hunk she was after. I hoped Juice was picking up on my hints for her to break up with him for my sake.

“Tee hee,” Juice said, then suddenly halted her giggles. “Jolly, why did you let your mom in the room?”

“Somebody left the door open and I don’t know how to close it,” I shrugged as my mom opened my dresser drawers. “I don’t know why she keeps coming in and putting clothes away. Those aren’t even my clothes.”

“That’s right, Jolly, and I’m not even your mother,” she said, turning toward us. She began to glow all over. “I’m an angel, sent by the most-beloved television networks, to provide answers to all your problems. I’ve come to tell you, Juice, not to feel guilty about what you did to your boyfriend’s father. For a happy ending, I’ve arranged for the three of us to be in a toothpaste commercial together.”

“Nice lipstick,” I said to my fake Mom during the spontaneous and ill-prepared commercial shoot. Then I sniffed and embraced her. “I’ll never forget you, fake Mom,” I told her, “or the money I’m making from this commercial.”

Walks

2008-09-27T16:55:00.001-04:00

Juice was moaning at my kitchen table today, saying, “I can’t believe I ate an apple while I’m wearing cherries. This is such an inconsistent phase!”

“I can’t believe you’re studying from a blank notebook,” I said. “Nothing you do is consistent, Juice, but I take French. I’m smart.”

“Are you smart enough to know what a ‘walk’ is?” Juice asked.

“Um, no.”

That’s when Juice introduced me to the world of “walks.”

“A walk is when you walk somewhere, enjoying the outdoors,” she explained as we walked toward Greasy Burgers.

“Makes sense,” I said, pushing the glass door open without using the pushbar. “I love putting my greasy fingerprints on Greasy Burger’s glass doors,” I told her. “That makes sense too. See how logical I am?”

“You wanna talk logical?” Juice smirked. “Look. When I touch this super-size cola painted on the wall, it looks like I’m holding it.”

“Big deal,” I said.

Borel then interrupted us, gushing that the library had received a new supply of French books.
“Floating hearts come out of them when you open them,” she said.

So Juice and I are heading to the library, figuring the floating hearts will visibly express our love for the dreamy nerds who work there. Wish us luck!

Puppies my butt!

2008-09-13T12:54:00.001-04:00

Last week one of my next-door neighbors put her dog up for adoption after finding out that she had caninivorous tendencies. As soon as I heard the news I ran over to her house and rapped on the door. She wasn’t home, but I came back later and told her that I wanted to adopt her dog.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” she exclaimed.

“Me too,” I said. “I love dogs. It’s fashionable.”

She brought me into her house and brought forth an adorably tiny lump of fluff and flesh.

“Here’s my puppy-shnuppy-cuppy-fluppy-yuppy.”

“He’s got dots for eyes!” I squealed.

I toted home my new pet, set him on the floor, and watched him jump up and down in front of me. “I’m so glad I didn’t let her eat you,” I said. “But stop sticking your tongue out at me.”

“Eat me,” barked the puppy.

That was only the beginning of my problems with that stupid dog. He proceeded to reassemble my mom’s nasty-smelling citrosa plants, which I had toppled over and kicked around in hopes that Mom would think the stinky things committed suicide. Then, when I tried to feed the dog, he wouldn’t eat.

“You’re going to eat these shoes whether you like it or not!” I screamed, trying to shove a heel sole into his little mouth.

“You can’t make me,” he barked, backing away from me.

Then I decided to teach him to fly so that he could migrate with those droppings-happy sparrows come winter, but I had no luck. Finally I called up my caninivorous neighbor, who rushed over with a bag of groceries, saying, “So you say he wants to be eaten?”

“Yes!” he barked.

“Munch away,” I panted.

Pus = Profit

2008-08-16T20:18:00.001-04:00

Last week I was lounging in a yellow inflatable kiddie pool in my back yard one afternoon when Juice, in her prairie dog phase, rose out of the ground and rested her cheek on my legs, which were hanging over the side of the pool. When I asked Juice why she had risen out of the ground she said, “So I can flick pool water at you like so.”

She began flicking, but I smiled with my eyes closed and said, “Sorry, I’m not annoyed. Plus, I can’t feel my legs. I disconnected them.”

“Gross!” Juice shrieked, causing me to open my eyes. “This isn’t pool water! Your legs are pussing! I think some pus went down my shirt!”

“I’m growing pus to sell to florists. I figured if hangnails will grow a decent amount of pus, imagine how much detached legs will grow!”

“What do flower shops want pus for?” Juice asked, gazing over my increasingly pus-filled pool as I stirred my precious white commodity with my hands. “Pus can’t be more valuable than my little bunny Foofoo,” she added, holding up two fingers to form her current finger friend.

“The presence of my pus grows white roses, which are valuable,” I said.

Needless to say, Juice stripped to her bathing suit and joined me. “Golly, Jolly,” she said, sinking her body deeper into the pus. “Detaching one’s legs is fun.”

“Help me detach my arms,” I squealed, glad for the encouragement. After Juice obeyed, I leaned my head back against the poolside and said, “Now I can grow twice as much pus. I’ll be rich! I can finally buy hairless armpits!”

“What, is there a sparrow town meeting up in that tree or something?” Juice asked, tilting back her head as well.

I looked above me. We were in the direct shade of my oak tree, which seemed to be holding more sparrows than leaves. Then my vision was blurred when a white substance other than pus plinked down on my face.

“One bird dropping and you’re scared out of the pool,” Juice smirked at me as we watched from inside my house a few minutes later. The sparrow convention was raining down their droppings all over my yard, contaminating my pus pool beyond repair. “How many birds are there?” Juice asked.

I leaned my reattached arms on the window sill and said, “They’ll be done soon.”

They've been there for SEVEN FRICKIN DAYS!!!!!!!

My Rankings of Sir Walter Scott novels

2008-08-11T17:29:00.001-04:00

Due to popular demand (if by popular you mean Juice, and I do), below is my ranking of Sir Walter Scott novels. As most of you know, he is my second favorite author after Ryan Rhodes, author of Life Pus. I'm still holding out for the movie version of Life Pus, though Rhodes has apparently turned down multiple offers so far. Anywho, the list:

1. Quentin Durward: I just love positive protagonists. None of these modern "life sucks cuz I don't get what I want but at least I found myself along the way" craptagonists. Quentin is optimistic, idealistic, and his cuteness just leaps off the pages. Plus he finds true love. Too bad no GOOD movie was ever made from this story. I did see the old crappy movie version, and am still having anger-management issues as a result of that butchery. A+

2. The Fair Maid of Perth: This book has it all--romance, violence, drama, violence, death, kidnapping, violence, a hero who kicks butt, and a heroine who converts from anti-violence to "Oh, violence has merit." We'll never see a book that awesome again. A+

3. Ivanhoe: Juice will disagree with me because of one or two chapters where she had no idea what was going on, but this was the first Scott book I read so it will always have a special place in my heart. Who needs characterization when you have a medieval setting? A+

4. The Pirate: I loved the characters, loved the ending, and unlike alot of Scott's books that I ranked much lower, this one had a plot that actually moved, and you got where it was going before the midway point of the book. Always a plus. A+

5. Count Robert of Paris: Again, I got interested in this one pretty quickly. It helped that it was shorter and had a medieval setting. Scott does this setting well. A

6. Peveril of the Peak: This is my favorite of Scott's 17th century novels. The plot sounds dumber than it is when I describe it, but it really is a good read. A

7. Waverley: Scott's first novel, and a very good one. The female characters were underdeveloped, and it was a little predictable, but the plot moved well and kept me interested. A

8. Castle Dangerous: I'm a little surprised I placed this book so high. It was Scott's last novel, and I did get a sense he was a little tired of novel writing during the book. It took a little while for the story to get going, and the end seemed rather implausible, but it was a good way to spend a few long flights during vacation. A-

9. Redgauntlet: This book's title makes it sound a lot cooler than it is. It's actually a book that's half made of letters between two best friends who just graduated, and one of them ends up getting kidnapped, so the other one goes on a quest to find him. The epistolary parts get a little cheesy, but I really liked it for all that. I'm a sucker for epistolary cheese, I guess. A-

10. The Talisman: Again, title much cooler than book. The talisman has little to do with the story and was probably just chosen in order to sell the book. There's a ton of Saladin-worship in it, so if you're a Saladin fan you might enjoy it more than I did. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I get it already, Saladin is perfect. B+

11. The Betrothed: More boring, romantic girls might like this book alot more than I did. Very cliche plot about a couple in love, but she's betrothed to his uncle. Gee, I don't know where that's going. The medieval period makes up for some. B+

12. A Legend of Montrose: This title is actually accurate. It's a short book, so maybe it would have been ranked higher if the story was more fleshed out. Or it might have been ranked lower, because the story would have moved more slowly. B+

13. The Fortunes of Nigel: I liked this book, but I hated Nigel. Biggest baby ever. Dude couldn't even dress himself, the priss. He didn't deserve a happy ending, but I was happy for him anyway. B

14. Woodstock: Rather contrived plot that takes place during the time of Cromwell. Some good fight scenes and other dramatic scenes. Nothing special. B

15. Anne of Geierstein: This book is one of Scott's weird ones that kind of take place outside of a bigger story, or multiple bigger stories. The action is very sporadic. It's like Heidi with a little political intrigue and war tossed in there. B

16. Guy Mannering: Scott's third book. I liked the characters, but the plot was all over the place. It's like he made it up as he went along, which would be ok if the plot ended up being plausible. He really should have made fewer of his books about kidnappings. B-

17. The Black Dwarf: Like A Legend of Montrose, lengthening this book might have made it better or worse. It was fine for what it was. B-

18. The Heart of Midlothian: This is supposed to be one of Scott's best novels. It was fine, but the female characters were a bit overkill. This one could have been alot shorter. B-

19. The Abbott: I would have liked these characters much better in a different story. Basically they're stuck guarding Mary Queen of Scots the whole time, until she gets taken away to be killed or something. Mmm-kay. B-

Everything below this point should not be read unless you really want to waste your time.

20. Rob Roy: The worst of Scott's titles that were obviously chosen to sell books. Perhaps it wasn't his fault, but come on, Rob Roy was a tertiary character in this story at best, and the real plot isn't a speck as interesting as anything Rob Roy was involved in, and the end was such a rip-off. D+

21. The Antiquary: Scott's second novel, written solely for Scott's enjoyment of writing about a character who was a geek about all thing ancient. The plot teetered between boring and nonexistent, but what there was of plot was predictable. D+

22. The Monastery: This book had potential, but it sucked. D+

23. A Tale of Old Mortality: Do not read this book. It was an excellent book up until the last chapter, and then it became the stupidest, most cliche and unsympathetic book ever. You begin the book being set up to think that Old Mortality is a character in the book, and that one of the male characters will become him. Turns out Old Mortality is NOT a character in the book, he was just used to set up the story and has nothing further to do with it, causing most of the interest of the book to be taken away. I hate this book. The ending makes me so angry! F

24. The Bride of Lammermoor: It's pretty much like the opera, only not as good. F

25. Kenilworth: This was praised as one of Scott's best novels. Huh? Why? The only decent thing in it was two tertiary characters. F

26. St. Ronan's Well: Scott's only contemporary novel. No one in the history of mankind liked it, including Scott himself. F-

27: Chronicles of the Canongate: A couple lame short stories. F-

Vicious Pirate Trainees Suck!

2008-08-02T20:16:00.001-04:00

We've ended our stint as Vicious Pirate Trainees mainly because they changed the dress code. The bigwigs kept the red, horizontally-ribbed shirt but replaced the rest of the wardrobe with khaki shorts. I’m all for wearing khaki shorts on my butt, but wearing additional pairs as earrings, bracelets, a hat, a belt, and a necklace was a bit much for me.

So today I was sitting in the park with my mother. She was sitting on the seat of a park bench, and I was trying to balance on the seat’s back so as to distance myself from her as we read separately. I managed to keep my balance by fitting my toes into a pair of paper cups littered beneath the bench. While we were reading, along came Borel.

“Hi Jolly and Mrs. Rogers,” she gushed. “You look like you’re in uncomfortable positions.”

Mom, whose legs were crossed several times over, said, “I really have to pee, but I’m trying to shrink these pants.”

“Shrink your pants? You’re too old for such trends!” Borel squealed. “You’re aging as we speak!”
“But according to The Idiot’s Guide to Fake Youth, age can be fought,” Mom replied with a wrinkle-ridden smile. “Not with scalpels or acids, but with meditation and a nighttime neck brace named Fluffy.”

“Ok, I won’t say anything. Anyway . . . Jolly, you’re reading Pork Hockey? Wasn’t that book banned by the Vicious Pirate Trainee Association?” Borel gasped, looking at me.

“I don’t care,” I said, leaving my uncomfortable seat. “I find it to be a very moving account of a girl who’s a loser but finds that she has a gift for playing hockey as long as a frozen pork chop is used as the puck, which conflicts with her Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Besides, I’ve quit the Vicious Pirate Trainees.”

“Oh pooh!” she gushed. “No real Vicious Pirate Trainee would ever quit. Look at me. I’ve never taken off this red shirt since I joined. It may have cost me my friends, what with the odor and the festering sores, but I’ve been elevated to the rank of hypnotee. I gape like a big screen actress and my hands take on a life of their own.”

“Don’t listen to Borel, Jolly,” said Mom. “Vicious Pirate Trainees may have clout and fan clubs, but they can’t fight age. Here.” She held open her book for me to see. “Gaze at these words of wisdom and--oh wait, this is a blank page for notes.”

“Borel, wait,” I said as she began to turn and strut away. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather be a Vicious Pirate Trainee than bond with my mom. Help!”

“Forget it,” she scoffed. “You had your chance. I’m going tooth shopping, and then I’m going to convince the association never to readmit you!”

We watched Borel strut away singing.

“Looks like she’s composing a song about your failures as a Vicious Pirate Trainee,” Mom said to me. “This is all my fault, isn’t it sweetie? I feel ready to cry. Oh wait . . . no, that’s just gas. Oops. That one didn’t sound too good.”

I regained my uncomfortable seat and edged further from my gaseous mom as she muttered, “Must shrink pants! Must not wet pants beforehand. Now my slimmed neck is sinking into my lungs. Aack! The trials of youth!”

“Ha!” I said, my face resting on my palm. “You think you’ve got problems? I have a wedgie.”

Vicious Pirate Trainees

2008-07-19T20:15:00.001-04:00

Summer hasn't been all fun and games for Juice and me. One day we were just walking along the outskirts of a cemetery when little stars started bubbling out of the many scrapes on our arms. (The outskirts of that cemetery were a pretty hazardous trek, let me tell you.) Our predicament outraged me because it was so unrealistic, and I am consistently a realistic and logical person. Juice, currently in her Jewish gay man phase, said we were at fault for examining our nails so much, which prevented us from watching where we stepped. My response was to puke my grape popsicle all over my shirt.

When we reached my house we tried to scrub off the star-bubbling scrapes in the kitchen sink, but the boiling water splashed soap in Juice’s eyes, making her mad. Our efforts were only partly successful; the stars stopped bubbling for a while, but the scrapes remained. We sat outside on my front doorstep, hoping the scrapes would fade in the sun. Waiting for scrapes to fade away makes people pensive, so before long Juice said, “You know, we should stop slouching so much. We might suffocate and die.”

I didn’t respond. I was privately wishing Juice would stop scraping out her earwax with her fingers. I looked away from her and promptly groaned. “Oh no. Here comes Borel, trotting up to us like a twenty-year-old gymnast. Aren’t you annoyed that she copies off of your patented tendency toward stupid phases?”

“At least she has geeky boots,” said Juice with a smirk.

“Why the frowns?” Borel gushed. I don’t think we were frowning.

Suddenly I recognized her outfit: the red, horizontally-ribbed shirt, the blank name tag, the yellow tablecloths tied around her waist and head, the black pants, the onion ring jewelry, and the shoulder sling-shot. “Borel!” I gasped. “Are you one of those Vicious Pirate Trainees?”

“The ones that put glue on people’s toilet seats?” Juice asked.

“But of course!” Borel gushed. “I’ve also stolen people’s underwear for my own personal use, and killed a minor celebrity!”

“And probably put itchy powder in a hamburger!” Juice called after Borel as she strutted away. “Ooh, I’m so impressed.”

“Those stars are coming out of my cuts again,” I sighed, holding up my hands.

“I’ve always wanted to glue people’s butts to things like toilets,” Juice responded.

So we are Vicious Pirate Trainees for the time being, at least until Juice progresses to her next phase. We had to cook until we were promoted, but fortunately all our ingredients were stolen: suede shoes, pooper-scoopers, bumper stickers, etc. After a week of kitchen duty we got to moon people entering the cemetery, but Juice could never do it right. She blamed it on a force of habit; she wasn’t used to pulling down her pants without pooping or peeing, so her mooning victims got an extra bonus.

Summertime

2008-07-05T20:13:00.001-04:00

This summer has been a blast so far. I've been basking in the sun so long my arms developed super solar powers, enabling me to stretch them far enough to touch my house from our backyard hammock. Juice has been coming by every day, now in her “Save Saturn” phase complete with a T-shirt she had designed herself, depicting a cartoonish version of Saturn. I told her the shirt was ugly.

“Nothing compares to my magical powers from the solar rays,” I said to her one day after rejecting her suggestion of a round of potato golf. “I can change the colors of the sky and the house. Look, I even made a rosebush appear and a window by the back door vanish. I’m awesome all by myself. Who needs guys like Jiff and Smarty?” (Smarty is Juice’s equivalent to Jiff.)

“Not me,” said Juice, standing up and turning away from me. “However, I intend to go to King’s Opinion with them, let them pay for everything, and then ditch them cruelly. Have fun being uncruel to dorky guys . . . or would you like to come, Jolly?”

“Must come!” I panted. “Must be cruel to dorks!”

We've gone to King’s Opinion with those guys like twenty times this summer, and they just don't get it. Every time we went with them we ditched them, and we told them that we intended to do as much.

“They’re so stupid,” Juice laughed with me as we were visibly ditching them on one such occasion.

“We’re never going to sincerely enjoy their company.” I laughed loud enough for Jiff and Smarty to hear.

“Who’s going to pay for this floating popcorn, Smarty?” I could hear Jiff ask.

“I don’t have any money left,” Smarty said. “No wonder they keep ditching us.”

You see? I told you they don't get it!

My day? MY DAY??????

2008-05-09T20:11:00.001-04:00

My new bust-enhancing backpack is making me feel confident enough to flirt with the flowers, which in turn has made the sky say to me, “I think I’m gonna puke.”

Today, a cheerful bird’s song that I heard from the window I sat near during third period helped me to forget that my desk had been stolen. That in turn inspired me to barge into band practice despite being expelled for telling the director what he already knew--that no one loved him. He looked pretty downcast and desolate when I snatched one guy-girl’s flute out of his/her hands and made it smile in tune to the bird’s song.

In our one o’clock study hall together, Jiff was smacking me so hard my paper airplane hat flew off my head.

Walking home with Juice, we showed off our bust-enhancing backpacks to a scurvy sky. We could actually hear it gag.

Coming home wasn’t too pleasant, though. I found Mom spray painting light blue over the crescent moon I had carved in our coffee table. She threatened me at vacuum-point to hop up the stepladder and clean the chandelier, all while balancing on one leg. Fortunately she rewarded me with a trendy glue pencil, although inhaling the pencil made me as pukey as the sky, so I laid my face down in my glue writing before it dried on my homework. I can still see the freckles I had to leave on that page as I tore my face away.

Messy entry

2008-03-15T18:15:00.001-04:00

In lieu of a real blog post, I've decided to type alot of gibberish to fill up my life's blank pages.

patronizing Philadelphia cheesecake sausage lamb ham entry face milk turtles potato pancakes Joy lemon eight force fart cake dial nose error pizza pencil twelve cup camera lotion monitor freckles Juice breath skin elves Brian nerd cheeks butt neck knees wrist computer post-its Brittany Spears fourteen paper stapler garbage Paris Hilton Drudge Report earrings bangles mortician fingers typing numbers calendar spitwad dollar sign money friction plethora ludicrous asterisk tennis makeshift airplane rocket buttons glue Jiff necklace question worthy enemy retard tower yuppie underwear ignorant opera palace arrogant saucy depth forks spoons grace head Jolly ketchup lipstick xanthophyll zethyr cookies varnish baby nuggets unworthy machinery acorns math studies books cartilege depression ring alchohol purple monky dishwasher twirly maggot twin potato twilight crane

Valentine's Day

2008-02-15T23:09:00.001-05:00

Yesterday my locker vomited out not only my spare fleas but an envelope. Juice was in the middle of saying that maybe if she wasn’t in her pretty-in-pink hunchback phase she might be able to get a date. I was saying, “No way. You’re too ugly. Unless you won some beauty pageant for pear-shaped chics you couldn’t get a date with a chicken muscle. Hark! What’s this?” I picked up the vomited envelope and opened it.

“Maybe if my lipstick didn’t always match my clothes--” Juice was babbling on.

Inside the envelope was a valentine from Brat, the school’s most logical dreamboat and captain of the fishing team, saying that my face was as lovely as a basketball with peas for eyes and that he loved me so much he painted half the school yellow. “I hate yellow,” I squealed, hugging my inflated rubber cheeks with my hands, “but I love him! Hearts are floating around my head, Juice!”

“Maybe if I smile provocatively at him he’ll love me too,” she said, straightening her phase-enforced hunchback posture. “I’m desperate.”

Always true to my best friend, I met up with Brat outside after school and told him, “Brat, I love your card, but you’ll have to share your love with Juice too.” I was confident enough in his logical love to manipulate it in that way.

“Are you nuts?” he said, backing into a protruding brick corner of the building. “That pretty-in-pink hunchback? I’d rather carry books in my fly. Observe!” With that he snatched the valentine from my hand, shoved his books in said fly, and ran away from me, saying, “This is uncomfortable. Hey you! Girl with the nice butt! This is for you. I hope you like guys who wear purple pants.”

“He unzipped his fly sorta-kinda in your presence,” Juice commented. “At least you can remember.”

I told her to shut up. What made matters worse, once I got home I found that Mom had gotten her hair redone, so my sobbing refrain became: “Your hair looks like snakes, and why is my stupid cat smiling? I should have left it at the pawn shop. Oh Mommy, Brat loved me for a moment.”

“I’m sick of snake jokes,” Mom said. “I like my hair.”

Just then the doorbell rang, but it was only my nerdy boyfriend.

“You’re not Brat,” I told him. “Leave me alone, Jiff.”

“I don’t know how,” he shrugged. “But guess what? I got my palms read today and I’m going to win a shoelace! Why don’t we hitchhike our way to the Shoelace Lovers Festival downtown? They have shoe-flavored ice cream floats.”

“With shoelace straws?” I exclaimed. “I’m so there!”

So we spent the evening having staring contests over a shared shoe-flavored float until my eyes dried up. I think Jiff was spitting into the float and I was sucking up his spit.

winter slump

2008-01-27T02:05:00.000-05:00

I still can’t seem to get that plaster out of my mouth, but I can talk more coherently now. I was complaining to Mom today that my bath towel kept turning into a giant sponge. Mom just told me to go jump over a candlestick. Then she made fun of my robe and how the sponge towel was wrapped around my head, saying “You can wear that to school on Middle East day.” Little does she know my robe and towel happen to be the latest fashion trend from the Parisian dumpsters, and I have every intention of wearing that ensemble to school.

I stormed into the living room, where Dad was doing arm curls with a piece of firewood. After he strained his back, Mom gave him an “I told you so” slap in the face, and to vent his feelings he started pinching my cheek like a maniac. I told him to stop and he said, “Call me a maniac one more time and this cheek comes off and goes into my mouth.”

“Stop making fun of me, you badly-dressed weasel!” I screamed.

“She has no taste in clothes, honey,” Dad said to Mom.

“Maybe she hasn’t tasted enough clothes to be able to distinguish,” said Mom, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s feed her.”

Then my parents changed their minds and once again decided to eat me for a snack.

“Not with my turban,” I pleaded.

“Go get the pepper, honey,” Mom told Dad. “We’re going to have a feast. I’ll toss her in the fire.”

After they tasted me and whined that I tasted like cafeteria water, they decided to make me smile through my flute instead, while they sang, “One hundred gospel greats on the wall, one hundred gospel greats, sing one badly, drive people madly . . . .” Aargh! I still have that in my head!

Later I bit my tongue so hard while trying to pull a s’more apart that I cried.

While typing this up, the two halves of my brain have been fighting with each other.

Right Brain: I rule because I revel in mushy love.
Left Brain: I rule because I can calculate my superiority.

They both shut up once I turned on my new blow dryer. It’s so strong it can shove my mouth to one side.

post-Christmas stuff

2008-01-02T23:53:00.000-05:00

Today was my first day back at school after break. Mrs. Sute (whom everyone laughs at because her name is Polly Esther) gave a bowl-cut to some guy who sat in front of me in tolerance class. She was scolding him, “Young man, the next time you don’t want the sides of your head shaved, try not making fun of my outfit.” She was wearing a bright pink suit, but I didn’t laugh much because I was still daydreaming about my vacation.

I still can't believe that after all the Christmas shopping I did, all I bought were some empty cardboard boxes and a mini-breadstick that I had mistaken for a toaster pastry crescent roll. Then on Christmas Eve I got my holidays confused and dressed up for Halloween instead. My parents and I spent Christmas Eve making dozens of hamburgers, absorbing the grease from the hamburgers by covering them with dish soap. I cleverly wrapped up my radio as a gift so Mom couldn’t tell I was listening to ButtLovers, whom she hates. Dad tried to hang foil stars in the window like he does every year, but I had deliberately moved the Christmas tree in the way of the window--tee hee! After Christmas I used our greeting card collection as toilet paper, but Mom made me wash them all and hang them out to dry.

The only interesting gift I received for Christmas is a lip liner pencil that I can also use as an eraser, but it makes my armpits sweat so much I've been constantly drying them by our fireplace. That's ok; I've been using my time by the fire to practice clawing like a cat in the absence of Whitey, whom I had to pawn off in order to buy presents. I'm getting pretty good at clawing too, though it keeps Jiff from trying to kiss me.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-22T17:32:00.000-05:00

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.

Christmas cookies!

2007-12-16T17:26:00.000-05:00

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.

what's wrong:

2007-12-09T16:09:00.000-05:00

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.

Stop asking me!

2007-12-02T15:32:00.000-05:00

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.

Borel again

2007-11-18T01:23:00.000-05:00

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!”

Speaking of fashion mistakes....

2007-11-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

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.

Mondays suck too!

2007-10-23T02:43:00.000-04:00

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".

Heroes jumps the shark?

2007-10-09T12:04:00.001-04:00

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.

Jiff sucks!

2007-10-06T02:25:00.000-04:00

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.

Heroes thoughts

2007-10-03T17:35:00.000-04:00

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.

Heroes thoughts

2007-09-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

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

Parents

2007-09-22T17:39:00.001-04:00

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!

boyfriend troubles

2007-09-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

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.

My first day of high school ever!

2007-08-29T01:01:00.000-04:00

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.

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-08-27T15:19:00.000-04:00

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.