skipping class.

lolz.

failing out right before i graduate ftw.

everything going right in my life.

can't imagine why so miserable.

would like to nap for three days while the world on pause.

what to do.

Spent too much money on a very short trip to Colorado. Need to breathe some fresh mountain air and stay with an amazing family.

Will be great if I can get over crippling guilt over spending money on myself. Why is it so much easier to send my mother to Disney World than sending myself to anywhere?

everything i ded

LOL

SRSLY DYING

LOL

PITY POst

convincing urself u r the worst person ever can really bring a girl down.

LOL

SO MANY THINGS TO SAYYYY

WILL BULLET POINT. 

1. I am going to graduate this yeeear! Will do the whole graduation ceremony thang in June (the 10th. y'all should comeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and then take summer classes to finish up them credits. CRAZY

2. Maybe moving back to Boston next year. 

3. Was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO jeeked last night. Haven't smoked for like two million years then got SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO high like I did when I first started smoking. Awesome. 

4. Will be home March 31st for like a week. Will be slightly busy with the family thing but PLAYYY WIT MEEE.

5. Three bands played a show at my house last night. Was very fun and will happen more often. Very Olympia. 

6. I am very ready to graduate college. Not that I don't luuuuuuuv my college but I feel very much like I've had my college experience and I'm ready to move on. It's brilliant how nicely it is all getting timed out. 

7. S&M-- Rihanna. Play it over and over obsessively for the rest of your week. It is great. You're Welcome. 

8. This past week or so has arguably been one of the best of my liiiiiiiiiife. I haven't been horribly miserable nor have I had the energy of a thousand suns. I have been very balanced. It is amazing how easy life can be when I am living it as I should be. The only thing is I feel very rushed to finish everything I've been wanting to get done while I'm still in a place of functioning. Been doing a lot of reflecting on this but have not reached any conclusions. 

9. I MIISSSSS YOU. 

10. Spring is coming. Mixed feelings on the subject. Spring is great but there are perks to winter too.

11. Spring break is also coming. Will be nice. A lot of people are just staying around town for most of it with little overnight getaways. Been invited to a couple of them so I will probably go to San Juans for a couple of days then cabin by Mount Baker for a couple of days. Spend the rest of the time hangin around here. It's nice because my spring break is like two weeks. A solid period of rest.

12. EDUCATION REFORM.  I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT. I believe it will be my life's work. It's dumb because my sister also wants to work with education reform. And thats so gross to me that we would both be doing the same thing. I'm not sure why I think its gross but it is definitely the feeling of "gross" that I am feeling about it. I'm sure we have radically different view about how to change the education system and I would LOOOOOVE to have a nice lively debate about it with her but lively debates usually end up with her getting very upset and bursting into tears and storming off. Probably because my arguments are bullet proof and she gets frustrated at how wise her little sister is. Most likely. 

13. It will be nice to live in Boston for a little bit I think. I will get to see all of y'all which will be nice since I see you guys like once a year for a few days. But mainly I will see my brother more. It's funny because I'm not even sure all of you have met him. I'm pretty sure many of you haven't and even if you had it was probably for like two seconds. But he is my faaaaaavorite brother in ALLLLLL the world. It's super frustrating because there is really not way to stay in contact with him while I'm away. We were always very close growing up (in a weird  he's autistic so we don't hang out but when either of us are upset we try to comfort each other sort of way). I'm always very worried he will forget about me or something. But he still asks for me sometimes which is nice to know that he thinks about me. 

14. It's also weird to think that I could possibly stop living here in a few months. I was thinking about how much of a life I have built for myself here. How many friends I've made. Its kind of absurd. There are all these things that I do everyday that are just part of my routine. I take the bus every day. I pay my rent. Pay the bills. Bills! I have bills to pay! I'm one of those people who have to pay bills. Like one of those Real People. I hang out with Maggie a lot. When she goes to bed her roommates give me beer and whiskey and make me food and we stay up till 3 am watching bad movies or the twilight zone, playing apples to apples or nintendo 64 jeopardy. I have dinner nights with Nina where we make delicious food and drink cheap wine. I have pierogi making parties with the two Mellisas. We have potlucks at Rachel and Andy's. I drop by Melanie, Emma and Adrienne's house occasionally. Jules and Jared and I hang out in my room. I go to Anna's house and usually just lay in their bed and eavesdrop on Benji and Anna and Jesse's conversations and music. Jake comes over and we play. I go to bars downtown. We play beer pong at Avery's. I do all these things and none of these things because I don't have time for it all! I see everyone on the weekends where we host parties. I have school. I go to class (even though some people don't believe me). I learn about advanced electromagnetism and quantum mechanics and differential equations and linear algebra. I can find the laplacian of equations in cylindrical coordinates. I can derive cylindrical coordinates. I can do all these things! And I do all these things! I live here and do all these things because this is my life. I can't imagine leaving it but I certainly cannot imagine staying here forever. There is a traveler in me. 

15. I don't need much. I don't need to make all this money to buy all these things because I don't need anything. I need some satisfying food. I need people. I need to learn. I need to do something. I need to go places. I need to have somewhere to sleep. I don't need much else. 

16. That said, I have all this stuff. I have clothes for miles. I have infinitely less clothes than some people but it still feels like TOO MUCH. But I wear everything I have. But if I didn't have it would I miss it? I have nail polish, I have some necklaces, and I have all these shoes. I will keep it all until my lifestyle demands otherwise. 

17. This is very long and I am just sort of rambling about thoughts in my head. YOU LOVE IT. 

18. On the topic about friends, I never even THOUGHT about how many PLACES I have friends. I have all of y'all in and around Boston of course. I have everyone in Olympia. And all these Olympia people come from everywhere. Hawaii, Ohio, Washington, Washington DC, California, Colorado. Jules is moving to Chicago. I have befriended the families of Kelsea and Avery. I am friends with Avery's friends from the San Juans. I have people from many places. I want it to stay that way. I will need to visit these people and go to these places. 

19. I worry about getting depressed again. It happens often. I can't start a new job in a new place (even if it is Boston, it will be new) when I can't do the most basic things. I worry about this a lot. If I started a new job in a new place tomorrow I could do it and be great at it. But who knows what will be happening come September? Sanity is a gift and I treat it as such. It makes me feel insane to say that. 

20. I don't care what most other people think. I care about what people who matter think. These are true things. 

21. I will be 21 soon. I will be turning 21 ten days after I graduate college. I hate my birthday. I'm a brat about my birthday I think. I wish I wasn't a brat about it but I don't think I know how. I also think that I should be able to be a brat about my birthday. But I think that is what birthdaybratme says. 

22. I am passionate about education reform because I had to do so much thinking in college but what I like to do. Why should I just be figuring it out in college? Why shouldn't I have been given the opportunity for that in elementary school? And in middle school? And in high school? Needham High School was a Good School. Everyone graduates from there. The teachers are Good. People get into Ivy League schools. I was a Good Student in a Good School. I took all the hardest classes. I got all the best grades. By all accounts I am a success story from the Public School System. And that means nothing. Behind the scenes, I did nothing throughout high school. I sat through class and did pretty much nothing else. Nothing excited me so I didn't put any effort into anything. I read none of the assigned reading. My homework was done in the hour before school in the morning. I managed to get good grades because I am very good and making it look like I should get good grades. So even when the education system "works" it doesn't work. And when,  by their own standards, it "doesn't work", its absurd. The first part of your life is so defined by your school experience, its so important to get it right. I will travel the country and the world and teach at schools of all flavors and I will create the perfect system and SAVE THE WORLD. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

23. I am going to eat Vietnamese Sandwiches with Anna and Benji soon. Have I mentioned that yet? It's super exciting. 

24. I have this super sick obsession with Subway. It isn't even that I love their sandwiches that much, but I'm obsessed. It's something about not being allowed to eat there as a child I guess. Which is weird because I wasn't allowed to eat lots of things as a tyke but I'm not obsessed with any of them. But I guess Subway stuck. I literally am obsessed with it. I think about it like, all the time. I mention this because Kelsea has a giftcard to there and we are going on a Subway date sometime this week. 

25. I am actually in kelsea's bed right now. She has an insanely comfortable mattress topper. And a fully functioning laptop.

26. I will tell you ALL ABOUT MY day. 

8:30 am- woke up still very drunk, drunk dialed the usual crowd with kelsea. 

9:30 am- crawled up to kelsea's room where nina was sleeping, got into bed and snuggled with nina. then kelsea got into bed too and we watched Skins Season four, the last episode. 

10:30 am- kelsea and nina left and I started working on my project. Analyzing the magnetic field of the permanent magnet motor my group and I built. While listening to Rihanna and Nicki Minaj.

11:30 am- Breakfast! I ate some brie (SPECIAL BONUS PURCHASE COURTESY OF ANNA FINDING THE BARGAIN HUNTER AT GROCERY OUTLET. ONE DOLLAR OFF. MAKING ALLLL THIS BRIE ONLY ONE DOLLAR. Love me some Grocery Outlet) with french bread from the on campus food bank. I drank it with some unsweetened iced tea. I remembered to take my vitamins and then I ate a little apple sauce. I watched Brothers & Sisters on Hulu while I ate. I thought about how much I love brie. Because it's a lot. 

12:30 pm- I worked a little more on my project. Then I got distracted by facebook. And by blogging. 

It is now 2:10 and I am blogging. 

2:45 pm- I will catch the bus where I will meet Anna and Benji then we will go to Nammy's- the new local vietnamese sandwich shop. 

Whatevr o'clock- I will return home and digest while working on my project. I really like analyzing data. It's dumb.

Very soon after- I will clean the bathroom. I WILL clean the bathroom. I WILLLLLLL clean the bathroom. I need to clean the bathroom. 

After I CLEAN THE BATHROOM o'clock- I will read Copenhagen, a play about Bohr and Heisenberg. But most likely I will crawl into Kelsea's bed and make her watch a movie with me. 

26. I can't be positive why I'm still doing this. It is a combination of project-working procrastination and waiting to catch the bus time. You get to know ALL ABOUT MY LIFE.

27. It is Week 10 which means lots of work to do. Finals this week, final presentation, final final final. 

28. I like who I am. 

29. I like you.

30. Beep

31. I think I said everything I can say actually. EVERYTHINGGG EVER. 

YOU SHOULD TELL ME ALL ABOUT YOUR LIVES NOW. I WANT TO KNOW IT ALL. 

I think I was going on the basis that I would want to know all this information about you so I figured you would want to know this information about me. But I think I forgot about my love of the mundane details of people's lives. So maybe you did not like some of that. But that is okay with me. But I want to know ALLLLLLLLL the mundane and not mundane details of your life. I especially like details about everything you ate today. 

PLEASE DO IT. 

*** Okay, so I was downstairs for a minute and I thought, "Oh no! I forgot to tell them something!" Which I will tell you in a second, but the weird part is that I don't know why I think that this is the "one thing" I forgot. I did not tell you many things about the entirety of my life but somehow I think that this belongs on the list.
32. When I get dressed in the morning (or whenever I happen to be dressing myself) I don't put much thought into what I wear. But thats not the important thing. The important thing is that what takes me the longest time is choosing my socks. It takes me a very long time to choose my socks. What socks I wear is not an arbitrary choice. I do not just grab socks. I think about the perfect sock for the situation. It is important that the socks match. I get very upset when I find the perfect sock but its match is not around. Then I have to choose the second best socks. That happened this morning. Another important deciding factor is practicality. My feet CANNOT be too warm. Do I want my feet to be snug in my shoe today or slightly more free? Do I want tall socks? More breathable socks? Can I have a hole in my sock today or will my feet be spending a lot of time outside of shoes? Long list of qualifications. The other factor is FASHION. They must go with my outfit. Not that I even look in the mirror while dressing the rest of myself. Not that I even care if the rest of my outfit is matching. But my socks must be HIGH FASHION. Although I think my idea of the appropriate sock for a given ensemble is very different than other peoples. But I think my socks look gooooooood. Socks are important to me.

Okay. Now I'm done. 

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Here and Now.

Fresh start. Dusting off the cobwebs and getting ready for happiness.

Glitter on my eyes.

The thing about me, is that I could be perfectly content doing nothing. Playing all day. Friends and sleep and food and friends and friends and food and sleep. What else do you really need? Pretty flowers. Windy days. Ladies night and toga parties. Being scared of ferris wheels. Dancing. Adventures. Knowing about string theory and quantum loop gravity and astrology. Snow storms and hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps. Sitting, laughing, fires, plaid shirts.

When you don't believe in a real world, it seems that responsibility is just an illusion.

Copenhagen.

I've been very homesick lately. But I'm not sure for where.

godddddddddddddddd

ghvfuohsovjdsiofjciodciodjiodsjfiowejiocncklsjiocsjiofjiosdk

flavor flav. you too good.

I need to charge my ipod, load up some flavor flav, and ride the bus all day long blasting flavor flav in my ears.

yeah.

CHEESEBURGER FOR BREAKFAST

I'm so nauseous all the time every day every night whenever I eat and whenever I am hungry. It is starting to drive me MMAAADDDDDDDDDD.

Sushi, Snickerdoodles, and Country Music.

Everything went right today but I am too tired to really care.

Summer of 2010.

This summer is the summer to live. It is the summer to be irresponsible. The summer to learn that if I eat a burger from Burger King it won't kill me. The summer to learn that if I buy mustard it won't kill me. If I go to see Toy Story in theaters it won't kill me. If I depend on other people it won't kill me. If I let people actually know me it won't kill me. If I make some mistakes it won't kill me. If I let my mother buy me things it won't kill me. If I don't give my mother money it won't kill me. If I take this summer for myself it won't kill me.

It is also the summer to think about what I have. And what I don't have. What I want, what I need, and how I can get it. To think about how I grew up and how I want to be now and how I want to live my life in the future.

I needed to learn and do these things and I could not do that at home.

Summer of 1995.

This summer is the summer that has probably most defined how I see, think, and feel about the world. It is the summer when my memories first began to crystallize in a more definite form. I have a handful of recollections from before then- backwards clothes day in preschool, eating graham crackers in the basement of a church- but nothing solid. So, in many ways, this summer is the story of my beginning. How I came into being. The foundation of my life. And while it is not a continuous timeline of my summer by any means, when I think of my childhood, these are the images and sounds and words and motions that I know and that I feel.

My best friend at the time, Julie, had come over to my house to play. When it was time for my mother to drive her back to her own home, I had decided that I would prefer not to go along for the ride. I was tired, I didn't feel like it, I wanted to watch something on television, I probably whined. My father got involved. For one reason or another he became invested in the situation and his anger and bulging eyes broke me into tears and the next thing I know I was pinned against the wall by my neck with my father's hand. I am in the hallway, to the left of the bathroom door. I can see my mother and Julie watch on as my crying slowly stifled to a stop and my arms and legs grew slightly numbed. I was told I would be going with Julie to drop her off, and I believed him. As it turns out, I was not good company for Julie in the car that day anyhow. It would be years before Julie's mother allowed her to return to my house, so I suppose the problem was solved.

I liked to walk into the room in between the living room and the kitchen, where the bookshelves were, and find the red dictionary or the white bible with the pastel illustrations. With the minimal reading skills I had, I would carefully examine the letters that made up the indents in the side of the dictionary and search for my favorite pictures in the bible. On my way over to the kitchen, I would open the liquor cabinet and deeply breathe in the smell of old wood, liquor, and dust. I reached inside around all of the glass bottles and found the lamb made of sugar that was the centerpiece of every Polish Easter table setting. After taking a lick, I would reach back around the bottles and replace the lamb into the wooden bowl full of jellybeans. I closed the cabinet and continued into the kitchen where I would sit at the table and watched my mother cook.

It was late, for a five year old at least, when I walked into the kitchen. My mother was sitting at the table, in the spot next to the wall beneath telephone. There was a half empty coffee on the table in my mother's coffee cup- glass, tinted brown, an unrounded handle. Next to it, a half empty bottle of wine. In my mother's hand was a wine glass, also half empty. On my mother's face were tears. I continued to the cabinet and reached for the identical copy of my mother's coffee cup and filled it with milk. The brown tint of the glass made the contents look very similar to my mother's unfinished coffee. I took a seat at the far end of the table, closest to the back door. I took a sip of my milk as my mother took a sip of her wine. I looked at my mother's face as tears rolled down her cheeks. There was once a time when I would have climbed into her lap, extended my arms, and offered a hug. I can't remember that time, but I can feel it. But by this summer I knew that was no longer welcome. I had grown accustomed to the hugs being pushed away, the embrace greeted with more annoyance than welcome. So I did what had become the new tradition. I sat across the table, in a parallel world, hoping my mother felt a comfort in my presence that I no longer felt in hers.

Summer of 2008.

This summer is the best summer on record. Just graduated high school, gearing up for college, smoking, drinking, making money. I don't remember this summer. I remember words and phrases that defined this summer, but the memories themselves- the images and motions and sounds- completely evade me.

"Oh look, it's us again." Khadijah, Minh, Anna, me.

"Noodle nap time." Absolutely delicious Vietnamese feasts followed by napping and cuddling.

"Lank battles." Always the winner.

"Jeeks and Peter." Self-explanatory.

The rest is blank. Goddamn lyme disease. All I know is that when I

think back to the summer of 2008, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't without its faults. But there is a general feeling of goodness when I think about it.

I can look at pictures, and know that it was good.

Summer of 1999.

This summer is the summer I remember most vividly in my mind. It was marked by three friends- Jamie, Kristina and Kerri- not so much by choice but rather by circumstance. We all had a mutual understanding about each others' lives and none of us ever felt compelled to talk forthright about it. It was marked by misadventures. There were several run-ins with the police that, looking back, seems to be several run-ins too many for a pack of 9 year old girls. But mostly it was marked by freedom. Not the kind that most kids crave but the kind that leaves a bitter taste on the tongue by the end of the day.

The feeling of indestructibility was intoxicating. The air wreaked of it. We knew, or so we believed, that the only thing that could devastate us was what lived inside the houses we ran from. Jamie's mother was bipolar, Kerri's house was marinated in liquor, Kristina's parents both worked full time jobs, and my house was, well, my house. If the plan was to grab some lunch at my place, but as we walked across the back porch we heard the sounds of dishes breaking and screaming, Kerri would mention the pack of bacon newly purchased at her house which was obviously the superior food choice. And if once we got there her mother had a tall glass of whiskey in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and was slurring to herself, Jamie would recall how much she hated bacon in the first place and talk about the ice cream and cones in her kitchen. And so it would go until we found a moment of temporary peace at one of our homes. When that wasn't an option, we would continue to Friendly's where we had befriended the Haitian waiter who would tell us about his family back in Haiti and offer us free plates of french fries.

The days would start well before breakfast. We would go to the abandoned school a couple of blocks from our street and sit on the rocks and play with acorn tops or go in the woods to try to find the fort that Jamie's older sister built there. (We never did find it but did have the cops called on us, turns out it was a private area and our disturbances were not welcome.) We would make up dances to Britney Spears songs. We would make movies. We would craft posters that encouraged drivers to honk their horns if they loved or supported various causes and keep tally of how many honked, how many read the sign the did not honk, and how many picked their noses. On the corner of Oak and Maple, the "Honk if you love rainbows" poster got two nose-pickers.

Days would turn into nights and we would play on. By dark, the streets were our playground. An all time favorite was playing Red Light, Green Light with the traffic light at the Oak and Chestnut intersection. The traffic light would always win. When we grew tired we would walk over to the sewage grate closest to Kristina's house with the S on it, spit on it (which was what the S signified), and lie in the middle of the street and discuss our next move. By then it was generally time for some late night TV or a movie marathon. We were friendly with the folks who worked at the Blockbuster down the street so we were allowed to rent whichever movies we wanted. The most memorable rental was that of American Pie and Silence of the Lambs.

To us, sleep was beyond the point and I pulled more all nighters then than I would advise to anyone. By sunrise, it was time to start our days again and off we would go. There were certainly strings of days that would go by without me seeing or speaking with my family. But inevitably, after a few days, total exhaustion would seep in and we split up to go sleep in our respective houses for the next 36 hours until we could run loose once more. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Okay.

Okay.